Vatican Rejects Intelligent Design?

typobox43 writes "A Vatican representative has expressed a defense of the theory of evolution, stating that it is "perfectly compatible" with the Genesis story of creation. "The fundamentalists want to give a scientific meaning to words that had no scientific aim," he said at a Vatican press conference. He said the real message in Genesis was that "the universe didn't make itself and had a creator"." Of course, it'd probably be best if fundmentalists actually talked to, say, the rabbis who wrote the whole thing down. The Orthodox rabbis I've spoken find it amazingly amusing that people take the creation story as literal truth, rather then a story about YHWH's power.

Comments

Talk to those that wrote it down?

[TurdTapper]

Of course, it'd probably be best if fundmentalists actually talked to, say, the rabbis who wrote the whole thing down.

How exactly is that going to happen? Since this was all written down thousands of years ago, how is someone going to talk to those rabbis? WABAC perhaps?

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[tloh]

dude, That was sarcasm leaving a message on your answering machine.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Ironsides]

How exactly is that going to happen? Since this was all written down thousands of years ago, how is someone going to talk to those rabbis? WABAC perhaps?

If I recall corectly, the Pentateuch was writen by Moses as dictated to him by God. This includes Genesis. The great flood is supposed to have happened around 2,200 BC from what I can find, so year, we'd need a WABAC to ask him. Or maybe a phone booth.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[aurelian]

How exactly is that going to happen? Since this was all written down thousands of years ago, how is someone going to talk to those rabbis? WABAC perhaps?

well, compared with the people/beings they usually communicate with, surely it would be easy to talk to someone who did actually exist once?

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[simon_hibbs2]

And of course the Rabinical movement didn't emerge untill after the destruction of the temple in 79 AD. Before that Judaism had a priesthood (plus the Pharisees, precursors of the Rabbis). But I'll stop now before your eyes glaze over.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Shadow Wrought]

I believe what he is alluding to, though he worded it poorly, is that Orthodox Rabbis hand copy Genesis and the other parts of the Pentuarch on scrolls as a means of preserving them. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that they do this and that it would explain what he was getting at.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Golias]

Of course, it'd probably be best if fundmentalists actually talked to, say, the rabbis who wrote the whole thing down.

How exactly is that going to happen?

My thought as well. That comment had to be just about the most stupid thing I've seen written about religion in a long time.

To commune with the dead is occultist divination, and considered satanic by Catholics and Fundamentalists alike, so even if they could do it, it would be forbidden.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Hedgethorn]

I'm not sure where you've heard the 2200 B.C. date for the flood. Most of the evangelical and/or fundamentalist Christians that study such things usually put Abraham in the neighborhood of 4000 B.C. The flood was considerably before Abraham's time, so I would think that they would date Noah's flood sometime prior to 4500 B.C.

Of course, IANAOldTestamentScholar, so take this for what it is worth.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[tomhudson]

rather then a story about YHWH's power.

Somehow, I don't think that its a demonstraton of the power of any Young Homosexual Women's Helpline (1-888-THE-GLNH), though working in a reference to lesbians in ANY article is guaranteed to get the "guys-living-in-mom'sbasement" crowd all hot and bothereddddddd

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Anonymous Coward]

Theres only one way to find out for sure, we need Bill and Ted

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[teh Wang]

So why do they spend so much time and effort praying to dead saints?

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Pig Hogger]

If I recall corectly, the Pentateuch was writen by Moses as dictated to him by God. This includes Genesis. The great flood is supposed to have happened around 2,200 BC from what I can find, so year, we'd need a WABAC to ask him. Or maybe a phone booth.

You mean a TARDIS???

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Will2k_is_here]

If I recall corectly, the Pentateuch was writen by Moses as dictated to him by God. This includes Genesis.

That depends on who you ask. Researchers believe the pentateuch was more likely written by at least 4 scholars/rabbis during the exile in Babylon.
See:
http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mbible1.html
or this book.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Ironsides]

I was thinking of that and Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Ford Prefect]

I think you need more monkeys - that's still not Shakespeare.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[petaflop]

Obviously, the authorship of the Pentateuch (and consequently the date) is a subject of debate.

Orthodox Jews and fundamentalist Christians generally support the Mosaic authorship, with datings in the 13th-15th century BCE.

Most other scholars (90% according to wikipedia), including secular, Jewish and Christian scholars, would date the final redaction to 6-7th century BCE (see for example the documentary hypothesis, which although it is not the latest theory forms a background and frequently a basis for newer theories). The final form was based on earlier documents and oral traditions, with the earliest written parts going back to about the 9th or 10th century BCE. More info here: Dating the bible.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Anonymous Coward]

no, no, keep going, get to the part about how the temple was used for animal sacrifice, and how when the messiah comes and the temple is rebuilt, judaism will once again become a temple religion and the animal sacrifices will recommence. You know how there is only one true G-d, and He is just waiting till animal blood will be shed in His name again! Oh, not all primitive like those darn pagans, oh no!

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Anonymous Coward]

Crap, the tape ran out before he finished! How am I gonna find out what he said now?

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Anonymous Coward]

Somebody mod^2 parent back up, while it may have been intended a troll, it is actually a valid question, one many Catholics like to sidestep when I ask, especially with Mary(mother of Christ) being in there.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Ironsides]

I had thought it was around 4000BC. However, after a quick googling I came across one that said ~2000BC. I took it to mean that what I remembered as 4000BC was supposed to be 4000 years ago.

Here's some on the 2000 BC range.
The year given for the Flood is the 600th year of Noah's life (Gen. 7:11), which, according to adding up the ages of the patriarchs should be about 1,656 years after the Beginning of Mortality, or about 2345 BC
http://www.johnpratt.com/items/docs/lds/meridian/2 003/deluge.html
http://www.spiritrestoration.org/Church/Research%2 0History%20and%20Great%20Links/Old%20Testament%20T imeline.htm

Here's one that places it at ~3500BC
http://www.templemount.org/earlytm.html

I'm not a scholar on the subject, just trying to point out that is has been a really long time since the words were written. Alhtough, I'd also like to find out how they plan on asking since no one speaks sandscrit/cuneiform anymore (or whatever language was used back then). We may be able to read it, but I don't think anyone actually speaks it.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[rosewood]

THe people pushing ID are Fundies.

This article is about Catholics.

The editorial is about Jews.

Shocker that this place would get mixed up by different religions.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Golias]

If I recall corectly, the Pentateuch was writen by Moses as dictated to him by God.

Which, if true, must have been very depressing to Moses, since his death is recorded in the second of the the five books.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[|/|/|||]

Yeah well, the religious acceptance of such an act is the least of the worries of anyone attempting to commune with the dead.

The much more difficult hurdle is the physical impossibility according to current theory. That doesn't stop a lot of charlatans from fooling people, but it does stop them from being a credible source of historical information.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[petaflop]

The "straight dope" article is pretty good, but I'm afraid your summary doesn't do it justice. The "4 Rabbis" are more likely to be schools or traditions, separated by up to 5 centuries, and the common position is that at least J, E and D are pre-exilic. The redaction probably took place during the exile.

(A few scholars however, e.g. Van Seters, argue that the J source, instead of being the earliest in 9th-10th century BCE, is actually post-exilic).

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[mrchaotica]

Theoretically speaking, Moses would be going to heaven, so why would he be depressed about his own death?

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[charlesbakerharris]

Then why did they call Jesus a rabbi?

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Golias]

Yeah well, the religious acceptance of such an act is the least of the worries of anyone attempting to commune with the dead.

Really? If you were a Catholic or Fundamentalist, I would think that "this shit is not working" is a considerably less worrisome outcome than "hey, it worked! Now I'm going to burn in Hell forever for practicing witchcraft."

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Anonymous Coward]

First, they didn't write it down. Someone wrote it down and the rabbis chose that writing to be part of the Bible. (Not all books became part of the Bible. Some were rejected outright and there were some that were selected or rejected after considerable controversy but got a majority vote for the final decision.)

Secondly, you can find out the opinions of the rabbis who did the selection by looking in the Talmud. For example, there was a debate about whether to use the present tense ("boreh" in Hebrew) or past tense ("barah" in Hebrew) for "creation" in prayers that are a basic part of Jewish liturgy. One group argued for the past tense, implying that creation was completed. The other group (and the final decision) was that the present tense would be used, implying that creation is ongoing and continuous. There are numerous other decisions that reflect that view, and even hold that human beings are partners in creation (for example, that the Sabbath is brought on by the woman lighting the candles, not by the sun going down).

BTW, I don't think there is a functional difference between evolution and continuous creation. Or put another way, there was intelligent design behind creation and evolution is the design.

There are a lot of other current political issues that are caused by failing to look at the opinions of the rabbis as recorded in the Talmud. For example, the wickedness of Sodom had little or nothing to do with sexual perversion and everything to do with wicked maltreatment of the poor and the stranger.

You may not be able to directly "talk to those who wrote it down" but you can surely find out what their interpretations were of the writings they selected for the Bible.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Anonymous Coward]

What, you couldn't wait 24 hours for it to actually be Tuesday?

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[EnderWiggnz]

meh... at least they dont have a cannibalistic re-enactment at every worship.

seriously, eating flesh and drinking blood?

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Anonymous Coward]

A firm idea of heaven didn't show up until Jesus did.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[operagost]

I suppose that the assumption is being made that the rabbis are the generally accepted authority of the Old Testament. This ignorance pervades Christianity in a similar manner. I watched a recent episode of CSI in which Marg Helgenberger's character inexplicably browbeats a woman who runs a surrogacy service for abandoned embryos as if she was some sort of pedophile. Helgenberger's character appeals to an edict by a 17th century pope that life begins 40 days after conception-- as if this administrator, who was likely protestant as the RC Church opposes surrogacy or IVF of any kind, gave a damn about the supposed authority of the Pope.

That being said, it is often argued by Christians that all but the parts of scripture presented as visions and prophecies should be taken as literal. One of the most commonly cited proof texts for this is 2 Timothy 3:16, "All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work." Note that this is not a circular argument as to whether the Bible itself is reliable, but to persuade those who already profess their faith to accept the whole and not to "cherry-pick".

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[rjshields]

Did it ever occur to you that we're all just pissing into the wind? For all we know we could be studying the results of the world's biggest game of Chinese Whispers. How do you know the guy that wrote this stuff down wasn't just having a joke and is now chuckling from beyond the grave at all the havoc he created?

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[tfiedler]

Man, you are going to lose them... I see eyes glazing over already... but I'll add this: Never mind that we believe the Bible is a book about why and NOT how. Of course this is perspective, we also believe you need to be concerned with NOW and not the afterlife, because you can only work to improve the "now" and you really don't have any idea about what comes next; hence our focus on acts.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Anonymous Coward]

They didn't. You're just recalling more of that modern evenagelical protestant christian teaching again.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[c_forq]

Because rabbi means teacher. Jesus was a teacher. He wasn't a rabbi in the modern sense of the word (maybe as someone able to interpret Jewish law which it is still sometimes used to denote, but definitely not in the sense of the ordained position it is now).

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[operagost]

The whole JEDP hypothesis approaches absurdity once higher criticism methods lead to every word in a passage being attributed to a different author. It starts resembling the garlands of epicycles Copernicus used in an attempt to make perfect circular orbits fit his particular model of the solar system.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[drgonzo59]

Quite simply, talk to either the Orthodox Jews or the Orthodox Christians (Also called Easern Orthodox Christians), perhaps Catholics too. Why? They have a rich oral tradition that has been unchanged since the days the books have been written. Whoever wrote the book told his followers what it meant, then they told their followers and so on. As you can imagine there were no cameras or sound recording equipment in that day to just sit and record everything, so the oral tradition along with a written text is what we have.

The "Fundamentalists" follow the Bible, even though it was technically written and composed by the early Christians at a council in the 4th century, so instead of going crazy with the interpretation they should just talk to the people who composed the Bible and selected which books would be "in" and which ones would be left out - the Orthodox Christians, they would probably also know what the correct interpretation is.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Anonymous Coward]

actually its recorded in the end of the last book.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Braino420]

it was more than one person, and most died for what they wrote. i don't think the joke would be worth it, personally

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[petaflop]

I've never actually heard of anyone trying to assign a source to less than a quarter-verse, and even that practice was a passing fad.

Most modern scholars I've read, while they will on occasion attribute a few words to 'later redaction' (for example where an anchronous reference is included in a passage of probable early origin), don't try and assign a source to anything shorter than a couple of verses.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[stanmann]

Most people who subscribe to the 4th century council theory overlook the Coptic branch of the Chuch which while orthodox has never been associated with the "Orthodox" branches of the church, and shares the same set of Scriptures as the rest of "Christendom".

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Anonymous Coward]

Since Young earth creationists think the world is 6000 years old, the flood would have to have happened much later than 2000 bc.

Of course, there are billions (4.7 or so) of reasons why this line of thinking is wrong......

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Ariane 6]

IIRC, there's a Talmudic reference to Moses writing that part with his tears or something...I'd get my Jewish study Bible out, but I'm too lazy.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[MBGMorden]

That's metaphorical. It was metaphorical the first time it was done, so there's nothing "cannibalistic" about the re-enactment of communion.

And to be honest, that's the first instance I've heard that viewpoint come up since a some ignorant Romans took the words literally before the widespread adoption of Christianity.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[tomhudson]

... but then I can pretend I'm a slashdot editor and post it as a DUPE!

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[drgonzo59]

The Coptics are Orthodox too and would interpret the Bible in the same way as the other Orthodox. The was just a small dissagreement between the nature of Christ, that is thought to have arrisen from a translation error to/from Greek and Arabic. But dogmatic union of the early church was extremely important and thus there was split. I hope today they would come back together, there isn't any dogmatic difference between the churches and there is just as much customs and local tradition difference as there is between different national churches even among the Eastern Orthodox.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[EnderWiggnz]

apparently, you're not a Catholic (the whole transubstantiation bit)

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Anonymous Coward]

Spoken like an idiot who has never looked at a medieval manuscript OR an ancient papyrus. There are textual-critical justifications for assuming massive redactions in the biblical texts. Also, calling the authors "rabbis" is probably anachronistic, as we're likely talking about pre-rabbinical Judaism here (i.e., "priests" more than "teachers").

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Uzuri]

Unless you're Roman Catholic (Eastern Orthodox Catholic, too, I think, but I can only speak for what I've studies). Then it really is blood and flesh.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[stanmann]

The Coptics are not now, and have never been subject to either Constantinople, Byzantium or Rome.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[CDPatten]

The only problem with that Theory is the bible says bluntly that Moses wrote the books. Either the bible is accurate or inaccurate. Christianity is based on the notion that the Bible is 100% accurate and inspired directly by God.

For your link to be correct, Christianity as we know it today would unravel entirely.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[WormholeFiend]

What I find funny is that people on psychedelic drug forums describe talking to invisible and not-so-invisible "beings" all the time, yet you don't see them go out into the world and start exploitative religious movements.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Anonymous Coward]

well, you have to remember the jedp theory was started in germany by anti semetics.

second, it is based on the theory that the writer must be different because he used 4 different names for god.

So if you can draw the conclusion the because 4 different names are used, there must be 4 differnt writers, Why cant I make the same claim that the writer used 4 different names?

Third, the dead sea scrolls play an important part here. there was an 800 year span between the original messianic text and the discovery of the scrolls. when tested, there was text was nearly identical with the exception of a couple minor spelling errors. if we can validate the tect forward 800 yrs, we should be able to validate it back 800yrs given the great care the jews took to protect it. SO guess what?

800 years back from the original messianic text takes you back to the time of Moses himself.

Bingo. Moses said he wrote it. He wrote it.

And I am jewish and I do not know of any ORTHODOX Rabbi who would dare claim that its a "story". This is the word of God as handed down to Moses.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[drgonzo59]

Ok, I was talking about dogmatic unity not political subbordination. The Byzantium and Constantinople are not there anymore, Rome is Catholic, so that isn't relevant. Most Orthodox countries have been subject to policial rulers and pressures - look at the Soviet Russia in just the last 100 years - that has nothing to do with the dogma and beliefs of the church, which remained unchanged since the apostolic era.

The Coptic split occured because there was supposedly a difference in the belief about the nature of Christ -- while in fact now it seems it was just a translation issue between Greek and Arabic. So in case of unification, the Coptic church would not have to be "subject" to any political rule, they would have their own pope and so on probably, it is just that all the Orthodox would be in communion with each other - a pretty good thing if you ask me.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Kooglebot]

I suppose that the assumption is being made that the rabbis are the generally accepted authority of the Old Testament.

I suspect that you are right about that. The next question is: would they accept what the rabbi said? I mean, apart from his supposed authority.

... it is often argued by Christians that all but the parts of scripture presented as visions and prophecies should be taken as literal.

I know some ``fundies'' with just that point of view. While they are not totally against some symbolic interpretation of the bible, they generally avoid that. In the case of Genesis 1 and 2 specifically, a symbolic interpretation would contradict what Paul said in Romans 15:2 (I think) about sin coming into the world through one man (i.e. Adam), and would challenge their (also rather literal) view of original sin. In summary, even if the Orthodox rabbi and the Christian ``fundamentalist'' actually shared a similar technique for interpreting Scripture, they are working from different assumptions -- the Christian must also square any interpretation of the O.T. with the N.T.

I hold no brief for the fundamentalist or for Christianity in general, BTW

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[AndroidCat]

Email them with Occultlook Express or some afterlife contact management package?

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[MECC]

Communicating with the dead is not impossible - its just hard to interpet the moaning.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Will2k_is_here]

That depends on how you interpret the Bible. "100% accurate and inspired directly by God" can mean if the Bible says it, that's what happened (eg. 6 day creation, global deluge, four corners of a flat Earth), or it can mean that it merely carries truth, but not all things are to be interpreted in a literal sense.

And the Bible does not bluntly say Moses wrote those books. "The laws of Moses" is a common phrase, but that doesn't imply that the version contained in today's Bible is a direct translation of what Moses wrote but merely originates from what Moses wrote.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[vicparedes]

They do. It's called Rock Music.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[lordofthechia]

"his death is recorded in the second of the the five books."

He must have been dictating then...

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[CRCulver]

Most people who subscribe to the 4th century council theory overlook the Coptic branch of the Chuch which while orthodox has never been associated with the "Orthodox" branches of the church, and shares the same set of Scriptures as the rest of "Christendom".

Egypt was in the Byzantine Empire, the Coptic Church was united with the church of the rest of the empire under the Monophysite controversy when some of her bishops rebelled. Sorry, denying it can't change the fact that in the beginning the Church was one. What, you think Christ founded two Churches, one for the Copts and one for everyone else?

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Golias]

Worst.

Pun.

Ever.

...

Kudos.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Anonymous Coward]

But, how can they not cherry pick? There are passages that are mutually exclusive.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Sweep The Leg]

I don't think he would have been depressed about his name being in there. It's just all the "unreleased" material. He was the Tupac of the ancient world.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[hunterx11]

Why would the Persians or the Egyptians or whoever kill the Hebrews for writing down a bunch of modified versions of Sumerian mythology? And the Christians weren't killed for writing the New Testament; they were more obstinate than the hundreds of other mystery cults the Romans tolerated, so they became a scapegoat.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[CRCulver]

That's metaphorical. It was metaphorical the first time it was done, so there's nothing "cannibalistic" about the re-enactment of communion. And to be honest, that's the first instance I've heard that viewpoint come up since a some ignorant Romans took the words literally before the widespread adoption of Christianity.

Sorry, but all of the Church Fathers, not only in Rome but also everywhere else in the Christian world of the time, believed that the Eucharist was the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ the Son of God, not a mere metaphor. This is obvious from the fact that the Eastern Orthodox Church (which was one whole half of Christendom at the time of the split) maintains the same doctrine as the Roman Catholic Church, and so it is not a Roman innovation. What is an innovation is the Protestant notion that it's just a symbol, because this has no grounds in the writings of the Fathers.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Ced_Ex]

And the Bible does not bluntly say Moses wrote those books. "The laws of Moses" is a common phrase, but that doesn't imply that the version contained in today's Bible is a direct translation of what Moses wrote but merely originates from what Moses wrote.

How come God hasn't spoken to anyone recently? You know... to revise the Bible into modern times?

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[grammar fascist]

no, no, keep going, get to the part about how the temple was used for animal sacrifice, and how when the messiah comes and the temple is rebuilt, judaism will once again become a temple religion and the animal sacrifices will recommence. You know how there is only one true G-d, and He is just waiting till animal blood will be shed in His name again! Oh, not all primitive like those darn pagans, oh no!

Is it morally wrong if the animals are eaten afterward by the priests?

If it is, put down that hamburger.

The idea of offering a religious statement upon the slaughter of an animal really isn't that strange. A little ceremony is appropriate. That animal gave its life so you could live. I'm seeing shades of Christianity - aren't you?

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[CyberNigma]

I find it more interesting that some idiot modded you flamebait for something that's obviously true. Regardless of wrote it, they are dead so the phrase about talking to those who wrote it makes no sense.. Idiot grandparent, idiot modder. Luckily someone else with modpoints had some sense to counter the flamebait mod...

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[gwayne]

The "4 Rabbis" are more likely to be schools or traditions, separated by up to 5 centuries, and the common position is that at least J, E and D are pre-exilic.

Let me guess - the fourth source is I? J.E.D.I. See, midiclorians created life! QED.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[hunterx11]

Biblical infallibility may be Christian doctrine, but it is not actually found in the Bible, kind of like the Trinity.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[stanmann]

The church was one, Pre ROME. I don't argue that. The point is that there wasn't some secret/public meeting where there was a vote to vote parts of the bible in or out.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[stanmann]

Young earth creationists accept an age of the earth between 7 and 15K years. There is a very small subgroup that holds to a 4004BC creation due to some poor math and reading ability.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[rjshields]

Yes but if we have several sources of similar but slightly different information, it could be that they weren't first hand and that we don't know the original information source.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe no one has been listening.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[PHPfanboy]

So close....

The 4 writers are not just because of the 4 names of God, but also the massive discrepancies in style and content of various parts of the bible. How else do you square the Babylonian creation myths of Genesis with the temple accounts of Leviticus and then the need to recount everything all over again in Deuteronomy. Highly recommend Richard Elliot Friedman's "Who Wrote the Bible" to anyone really interested in this. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0139 585133/103-1081140-1817412?v=glance
Spoiler: not written by Rabbi's but by High Priest in Josiah's reign to cement the legitimacy of the new monarchy with the old priestly sects and monarchy bloodline (Rabbi's being a relatively late addition to Judaism, the priestly Cohen sect was more important for spiritual leadership back then)

The Dead Sea scrolls don't play such an important part here, although they are very interesting especially to understand the socio-political developments of Roman period Judea. And in fact there's another myth that there were not different versions of the Pentateuch. Apparently the Karaite bible has at least 13 differences and you can assume they are just as accurate with protecting their textual tradition (and if you're into lamb barbecue's Mt. Gerizim outside Nablus is the place to be around Passover time).

Anyway, your evidence is very patchy. If you're looking for Orthodox Rabbi's to claim creation is allegorical you can start hunting around Maimonides (Rambam), IIRC you'll find plenty there.

And yes, it's trite, but I believe (with a complete belief ;-)) that my karma does run over your dogma...

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[FuzzyDaddy]

According to Jewish tradition, it has been 5766 years since the creation of the world. Hence the year on the Jewish calender is 5766.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[EnderWiggnz]

the funniest thing about Catholic vs. Bible literalists, is that there are only three aspects of the bible that Catholic (Eastern or Roman) believe literally happened, while the biblical literalists absolutely do not accept these as fact. They are:

Permanent Viginity of Mary
Transubstantiation
Assumption of Mary

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[stanmann]

It is truly amazing that so many people don't know anything about the Coptic(north african) and Anabaptist(pre-400 AD protestants) branches of the church.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[CRCulver]

The Coptic Church has the same doctrine on the Eucharist as the Eastern Orthodox Church. Anabaptists didn't come about until the 16th century in Germany. The Amish and the Mennonites are their biggest descendents. There were no "pre-400 AD Protestants". There were some heretical groups, such as the Gnostics and the Montanists, but they can't be called "Protestants" because that word refers to those who followed Luther's break with the Roman Catholic Church. Do you have any training in the history of religion, or are you just trying to get attention by injecting mentions of the Copts in places where they aren't especially pertinent?

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[GuyWithLag]

Mybe those that listened got drawn and quartered?

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[bStrom]

Interesting article on the extent of Roman Catholic beleifs: http://www.catholic.net/rcc/Periodicals/Homiletic/ Jan98/transubstantiation.html

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[StalinsNotDead]

Or the ones that do listen are heavily medicated nowadays.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[jotok]

This is actually a really telling point.

Ask any fundie if the Bible is the sole authority on matters spiritual and temporal, and they'll say, why, of course it is.

Then ask them to find the chapter & verse IN the Bible where it says that.

Problem is, it doesn't. It is a TRADITION that is passed down. So they give authority to tradition as well as scripture, while claiming to only trust scripture.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Anonymous Coward]

kind of like the Trinity.

That's because the concept of "Trinity" was invented at the Council of Nicea in 325A.D. You know, the whole shamrock theory? Yeah. Jesus never said anything about that, but man just loves to make things more complicated than they are.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[BlueStraggler]

Well, they do. It's just that most of them don't get beyond a handful of followers on some commune somewhere. Only a small handful per millenia manage to grow to full-blown religion status.

Not a whole lot different than tech startups, now that I think about it...

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[CRCulver]

The Assumption of the Most Holy Theotokos is not in the Bible. Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox (there's no such thing as "Eastern Catholics" in English terminology) believe that it happened because there are no physical relics of the Theotokos. We only have her Veil, while for other saints we have various corporeal relics, such as the head of John the Baptist and the skull of St Anna. However, while the Roman Catholic Church has dogmatized this by a statement ex cathedra (making it a serious dogma), the Eastern Orthodox Church has not dogmatized it, although its members overwhelmingly believe in it.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[like_pilate]

Actually, thats incorrect.
The Jewish calender is counted from the creation of Adam - the first man/creature with a divine soul.

There is no counting before then (what some would refer to as the 6th day), so Genesis doesn't really comment in any way on how long the creation of the universe itself would have taken

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[danbeck]

"four corners of a flat Earth"?

What on earth are you talking about and where does the Bible mention this interesting idea?

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[lawpoop]

"Alhtough, I'd also like to find out how they plan on asking since no one speaks sandscrit/cuneiform anymore (or whatever language was used back then). We may be able to read it, but I don't think anyone actually speaks it."

Submit your *written* questions on a clay tablet or animal skin.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[anonymo]

Copernicus realized that by moving the Sun to the centre of spheres instead of the Earth he needed less amount epicycles.
Copernicus did not invented the spheres neither the epicycles. They were described by a scholar greek, Ptolemaios referring to secret Egyptian scripts (of course he could just made up them) as a flat Earth surrounded by the spheres and epicycles. Another greek thinker found out that the Earth is a globe and the Sun at incredibly far away about at the same time but it was so surrealistic that it was dropped.

Kepler enchanced the heliocentric view by describing the rules for the ellyptical planetary orbits.

The Bible has been treated (almost) as any other script for about 200 years. Even the Vatican's text analysis concluded that every gospel has parts with unique structures that definitely point to separate authors.

It's a pity that you've got 5 points as interesting :-(
Instead of 5 points for a troll that you are.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Anonymous Coward]

Both wrong. God didn't dictate anything to Moses. Can you imagine: Ok, Moses you came up the mountain, now write that down. Then you took off your shoes. Write that too. Moses: What about this writing I'm doing? God: Um no. Infinite loop. Haven't got time for that.

Moses did the writing. What's so hard to believe that they kept records?

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Anonymous Coward]

2 Timothy 3:16 All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[like_pilate]

" Obviously, the authorship of the Pentateuch (and consequently the date) is a subject of debate.

Orthodox Jews and fundamentalist Christians generally support the Mosaic authorship, with datings in the 13th-15th century BCE. "

Some more details perhaps? Speaking as an orthodox jew - the Torah (hebrew name for the Pentateuch) had only one author, which was Moshe Rabbeinu (Moses).
Jewish tradition holds that Moses was dictated the Torah on Mt Sinai until Parshas Yisro (about 3/5ths through) - as that was the point until current events had occured. I'm not sure of the exact date, but I believe it was about 3600 years ago.

An interesting point to note is what would have happened had Moses had the entire Torah dictated to him? By all means he would have lost his free will (a spiritual impossibility by jewish reckoning) as he would have had the entire future dictated to him by G-d, and would therefore not had any ability whatsoever to go against it. Rather, (and I asked one of my rabbis this) once events had occured - e.g. the deaths of Aaron and Miriam, the building of the Mishkan (tabernacle), etc - Moses would be further dictated to by G-d, and record what was told to him in the original scroll.
The Midrashim (oral traditions that give details of biblical events) tell that on the day he died, Moses had the last of the Torah dictated to him, taught it to Joshua, and wrote enough other Torah scrolls for each of the 12 tribes and several for the tribe of Levi, who would be dedicated Torah scholars.

For all of Jewish scripture (the Tanach), the Torah is the only section considered absolutely divine. Kabbalah (proper Kabbalah) even states that G-d has the Torah surrounding his Throne of Glory, made up of black flames on white flames.

The other sections, Nevi'im (prophets) and Ketuvim (writings) are not considered divine - rather written by people with divine inspiration.

The Torah is also considered an incredibly dense code that can only be unlocked with the Oral Torah (the Talmud), as this contains the wisdom and traditions handed down through the generations, many from Moses himself.

I thought people might like a bit more insight into the Jewish side of things.

Take it easy,
Richard

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[heson]

Who cares, the author obviously realized those stories confused people and made sure second edition was written(NT). But beware, there are lots of third party addons in that one too. No need to hesitate on readiong it, even if third edition is in the making and it will probably not be out before Duke Nukem Forever.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[hey!]

Maybe you can't talk to them, but you can get pretty close to generations of rabbis that 2/3 closer to the composers than we are. They even left a very early attempt at hypertext in dead tree form.

I'm talking of course of the Talmud.

The Talmud layers commentary and meta-commentary over text. If you do a Google image search on "Talmud" you can see some amazing page layouts created by rabbis and scribes adding a third dimension of conceptual and historical hyperlinking to the flat page.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Anonymous Coward]

But I'll stop now before your eyes glaze over.

MMmmm.. doughnuts... *garbled drooling*

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Anonymous Coward]

All scripture? Even the canon of the Paratheo-anametamystikhood Of Eris Esoteric (which is admittedly mostly scribbles left on napkins by the Late Emperor Norton).

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[jerald_hams]

"Researchers believe the pentateuch was more likely written by at least 4 scholars/rabbis during the exile in Babylon."

That idea has been out of fashion for a few decades. There are parts of the pentateuch that were almost certainly written in Babylon. But many parts carry the grammar and style of a pre-Hebrew semitic language, indicating that they probably pre-date the formation of Israel.

Some people have gotten it into their heads that some committee in Babylon sat down and wrote a Torah de novo. That's silly. Why would Israelites accept a religion/history unfamiliar to them?

We can never know the definite origin of the pentateuch, but it was almost certainly a unification of earlier religious texts and histories.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Anonymous Coward]

I am a believer, but I don't think Paul was calling his letter to Tim "Scripture" here. The point is still a good one.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[cloak42]

Yes. Jews knew at the time that they were not going to Heaven, given that they were waiting for their Messiah. Moses would have to know that when he died, he'd be going to Purgatory to wait for the Messianic arrival.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[jkauzlar]

Nice try, but actually works against your purpose. I can probably find hundreds of books of fiction that were 'inspired by God' and that are profitable for teaching, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[PakProtector]

As a Zen Discordian Buddhist, and Second Emperor of the United States, Protector of Mexico and Canada, and Embarasser of the Faith, I take official notice that I have taken offense to that!

They were doodles on hankerchiefs.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Shimbo]

Either the bible is accurate or inaccurate. Christianity is based on the notion that the Bible is 100% accurate and inspired directly by God.

Sigh, you really have no idea about Christianity, do you? Hardly any Christians believe that.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is worth considering that Orthodox rabbis today may be misinterpreting the scriptures, since this is the entire basis of Christianity.
Let me explain:
The Jewish and Christian religions were one up to the time of Christ, at which point a "fork", if you will, separated the two branches. The issue at question was, quite simply, the deity of Christ. Both sides agreed that Christ made statements equivalent to "I am God".
However, the Jewish response was to call this blasphemy, because Christ was a man, not God. The Christian response was to affirm Christ's deity, saying that he was fully god and fully man. They pointed to passages in the Jewish/Christian scriptures, claiming that they prophesied of God coming as a man. The Jews said those scriptures referred to various other things. So, essentially, the entire Jewish/Christian split was the result of a disagreement on interpretation, while agreeing on the document itself.
In light of this, it's clear (to me, at least) that all christians essentially claim that the rabbis in the first century C.E. made serious errors in interpreting the scripture, presumably having strayed from the original interpretation intended ny the author. Therefore, since modern rabbis are direct ideological descendants of them, it is fundamental to the christian's belief system that they are in serious error regarding their interpretation of scripture, and as a result, most christians have a large measure of distrust for their interpretations.
Hope this helps.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Clockwork Apple]

Wow, and they give Star Trek geeks shit for spending so much time reading and thinking about a fictional history?

I'll see your Jesus and raise you a Spock.

CB.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[terevos]

Hardly any, huh? You must know only a certain type of Christians. All the Christians I know that I consider to be more than just Christian by name believe the Bible is 100% accurate.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Anonymous Coward]

old argument that is based on flaw. JEPD has no credibility.

good write up here http://www.carm.org/bible/jedp_b.htm

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[iocat]

The Christians were killed not so much for worshipping Jesus, but for refusing to worship and/or acknowledge the Roman dieties at the same time. They were very intrastringent about their monothesism, which upset the Romans, who were all about everyone paricipating in detailed rituals to appease their gods, so the Christians really pissed them off (before they took over the entire Empire).

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[tdelaney]

You've never heard of "writing by committee"?

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[shimavak]

Well, not to be flamebait, but TFA is talking about one "minor" group of Christians that do not, by the doctorine of the Church, believe the Bible to be 100% accurate. As has been pointed out to me by my girlfriend , and on Slashdot before, the Catholic Church has no problem with, and teaches in their private schools, evolution. The Church has had pretty bad problems in the past, but it is now relatively benign when compared to some faiths practiced in various parts of the USA.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't say it's hardly any. I don't think there are any metrics we can use to prove any statement of numbers. However, I would, from experience, extrapolate that a minority of Christians believe this -- even 1% would be a lot of people. Unfortunately, it is a very vocal minority and gives Christians a bad name. In fact, they are the reason I hate Christianity, regardless, there are many things about Christianity that people could benefit from.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[hunterx11]

All the Christians had to do was light some incense in front a statute once a year. Then again, there weren't protected by Minersville School District v. Gobitis back then.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Descalzo]

You assume that he has not spoken to anyone recently. On what do you base that assumption? Have you been listening for it? I get the feeling that this is a wasted post.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[hb253]

Actually, it's not the permanent virginity of Mary. The immaculate conception refers to the fact that she was born without sin.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[FuzzyDaddy]

Yes, you're right - I forgot about that. 5766 years plus the six days. As Rashi said "Scripture did not [intend to] teach anything of the earlier or later sequence [of creation]" - the exact meaning of time during the six days being unclear.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[dclydew]

Indeed, the best it says is
(paraphrase)
"All scripture is inspired by God"... considering that FanFic is also 'inspired' I don't think that means much ;-)

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Ced_Ex]

You assume that he has not spoken to anyone recently. On what do you base that assumption? Have you been listening for it? I get the feeling that this is a wasted post.

My assumption is based upon the fact that there hasn't been a new addition to the Bible in recent times. Where's the Testament after the "New Testament" (which was written a long long time ago)?

It's a legitimate question. Why hasn't there been any new revelations since the time of the original publishing? When was the Bible last updated?

I personally haven't listened as I don't believe.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[phaggood]

Interesting, relevant Slashdot stories on avian flu, open source web tools and Eclipse + BO; ~ 200 comments.

Useless, passion-enflaming red herring actually designed to get the fundie-bots to the polls w/o rational consideration of the rest of the party's destructive platform, ~ 1,500 comments.

This country is doomed.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[dclydew]

I think the truth likely lies somewhere in-between. More fundamentalist religions tend to presume that the Bible is Correct, while some of the less fundamental groups(and the Catholics oddly enough) tend to consider the Bible a spiritual guide, not a historical one.

Other groups seem to pick and choose what is and isn't litteral.

Jehovah's Wittnesses, for example, take Genesis litteral, but consider a "day" to mean a full cycle of time, and not a 24 hour spin on this rock. Ergo, it could have been 6 days, 6000 years, 6,000,000,000 years, or more. The creation of Adam and Eve is conisdered litteral, but the Revelations are not litteral and are instead symbolic.

In the US at least, there are a number of other less mainstream groups (and some mainstream protestant groups) that appear similar to this sort of view.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[dgatwood]

Who wants to place bets that the scholars translated that wrong, and that the word actually mapped onto months instead of years? The 600th month (50th year) of Noah's life seems a lot more plausible---unless, of course, he wasn't human (or wasn't a human from that time), in which case maybe 600 years is right.... Either explanation sure would explain a lot.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[dclydew]

I think you may have your Christian and Jewish wires crossed. The Jewish belief system during the time of Moses does not appear to inculde Purgatory, Heaven or Hell for post death activity.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[WiFiBro]

There are Christians claiming they are in contact with God. I spoke to 2, read from more. You may have heard also about the Book of Mormon, I think it is just a century old.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Anonymous Coward]

Talking to the rabbis that wrote it down is one thing. It's when those rabbis start responding that things get interesting.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[WiFiBro]

Well the Book of Mormon is newer... and all those people being inspired by God writing stuff, and of course the Pope...

[yep. I'm a non-believer]

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[sickofthisshit]

That's a pretty pathetic "refutation" of the Documentary Hypothesis.

It reeks of strawman.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[thomas.galvin]

And of course the Rabinical movement didn't emerge untill after the destruction of the temple in 79 AD. Before that Judaism had a priesthood (plus the Pharisees, precursors of the Rabbis). But I'll stop now before your eyes glaze over.

The Rabinnical system was actually developed during the Babylonian exile. Jesus was refered to as "Rabbi" a number of times. Phariseeism did, though, evolve into what is refered to as Rabbinic Judaism after the destruction of the temple.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[cloak42]

Well, I can't claim to know, actually... I assumed that the Messianic prophecies were inclusive of Judaism from the start. Please excuse my ignorance, or rather, my neglect to verify my assumptions. :)

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Greatmoose]

Well, the answer to this question is simple. Revelation 22:18-19 "(18)I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book, if anyone adds to them, may God add to him the plagues which are written in this book. (19) If anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, may God take away his part from the tree of life, and out of the holy city, which are written in this book." There are to be NO additions or deletions to the Bible. That is why a lot of Christians have some real doctrinal disputes with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, as they have added an entire book to the Bible (and that is a debate for another time).

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[sickofthisshit]

Nice, and perhaps funny.

But of course we know who created Star Trek. The fun thing about applying the techniques of modern criticism to Biblical texts is that we can find out things that we didn't know before about the people, places, and events that were involved in the production of the scripture, but left very little if any external evidence behind. As opposed to just reading it as Sunday School stories, and choosing to believe them or not.

I'm hardly a Bible thumper, but this kind of textual analysis is real interesting to me, in a "ancient history" kind of way, just as comparative religions is really interesting in a "I didn't know there were so many ways of confronting the unknowable" kind of way.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Greatmoose]

The Bible is actually one of the first places that mentions a spherical earth. (Isaiah 40:21-22, Proverbs 8:27, Job 26:10, and a few others).

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[feijai]

The whole JEDP hypothesis approaches absurdity once higher criticism methods lead to every word in a passage being attributed to a different author. It starts resembling the garlands of epicycles Copernicus used in an attempt to make perfect circular orbits fit his particular model of the solar system.

I guess you got modded 5:Insightful for use of the terms "garlands" and "epicycles".

Historical biblical scholarship is not the same as literary criticsm. Literary criticism is largely an attempt to gain insight into the mind of the artist, and it is mostly ego-driven baloney. The goal in scholarship, when lacking definitive evidence, is to produce a hypothesis which is the most plausible, straightforward explanation given known (indefinitive) evidence. And so far as I understand it the evidence for JEDP, while not definitive, is a helluva lot stronger than that for the single-author hypothesis (or other major ones). Evidence includes: linguistic and statistical analysis of the text; historical events and the need to jibe with them; numerous repeated stories in the text which can be grouped off with other repeated stories to make internally consistent groups (which are inconsistent with other groups); and an awful lot more. And the trend is bad: generally speaking as new evidence has come to light, it has weakened the single-author argument.

Strikingly, it's the God-wrote-it or Moses-wrote-it-under-God's-direction groups that have constructed epicycles like Copernicus: heap upon heap of crapola attempting to apologize for the mounds of inconsistencies between their theory and the text. At some point the whole house of cards will come crashing down.

It's also striking that you used epicycles to justify your position, as Copernicus is not the one most famous for having to need them. No, that was Ptolemy, and by extension, the Catholic Church. Strange how religion starts needing to build these weird constructions when faced with even a small chunk of damning data.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[rookworm]

Actually, they'll be able to have a long discussion about it in heaven ;)

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[feijai]

Hardly any Christians believe that.

Interesting, since as of 2001, 41 percent of all Americans did.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Ced_Ex]

Thank you for some facts.

Although, to me, it seems suspect to have that clause in there. Anyway, that's something to debate about another time.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[ezeri]

No, it's not a mistranslation. The environment was different preflood, lifespans in the hundreds of years were common.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Will2k_is_here]

It's a legitimate question. Why hasn't there been any new revelations since the time of the original publishing? When was the Bible last updated?

Yeah, it's a legitimate question. The answer is the Bible is a complete text in itself so requires no additions. We have the complete story described for us:
1. God intended us to be in perfect harmony with him - a personal relationship with this god
2. Man is now sinful and was cut off from this intent by Satan
3. Jesus allows a way to reconciliation with God provided we accept Jesus as that pathway for a "reconnection"
4. The day will come when Satan will be destroyed and the intended harmony will be restored for us permanently (provided you agree with and have done point 3).
There is nothing new to "reveal".

The Bible isn't a story of historical events where God intervenes from time to time and all of sudden sometime after 100 AD he stopped. It's a story of the above 4 points and everything else in there is filler (and I use filler in the positive sense, those stories/letters and the like help describe those points).

I personally haven't listened as I don't believe.
You probably have always been "hearing" but you haven't always been "listening". Like when you show up for class but zone out and miss the whole lesson.
God's presence is revealed to us a little differently from the way it was revealed in the Old Testament/Gospels. How do you listen to God today? One method is to "listen" to this post. Again, he is talking directly to you! Are you listening?

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Will2k_is_here]

That clause is more likely referring to the Book of Revelations, not necessarily the entire Bible itself. My other post describes better reasoning I think.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Will2k_is_here]

Precisely my point. There are references to "four corners" mentioned several times throughout. These are not to be interpreted literally because it would conflict with the passages you referenced and the evidence we have. It's to be interpreted figuratively as "from all directions" or "North, South, East, and West"

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[samjam]

Or would that be from the fall of Adam, rather than the creation?

Who knows how long he hung around the garden before then, or what was going on outside the garden while he was in it?

Sam

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[samjam]

Yes.

Its sad how many people say "The Bible isn't X like I thought it was supposed to be which confirms that its all rubbish as I thought all along"

Or even, "The Bible isn't X like I think YOU thought it was which confirms that everythine non-scientific that you have been thinking is rubbish all along"

Detecting God is not as hard as detecting the ever present ether, which, I note, scientists are still trying to do.

Sam

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Anonymous Coward]

You need to stop reading the DaVinci Code so much. The concept of the trinity was not invented whole cloth. Christ discusses both his oneness with the Father and the Spirit's oneness with the Father in the Gospels. The theology had been developing for centuries. Nicea was just when they put it down in a written creed to put a stop to many of the early heresies surrounding the nature of Jesus divinity.

Oh and the concept for the trinity used today is not necessarily that used in the Nicene Creed. While the Nicene creed admits that Jesus is "of the same substance" as the father, it also contains language about the Son and Spirit "preceding from the father". Many took this to mean the Father was on a higher level of divinity than the Spirit or Son. This thinking proved unacceptable to many and caused the Great Schism. I believe the Orthodox still use the Nicene model but the Catholics and Protestants do not.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Dayze!Confused]

To know better what that verse means you should also take a lesson on when the books of the New Testament were written. The Book of Revelation written by John the Divine was written while he was in exile around 68 AD. His other book, the Gospel according to St. John was written at a much later date, some saying as late as the second century. With that we can conclude that his Gospel should be excluded from the New Testament which was not canonized until the fourth century.

Another reference to look into is Deuteronomy 4:2. If you want to be really picky you could say that anything after Deuteronomy should be discarded and considered blasphemy since it says:

  Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish ought from it, that ye may keep the commandments of the LORD your God which I command you.

In conclusion the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is not put at ends with the passage that you quoted.

Re: Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Black Parrot]

> The whole JEDP hypothesis approaches absurdity once higher criticism methods lead to every word in a passage being attributed to a different author.

And the counterargument reaches absurdity when it compares the idea of four or five sources to the idea of a separate source for each word.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[ChaosDiscord]

Many Christian denominations, including Catholics, hold to belief in transubstantiation. They believe that the bread and wine become in a literal and non-metaphorical way the body and blood of Jesus. It's certainly official Catholic doctrine.

Obviously this is a major point of disagreement for many other Christian denominations.

Like it or not (personally I think it's goofy and completely misses the point of Jesus's act), it's there. However, the person you replied to who railed about "cannibalism" isn't helping his cause. EnderWiggnz, you're not doing your argument much good. You'll get some, "Heck yeahs!" from those who already share your viewpoint, but not do much to convince others. First, as the above poster mentioned, for many denominations it's a symbolic action, symbolizing being one with Jesus. It was symbolic when Jesus did it and symbolic ever since. A little metaphor and symbolism are hardly worth making a fuss over.

For those people in denominations which do insist on a more literal interpretation, sadly, many don't really know about it, or at least don't really appreciate it. I didn't really appreciate the literalness of transubstantiation until I was into my twenties, and I was raised Catholic. A despressingly large number of Catholics don't really understand what their religion preaches. Instead of harping about cannibalism, just point out what their own faith demands. When the priest says, "This is the Body and Blood of Christ," he means it in a literal sense. It may look (taste, feel, and smell) like flatbread, but you've witnessed a miracle and Jesus is literally there. That's by papal decree and not up for debate. Officially you must accept it or you are not a Catholic. (Although given the pervasive US Catholic acceptance of birth control, it may not matter. US Catholicism verges on a protestant splinter, a fact that irritates the hell out of the Vatican.)

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Pantero Blanco]

Not to mention Ezekiel's "wheel within a wheel". Check out a model of the Solar System.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[roastedMnM]

How interesting. All of the church fathers saw the Eucharist with a transubstantiationist view? I didn't realize we had enough of Papias.

But regardless of that particular particularity :D I really wonder. The strongest statement seems to come from Ignatious but then again he spoke of the gospel and faith as the flesh of Christ, and of love as His blood (Letter to the Trallians 8.1). Ignatious simply seems to lean heavily on the 'unity with Christ in His passion' aspect, the mystical, just as he did with baptism.

meh, someday when there are no more days, it won't really matter.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[shutdown -p now]

Is it morally wrong if the animals are eaten afterward by the priests?

He didn't say it in any way is. He did only say that it is no better (nor worse) than practices otherwise traditionally associated with paganism, and often reviled and contrasted both in Judaism and in Christianity.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[tezbobobo]

Maybe he meant 'listen to.' It's easy enough to study available material, writings of the day, and so on, and discover whether it was meant to be allegorical or not.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Chuckstar]

"Alhtough, I'd also like to find out how they plan on asking since no one speaks sandscrit/cuneiform anymore (or whatever language was used back then). We may be able to read it, but I don't think anyone actually speaks it. "

Um, you do know that the Torah is written in Hebrew, don't you? I think there's a few million people in the world that speak Hebrew fluently.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Auckerman]

How exactly is that going to happen? Since this was all written down thousands of years ago, how is someone going to talk to those rabbis?

I think the more compelling question is the author of which creation story, first or second Genesis. One came from Judah, the other from Israel. The question of authorship is more complicated than just a bunch of "rabbis". For a good primer, check out "Who wrote the Bible?" (I can't remember the authors name). For a more detailed view, Wellhausen, Noth, and possibily Gunkle are worth checking out.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[clanky]

Yes, that's absolutely correct, the environment was different preflood. Biblical scholars generally agree that preflood (PF), the atmosphere contained much higher concentrations of pixie dust and psychic voodoo waves.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Hal_Porter]

Many took this to mean the Father was on a higher level of divinity than the Spirit or Son. This thinking proved unacceptable to many and caused the Great Schism. I believe the Orthodox still use the Nicene model but the Catholics and Protestants do not.


This stuff is worse than vi vs emacs.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[milkman_matt]

Reminded me of that joke I once heard...

"What's the last thing you want them to say about you before you're burried?"
1st guy: That I was a great doctor and a loving husband
2nd guy: That I was a great person and a good provider
3rd guy: Look! He's moving!

Yeah yeah off topic, but I love that joke. ;D

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[gewalker]

If you interpret Genesis literally, you get into serious problems with a 1 year=1 month interpretation, you have 3 years olds have babies.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Anonymous Coward]

For that to mean anything, you would have to assert that either

A: The United States contains most of the world's Christians, (a laughable assumption)
or
B: The types of Christianity in the United States are in the same proportions the world over (probably a bad assumption, considering how much more prominent the Catholic church is outside the United States, and the American evangelicals are only now beginning their spiritual bid for non-American believers. Not surprising considering the biggest fundamentalist sects thriving in the states today are descended from cold war era patriot movements.)

You would also have to assume that everyone who checked that box "yes" in the opinion poll would still express that opinion if you were to itemize the Bible. (For many, the inerrancy of the Bible is a tenet, not a practice.)

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[LordMaxxon]

"We've heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards could produce the complete works of Shakespeare; now, thanks to the Internet, we know that is not true."
    - Robert Wilensky

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Melllvar]

No. The Bible is relatively consistent in describing the Earth as a circle, not a globe. There is an enormous difference between the two, both in terms of geometry and cosmology. Doesn't matter what translation you use, either; it's pretty much the same concept in English, Latin, Greek, or Hebrew.

This is in line with the worldview of all but the most keenly observant of the ancients (i.e. a few Greek and Egyptian mathematicians), who thought of the world as a flat disc of land floating on, and/or surrounded by, an unnavigable ocean, eerie void, mystic firmament, or whatever. Since the ancient Hebrews weren't nearly as into astronomy as their immediate neighbors, it stands to reason that this is just about how they saw Creation, as well.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, it'd probably be best if fundmentalists actually talked to, say, the rabbis who wrote the whole thing down. The Orthodox rabbis I've spoken find it amazingly amusing that people take the creation story as literal truth, rather then a story about YHWH's power.

The writer is falling for the mistaken notion that modern Judaism is somehow the same thing as ancient Judaism or the religion of the ancient Hebrews. Nothing could be further from the truth. Today's rabbis don't have any more of an "inside track" into understanding the intent of the original writers of Genesis than does anyone else; besides, Genesis is simply a retelling of much older, non-Jewish stories. The OT Bible was also in a constant state of flux, being changed and edited for quite some time; the Hebrew Masoretic text itself dates after the time of "Christ" and if you want the oldest extant example of the OT Bible, you have to go to the "poorly translated" (allegedly) Greek Septuagint, which is our earliest window into the OT Bible as we now know it.

Anyway, everything in the Bible is a myth, not just Genesis. There's no archeological records of the "great empire" of David and Solomon; it's a myth. It was invented by Jewish priests long after it supposedly existed as a way of giving their religion the kind of backstory and foundation myths it was otherwise lacking. So it's rather silly to try to go to modern rabbis and expect to find from them an "accurate" interpretation of the Bible. They weren't there, they didn't write the Bible. They are just as much prisoners of Biblical myths as the Christian fundamentalists are. Different kinds of myths, differently interpreted perhaps, but just as false.

http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/jews.htm

http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/david.htm

http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/solomon.htm

http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/assyria.htm

The Bible was never intended to be a work of history as we understand history, although it certainly does present a false history. Asking rabbis however for its meaning is about equivalent to asking modern Egyptians what the Great Pyramid "means". They don't have a clue and simply because they have a closer connection to its history than we do, does not make them experts or give them any special insights. On the contrary it may make them more unreliable.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[ndansmith]

linguistic and statistical analysis of the text

But did Moses actually write it down? More than likely, as is common with many writers of antiquity, Moses employed an amanuensis (basically a secretary) to take down his oral dictation. Consuquently the result reflected not only the style and content of Moses' speech but also the style of the amenuensis. If there were multiple amenuenses (say, I dunno, 4), then there could be four distinct sylistic/grammatical/lexical types of writing in the Penteteuch.

numerous repeated stories in the text which can be grouped off with other repeated stories to make internally consistent groups

In some cases, the supposedly repeated stories may actually be distinct as the current form of the Penteteuch presents them. Almost always they reflect a sense of historical irony, repetitive cycle of sin which besets the main characters. The fact that the stories are similar does not necessarily mean that they are retellings of the same event.

And here is the truth of the matter: Many people accuse conservative Biblical scholars of oversimplifying when it is their critics who are indeed oversimplifying the issues.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Anonymous Coward]

These are not to be interpreted literally

So when it suits your purpose, you chose not to interpret the Bible literally. Which is why Biblical literalism is absurd.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Ironsides]

Assuming Hebrew is the original language of the Torah (I had thought it was another, such as sanskrit) the way of speaking the language has undoubtably changed over time. For instance, it is not known how YHWH (assume I just wrote the Hebrew version) is pronounced. For several hundred years one was not allowed to pronounce it and as such the pronunciation was lost. Even with that, languages shift over time. The way we prounounce words today is not the same way english words were pronounce 200 years ago. There are still going to be translation problems no matter how it comes out.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Zodiac, astrology, study of the stars goes way, way back. That's the "wheel within a wheel" Ezekial is talking about: the "wheels" of the various planets, sun and moon. All that is perfectly compatible with a "flat earth" cosmology. Various comments in the OT indicate a flat earth cosmology: the "four corners" of the earth, the "waters of heaven" and the "curtains of night" etc. Flat earth cosmology saw the earth as a kind of bubble in the ocean of water; water below and water above. When it rained, that was just the "heavens opening up" and letting some of that primordial water above the heavens fall to earth.

Spherical earth ideas don't creep into the Bible until the Hellenistic period, when Jews and proto-Christians began to be exposed to Greek learning.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Oligonicella]

"Many people accuse conservative Biblical scholars of oversimplifying when it is their critics who are indeed oversimplifying the issues."

Conservative scholars - "God is source of all of it."

Critics - "It was done by more than one man."

Lessee, which of these two is an oversimplification?

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Anonymous Coward]

And the argument holds even stronger for human consumption, but you have to watch out for the mad man disease.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[mpfife]

If I recall corectly, the Pentateuch was writen by Moses as dictated to him by God. This includes Genesis. Man, it must have been a real bummer when Moses wrote: "So there, in the land of Moab, Moses, the servant of the LORD, died as the LORD had said" Deuteronomy 34:5 and then went on to finish the chapter...

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Researchers believe the pentateuch was more likely written by at least 4 scholars/rabbis during the exile in Babylon."

That idea has been out of fashion for a few decades. There are parts of the pentateuch that were almost certainly written in Babylon. But many parts carry the grammar and style of a pre-Hebrew semitic language, indicating that they probably pre-date the formation of Israel.

Bullshit. "Out of fashion" with who? Bible thumpers? What "pre-Hebrew semitic language"? Biblical Hebrew is indistinguishable from old Phoenician, aka Caananite. There's absolutely no evidence that the "Hebrew" speaking population of ancient Palestine was ever distinguishable from the "Phoenician" speaking population of the rest of the Levant of that time period. Sure, some old Hebrew stories carry this older language in them, but they were assembled and edited in Babylon and probably, later, in the "return" to Jerusalem. But whatever dates back to before the "exile" is in no way "Jewish"; it is polytheistic and "pagan" and was heavily edited and changed to conform to Babylonian-Jewish "monotheism" under the influence of Persian Zoroastrianism.

Some people have gotten it into their heads that some committee in Babylon sat down and wrote a Torah de novo.

Nice strawman argument, jackass.

That's silly. Why would Israelites accept a religion/history unfamiliar to them?

Why does anyone accept a new religion/history unfamiliar to them? It happens. It happened when Christianity was forced on Europe. Carrot-and-stick inducements can be very effective in "changing hearts and minds".

We can never know the definite origin of the pentateuch, but it was almost certainly a unification of earlier religious texts and histories.

Yes, and no one said differently. However, the transformation of these earlier texts transformed their meaning radically into something entirely new. That is the real creation of the OT Bible; the fact that some of the plagiarized source material was older than the newer material is irrelevent and misses the point that something radically new was being created.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Anonymous Coward]

this is called kuru and was endemic to papua new guinea, it is a spungiform encephalopathie and is related to mad cows disease (aka VCJ: Varient Crutzfeld Jakob)

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Z4rd0Z]

I just love how Christians say "that's not meant to be taken literally" when it's convenient for them. But don't you dare say that about the story of creation!

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[msuarezalvarez]

These are not to be interpreted literally because it would conflict with the passages you referenced and the evidence we have.

Wouldn't it be a start of people started following this recomendation when reading other parts of the book?

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Lil-Bondy]

ahh, well, you certainly got the jehovahs witnesses right, but then again, i happen to know alot of JW's and evolution is still a topic discussed apart from religion and doesnt seem to be related (in their minds, science and religion are two different things, which, they are). its not like they try to explain the bible to suit evolution. (i used to be a JW)

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[TheOldFart]

I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book, if anyone adds to them, may God add to him the plagues which are written in this book.

World's first EULA

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[SirPavlova]

The Jehovah's Witnesses don't really count as Christian though. They call Jesus "a god," not "God," & claim he's like a super-angel. This while claiming "there is only one god, Jehova" - so how can Jesus be "a minor god?" They witness for Jehovah, i.e. the father alone. Not the other two bits. They don't actually follow Christ, which sets them apart from the rest of the denominations, & disqualifies them from the name, if you get what I mean.

Their religion is quite similar to the Catholic religion, the Greek orthodox religion, the Southern Baptist religion, the Lutheran religion, etc., but their faith is totally different - those I just listed hold the same faith.

The difference between a faith & a religion is subtle, but it's important. I notice you didn't actually say the JWs were Christian, so sorry if you didn't mean that, but it seemed implied.

P.S. Other than the JW thing, your post is great. Well done.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[SirPavlova]

Doesn't the immaculate conception refer to the fact that Jesus was born of a virgin? Jesus had (non-divine) siblings so obviously you're right in that it's not the permanent virginity of Mary.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Damer Face]

Of course, it'd probably be best if fundmentalists actually talked to, say, the rabbis who wrote the whole thing down.

And it might be better still if they talk to the generations of jewish hill tribes whose oral traditions eventually became the old testament.

Or maybe they should talk to the babylonians and sumerians from whose myths the jewish tribal traditions were formed.

This is the thing that really gets me about Abrahamic fundamentalists: they have no conception of where there "truth" of the old testament comes from, and no conception of the new testament as the political (and therefore distorted) document that it actually was.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[feijai]

For that to mean anything, you would have to assert that either

A: The United States contains most of the world's Christians, (a laughable assumption)

No I don't. All I have to do is aruge that the US proportion of Christianity is nontrivial. The guy said "hardly any". Which is total baloney.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Spunk]

Actually, there are Eastern Rite Catholics. Sort of between the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholics, and much fewer in number.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[ucahg]

If you tell me the sun rose this morning, I'd believe you, but I wouldn't take your words literally. We still say sunset and sunrise when we clearly know that the earth is moving around the sun, not the other way around. I don't assume you think the sun revoles around the earth.

However, if you tell me that yesterday you drove to the grocery store, bought a cake, drove back, and ate supper later on, I'd probably take your words at face value. Because you presented them as historical truth, not as a figure of speech.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[FuzzyDaddy]

Jewish tradition places the start of the calender on day 6 of creation.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[ezeri]

Yeah, God can create an entire universe, but must realy on pixie dust and voodoo waves to allow men to live longer before wiping the face of the planet clean. Regardless of your lack of belief in the matter, biblical scholars to agree that the world was different preflood, so go ahead and keep insulting those who you disagree with, it doesn't change anything.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Anonymous Coward]

You are so clueless, A Rabbi is someone that has got smicha from direct line that can be trased to Moshe (Moses), only Moshe has premission to give smicha outside the land of Israel, and gave it right before the end of his life to Yeshua (Joshua). The Scollars which where in Exile out side of Israel instuded a new thing called Rav because a king (IIRC it was the King of Roman) ordered his army to kill every last person that had a valid smicha so this tradition could no longer be continued, thinking it will distory it. A Rav has the all the quilifacations of a Rabbi besides having a valid smicha because:
A) it wasn't given in Israel, this would not apply if it was given by Moshe.
B) It wasn't given from a direct line going back to Moshe.

The english lang. decided to use the word Rabbi to decribe a Rav... which is alright because its not a translitaration, and it just happens to sound just like the hebrew word...

So Judaism always had Rabbis it just since the exile never had valid Rabbis (besides a few which got valid smicha from a visit by Eliyahu HaNavi (Elijah the Prophet) while they where in Israel)

P.S. for all of you that know hebrew, yes smicha also means joy but it is also a quilifacation.

P.S.S. Can you christans stop making Judaism into christanity because it isn't, christanity doesn't have a clue to what Judaism is if they are going to think they are the same thing.

Old Testament != Torah... Us Jews beleive that the Torah was around from before time was created and that G-d created the world in accordance of what it says, And that Moshe went upto "Heaven" (no, what we believe of what heaven is, is nothing like what you think we beleive it is) and brought down the Torah into this world, hence the questions like "how could Moshe write that he was the most humble man...?" don't make any sence, and there is no question on "how could Moshe write down his own death" as the world was created from the Torah, hence the Torah stating Moshe death was "before" (remember there is no time and we can't understand this as we never experanced no time) Moshe was even created.

RE another comment I saw... yoshka (jesus) was not a Rabbi he could not quallify to be a Rabbi as because accorrding to Jewish law he is what we call a mamzir, and not only couldn't he be a Rabbi there where many more things he couldn't do (such as marry certain people).

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[csmatyi]

This makes sense, although one must be aware that there are also many many different exegetical traditions in Judaism. This I learned from a Rabbi in Budapest who teaches Genesis. He showed me tons and tons of books from all different kinds of authors who all exegesize Genesis differently.

Also, one must also be aware that it might be possible that Catholics buy rabbis and coxe them to declare that the creation account can't be taken literally. Just as an extremely funny and very embarassing anecdote for the Catholic church (iszonyat ciki as they would say in Hungarian) anecdote was when both a rabbi and a Catholic bishop came to the chromosome geneticist Gyula Hadlaczky to discuss wether it is genetically possible that a population of humans could arise from a single mother and father (meaning in the Biblical sense Adam anad Eve). The rabbi and the bishop were told by this famous academist scientist that bottom line, yes, it is possible. On the way out of the lab, the rabbi frustratedly told the Catholic bishop "See, I told you, that whenever you try to persuade us to alter the meaning of creation, it always turns out that we were right!"

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[samjam]

Aye, this is interesting, and an interesting tradition, but to me not certain.

For me it's hard to tell if the current form of that tradition is because the sojurn in the garden was very brief or because in the retelling of the tradition, the fact that the time in the garden is unknown was forgotten and an erroneous equivalence was made..

Some make a case that the timekeeping of earth changed as part of the fall; and to say that the tradition is "correct" implies at least one of
a) avery breif sojurn in the garden or
b) a cross-timescale year count

Sam

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[EnderWiggnz]

RC's do not accept that Jesus had brothers and sisters, even though the original language was specific.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a whole pile of people in India who read Sanskrit. All Hindu worship is in it. There is a small region where the daily language is Sanskrit as well.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[FuzzyDaddy]

That the nature of the world changed as a result of the fall is, I believe, a Christian tradition. The sin of Adam and Eve plays almost no role in Jewish theology, although I understand it is important to the Christian concept of original sin.

The Jewish dating of the calender is by no means "sacred" - it was worked out by rabbis as best as they could from the texts. Everyone needed to agree on the year so they could have a coherent calender, but whether 5766 is the correct number of years is not particularly significant. It's just the best estimate of the rabbis who worked out the calendar.

The reason to date from the creation of Adam is that scripture mentions how old he was when he died - started the clock at when he was created.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[AkumAPRIME]

I enjoy the fact that your god deemed it necessary to put "filler" text into his revelations. Anthropomorphic much?

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[ndansmith]

This is a further illustration of oversimplification, I am amused, though I find no irony in it. You post illustrates a false dichotomy. Just as an author can dictate to several secretaries, so God can inspire many different men. Those two ideas (God as source and multiple men writing it) are not contradictory, but both by themselves are oversimplification.

All Bible scholars agree that the Bible was written down by more than one man. Conservatives (broad generalization time) believe that God inspired the authors to write what they wrote.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[BigMuggle]

A minor point, but I don't think it's correct to say that the Bible was written by Rabbis. The (possibly multiple) accounts contained in Genesis were probably authored before Rabbinic Judaism came into existence. (Now I could get up and check on this, but my books are in the living room and I'm in the bedroom, and it's just too far.)

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[sickofthisshit]

Doesn't the immaculate conception refer to the fact that Jesus was born of a virgin?

No. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07674d.htm

The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception is that *Mary* was free of original sin. This isn't some kind of Catholic secret. Anyone can read the catechism http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/cate chism/p122a3p2.htm.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[feijai]

All Bible scholars agree that the Bible was written down by more than one man.

We're not talking about the Bible. We're talking about the Torah. Who's oversimplifying now?

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Hard_Code]

What about those who listen but don't care? Or feel resentful for being created as a toy for a supreme being (his "benevolence" aside) to fulfill his personal wishes, for FAILING to do so due to some other personal squabble between God and some other guy with horns, and that it is now OUR responsibility to somehow decipher and discover the means by which we are to be "reconciled".

Fuck That.

If God wants "reconciliation" he should come down and give us a clue about why he started this big fucking soap opera.

The philosophy and metaphor I get (because they have been developed by humans based on human experience). But the literalism that my entire life is owned by some ethereal entity I must worship is bullshit.

Re: Talk to those that wrote it down?

[mink]

Where does that whole bible code thing (something I only recently came across) factor into this?

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[ndansmith]

I am!

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[scstsut]

Moses wasn't a Rabbi anyway. He was a prophet tho.
http://biblegateway.com/passage/?book_id=51&chapte r=7&verse=37&version=31&context=verse

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[SirPavlova]

All right then, thanks. That seems rather mad to me, but believe what you want to. I just can't agree that anyone else came even close to Jesus, which this would seem to imply Mary did. That's my personal belief, I'm not bashing anyone.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Chuckstar]

Well you could always communicate by writing. Because Hebrew survived as a Torah and Bible study language, we understand pretty well how the written language works.

It is supposed that the stories pre-date the Torah, but if you believe that, then you already do not believe it was divinely inspired on Mt. Sinai, so the basis for believing the stories have any significance is falsified. In other words, if you believe the stories enough to want to learn from the original writers why they wrote what they did, then you should believe they wrote in Hebrew. If you don't believe they wrote in Hebrew, then you shouldn't have any reason to believe the stories are divinely inspired.

The YHWH issue is a red herring. There was one word in Hebrew that no one was allowed to pronounce. Clearly you do not need that word in order to communicate in Hebrew, otherwise, how were they communicating back then.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[operagost]

You're kidding yourself if you think your opinion is that of the majority. In fact, I've never heard of your claims about the stance of the Vatican on the gospels before. Care to offer a citation or two?

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[operagost]

Evidence includes: linguistic and statistical analysis of the text; historical events and the need to jibe with them; numerous repeated stories in the text which can be grouped off with other repeated stories to make internally consistent groups (which are inconsistent with other groups); and an awful lot more.

You are describing textual criticism, and the Bible passes quite handily with a preponderance of texts which correlate to a high degree; narratives which do harmonize when properly placed temporally, in the person of the author, and in reference to the audience; and in internal consistency with a single author.

It's also striking that you used epicycles to justify your position, as Copernicus is not the one most famous for having to need them. No, that was Ptolemy, and by extension, the Catholic Church.

Again, another ignoramus lumps all Christians in with the Roman Catholic church. I am not a Catholic do not agree with the RCC's position on just about anything. Therefore, your attempts to discredit me with your red-herring trolls are totally futile. That being said, Copernicus used epicycles when he could have thought out of the "appealing to ancient authority" box, like Kepler did. So he is guilty.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[cwspain]

Almost no current scholars accept the JEDP hypothesis in its classic form, popularized by Julius Wellhausen (though most of the literary source criticism had been done by others). The classic theory treats the text as a literary document compiled from four written sources, each from a single author. It also includes the same nineteenth century optimism that things are constantly improving which inspired Charles Darwin and Karl Marx. In addition to the literary source criticism, the Graf-Wellhausen theory traces the development of the Israelite religion from animism to polytheism to henotheism to monotheism and on, getting better all along, reach its highest expression in (naturally) 19th century German Protestant Christianity. Today much more attention is paid to the considerable oral tradition behind the written texts and how the community and shaped and interacted with the texts and traditions, but scholars still talk about the J, E, D, and P traditions. Wellhausen has this in common with his contemporary Darwin. Scholarship still works with the basic idea, but has moved far beyond the original theory.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[sickofthisshit]

I don't believe it myself, and that is one of many reasons that I am not a Catholic. However, I do know where to go to find out what it is that Catholics are supposed to believe.

This is all based on both scripture and the long-elaborated teachings of the church fathers and other tradition. They have what they think are very good reasons to believe each of the tenets of the faith, and they have the catechism to explain it.

That's a lot more care than the typical fundamentalist "I read some verse in the Bible, and I understand it in the same way my preacher told me to understand it, and there's no other way to understand it." That doesn't make Catholic doctrine any more correct, but at least you can read a long, careful description of what is being stated and why.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[SirPavlova]

That's a lot more care than the typical fundamentalist "I read some verse in the Bible, and I understand it in the same way my preacher told me to understand it, and there's no other way to understand it."

Oh, I agree. No claims to the contrary.

That doesn't make Catholic doctrine any more correct, but at least you can read a long, careful description of what is being stated and why.

Now this is what I didn't realise. I knew it to some extent, of course, but didn't know how far it went.

Thanks.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[pthisis]

Actually, there are Eastern Rite Catholics. Sort of between the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholics, and much fewer in number.

Just a couple more tidbits:
1. They are true Catholics, under the Pope in Rome.
2. They are the dominant but not only population accounting for the fact that about 20% of Catholic priests are married. But there are a few hundred legitimately married Catholic priests in the US (my priest growing up was a converted Episcopalian, a common way for this to happen--he was married with children). Spain ordained a married priest outright a couple months ago.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[dclydew]

Jehovah's Wittnesses can be considered Christian, in many respects. Christian means Christ-like not Worshipper of Christ. Jehovah's Wittnesses base their ministry (arguably one of the most important part of their reality tunnel) on the ministry of Christ (as recorded in the Gospels). They stress the aspects of "brotherly love" that Christ is recorded as having pushed. Indeed, the most important date of their year is the one corresponding with Nisan 14, the night of the Lords Evening Meal. Jehovah's Wittnesses consider Jesus as The Only Creation of God (all else was created by both God and Jesus). He is greater than the angels and like God in all aspects, except that he is Not the Father. They consider him their King and their Redeemer.

When Jehovah's Wittnessesd pray, they end all prayers "through Jesus" "In Jesus' Name, Amen" or something similar. They believe that unless one goes Through Jesus as the mediator between imperfect man and Perfect God, that God will not hear their prayers. In their belief, without Jesus, we would all be condemed to die.

That being said, they still consider Jehbovah as the Creator, The Father and God... he's just not all that acceptable until humans regain perfection... until then, they worship him through Christ.

I'd say they're not the typical Protestant, but that doesn't mean they aren't Christian.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[dclydew]

I was a JW for about 23 years... I'm interested as to why you percieve their take on evolution as different. At the time I left (2000) they were still avidly pro-creation and continued to reference their book "Did Man Get Here By Evolution or Creation?" From my recollections, it was pretty definately on the side of Creation and thought that evolution was a lie.

Perhaps they've changed in the past few years... their beliefs tend to do that whenever it becomes painfully obvious that they're wrong. ;-)

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[anonymo]

Actually, I couldn't find the original news about this: It was back in the 70's or early 80's. The text of the Old and New Testament was digitised (Latin, Greek and some other sources) to find a translation that is most correct.
The text analysis was ordered and supervised by the Holy See.
The conclusion was that different wordings and differences in translation exist but still all of them are God words and those differences were human errors.
The only citation of Vatican I found is this link, especially Chater III, 11. and Ch V. 18-19.
http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vat ican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19651118_dei-v erbum_en.html

Of course the wording is just as an Oracle :->

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Lil-Bondy]

ahh, yeah, well, im a youth in australia, i could have misintepreted it myself. but i see the logic of evolution, and i see the need for religion too... but i saw it as both worked, and i left in about 2002. i still go sometimes. but it seems a little bit too much like a cult (follow THE TRUTH!!!)

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[SirPavlova]

That was an interesting read... I've never thought of it that way (nor is my knowledge of them highly in-depth, I'll admit). I'm still not sure if I'd classify them as Christian, because I really believe you have to follow Jesus to be that, but I'm no longer certain I'd classify them as being non-Christian.

'Twas an eye-opener, so thankee.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[SirPavlova]

Perhaps they've changed in the past few years... their beliefs tend to do that whenever it becomes painfully obvious that they're wrong. ;-)

Not trying to flame, but it's one of those incidents which causes me to have no respect for them:

When they started out, they accepted the doctrine of only 144,000 getting into heaven as literal. They were quite specific on it. But now that they have over 6,000,000 adherents, that seems to have mysteriously disappeared from their (official) doctrine.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[feijai]

Again, another ignoramus lumps all Christians in with the Roman Catholic church.

Hmmm.... I didn't do that. But no matter. As soon as someone calls you an ignoramous instead of actually providing a reasoned response, you know he doesn't have one.

Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Shimbo]

All I have to do is aruge that the US proportion of Christianity is nontrivial. The guy said "hardly any". Which is total baloney.

True. I did find the narrow definition of Christianity implied in the parent post rather offensive. Glad to see the followups were, in general, somewhat more measured in tone.

Attack the messenger (please)

[MoxCamel]

Dear Scientific and (non-fundamentalist) Religious community,

Normally I would espouse a policy of "attacking the message, not the messenger." But in the case of ID, the problem is the messenger. Intelligent Design proponents no more believe in their so-called theory than any other critically thinking human. ID is simply fundamentalist's latest attempt into having evolution taught in highschool science classes. They have been knocked back time and time again on this issue, and now are trying to beat science at its own game. It doesn't even have to be a good or sound "theory," so long as they can repeat the mantra that it is a theory, long and loud enough for it to stick.

As long as we (including the Vatican) formulate our arguments on ID as a theory, even to debunk it, the fundamentalists maintain their foothold. In this case, we need to attack the messenger, not the message. ID is political propoganda, nothing more. To address it as anything else is to give undue power to its proponents.

(oh, and this story does not belong in the Science category)

Mox

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Daniel Dvorkin]

The problem, to put it bluntly, is one of PR. If we go after ID'ers personally (which normally I'd be all in favor of, because they're jackasses) then they'll scream "persecution," and that works very well. Maintaining an aura of dignified debate unfortunately gives the false impression that ID is worthy of either dignity or debate (all it's really worthy of is laughing dismissal, a la astrology or flat-Earthism, of course) but looks better in the press.

Note that the ID'ers aren't really bothering to challenge evolution scientifically any more, because all their dumb arguments were debunked long ago. Instead they're working through the court of public opinion. Like it or not, the defenders of science have to do the same.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[VolciMaster]

Many ID proponents (myself among them) do not throw out the baby of evolution with the bathwater of origins. God's having made the universe (ie, the Intelligent Design) does allow (and perhaps even demand) some evolution to occur. Repeatedly in the creation account God tells His creation to 'reproduce after their kind'. He tells Man (a special creation that did not come from 'lower' beings) to 'be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth'. He also tells Adam that he is in charge of the brids of the sky and beasts of the ground.

A great deal of man's dominion over nature has been shown in selective breeding. Now that we can experiement with genertic engineering (on a far more fine-grained scale than breeding alone allows), we have the opportunity to see all sorts of new variations of exiting plants and animals.

What evolution can not speak to, without getting into philosophy, is the actual origins of life. Eventually in the evolutionary timeline, yuo get back to a point where the question of 'where did the matter come from' pops up, and evolution comes alogn and says that matter is eternal: we've been in an unending cycle of compression and expansion of matter for eternity, and this time around humans popped up to figure it out.

What the Biblical creation account gives as the answer to that question is not that matter is eternal, but that there is a supreme being who is eternal, and He decided to make the world for His pleasure.

Intelligent Design is an alternative to the origins of life, not the continuing processes since that have shaped our world.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Burgerman851]

Curious; you have yet to name one fact that contradicts the Bible. Do you have evidence that the Tower still stands? If so, where in the Bible does it say that it doesn't?

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[BLAG-blast]

If we go after ID'ers personally (which normally I'd be all in favor of, because they're jackasses) then they'll scream "persecution,"M=

So what, they should be used to it. Bring me some lions!

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Troed]

yuo get back to a point where the question of 'where did the matter come from' pops up, and evolution comes alogn and says that matter is eternal

Maybe - but it's far more plausable that time and matter began together.

Thus there is no "before" nor "eternal".

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[d-rock]

Actually, I think you're taking a very different stance than most ID proponents in the US (I recognize that ID is a grey aread like everything else). What you're stating here is mostly what the Vatican is saying. Where you're headed is starting to bleed into cosmology/big-bang theory, since as far as I know Darwin (and more modern analyses) don't discuss about where matter came from, but rather how life changed from the very first organism into the multitude of species we have today (both micro- and macroevolution). Most ID I've heard has tended to be things like "God invented the eyeball"...

Derek

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[MightyMartian]

Intelligent Design is an alternative to the origins of life, not the continuing processes since that have shaped our world.

How is ID an alternative to the abiogenesis question? Other than "somehow something produced life" what does it bring to the table? Can it tell us about potential chemical pathways? Can it be falsified?

Abiogenesis researchers do not pretend that they can answer the question of how life on this planet developed from prebiotic organic chemicals, because even when they find a potential pathway, that might not be THE pathway. For all we know, there may be dozens of different means by which organic molecules began to function as self-replicating systems. But the key here is that each and every abiogenesis theory is falsifiable.

ID, as formulated by the likes of Behe and Dembski, can tell us nothing. It is an empty argument from incredulity.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[shine-shine]

This is just precious. After all, much of the scientific research in the past was done under the umbrella of the Church, and it was never a problem. There's faith (e.g. God made the Universe), and there's science (e.g. the Universe started from the Big Bang, and life evolved as a consequence), and there's no problem holding to both at the same time, if one wants to.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Vo0k]

As long as we (including the Vatican) formulate our arguments on ID as a theory, even to debunk it, the fundamentalists maintain their foothold. In this case, we need to attack the messenger, not the message. ID is political propoganda, nothing more. To address it as anything else is to give undue power to its proponents.

Not necessarily so.
There are people who genuinely believe in it. They treat the Bible literally in many places where they really shouldn't. In many countries they aren't catholic, so they will most likely ignore the voice of Vatican. But there are countries (like Poland, where I live) where the voice of the Pope is the final oracle of truth, and the extremist catholics are very strong, in politics too. So finally there is hope they WILL stop fighting the theory of evolution and follow the voice of Vatican once again, in the right direction this time.
I just wish same voice came in matters of anticonception, homosexuality, birth control, possibly even limited support for abortion or euthanasia...
Mayor of Warsaw has forbidden prevent the gay parade in the city. In the name of morality and God. Now he is president of Poland. I'd be really happy to see the Pope set him straight...

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Hedgethorn]

I would be hesitant, even if only for PR reasons, to lump theism (the belief that a God created the universe and guided the development thereof) with Intelligent Design, which fancies itself as an alternative to evolution.
"Theistic evolution" is a legitimate view of the origins of the world. "Intelligent Design-istic evolution" is a contradiction, assuming the normal denotation of those terms.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[MightyMartian]

It should be noted that ID advocates make a few specific claims (the bacterial flagellum being the most well known) and that these claims have been falsified, though the likes of Behe have tried to wiggle out of that by moving the goal posts to "you don't know that's how it happened".

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Anonymous Coward]

Everything true in the Bible is correct. Everything that contradicts fact is a parable.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[lawpoop]

I know there are a lot of religious fundamentalists that are pushing ID just to get their religion in schools, but...

In the abstract, looking for an intelligent creator is no different than SETI. Whether we are looking for signs of intelligence in radio waves coming from other stars/planets, or signs of intelligence in, say, the background radiation from the Big Bang, there is nothing theoretically wrong or unscientific with that line of inquiry.

Let me re-iterate that this would be a different project than what they fundamentalists are trying to do with ID. Also note that the argument against open-minded search for intelligence 'elsewhere' would somehow legitimate the fundamentalists' project is itself an anti-knowledge argument.

But, keep in mind that no branch of science or study has an operational definition of intelligence or design -- tasks that seem relatively simple, such as face recognition, or navigating a forest path, are incredibly difficult for AI and robotics. We have no definition of intelligence, much less self-awareness or any other 'human' traits. A serious study into the question of intelligence would be an interesting line of inquiry.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[nickname225]

The problem with ID - is that if the people and other animals are too complex to exist without an intelligent creator - well then certainly god is too complex to have spontaneously sprung into existence. You can't have it both ways - either there is a process by which complex objects can exist without a creator or god must have a creator - and if he does - then you have the whole infinite regression problem - somewhere there must be a prime mover...

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[digidave]

You are in agreement with the Vatican and many, perhaps most, scientists, however you have absolutely no clue as to what Intelligent Design is.

ID doesn't describe the origins of life, or anything else for that matter. It simply states that certain biological features are irreducibly complex. (In each of those cases, evolution has proven that they are wrong.)

I think it's perfectly reasonable to believe that evolution is the process by which God decided to create current life. ID states that this is impossible, that life doesn't change dramatically and that some "intelligent being" must have created complex life to begin with. It leave no room at all for evolution.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[fireboy1919]

Intelligent Design proponents no more believe in their so-called theory than any other critically thinking human.
Okay, I'm getting a bit sick of this. "So-called theory" is charged language (flamebait); it's a theory. When we're not in the realm of pure math (and we're not), a theory is a conjecture used to explain a phenomenon. Testability is not a necessary condition for it to be a theory. AFAIK intelligent design isn't testable, but it does explain a phenomenon.

ID is simply fundamentalist's latest attempt into having evolution taught in highschool science classes. They have been knocked back time and time again on this issue,

You make ID sound like a new thing recently proposed by fundamentalist politicians. This is not the case; the idea has been around for as long as I can remember (admittedly, that's only about two decades, but still...), and has long been held as a possibility by Christian scientists (not to be confused with Christian Scientists who go around suing everybody).

The fact that politicians are now making use of it is a new thing that has brought it to public attention. The fact that the theory has been around as long as it has leads me to believe that there are lots of people who believe it to be true. Otherwise it would have died out entirely. Is it possible that you are not fully versed on why they believe this? I'm willing to concede that point myself.

and now are trying to beat science at its own game

You're basically implying that Christian leaders have basically been ignoring science in the past, and are only just now seeing its usefulness. This is certainly not the case. Until recently, the majority of the scientists in the world were monks; science has always had a very high position in Christian theology.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[misleb]

Ok, so God created the first life form and everything evolved from there. Do you accept common descent? Why only "some" evolution?

-matthew

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Anonymous Coward]

so long as they can repeat the mantra that it is a theory, long and loud enough for it to stick.

If you throw in a truck load of fear and retribution in your message this is basically the same approach religion takes in spreading itself. Just an observation.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[NinjaFodder]

The problem with ID is that the scientific community cannot test the theory.

Scientists are able to scientificially test evolution because there is scientifically testable evidence.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Golias]

Unlike some of the haters here, I believe you are sincere.

That said, you're way off base.

and evolution comes alogn and says that matter is eternal: we've been in an unending cycle of compression and expansion of matter for eternity

Oh, and way out of date, too. That theory has not been the most popular model for a long time now. Even formor advocates of it, such as Stephen Hawking, have abandoned it in favor of the "Big Bang" theory.

See... that's what scientists do. They adjust their theories based on available fact.

Your notion, that the universe was designed, will never change or falter, no matter what facts come along to disrupt it. That makes it religion. Not that religion is a bad thing at all. I'm a believer myself. The point here is that science can not rely on tradition, dogma, or scripture. That which can not be demonstrated or falsified with raw fact alone is completely outside the scope of science.

In other words:

"Things evolve." That's science. We can see it happen, we can see evidence that it has happened.

"Things were designed to evolve by a loving God." That's religion. Until a peer-reviewed journal submits a valid proof of the existence (or non-existence) of God, science is, and must remain, mute on the subject.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Anonymous Coward]

Why does it make sense to say "God has always been around" instead of "Matter has always been around"? Regardless of the truth of either of these statements, the second at least involves things we can see. The former does not. If you find it impossible to believe that the universe didn't have a creator, why don't you find it impossible that your creator didn't have one either?

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[slavemowgli]

Well, actually... even John Paul II made it known a several years (or even decades, if memory serves me right) ago that evolution was (as far as he could tell) correct and that it did not contradict catholic dogma. So this is not even really news, even though the current pope is even more conservative than JP was (who'd have thought this was possible...)

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Anonymous Coward]

parent is not a troll. +1 informative

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[ivan256]

  Science \Sci"ence\, n. [F., fr. L. scientia, fr. sciens, -entis,
          p. pr. of scire to know. Cf. {Conscience}, {Conscious},
          {Nice}.]
          1. Knowledge; knowledge of principles and causes; ascertained
                truth of facts.
                [1913 Webster]

          2. Especially, such knowledge when it relates to the physical
                world and its phenomena, the nature, constitution, and
                forces of matter, the qualities and functions of living
                tissues, etc.; -- called also {natural science}, and
                {physical science}.
                [1913 Webster]

          3. Art, skill, or expertness, regarded as the result of
                knowledge of laws and principles.
                [1913 Webster]


Believe what you will, but science is something specific and well defined. Nobody should question your right to believe in Intelligent Design, because the freedom of belief and worship is a basic human right. Intelligent Design, however, is not by any strech "science" and thus should be left out of science class.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[royli57]

Disclaimer: I am part of the 'religious right'

I don't usually bother to respond in slashdot political/religion debates, because of the strong anti-Christian sentiments here. However, I feel compelled to explain the viewpoint of an intelligent design proponent - I certainly don't think of our believers as rubes or idiots.

"Intelligent Design proponents no more believe in their so-called theory than any other critically thinking human. ID is simply fundamentalist's latest attempt into having evolution taught in highschool science classes. They have been knocked back time and time again on this issue, and now are trying to beat science at its own game."

I am sure you meant to say that we are trying to teach creationism in the classrooms rather than evotluion. That point aside, there is a dual argument that the ID proponent has againt current educational standards.

The first is an attack on evolution itself. It is simply not true that evolution has been proved beyond doubt - in fact, most illustrations of evolution given in classrooms are known by scientists to be incomplete or erroneous examples. Haekel's embryos, Darwin's tree of life, the Miller-Urey experiemnt are all 'evidences' of evolution that in themselves do not stand up to scientific rigor. I could go into details, but I would suggest that you google these topics independently. Simply speaking, Darwin maintained that future science would justify his research and his theory. He thought that the many gaps in the fossil record would be filled in the years to follow. This has not happened.

The fact that evolution is taught in classrooms as mere fact is an affront to many Americans (85% believe in literal creationism/intelligent design guided evolution).

The second argument of ID proponents is that we need a system that will offer a view of the rise of life separate from Darwin's model of selective evolution. Although I personally question whether our public education is mature enough to handle an argument that a designer is the answer for the unbelievably complex systems of life and universe, I certainly do not argue against the merits of intelligent design (Lee Strobel's Case for a Creator gives several excellent examples of nature that seems complex beyond chance). I certainly think that it is time a critical challenge was waged against Darwin's evolution, so that people can make a decision on their own. I was spoon-fed Darwin's model of life through high school (from the liberal Bay Area), but came to see its flaws after going into biochemstry at UC Berkeley.

One more point:

"Normally I would espouse a policy of "attacking the message, not the messenger." But in the case of ID, the problem is the messenger."

Yes, there is a validation of ID if you try to attack the message. But just the same, unless you try to attack the message, you are simply closing your eyes to the arguments (and beliefs of a majority of Americans), unwilling to even consider that they may be right. Why is Darwin's theory so invincible, that you automatically dismiss any attempts to discredit it? Have you researched both sides of the Darwin argument?

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[nickname225]

There is a big difference between the idea that people are too complex to exist without a creator, but god is not to complex to exist without a creator and the search for ETs. Once we realize that people are (supposedly) intelligent life that came into existence through natural processes - it makes sense to look for other intelligent life that came into existence through a similar process. It makes no sense to look for something as complex as god which just sprang into existence. If you are telling me god EVOLVED - then I say go look for him - but if he can evolve - then so can we - so who needs him?

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[user9918277462]

ID propagandists must be attacked in the same way that, for instance, white-supremacist/neo-nazi/neo-fascist ideologues are attacked. In many ways, who cares if they scream about persecution? They are nutjobs hell-bent (no pun intended) on dismantling the basis of rational, secular civilization and all the advances of modern science. I don't care what your religion is or what you choose to believe, but when you try to force your worldview on me or society as a whole, I will attack you with whatever tactics I have at my disposal.

This is not a game, in other words.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Thuktun]

evolution comes alogn and says that matter is eternal: we've been in an unending cycle of compression and expansion of matter for eternity

Er, no. The theory of evolution (natural selection) doesn't address the origins of the Universe, of matter and energy, etc., nor should it. It only describes a general mechanism by which more complex, better-suited organisms can form from lesser ones.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you not click on the link? That's a God-impressing tower if I ever saw one.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[blinder]

If we go after ID'ers personally (which normally I'd be all in favor of, because they're jackasses)

wow. quite possibly the most telling thing i've ever read. don't agree with someone? go after them personally.

yeah... what mode do you like? do you stop at verbally assulting someone... or do you take it up a few notches? i hear physical violence is good for that. of course... why stop there... maybe you should just kill those who disagree with you?

nice to see such an evolved world view.

p.s. i'm not an id supporter.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[mbbac]

"Intelligent Design is an alternative to the origins of life, not the continuing processes since that have shaped our world."

If ID proponents believed that, they wouldn't be trying to get it taught as an alternative to evolution in science classes. Don't latch onto ID if you don't believe it.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[MightyMartian]

You are aware, I trust, that evolutionary theory has changed significantly in the last century and a half. Darwin's work was a good base, but it wasn't until the Modern Synthesis that we had a theory that contained the actual means of imperfect replication. It may surprise you, but Darwin isn't the Jesus Christ of the scientific community, and his theory has been tested and refined for a goodly long time, unlike old Paley's watchmaker argument, which simply gets more vague and less capable of even explaining any kind of theistic claim. ID is empty rhetoric, evolutionary theory is the the grand unifying theory of biology.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Anonymous Coward]

Curious; you have yet to name one fact that contradicts the Bible. Do you have evidence that the Tower still stands? If so, where in the Bible does it say that it doesn't?

I bet you can't come up with one fact that contradicts the existence of the Flying Spaghetti Monster either. Do you believe in him?

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[VolciMaster]

Except that there are certain systems which are irreducibly complex.

Another point to be made is that everything we have observed in terms of evolutionary changes are all variations around a common theme. If you stick a whole posse of different dog breeds together, it won't take very many generations until you regress to the common state of 'dog'.

Intelligent Design posutlates that someone or something designed a big chunk of what we see on the earth today. It allows for minor changes to occur since. What it does not allow for, just as Theistic Evolution does not allow for in its pure form, is for sudden speciation. The IDer (for sake of argument call Him God) implemented all basic forms of life, including the parent species of everything we see now. some of these parent species have undergone minor changes, in multiple different places, giving us such things as Emus, Ostriches, and Cassowaries. God didn't give us primordial ooze and a spark for the amoeba to start life, and then let it go on its merry way.

In fact, ID and creationism do claim to be abionetic processes: life was created from non life, but it didn't do it on its own.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Vo0k]

If he did, he certainly didn't voice it clearly enough.
He did admit Earth is round and circles around the Sun though :)

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[NinjaFodder]

Um... no. The wikipedial def. of ID is "Intelligent Design (sometimes abbreviated ID) is the controversial assertion that certain features of the universe and of living things exhibit the characteristics of a product resulting from an intelligent cause or agent, as opposed to an unguided process such as natural selection." This means that ID addresses not only the origins, but also the continuing processes.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Fiver-]

He tells Man (a special creation that did not come from 'lower' beings) to 'be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth'. He also tells Adam that he is in charge of the brids of the sky and beasts of the ground.

Ah yes, the Intelligent Designer who didn't realize that Adam would need a mate.

It's so plausible!

Now tell me the one about the talking snake.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[varith]

Testability is not a necessary condition for it to be a theory. AFAIK intelligent design isn't testable, but it does explain a phenomenon. Testability *is* a necessary condition for something to be a *scientific* theory. Dunno where you get the idea that it isn't. Otherwise its just a story. I could make up a story right now that explains just as much as ID. And that is the problem with the whole thing. There is no way to determine the truth of it.

Re: Attack the messenger (please)

[Black Parrot]

> ntelligent Design is an alternative to the origins of life, not the continuing processes since that have shaped our world.

That's not at all what the leading ID "theorists" claim. They claim that certain things could not have evolved, and that therefore "sometime, somewhere, somebody did something" to "design" those unevolved things. They say nothing about the origin(s) of life.

Your post is a good example of the fact that ID means whatever anyone wants it to mean.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[j-turkey]

If you find it impossible to believe that the universe didn't have a creator, why don't you find it impossible that your creator didn't have one either?

You've got my vote for best quote of the day right there.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[digidave]

"Except that there are certain systems which are irreducibly complex."

I have yet to hear of a good example put forth by any IDer.

"(ID) allows for minor changes to occur"

ID only claims microevolution is occurs because they cannot possibly deny it. It's something that is easily explained and proven to everybody. Speciation is a lot more difficult to understand and most people don't have access to proper fossil records that show speciation.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[AndersOSU]

NO ONE expects the Spanish Inquisition!

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[slavemowgli]

Yeah. :) I just looked it up again; it seems that he talked about evolution in October 1996, and while he seems to have rejected the wholly naturalistic approach which rules out the involvement of dog, he also seems to have said that evolution as a concept is not fundamentally incompatible with the bible and catholic belief.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[the real chahn]

Until a peer-reviewed journal submits a valid proof of the existence (or non-existence) of God, science is, and must remain, mute on the subject. Plantinga, Alvin. The Nature of Necessity. New York: Clarendon Press, 1989. Peer reviewed in journals such as Mind, New Scholasticism, Philosophy: The Journal of the Royal Institute of Philosophy.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[flyinwhitey]

Unfortunately, you left out one of the most important parts of "theories" their ability to predict.

While I am forced to agree with your assertion that ID is a theory, that is only due to the inaccuracy of language, not because it meets the test of a scientific theory.

If you accept the standards that are normally used in science, and reject the language games, then no, ID does not rise to the level of a theory because it has no predictive value.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[royli57]

I am not familiar with the mod system here, but does my comment deserve a 0?

Are people here so insecure about their beliefs, that they would rather bury opposing ideas than expose them to the public?

Perhaps this is my misunderstanding, but for a forum that espouses the freedom of speech and ideas, your system seems narrow-minded.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[VolciMaster]

certainly god is too complex to have spontaneously sprung into existence

You're right, God is too complex to have 'sprung' into existence.

That being said, God didn't spring into existence. He has been Himself forever. There is no infinite regression problem if you have a supreme being who is capable of making time.

People can't wrap their heads around the concept of infinity. In mathematics, there are notions of positive and negative infinity, the infinite number of real numbers between any two real numbers, and the inifinite number of integer or whole numbers. If God is inifinite, as the Bible claims, and I believe, then it is perfectly rational to believe that He could have existed before He made time for us. People are finite beings, living only for a short period of time before dying.

The real problem people have with God, and why humanists love evolution and atheism, is that if God exists, He made us. And if He made us, then we have a duty to respond to Him. If we really did just appear from ooze, then life and death are meaningless. As the old saying goes: 'eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow you die'.

The 'prime mover' you seem to be claiming is that matter is eternal, and that it is why we are here. We're some big cosmic oops, and we only have a few years to do anything before we're gone.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[rco3]

Sounds like you have a more rational position on the matter than other ID proponents. It's true that evolution as a process is much better understood (and supported with observed fact) than scientific theories of the origins of life, although it isn't true that no such theories exist or that science cannot "speak to" them. This in no way serves to make creationism in any way scientific, though, and as such creationism has no place in a science classroom - even when thinly disguised as ID.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Cpt_Kirks]

Most fundementalists do not consider Catholics "Christian". They have a long, boring explanation of why this is so.

From what I can dig out of their "logic", it has something to do with John the Baptist (or so my Grandmother used to say).

The fundementalists consider the Pope the "Whore of Rome" or even the Antichrist, so I don't them being swayed by what the Vatican says.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[flyinwhitey]

Don't feel too bad, I got a troll mod for arguing the other side of this, essentially the same way you did.

While I think you're a kook, you didn't deserve to be modded down.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[carlos_benj]

...well then certainly god is too complex to have spontaneously sprung into existence.

Except that God didn't "spring" into existence but has always existed.

Or is it matter that didn't spring into existence.....

One of those.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Grab]

You need to get the words right according to their real meanings. "Hypothesis" means a wild-ass guess that might just match the data. "Theory" means a hypothesis that has been confirmed to match the data, and therefore can be used as a model to predict further events. A hypothesis can be disproved by failing to match existing data. A theory can be disproved by new data.

Evolution is a theory. Not only can you show it matching the data, but you can also use it to predict what'll happen in future. If someone gets new data then it might be disproved, but to date it's looking good.

ID is a *hypothesis* though. It's been 100% disproved with existing data. No example given by the ID crowd has stood up to scrutiny.

It's a nice idea that we could just ignore ID and it'd go away. Unfortunately it has significantly more political capital in the US than science does, and quite possibly more financial capital too. Ignore it and you're screwed - their PR machine will kill you. ID proponents have carefully assessed how best to fight science, and have come up with PR through with appeals to religious beliefs and claims of being discriminated against by the scientific community. By fighting them and *beating* them on their own ground, we leave them without a leg to stand on.

What ID *doesn't* have is correctness by any standard of measurement. However, ID proponents complained loudly that science wouldn't take them seriously or measure their claims according to scientific principles. Great, so let's do it. By proving without possibility of doubt that ID is a religious stance and not a scientific one, we can force the courts to refuse to allow schools to teach it as science. The court case currently on the go is doing pretty well on this - so far they've forced the main "scientific" ID proponent to admit that if ID is science then astrology is also science, which is a bit of a result.

On a separate front, ID proponents claim that evolution equals atheism and so is also a religious position, hence ID is no better or worse than evolution. The Catholic church have neatly busted the wheels off their wagon on that one, which is nice. Unless they can prove the Pope is an atheist, they're screwed on that front too.

Grab.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[AJWM]

'where did the matter come from' pops up, and evolution comes alogn and says that matter is eternal: we've been in an unending cycle of compression and expansion of matter for eternity

See, here's a prime example of the idiocy of ID proponents. Evolution says nothing of the sort, evolution is concerned purely with biology. It's cosmology that talks about the origins of the universe (and the matter in it), and the Big Bang theory says nothing about what (if anything) may have been around before said Big Bang. (Some other theories do say such things.)

If somebody doesn't know the difference between cosmology and biology, why should anyone listen to their opinion about either?

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[nickname225]

You are just side stepping the issue - if complex things on the order of people and mice require a creator - certainly something as complex as god must too. Either complex things require a creator or they don't. Infinity has nothing to do with it.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[AndersOSU]

It is an empty argument from incredulity

My personal take on ID supporters is that in their arrogance they believe that they should be able to understand everything that is not supernatural. As a result if they don't get it it must be God's work.

So they build up this God of the Gaps that is responsible for everything man cannot expain. Then once we get close to understanding something they get all upset, because we are removing some of God's power.

My blanket dismissal for all IDers is that they are limiting the power of their god to that which they don't understand. My God is more powerful than that and not subject to my arrogent limitations - If He wants to violate non-contradiction He can. I don't know what that means, but just because I can't imagine a world where something can both be and not be simultaneously dosen't mean that God can't do it.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[rco3]

Of course, the grandparent poster meant peer-reviewed scientific journals. Proof, in this case, means based on observed fact, not based on a chain of abstract logic symbols. Sorry for the confusion.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Anonymous Coward]

The theory of evolution has, excuse the pun, evolved quite a bit over time as most scientific theories do, so I've never understood this need to replace the theory; if the evidence changes, the theory changes. What more do people want? Does this really come down to making the case that the world is 6K years old? I think your post is sincere, and yet it seems to reflect the style of the argument for ID: Long winded and filled with random ideas about existing science and vague ideas of a scientific theory that shoud be introduced into the educational system.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[VolciMaster]

The Big Bang theory, though, does propound matter's eternality: otherwise matter all sprang into existence in a little teeny-tiny ball just for the Big Bang to happen.

Also, as you point out at the end of your comment, science has to remain mute on the subject of 'God'. That means that it also has to remain mute on the subject of 'not God'. Since most people who believe in evolution do not believe in a God who created them, they can't believe in a God who will save them, or in one who will punish them.

There is also a very interesting side issue at stake here, too. It's not just the 'fundamentalist Christians' who have taken up ID, or who shun evolution as the source of life. In this country alone, many prominent non-Christians have taken up ID's cause. Ther are also the millions upon millions of non-Christians in other countries who do not belive in evolution, but believe in a creation of some kind: Muslims, Hindus, tribal religions, etc, etc.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[carlos_benj]

Heh.... flagellum.... wiggle.... funny.....

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Landshark17]

One part of ID says that humans are creatures of "irriducible complexity" and therefore must have been created by a supreme being. However, a paradox appears. If we are so complex that a supreme being had to create us, then that supreme being would have to be so complex that some other, even more superior being had to create it, and so on and so forth.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[ConceptJunkie]

it won't take very many generations until you regress to the common state of 'dog'.

Sure, but take some of those common 'dogs' and put them in Siberia. Take some more and put them on Tahiti. Take some more and put them in the American Southwest.

Come back in a few generations and you will see very different versions of 'dog'. It's not unreasonable to conclude that in a million years they won't even be dogs any more... but... I don't know Siberian Sabre-toothed Wolves, Coyoteodons and um, Spuds Mackenzie.

The former process can be observed and duplicated with relative ease. The latter can't because we don't live long enough to see the results. That's why evolution is just a theory.

The thing I find much more amusing than the concept of ID, which at its face value is a reasonable hypothesis, is the hardcore Young Earth Creationists, who claim that "creation science" is starting from the conclusion that the Earth was created 6000 years ago and shoehorning all empirical evidence to fit the conclusion (i.e. the Flood killed the dinosaurs, etc). This is no more science than the Mormons "history" which involves constantly retro-interpreting their scripture concerning the history of South America because its face value is totally contradicted by archaeology, zoology and botany.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[peacefinder]

"[...] where did the matter come from' pops up, and evolution comes alogn and says that matter is eternal [...]"

Whoa! Hold on there, pardner. The theory of evolution through natural selection argues no such thing. It only addresses the ongoing changes in life, not their origin... there are other theories which handle that part. It certainly falls well short of addressing the origin of the matter in the universe.

"Intelligent Design is an alternative to the origins of life, not the continuing processes since that have shaped our world."

That would be sensible. If only it were true!

If that were what was actually being argued, there would be no conflict at all. ID would not be an alternative to the theory of evolution through natural selection, because origins are not within the scope of the theory of evolution. The current debate over ID in the biology classroom exists solely because ID is being presented as an alternative to the mechanism of natural selection.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[nickname225]

Oh and by the way - if god made us - we don't have any duty to him - HE has a duty to us. We didn't ask to be created he made a UNILATERAL decision to create us. His actions, without my agreement, cannot give rise to an obligation on my part. If there is a god (and there isn't) he owes us - not the other way around. He may claim might makes right and try to force us to his will - but he has no legitimate moral claim for obedience. Think for yourself and you will see.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[pboulang]

. . .maybe you should just kill those who disagree with you?

If the Flying Spaghetti Monster makes that decree, so be it.

You aren't the Flying Spaghetti Monster by any chance, are you?

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Golias]

Since most people who believe in evolution do not believe in a God who created them

Actually, you are wrong again. The vast majority of scientists who study evolution (at least in Western society) believe in God. This included Darwin himself.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[ConceptJunkie]

Most fundementalists do not consider Catholics "Christian". They have a long, boring explanation of why this is so.

And from what I've seen and heard many of the arguments used are on the same level as the KKK's arguments that blacks aren't as good as whites. I realize not all Fundamentalists are like this, but I find it ironic that many of these churches spend an inordinate amount of time teaching why all these other churches are evil, etc, etc. You know what they say about people who justify themselves by attacking others.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[TGK]

Not to be a grammar Nazi, but this is worth pointing out.

catholic == Christian
Catholic == The Roman Catholic Church

The Catholic (big C) population of the United States breaks down to roughly 80% mainstream and 20% extremists. The 20% are the ones that hold with Vatican doctrine on birth control, spout the creationist doctrine, and generally give other Catholics a bad name.

Random bit of trivia. John Kerry (Catholic - MA) was informed that he would no longer be allowed to take communion at certain Catholic churches because of his refusal to come down legislatively against Roe v. Wade. Strangely, no one seems to deny pro-death penalty Republicans the sacrament of communion.

The antidote is relevant because Americans are increasingly using Religion to justify their political and ideological beliefs instead of building those believes around the fundamental morality dictated by their religion. Politics has, for many, even the highly religious, become a second religion in and of itself.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[VolciMaster]

Who does have access to proper fossils to show speciation? If they existed, I would consider altering my beliefs. Unfortunately, sufficient fossil records do not exist to support major speciation. Small changes can be seen all over the place, but nothing big.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[fireboy1919]

it has no predictive value

There is a long held belief in nearly all religions that hold that creation itself is evidence of a creator. The idea is that doing things the way that we see them is itself evidence of intelligence.

If this is true, then the properties of intelligence itself will give us a mechanism for predicting things, i.e. we can ask the question "how would an intelligent being design an X?" for any given thing in order to get a predictor.

There are predictors, be they ever so hard to use.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[|/|/|||]

Exactly. I hope that the grandparent poster takes your post seriously, because you really got to the point of the whole matter.

There's a difference between science and religion, and science cannot allow the two to be mixed, or it will no longer be science. ID proponents are trying to combine science and religion for whatever political means, and the result, Intelligent Design, is nothing but a scientifically useless bastardization. The grandparent pushes the science/religion combo all the way back to the origins of the universe, but is still making the same mistake.

Sombebody mod the parent up, please.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Fiver-]

Okay, most moden archeological evidence and Egyptian history shows that the Jews were never slaves in Egypt. Is that contradictory enough for you?

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[nickname225]

That is a convenient way to ignore the issue - either complex beings require a creator or they don't - If man REQUIRES a creator - so must god.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Ced_Ex]

You're right, God is too complex to have 'sprung' into existence.

That being said, God didn't spring into existence. He has been Himself forever. There is no infinite regression problem if you have a supreme being who is capable of making time.

That's certainly a convenient way to get out of explaining that concept isn't it? How exactly do you know that God doesn't have his own God? Or even that God is God, and not Allah?

People can't wrap their heads around the concept of infinity. In mathematics, there are notions of positive and negative infinity, the infinite number of real numbers between any two real numbers, and the inifinite number of integer or whole numbers. If God is inifinite, as the Bible claims, and I believe, then it is perfectly rational to believe that He could have existed before He made time for us. People are finite beings, living only for a short period of time before dying.

How can you assume that the Bible is absolutely correct? Afterall it is written by humans who claim to have penned it through conversations with God. If the Bible is THE book, how come better interpretations from God himself haven't been put into a 2005 version? I believe I read somewhere here that if God is such an omnipotent being, why does he insist on using middlemen to try to communicate with us?

Faith alone is not enough to convince many of us here.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Anonymous Coward]

One day you will understand the meaning of humility, and be a much better person for it.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[AJWM]

In the abstract, looking for an intelligent creator is no different than SETI.

But we're not talking about the abstract (although I'd disagree anyway), we're talking about a very specific notion of an "Intelligent Designer" -- who has designed stuff right down to the biochemical level of life as we know it -- versus searching for signs that critters more or less like us (at least to the extent of developing technological means of communication, such as radio) have evolved (or, as the IDers would prefer, have been created) on other planets. Two VERY different things, totally orthogonal to each other.

Unless you're proposing that the IDers' Designer was actually an extra-terrestrial (FSM, anyone)? That just complicates the situation -- you have to come up with a totally alien biochemistry (ours was "designed", say the IDiots), which in turn is probably so complex that it could only have arisen by design, so there was another designer. (Yeah, it's Intelligent Designers all the way back and turtles all the way down.)

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[oni]

hmm. Interesting perspective. Not sure that I agree with it but it's an interesting tack.

I always thought that it might be cool to write a sci-fi book about a society of AI's who don't know they are AI and don't know they are in a computer. Some of them believe that humans exist outside the universe, and created them, but the scientist AIs reject that notion as religious rhetoric. "How is it possible to argue that AI is too complex to have evolved in RAM, but that some magical 'creator' is not too complex to have evolved?"

But then I'd get sued by Disney for copyright violations over Tron.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[VolciMaster]

Actually, I do think for myself. And I can see you're wrong.

When you make something, what is your obligation to it? Nothing.

However, whatever you have made has an obligation to you (for example, something as simple as a bookshelf whose job is now to hold books). God doesn't owe us anything. If He made us (which He has), then we owe Him our loyalties.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[crumley]

Yes, fundamentalist protestants will ignore the pope.

Right-wing Catholics may listen, though, and there many of them who side with the ID folks. A famous example of a pro-ID Catholic is Rick (I wish my name didn't have another meaning) Santorum, Republican Senator from Pennsylvania who has added pro-ID wording to legislation.

Of course, there is no proof that this will do any good. In particular, the extreme right-wing Catholics of the Mel Gibson variety, like many fundamentalist protestants, have already given up on the pope.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Ced_Ex]

Except that God didn't "spring" into existence but has always existed.

How exactly do you "prove" a statement like that?

"Umm... well, you see, we got this book... and umm... it's called the Bible. Ugh... it was written by a bunch of guys who said they spoke to God, and He told them what to write down in this book. Editors? Well, no. Facts? Umm... sort of, we did verify that these guys went somewhere to write the Bible. We can't for certain be sure that they indeed heard His voice. They were honest men, so we just assumed it to be true. Other Gods? No, there can be only one. Just trust me."

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[pboulang]

Stop cherry picking replies. The basic complaints against ID are these:

A) It isn't science, and shouldn't be taught in the science classroom.

B) It "explains" nothing.

C) It is logically inconsistent. Irreducible complexity does not create the ID "god". So, suddenly there is a meta-god, who would need a meta-god, and before you know it, it turtles all the way down.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Silburn_Luke]

Okay, I'm getting a bit sick of this. "So-called theory" is charged language (flamebait); it's a theory. When we're not in the realm of pure math (and we're not), a theory is a conjecture used to explain a phenomenon.

Nope. You are in fact describing a conjecture. Once the conjecture has been extended to include some falsifiable predictions it becomes a hypothesis and if those predictions match the observed evidence (and the new observations give rise to new conjectures and hypotheses that turn out to be productive) it becomes a theory. ID has made no predictions and thus has no supporting evidence and the 'observed phenomena' (all those irreducible complexity examples - a couple of decades ago it was eyeballs, now its bacterial flagellum) are problems being attacked by real, actual, scientists.

ID isn't a theory. Its not even a hypothesis. You might call that 'charged language', I'd call it 'stating an objective fact'.

This is not the case; the idea has been around for as long as I can remember (admittedly, that's only about two decades, but still...), and has long been held as a possibility by Christian scientists

If you're talking about irreducible complexity, then this has been around for a very long time - Paley was going on about the presence of a watch on a heath implying the existence of a watchmaker back in 1800 - so the basic concept predates Darwin (Charles at least) by several decades. The problem the basic conjecture has is that to date every example of something irreducibly complex that has been advanced as evidence for a designer has turned out, upon examination, to not be irreducibly complex after all.

Regards
Luke

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Anonymous Coward]

Or maybe it would be better if the Pope could set him gay?

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't care what your religion is or what you choose to believe, but when you try to force your worldview on me or society as a whole, I will attack you with whatever tactics I have at my disposal.

Exactly. Don't force your atheism on me or my children, please.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[operagost]

Hackers and OSS advocates must be attacked in the same way that, for instance, white-supremacist/neo-nazi/neo-fascist ideologues are attacked. In many ways, who cares if they scream about persecution? They are nutjobs hell-bent (no pun intended) on dismantling the basis of democratic, capitalistic civilization and all the advances of modern economics. I don't care what your political stance is or what you choose to believe, but when you try to force your worldview on me or society as a whole, I will attack you with whatever tactics I have at my disposal.

Your post goes right along with my theory that everyone believes in freedom of expression-- as long as it's their own expression.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Ragica]

The problem isn't the messenger or the message, per se. The problem is the failure of supposed "real science" to be convincing and meaningful to a frightening percentage of the United States population first of all; and second of all the problem is a fighteningly large percentage of the United States population. As has been noted by others, this seems to be largely an American problem.

If ID is so flimsey and ridiculous as so many here seem to say, what does the fact that we have these ID posts every few weeks say about the strength of "real science" which is supposedly so pure and clear?

As the Jesus says, if you'll forgive my referring to that messenger, maybe you should think about removing the log in your own eye before worrying so much about the splinters in the eyes of others.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[unbeatable73]

The Principle of Conservation of Energy(Also known by some as the First Law of Thermodynamics): "Energy can neither be created nor destroyed".

Taking that Law, we can now turn to the most famous equation in the world, E=MC^2. This states that Energy is equals to Matter, times the square of a Constant. Energy and Matter are interchangable: Energy can turn into Matter, Matter can turn into Energy. When combined with the Principle of Conservation of Energy, you get this statement:

"Energy AND Matter can neither be created nor destroyed."

Now that we have established that, we can turn to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which states:

"All work processes tend towards a greater entropy (disorder/lower energy density) over time."

The universe is getting more disordered and more simplified, as dictated by the Second Law of Thermodynamics. However, the theory of Evolution has the basic principle that everything is getting more organized and more complex.

My arguments summarized:

1. The Big Bang cannot be true as it contradicts the First Law of Thermodynamics.

2. Evolution cannot be true as it contradicts the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

My opinion on the universe:

1. The universe started as a complex and orderly living entity, which, over time, began to expand. As it aged, it began to expand, and the life began to DEVOLVE until it reached our current state, humans. You can even witness this devolving process. Think. 10 or so years ago, we didn't have so many hurricanes, earthquakes, or other devastating natural disasters. People are becoming stupider by the day.

2. As for where the entire mass of atoms came from, either there is a God(which is possible), or the universe has always existed, and there in some incomprehensible way, time started a billion years back, and the universe came into existence with time. And remember this. There might be something larger than a universe...

References:

http://www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/6e.h tml
http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/airplane/thermo1f .html
http://www.taftan.com/thermodynamics/FIRST.HTM
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_law_of_thermod ynamics
http://www.entropysite.com/students_approach.html
http://www.secondlaw.com/
http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/370.asp
http://www.christiananswers.net/q-eden/edn-thermod ynamics.html

This is what I understand the laws to mean...if I'm wrong, by all means, correct me...

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Chosen Reject]

somewhere there must be a prime mover...

I disagree and if you look at it from a wholly mathematical perspective you will see as well. We seem to have no problem getting from 1 to 2, 2 to 3, 3 to 4 and so on. Neither do we have a problem getting from -1 to -2, -2 to -3, -3 to -4 and so on. But what is the first number? There is none. You can pick any number to start with and go forward, but as long as you can go backwards, then you haven't picked the first number. And you can always go backwards.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[MightyMartian]

I think ID has just as many theological problems as it does scientific ones. By removing the identity from the designer and replacing it with a faceless, nameless entity, it debases the Judeao-Christian God. Guys like Behe will admit that God could be gods, could be aliens, and that God might even be dead. That is why Creationist organizations like Answers in Genesis, in fact, reject ID as a dangerous wandering away from scripture. Say what you will about the likes of AIG (and they are indeed liars on a monumental level), but their goal is plain, the forcing of Biblical Literalism into the public school. They reject a watered-down form of Creationism because it ultimately does their Biblical interpretations as much damage as it does science.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Anonymous Coward]

when was the last time an atheist walked up to your front door and tried to save you?

Don't worry, in fact we have to worry more about you so don't get yer panties in a bunch.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Braino420]

The Inquisition, what a show. The Inquisition, here we go.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[irm]

Tangentially related: The Vatican's recent exclusion of 'non-practicing homosexuals' from the priesthood amounts to a tacit acknowledgement that homosexuality is not a matter of lifestyle choice, but rather a genetic or in-born phenomenon.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[caseih]

If I understand catholicism, the Pope is supposed to be Peter's successor, who communicates God's will to people. If that is what catholics believe, then asking for the Pope to change the dogma or doctrine of catholicism is an interesting proposition indeed.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[FirstTimeCaller]

If you find it impossible to believe that the universe didn't have a creator, why don't you find it impossible that your creator didn't have one either?

Damn, and I just ran out of mod points.

This is the thing that has always bugged me too. Complex systems must have a creator and yet it is ok that said creator has just always been around? Forever? I guess one day he just got so mind-numbingly bored that he created the universe just to give him something to do. (Please excuse the assumed masculine form).

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Guppy06]

Intelligence is one thing, motivations are something else.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Anonymous Coward]

My freedoms are meaningless when society gets to vote and stick me in any class. Freedom means I could choose whether to be there or not.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[rot26]

When you make something, what is your obligation to it? Nothing

You're saying that when a man and woman create a life in the form of a baby, they owe it NOTHING? If that was true, it would pretty much be the ultimate pro-choice argument.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[FirstTimeCaller]

I could make up a story right now that explains just as much as ID.

FSM Rules!

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[nickname225]

There is a big difference between a bookshelf and a person - the bookshelf actually owes us nothing and if it fails to hold the books it is our fault - not the bookshelf. A person cannot obtain an obligation without his agreement - plain and simple. Whether god or my parents created me - I was not a party to the decision and can obtain no obligation as a result - on the other hand the active parties can obtain obligation as a result of their own actions - thus my parents and god (if he existed) own a debt to me for forcing life upon me unasked. It is a simple concept - we obtain obligation only from our own actions...

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[anomaly]

Right. Let's not use our intellect to examine possibilites and then choose to follow where the facts may lead. Let's instead be quick to run to "ad hominem," "straw man" and other approaches that will squelch the free expression of ideas. That's the way to really be a scientist, right?

Let's be clear. Science, since it deals with what can be observed and tested, is ill equipped to speak authoritatively about origins.

Evolution provides an explanation of the collected data points, and is currently accepted conventional wisdom when it comes to speciation. As a scientific theory, it may be falsified at some point in the future, as have countless other scientific ideas in the past. It may be bolstered by future study, or merely continue to hold the position it has. None of us know.

A true scientist will be open to new ideas, test them and evaluate whether they fit the facts or not. If ID is completely baseless, then science can investigate, falsify and then ignore the whole thing.

I think that it is particularly telling that materialists are threatened by the ID movement. Why do you think it is so upsetting?

Respectfully,
Anomaly

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Noren]

I'm glad to hear you're open to new evidence. I'd recommend you read this description of the fossil record of morphological intermediates.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[TheWhaleShark]

Actually, to be fair, most hypotheses aren't even exactly "wild" guesses; they are, in fact, educated guesses. A wild guess is often an excellent way to piss away grant money, so most researchers go with something that seems much safer; take a series of small steps rather than great leaps, in other words.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah yes, the Intelligent Designer who didn't realize that Adam would need a mate.

The Intelligent Designer knew Adam would need a mate but Adam did not. If you ever have kids you'll realize that they have to learn some things on their own but you can be there to help them along the way.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[xenocide2]

Intelligent Design is a theory, just like Lamarckian evolution is. Even a vigorous disproof doesn't render the idea not a theroy. And as far as I can tell, Lamarkian evolution is a far more appropriate "alternative theory" than ID, with more predictive value than ID. Perhaps we need a stronger statement than "science teaches us theories about observed natural occurrances."

With ID, you can't even suggest that the world, universe and all our memories are older than five seconds. Sure, decay of naturally occuring isotopes might suggest that some previously living things are older than other previously living things, but an All Powerful being is just as capable of creating a consistant backstory as it is creating the universe as we know it.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Fiver-]

I'm sure your creator appreciates the excuses you make for him.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Skjellifetti]

Unfortunately, sufficient fossil records do not exist to support major speciation.

Yes, they do.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[stupidfoo]

Interesting claim. Link please.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[heinousjay]

So what you're saying is that evolution isn't a satisfactory explanation because there isn't enough proof to make you believe it, but that a creator (be it god or whatever) with absolutely no proof of existence whatsoever is fine in your view?

Can you rationalize this one?

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[letxa2000]

I can't believe this troll was modded insightful. Actually, it's Slashdot, yes I can... if it attacks religion or conservative politics, it's insightful. If it supports religion or attacks liberal politics, it's flamebait, trolling, etc.

Anyway...

ID propagandists must be attacked in the same way that, for instance, white-supremacist/neo-nazi/neo-fascist ideologues are attacked.

Yes. And all those groups should be dealt with in the voting booth and with rational discussion. And, yes, that requires discussion. Something that a lot of people at Slashdot don't even want to seem to do when it comes to talking about intelligent design.

They are nutjobs hell-bent (no pun intended) on dismantling the basis of rational, secular civilization and all the advances of modern science.

Funny, after that sentence it rather sounds like you that is the radical nutjob.

I don't care what your religion is or what you choose to believe, but when you try to force your worldview on me or society as a whole, I will attack you with whatever tactics I have at my disposal.

I'll agree that no-one should force their religion or worldview on anyone else. But you should also not attempt to prevent the concept and beliefs from being discussed in public schools. For better or for worse, there are people that believe in evolution, creationism, and others that believe in this "intelligent design" concept. Mock any of those groups all you want, but we are doing a disservice to students if we intentionally omit any of these theories from our schools.

Now there are those that will say, "Sure, but do it in a mythology class." Right there, that's an inappropriate judgement that just shows that certain people are afraid to have the debate at all. They feel safer if it is pre-ordained that creationism or ID is a myth.

Is creationism or ID scientific? I would say probably not. But the origin of life is one of the few places where religion and science must intersect. While I disagree, some people would claim that science and religion offer competing views to the origin of life. As such, it is entirely inappropriate to discuss one without at least touching on the other.

If the purpose of learning and science is ultimately to ascertain the truth, it would be wrong to limit the exposure of students to only a single explanation under the excuse that it's the only "scientific" explanation. It doesn't matter if it is scientific if it's wrong, and it would be against the ideals of science to use science as an excuse to attempt to block the discussion of other explanations.

In short, the origin of life is a "special case" of science and religion. Those that want to try to drive evolution out of the classroom and those that want to keep intelligent design or creationism out of the classroom are being driven by their respective beliefs and not by an honest interest in seeking out the truth.

When it comes to what's taught in classrooms, both the anti-ID and anti-evolution factions are equally to be despised.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[giantsfan89]

"Ah yes, the Intelligent Designer who didn't realize that Adam would need a mate."

Maybe he wanted to give Adam some time to realize that he (Adam) needed a mate?

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[electroniceric]

I respect your right to believe what you like about ID, both as a thinking person, and of course from a freedom of person perspective.

But I have two reasons to find Intelligent Design troubling. First its primary use has been not to try to "falsify" or find and resolve problems in various theories of human origins, but rather to posit that a particular explanation of human origins (i.e., a biblical one) is the right one and also that it cannot be proven or disproven by science, thereby calling biblical explanations of human origins scientific without subjecting them to empirical tests conducted in the manner of scientific inquiry. This is why the scientific community finds ID as science troubling: it is used to postulate the veracity of an untestable theory.

If Intelligent Design is in fact science, what experiment could possibly be conducted that could disprove the notion that some parts of biology are irreducibly complex and could not have occurred naturally? In other words, what kind of evidence would convince you that ID was incorrect? Philosophically there are no settled truths in science, only theories that nobody has been able to prove wrong. In practice of course, things that have been verified extensively are often taken as settled truth, but it is scientifically valid to ask questions of the laws of gravitation, or cell division, even algebra. Evolutionary biology and science in general is built on these kinds of questions - by attempting to find evidence that cannot be adequately explained by a particular theory, and then attempting to formulate a theory that incorporates the new evidence and the old ones.

I don't happen to have an opinion on whether a Creator started the universe, or interceded in some way, and of course I think that's an interesting question. Inasmuch as you're saying that the direction of evolution has leaned towards but not verified the notion that a Creator could not have cause human life, I think there's a legitimate argument to be had about what science has or has not spoken to.

It's also fine to say that you believe that science cannot describe the origins of life of the universe (or more importantly, the question of why we came to be, and what it means), but in that case, ID is again not a scientific theory.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Guppy06]

"Eventually in the evolutionary timeline, yuo get back to a point where the question of 'where did the matter come from' pops up,"

How do proponents of science expect to defeat the ideology of ID if they make some of the same mistakes?

"and evolution comes alogn and says that matter is eternal:"

Einstein comes along and says it isn't. The people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are convinced he's right. There's also the matter of the Big Burning Shiney Thing in the Sky that we geeks rarely ever see.

"we've been in an unending cycle of compression and expansion of matter for eternity,"

First off, you seem to be assuming there will be a Big Crunch. Last I heard, signs point to "No."

Secondly, you need to let go of the "hand grenade in a vacuum" visualization of the Big Bang, as it will get you into trouble. The problem with that is that there was no vacuum; matter and energy didn't just expand, space-time itself explosively expanded from a near-singularity to the gigaparsecs we see today.

There is no "before" the Big Bang, at least not in the four-dimensional sense. And if there were to be a Big Crunch, there would be no "after." There might be some sort of "metaverse" "outside" the universe, but space-time it ain't, and science will likely never have a way to confirm or deny its existence since it cannot be observed.

If anything, the Big Bang does far more to support the Genesis account of cosmology than the "eternal universe" model that the (pagen) Greek philosophers like Aristotle thought up. It's a damn shame the fundies are hung up on the age of the universe/earth/etc.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Anonymous Coward]

...it is perfectly rational to believe that He could have existed before He made time for us.

existed before "He" made time for us? Who did make time for "Him"? Oh, I see, "He" made time or himself, too... How would we know anything about before time for us was created?

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[carlcmc]

"I don't care what your religion is or what you choose to believe, but when you try to force your worldview on me or society as a whole, "

and that is exactly the problem that individuals like myself have with people like you. I believe in a literal 6 day creation. Do not attack my beliefs here, I'm simply stating that as a point of reference.

When those who believe in Evolution present it and mandate it as a fact in schools, it is an affront to those who believe in Creation. Evolution is a theory to explain what has happened. It isn't a proven fact nor is it even supported a tremendous weight of evidence. There are many scientific examples of data that contradict the theory of evolution that are not explained. So to have it presented the way it is is "forcing your world view" on us. It would be best to present multiple theories and state that is what they are. Broaden the minds of our children instead of closing out competition.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[stupidfoo]

But you seem happy with the idea that all matter and energy was just sitting there in a tiny little dot until it just decided to blow up.

Yes, clearly that's the more logical thought...

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Guppy06]

I wouldn't know, never met him/her/it/whatever. Don't even know if there is a creator.

But I've seen enough intelligent humans do seemingly stupid things to know that intelligence isn't the sole driving factor in why things happen (if it's a factor at all). It's been speculated before that God created the universe becuase He got bored.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Rolgar]

There is a fundamental difference between abortion and the death penalty. As taught by the Church, Abortion is murder (taking of an innocent life), but the death penalty is not (presumably, the person is guilty). If you read the CCC (Catechism of the Catholic Church) you find that there is no exception to allow abortion, but on the issue of the death penalty, the Church would eliminate it in all cases except where the criminal was so dangerous that the public couldn't be protected by a sentence of life in prison. But even in cases where the death penalty is not warranted, it's still not classified as murder as long as the criminal is given his day in court and was truly guilty.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[NitsujTPU]

Thanks. That was an intelligent post.

I am strongly against intelligent design, but it does bother me when I must listen to an atheist explain that atheists are, essentially, more intelligent than people with religion, and then back the whole statement up with something asinine that shows them to be complete twits.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Ced_Ex]

There's faith (e.g. God made the Universe), and there's science (e.g. the Universe started from the Big Bang, and life evolved as a consequence), and there's no problem holding to both at the same time, if one wants to.

If one wants to hold both, how does one answer the question, "Who made God?"

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[drinkypoo]

When did it become unacceptable to express an opinion? They are jackasses. Not necessarily because of what they believe, but because they want to force other people to be indoctrinated into their own ways. However, I do think they are jackasses for believing in so-called intelligent design (ever hear the quote about how only a civil engineer would put a waste processing facility right next to an amusement park? or think about your fucking appendix, for that matter?) because it's such an indefensible position. To utilize another quote, minds are like parachutes, they only function when open. Being so closed-minded that you can actually believe that Jehovah put dinosaur bones here to test us is pretty damned lame. Granted, God is always testing people in the bible, which is one reason I can't believe in "H"im; I'm not going to follow any god that fucks with me that much.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Rostin]

Science may be lots of things, but it is neither "specific" nor "well-defined." I realize that the scientific community (I'd like to think mostly out of compartmentalized ignorance rather than real malice or arrogance) has worked very hard to convince you that this is the case, but it is not. The philosophy of science is an active field in which many very different ideas about what science is and how it should work are actively defended.

Also, it's hard to see how ID is excluded by the supposedly clear definitions you provide above.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[CDPatten]

I think God not creating women first is proof that he is all knowing. God knew how irritating women would be, and that is why he didn't give adam "a mate". Adam wanted women/mate... but little did he know.

Now WE are paying for his mistake.... nag nag nag nag nag nag nag nag nag nag nag...

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[drinkypoo]

I just wish same voice came in matters of anticonception, homosexuality, birth control, possibly even limited support for abortion or euthanasia...

No help on the rest of these, but the last pope said or at least implied that condoms and other forms of contraception were OK. As a wise man whose identity I don't know once said, "I said go forth and multiply - I didn't mean like rabbits!"

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Dirk Pitt]

Although I don't agree with the mods that your post is flaimbait, I would like to discuss a couple of points.

I've never seen reference to 'catholic' (lower c) as a general term for Christians anywhere. The word 'catholic' comes from the latin 'catholicus', meaning 'universal', as in 'the universal church'. Catholic with a lowercase 'c' would be used in the sense of describing something universal, not necessarily religiously related in any sense.

I would also take exception with your remark about Catholic extremism. I would say there are a minority of Catholics that follow all church dogma, such as the anti-birth control stance, but nowhere in Catholic dogma or other writings does the church teach creationism. I think I can confidently say that any conforming Catholic school, run by Marianists or Jesuits post Vatican II, have taught the theory of evolution as fact. In general, I would say Catholicism is actively anti-fundamentalist, in that they despise the idea of taking biblical text as fact without context. Many of its dogmas/core beliefs are not - although equally intolerant, such as the anti-gay view - based on literal biblical text alone, but built on centuries of Catholic philosophical writing in addition to scripture.

Although not Catholic myself (just an ex-Cath school student, much better academics than public where I grew up), I have a certain respect for the organization in that they are sticking to their beliefs. Their numbers are dwindling, especially in the Western world, so it would be very easy to change doctrine as a marketing move. But they've stuck to their guns, keeping their beliefs despite their low popularity.

I would say the 'extermists' that you talk about are a small sliver, such as the Mel Gibson 'sect', that don't even recognize the Pope.

I do totally agree with you about your last statement - too many people trying legislate the minutae of their religion. Pretty sad. Catholc teaching would say that the death-penalty is as equally heinous as abortion, so I have no idea how American bishops justify these silly denials.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually a 'fundamentalist' wouldn't agree with ID movement in total. The ID movement does not say that God created the world without sin and death, that sin then entered world through man's rebelling against God, that death is a result of that Sin, and that Jesus paid the price for our sin to reconcile us to God.

I have a single point to this post. It is NOT to defend ID , or people that believe the literal interpretation of Genesis. It is this: To (in vain) convey WHY a fundamentalist places such importance on a 6 day creation.

Its actually not difficult to grasp though the typical 'Crazed Fundie' might not even get it. God created the world, said 'it was good'. God did not create sin, disease, hatred, poverty, death. Man sinned, as a result of man's sin, death entered the world. Man was separated from God. Jesus Christ came to earth to pay the wages of sin, to restore humankind to God. When you remove the Genesis account, God creates Sin, God Creates Death, God Creates Disease, because these things exist before Humans and as Humans develop.

One other reason a fundamentalist places such importance on a 6 day creation is that is the most logical way to understand the passage. 'Morning and Evening' is repeated each time, the context, the intended meaning seems quite clear. When one interprets it by saying 'Days' were periods of millions of years, or by saying the passage is just means God exists. Then 'humans' are deciding what parts of the Bible are true. At this point any part of Bible can now be removed whenever we choose. The authority of the Bible is removed and it becomes a nice story book. Honestly at this point there is no right, no wrong, no 'sin', no loving God. No big deal to you, but the point of this post was to try and explain WHY its important to somebody who believes the Bible.

A fundamentalist may at least take heart that a group is being brave enough to point out the many problems of particles to man, non-living inanimate things to complete complex living organisms. ( Yes a single cell, self reproducing organism is extremely complex.)

Again, flame me all you wish no biggie. But what I wanted to point out is WHY a fundie opens themselves up to, most often times, blind ridicule.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[|/|/|||]

OK, I'll attack the message. Ready? ID doesn't make its arguments very clear (it mostly just attacks evolutionary theory as being incomplete, to which we scientists say, "duh.") but the core foundation of ID seems to be "irreducible complexity."

Irreducible complexity claims that certain physical structures are too complex to have arisen by natural processes. Since science is the study of natural processes, the only way to proceed via scientific methods is to assume that natural processes were the cause, and to refine our theories so that the formation of such entities is explained by natural processes.

ID, on the other hand, jumps to the conclusion of a supernatural creator. That's not science. It's out of bounds. Anything concerning the supernatural is by definition not science. You can believe it if you want to, but please don't call it science and please keep it out of science class.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Anonymous Coward]

>ID propagandists must be attacked

Why, attacking them only brings more attention to them. Instead just ignore them.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Bellum Aeternus]

I'd be really happy to see the Pope set him straight...

No, you see the Pope is attempting to set everyone else straight... especially his own priests.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[drinkypoo]

[...]we can ask the question "how would an intelligent being design an X?" for any given thing in order to get a predictor.

The question is, how intelligent? An intelligent being might have decided to design life forms the way they appear now, but not an intelligent being that was omniscient, too...

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[cl_everett]

First you say: Right. Let's not use our intellect to examine possibilites and then choose to follow where the facts may lead. Let's instead be quick to run to "ad hominem," "straw man" and other approaches that will squelch the free expression of ideas. Then you say: I think that it is particularly telling that materialists [emphasis mine] are threatened by the ID movement. Why do you think it is so upsetting? Hypocrite. Oh, and one other thing: A true scientist will be open to new ideas, test them and evaluate whether they fit the facts or not. If ID is completely baseless, then science can investigate, falsify and then ignore the whole thing. Most likely they don't do work falsifying ID because the consider it arrant bullshit and a waste of time to try falsifying something non-falsifiable. Anyway, ID'ers have no call to demand scientists falsify their theory. Scientists should be free to investigate whatever they like, any way they like.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[ScentCone]

don't agree with someone? go after them personally

Don't get it do you? It's who they are (personally) that we're talking about here. The ID crowd is made up of individual persons (no matter how much they act like idealogical sheep). The irrational, superstitious nonsense they spout is spouted by them as individual people whether or not they also say it as a group to make it sound more credible to their fan base.

The comment you're complaining about referred to people who are willing to close their eyes to what's right in front of them, to willfully turn off their capacity for logic and reasoned pursuit of causality. He called them, "jackasses." You refer to that as "verbal assault," while I prefer the common usage (outside the livestock world):

jackass
Pronunciation: 'jak-"as
Function: noun
1 : DONKEY; especially : a male donkey
2 : a stupid person : FOOL

And, indeed, "fool" is exactly the right word for it. Because the only other possible interpretation of the motives for the ID proponents is one of malicious deceit. They know it's BS, but they are pounding that drum loudly because it's the nearest they think they'll ever be to having the leverage required to get religion back into public schools. They're willing (ironically) to be liars so that they can preach Christian (no other!) truth in a public educational framework. Filtering out the ones that think like that, the only ones left are those that have been fooled into actually believing the mythology. It doesn't matter why they were fooled, but the mechanism that, as they grow up, allowed them to let go of Santa Clause and the Easter Bunny just never quite completely kicked in when it comes to other imaginary powers. Oh well.

I feel sorry for them, but I truly don't care what they think. I do, though, care when they attempt to corrupt science classrooms and squash critical thinking in young people. It's embarassing, really, but it's also damaging to the intellects that will eventually grow up and run the country. Leave them alone! If those kids become adults and feel then like they want to regress back to the dark ages and imagine that all-powerful beings are running the universe, then so be it. But at least give them a chance to go into the world with a clear head. Calling someone a jackass for wanting otherwise is hardly "verbal assault." It's calling it like it is, and the truth is never an assault (though it may feel like one if you've been closing your eyes to it for most of your life).

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[king-manic]

1. The Big Bang cannot be true as it contradicts the First Law of Thermodynamics.

Actualyl no, the first law of thermo dynamics means energy is conserved. The big bang was a the sudden expansion of a signle point of energy into a larger poitn of energy. Energy was conserved.


2. Evolution cannot be true as it contradicts the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

Again no, it states that things generally proceed towards states of higher entropy if no other force acts upon it. If it is more favorable to have less entropy for some other reason then so long as this reason can counter act the natural tendancy to entropy then it is ok.


My opinion on the universe:

1. The universe started as a complex and orderly living entity, which, over time, began to expand. As it aged, it began to expand, and the life began to DEVOLVE until it reached our current state, humans. You can even witness this devolving process. Think. 10 or so years ago, we didn't have so many hurricanes, earthquakes, or other devastating natural disasters. People are becoming stupider by the day.

You are indeed evidence of this progression towards ignorance. As for the weather, it isnt' a sign of the appocalypse, it's a sign of global warming. If you cohere to your apparent political leaning you deny that there is global wamrign as well.



2. As for where the entire mass of atoms came from, either there is a God(which is possible), or the universe has always existed, and there in some incomprehensible way, time started a billion years back, and the universe came into existence with time. And remember this. There might be something larger than a universe...

String theory may be correct and this universe is simply a thin slice out of the total dimensional space of the over all universe. There is a God, I beleive so. However his design was through evolution and not through mysterious proccesses that no one has any idea of. Evolution doesn't falsify that there is a god but to interject that some designs need a god to make them is stupid. Science is science, Religion is religion. Don't have one interfere with the other.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[arodland]

1. The Big Bang cannot be true as it contradicts the First Law of Thermodynamics.
2. Evolution cannot be true as it contradicts the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

1. Irrelevant, because assuming the Big Bang happened, Laws of Thermodynamics would only apply "after" it. Inflation stretches (heh) things a bit, but doesn't break them because it's based on the assumption of "latent energy" already present in the universe being converted into other forms.

2. Incorrect -- yes, evolution implies a localized increase in order, but that isn't prohibited by the Second Law, so long as things get more disordered in general. To illustrate the same point, grass growing doesn't violate the Second Law, because that increase is fueled by incoming energy from the Sun, and the Sun is still causing a net increase in entropy (and would be even if it were surrounded by a Dyson sphere covered in grass, due to the impossible of reaching 100% efficiency in energy conversion.)

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Mr Guy]

Testability and repeatability.

Evolution falls short under the same tests. For any test you have to make assumptions, where Evolution and Intelligent Design differ is what those assumptions are.

If you have a basin that holds 100 gallons of liquid, and you've measured the inflow to be exactly 1 gallon per minute (into the top, no pressure issues), and you've measured the current contents to be exactly 50 gallons. Approximately how long has the container been filling?

The correct answer is, of course, you have no idea. You have absolutely no idea what you started with, whether the current conditions have been continuous, whether any liquid has been removed, what conditions have changed, or any number of other factors.

This is the core of the debate, and it's one that can't be properly addressed. No system, given sufficient understanding of that system, is impossible to create mid-state.

The intelligent design debate centers on what you'd do if you'd build an aquarium. First, you'd make the conditions as much like how they'd exist had the system been functioning for a while. You wouldn't start with seeds, you'd start with plants. If you have plants that require composting matter, you'd add that matter at the beginning. In short, you'd create everything in a state that was ready to sustain life at the beginning, and given sufficient care was taken from inside the aquarium it would be impossible to determine a time refernce outside of the artificially advanced time you created.

It's a faith debate, and science can't prove it one way or the other. All things consider, it's not necessary to prove it one way or the other either, because the answer will very likely affect your life very little.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[gordo3000]

no, no , no!!! you're just wrong. The bible says that I owe god something and that you owe god something and so that is the way it is. There is nothing else.

you're trying to make humans more important than a bookshelf in god's mind and you can't do that. You damn well have an obligation because....... well damn, I couldn't turn off my "logic" circuits long enough to complete an argument. Guess I Need to get back into those good old houses of worship and really shut them down..

I think the real problem is most religious people want to make it sound like they have somehow logically derived god's existance and you will never be able to shake that foundation. The forget to say they take as an axiom the bible and certain limitations on methods of interpretation(some require literalism, some only partial, some none). You can never win the argument when an axiom for their standpoint is

1) God owes humans nothing
2)Humans are indebted to god
3) No analogy can be drawn from this relation to any other relation a person may have with something else, including children. They have have their own underlying axioms.
4)no matter what math or other systems of logic tell you, this system is consistent and complete.

There is actually a similar argument in mathematics. Namely, under certain axioms, one can show that any set of numbers is a complete, ordered field. So for example, the square root of 2 is a proof for the reals unless you reject the notion of a square root of a prime number. Without that notion, that proof falls flat on its face. It doesn't matter what anything else tell you, you simply reject the underpinnings of different systems and you win.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh? Which post were you reading? I didn't smell any atheism there.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[porcupine8]

Except that there are certain systems which are irreducibly complex.

You realize, of course, that this isn't a valid argument unless you can provide examples? Otherwise, I'll just say "but there aren't" and we'll go on ad infinitum.

What it does not allow for, just as Theistic Evolution does not allow for in its pure form, is for sudden speciation. . . . some of these parent species have undergone minor changes, in multiple different places, giving us such things as Emus, Ostriches, and Cassowaries.

So it does allow for speciation, just not sudden speciation. I'm not sure how it's any different from evolution, then. What does it matter whether God made primordial ooze or the ostri-emu, if either one can eventually evolve into several other species? The ostri-emu becomes ostriches and emus, then in a million or two years each of those is extinct, replaced by some other species, etc etc - you just have evolution with a different starting point. Seems to me that if this is really ID's goal, it's pretty useless.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[rufty_tufty]

Is this an attempt at flamebait?
If I make children I have every responsibility towards them and they have none to me. Try convincing anyone that I have no responsibilty to my children and I'd have a quick visit from the social services and possibly the local lynch mob.
If god is there, the comparison of what he has done is give a young child a few harsh rules and spankings; then a single visit where some good moral lessons were handed out. Then he abandons this child and now all it's left with is a few hundred year old book with vague contradictory moral lessons in it. Oh and a warning that we'd better not get any of his intentions wrong otherwise we're in a lot of trouble?

If my parents did that to me I would not call them loving parents, I'd call them bastards and be calling the social services to have them up for child cruelty! If the love and care God has given his children this last two thousand years is a model for parents I'm glad parents are less and less following godly values and actually caring for their children. What did he do in the old testament? Well fire and brimstone arbitraraly was the impression I came away with - again not a good role model at all.
The lessons of Jesus I can respect and take as a good moral foundation (with some careful interpretation). Otherwise I see the Jewish/Christian old testament god as a god of random wrath who has deserted his children for thousands of years. Say he's still around and listening to your prayers is the same thing you hear children who have been abandoned do, they think their parents still love them and will come for them, many of those children claim their parents can hear them and are still comming. I don't see the behaviour we observe of the Jewish christian god reflects anything other than a parent who has abandoned his children with little thought to the care of them.

Sorry for the angry post, I really am, but I can't see how anyone can miss this, please enlighten me as to what I've missed!

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Izaak]

The problem with your comparison is that the OSS
crowd is not trying to force our view onto
everyone else, and we are certainly not trying to
force fundimental changes in highschool science
curriculums. I have no problem with ID proponents
believing what they believe or even teaching it to
their own children, but I do have a problem with
them trying to force their view into the science
classroom. ID is not a scientific theory. It is
not supported by a body of evidence, it is not testable
in a scientific way, and it requires a leap of
faith to accept. In short, it is not science. It is
fine if you want to teach it in a comparative religion
course, but to assume it deserves equal weight in
science class just because a group of people call
it a 'theory' reveals a fundimental lack of
understanfin about what science really is.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Fiver-]

Link.

Also, you can Google "Jews Egypt Exodus archeology", without the quotes.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Proc6]

If He made us (which He has), then we owe Him our loyalties.

If he wants my loyalties he can appear before me and ask for them in clear concise communication not via a garbled 6,000 year game of "Telephone" that relies on inherently flawed and error prone humans to deliver it.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Rolgar]

The Church is actually correct in its stance on contraceptives and abortion.

The side effects of contraception in general:
50% divorce rate
A high rate of marital infidelity
Significant decay of families

All of this was predicted by the pope in 1930, long before such ills came to pass.

Side effects of the pill
Blood clots and heart attacks
Increased chance of breast cancer
30+% of women have their libedo nearly eliminated (1/3rd of those don't get it back after they go off the pill)

The church encourages NFP which has no side effects. The divorce rate of people who use NFP is about 3%. Uneducated women in India have used NFP with an effectiveness of 99.8%. That's 1 in 500 that has difficulty, about 5 times better than the pill. NFP is nearly free (I can get the charts for one year of use for $1, which gives a lifetime cost for most women of about $20, the cost of the pill for one month). NFP is highly scientific, since a woman has to observe her symptoms (temperature and mucus), record a chart, and let her partner calculate based on a few rules whether she'd get pregnant by engaging in sex on that day. From the first non-fertile day in the cycle through the end of the cycle (10-14 days) and into the early part of the next cycle, you can forget getting pregnant, and engage in sex with more freedom and less chance of getting pregnant than with any other method of birth control. Not surprisingly NFP users tend to report higher levels of sexual satisfaction and marrital happiness than those who use contraceptives.

Hopefully, the Church will do more to teach this to the people in the congregation, because 95% of priest never talk about this. Starting in a month or two, I'm going to start doing my part to make it happen.

I am a former seminarian who decided to get married instead, and I agree with the Church's sexual teaching 100%. If you think that the church is wrong on this issue, maybe you should wonder why I, a sex loving man would agree, and use NFP when I have the choice of both options.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, me.

I don't see myself evolving into an infinite, omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent being.

I don't really give a shit if 5 billion generations from now humanity evolves into that state. How does that help me now?

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[terjeber]

When those who believe in Evolution present it and mandate it as a fact in schools, it is an affront to those who believe in Creation

No, it is in fact not. Evolution isn't a belief, but a matter of observed fact, and as such we should teach it in school. Evolution as the method at which humans appeared on the planet is a scientific theory based on the observed realities. As a scientific theory it should also be taught in school, in science class. ID and Creationism are, along side with Astrology, belief in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy, belief systems with no basis in any observed reality. As such they should be taught in school too, but not in science class.

There are many scientific examples of data that contradict the theory of evolution that are not explained.

Eh, no, there isn't. There is in fact not a single piece of scientific data that contradict the theory of evolution. There are parts of evolution process that we do not fully understand, but none of them contradict the theory of evolution.

It would be best to present multiple theories and state that is what they are.

I agree completely, and to my knowledge that is currently what happens. In science class all available theories that describe the creation of humans are taught. Alle one of them. ID and Creationism are not scientific theories, they never have been and they never will be, and as such don't belong in science class. If you do not know what a scientific theory is I would recommend you read up on it.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[lawpoop]

Well, my point is that it is possible that there is an intelligent designer that we could scientifically detect. Just humor me and follow me down this thought experiment:

Imagine we had a definition for intelligence based on radio signal analysis, and we had detected several alien civiliations and confirmed this by later contacting them. Then, we apply the 'intelligence test' to the background radiation of the Big Bang, and guess what? The Big Bang has all the hallmarks of a signal from an intelligent source. That would leave us will several alternatives:

• Our criteria for detecting intelligence is flawed.
• There are some phenomena which look like they are intelligently generated but they actually are not (I.E. Pulsars were originally called 'LGM' stars, because researchers suspected that the regular pulses were actually signals from Little Green Men).
• The Big Bang was generated from an intelligent source, or perhaps the universe itself is somehow that intelligence

Now, if that last option would turn out to be the case, I don't think we could investigate this intelligene that originated or generated the universe scientifically. But we could know *scientifically* whether or not this was the case.

If it is actually true that there are intelligent designers all the way down (and why not? A lot of astronomers at the turn of the 20th century held that the universe was infinite, which is another way of saying 'goes all the way down'), I would like to find out.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit. If ID can in anyway be measured and proved scientifically, then by all means, teach it in science class. Otherwise end of discussion.

In short, the origin of life is a "special case" of science and religion

Again...bullshit. Science is science and religion is religion. The two cannot be mixed.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[CRCulver]

You are just side stepping the issue - if complex things on the order of people and mice require a creator - certainly something as complex as god must too. Either complex things require a creator or they don't.

No, God inhabits a different plane of existance than we do. In wherever he dwells outside of space and time, things may be able to have existed ab aeterno. That things require a creator is true only of our particular universe that he created. Philosophers of religion haven't had a problem with this matter for a long time now.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[NitsujTPU]

It wasn't sarcastic. I was being honest.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Anonymous Coward]

MOD PARENT UP!!

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[The Fun Guy]

Evolution cannot be true as it contradicts the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

Using the same logic as you have used here, it is impossible to separate gold from sand simply by swirling them in a pan full of water, because this would be an increase in the orderliness of the mixture of gold+sand. The mistake that you are making in applying this argument is that you are not looking at the whole system. For every bit of the world that becomes more orderly, a bunch more becomes more disorderly - a lot of chemical energy gets turned into heat in the process of panning for gold.

However, the theory of Evolution has the basic principle that everything is getting more organized and more complex.

A lot of people make this mistake. Only the *organisms* are getting more complex and sophisticated... on the other side of the energy ledger is all of the food they eat and energy they expend. Of all the billions of terawatts the sun has shined down onto the earth over the last 4.5 billion years, some dinky proportion was captured and stored as chemical energy, which was then liberated and used by the metabolism of some organism to do something productive, creating heat in the process.

The organisms are only one small part of the sunlight-into-heat progression. When you consider the whole system, there's no violation of any thermodynamics. Most people who use this argument are operating from an incomplete understanding of thermodynamics, evolution or both.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[lawpoop]

Another logical alternative is that an intelligent force, one that generated or originated the universe as we know it, is eternal. About a century ago a fair number of astronomers assumed that the universe was infinite -- no beginning, no end, either in time or space, just going on and on forever. The argument 'But where did the originator come from' is not *necessarily* a valid critique because we have no reason to assume that there can be no infinite phenomena.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[CRCulver]

Not so, if we have taken the existence of God as a given, the duty is clearly from Man to God. See Swinburne's Responsibility and Atonement (Oxford University Press 1989) for a logical demonstration. His The Resurrection of God Incarnate (Oxford University Press 2002) gives some further data.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[ranton]

Presenting multiple theories will not "broaden" the scientific minds of our children if we present them with unscientific theories. If I went into a math classroom and started saying that 2 + 2 = 5, that does not broaden the minds of the students. It confuses them, and makes the job of the teachers harder. It would produce students with problems in learning and using mathematics.

If you present propoganda like ID in science classrooms, it will confuse children. Average people have a hard enough time understanding what a theory is already, we do not need to confuse them further. The very fact that ideas like intelligent design are even being humored by our society goes to show that we need to improve how science is taught in school, not go backwards.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[carlos_benj]

Gee. I thought I made two statements.

Since you appear to be in Strawman 101 this semester, create one for the other statement.....

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[porcupine8]

"All work processes tend towards a greater entropy (disorder/lower energy density) over time."

However, the theory of Evolution has the basic principle that everything is getting more organized and more complex.

2. Evolution cannot be true as it contradicts the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

Exactly. And water cannot be changed from a liquid form to a more stable solid form, because that would also contradict the second law of thermodynamics.

Oh, no, wait. That's a complete misunderstanding of the second law of thermodynamics. Just like yours. Something can certainly become more orderly and complexly structured, we see this all the time when crystals form, etc - but there is always some tradeoff that increases the overall entropy. According to your argument, just the process of creating a human being, wherein a mass of undifferentiated cells differentiate themselves into a highly complex system of organs and other body parts, would be impossible. And yet women do it all the time - but they have to use a LOT of energy to do it.

And you can see the increase in entropy in their mood swings.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[lawpoop]

Well, I'm not particularly attached to the argument either, but all I want to say is that there is no logical reason why there cannot be an intelligent creator -- even something like a creative 'force' that is somehow intelligent also. It doesn't have to be a being, or an old white guy on a cloud.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[xenocide2]

I'll bite. Firstly, we have no evidence that the laws that appear to govern the universe around us today apply universally, let alone universally across time. That is, perhaps the rules have changed, we just don't know. So your argument by contradiction treads on the thin ice of assumptions. Why the big bang happened is very much open to discussion and investigation. On to the specifics.

Firstly, the second law of thermo is more of a guideline than a law. It's not an absolute, that every second in time, we're progressing towards some state of unpredictability; hence the word "tends". Furthermore, the law describes entropy, a concept we made up to encompass some concept of randomness at a microscopic level. Entropy is basically directly related to the number of possible states. Most importantly, the concepts of order and disorder rely on the possible configurations within the system. The most typical model of a system is a container of free floating gaseous molecules, although its possible to make up more complex examples. That said, it's also one of the most unassailable theories we have. "Not even Maxwell's laws of electricity or Newton's law of gravitation are so sacrosanct, for each has measurable corrections coming from quantum effects or general relativity." (Thermodynamics, Ivan P. Bazarov).

Now, you then go on to apply this microscopic concept to a MUCH MUCH higher level than it was intended to represent. Following your proof model, I can show that it's impossible for us to design a better computer under the laws of thermodynamics, for example. It's more organized, more complex, after all. And yet it would be difficult to do so without understanding the second law. Even more so for air conditioners ;) Thermo is intended to represent molecular randomness related to heat and energy, not model the complex interactions of organic molecules that propegate through various useful chemical properties. Furthermore, even if it was appropriate to generalize thermodynamics to things far outside its scale like evolution and astrodynamics and gravity, the observed "species explosion" suggests that the universe is growing new species (perhaps less so in within our life times, but still), which means the matter of the universe is finding more and more ways to organize itself. This is an increase in the possible states of the universe, which is by definition an increase in entropy. I still think it's hooey to describe lifeforms in the same fashion one describes the mechanics of an air conditioner or hot air baloon, however.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[mosb1000]

That's right, unfair treatment of opposing views is a tactic, not a moral failing on your part. It's time to start torching churches, this ID thing must be stopped at all costs.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[letxa2000]

Me: In short, the origin of life is a "special case" of science and religion

You: Again...bullshit. Science is science and religion is religion. The two cannot be mixed.

Like I said, people like you are as much of a threat to knowledge and truth as those that would, on their religious beliefs, attempt to ban evolution from the classroom.

Religion has an explanation for the origin of life and science has an explanation for the origin of life. If you cannot see why it is foolish to discuss either explanation without mentioning the other, your intellectual capacity and desire to find the truth is so low that your opinion doesn't matter anyway.

Thanks for trolling.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[porcupine8]

I think you're missing the GP's point, which was the line between Intelligent Design and Creationism.

Namely, creationism is a religious belief. No one can argue with your right to believe in it, but because it is inherently religious, and in the US at least there is separation of church and state, it cannot be taught in public schools as a fact.

Intelligent Design is a facade creationists hide behind to try and make creationism sound "scientific" and shoehorn it into the public school curriculum. It is not, in and of itself, a belief you get from the Bible - if it were, there's no way you could get it into the curriculum. No matter how strongly you believe in creationism, it's disingenuous to twist that around into something called "Intelligent Design" so that you can now claim that your religious beliefs are not religious, but scientific, and get them taught in public schools.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[afidel]

Creationism isn't competing with Evolution. One is a theory based on evidence, the other is a religious view based on belief. One is taught in a science class, the other can be taught in a comparitive religions class. I think that all children should be exposed to comparitive religions, the world would be a much better place if we did. Unfortunatly the same people who preach Creationism will often be the ones who scream the loudest if we tried to expose their children to different views on religion.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[ivan256]

Science may be lots of things, but it is neither "specific" nor "well-defined."

You're confusing science - (the field and practice) - with "science" - (the term sometimes used to describe any research, junk or otherwise). Just because something ends with an uncertain conclusion doesn't mean it's not specific.

ID is excluded by the definitions above because there are no ascertained principles or causes, and it doesn't describe any particular skill or technique.

Summary: Not knowledge based on the observations of cause and effect, but instead a belief founded in faith and hearsay. Not a technique to obtain said knowledge. Hence, not science.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[ievans]

The universe is getting more disordered and more simplified, as dictated by the Second Law of Thermodynamics. However, the theory of Evolution has the basic principle that everything is getting more organized and more complex.

Nope. Try reading (and understanding) your scientific principles again.

a) Evolution doesn't say that everything is getting more organized over time.
b) The second law of thermodynamics describes closed systems. The universe as a whole is a closed system, but an enormous one. The earth isn't a closed system. For one, it receives energy from the sun. The second law of thermodynamics doesn't require an "orderly" entropy; it only says that, eventually, all states in a closed system move to disorder. The operative word is "eventually."
c) According to your (mis)understanding of the second law of thermodynamics, it would be impossible for anything to grow more complex. For you to be consistent, you'd have to also believe that plants wouldn't grow, fertilization of sperm & egg could not occur, and ionic bonding is impossible.

1. The Big Bang cannot be true as it contradicts the First Law of Thermodynamics.

Again, you don't understand what you are talking about. Not the Big Bang, not E=MC2. Matter and energy cannot be unqualifiably substituted. No Big Bang theory ever suggested that any energy is created during the event.

If you are truly trying to understand how these theories work together, and are not just parroting the anti-Evolution crowd's talking points, I suggest you take some time to understand the science underpinning the theories you use in your argument.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[pthisis]

If one wants to hold both, how does one answer the question, "Who made God?"

You're very clever, young man, very clever. But it's turtles all the way down.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_d own

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[ranton]

Every time someone has a different opinion than you, you scream trolling. And with beliefs such as yours, it is no woner that you have alot of differing opinions with alot of people.

Just because both religion and science have a different explanation for life does not mean both belong in a science classroom. All it could mean is that they both may belong in a class discussing the origin of life. But as for a science classroom, only science's theories should be discussed. As soon as another theory for the origin of life is found it will be discussed in classrooms right next to evolution. But no such theory exists.

Religion's explanations should stay in sunday school classes and private religous schools where they belong. I do agree that they could be put into a philosophy/history/sociology class, but never a science classroom.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[thephotoman]

Comparing astrology to ID/Creationism is rather unfair: there's loads more science to astrology than there is to ID/Creationism. Of course, I say this in jest, but there at least is some underlying astronomy there.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[LordKazan]

"Evolution .... It isn't a proven fact nor is it even supported a tremendous weight of evidence." It's supported by an incredible ammount of evidence - infact modern biological science doesn't make sense without evolution. We have seen evolution occur, we have caused evolution to occur - a fundmental mechanism required for evolution to occur was discovered and described BY A MONK years ago!. He described genetic inheritance!

I want one of your "scientific examples of data that contradict the theory of evolution". You're probably thinking of the "history of speciation" which is still under revision and not actually thinking of evolution. "In biology, evolution is the process by which populations of organisms acquire and pass on novel traits from generation to generation, affecting the overall makeup of the population and even leading to the emergence of new species."

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that it is particularly telling that materialists are threatened by the ID movement.L

I think you've confused "materialists" with "rationalists".

Why do you think it is so upsetting?

Because it clearly isn't science, but continues to be foisted as such on an unsuspecting (and, sadly, incompetent) public.

The good news is that it hasn't got any real traction, it's just good at grabbing headlines.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, the world probably would be better off if all churches were burned to the ground. Certainly would be poetic justice for all the people christianity has burned over the centuries.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Anonymous Coward]

Lions with Frickin laser beams attached to their heads.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[ranton]

I can't believe this troll was modded insightful. Actually, it's Slashdot, yes I can... if it attacks religion or conservative politics, it's insightful. If it supports religion or attacks liberal politics, it's flamebait, trolling, etc.

You are saying that most Slashdot readers have a certain bias, but you are forgetting what Slashdot is. It is "News For Nerds", which generally implies it is built for a slightly above average in intelligence crowd. This may not always be true, but I am sure that your average Slashdot reader has at least slightly above average intelligence. Therefore it is pretty obvious that in such a society of smart people, religion is going to get a bad rap.

Maybe if you find a "News For Mindless Masses" site you will find people who praise religion and discard rational thought.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[flyinwhitey]

"Is creationism or ID scientific? I would say probably not. But the origin of life is one of the few places where religion and science must intersect."

Just so I'm clear, you want us to teach an idea (it does not rise to the level of a theory) that isn't science, in a science class. That's the gist, correct?

And by doing so, you're giving tacit approval of the idea, by making it appear that it belongs in a science class.

The only thing you've demonstrated in your post is a gross misunderstanding of what science is, and how it should be taught. Based on this, I have to ask how long you've been on the Kansas school board.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[The_Sock]

Evolution is a theory to explain what has happened. It isn't a proven fact nor is it even supported a tremendous weight of evidence. There are many scientific examples of data that contradict the theory of evolution that are not explained. So to have it presented the way it is is "forcing your world view" on us. It would be best to present multiple theories and state that is what they are. Broaden the minds of our children instead of closing out competition.

Evolution is a theory in the scientific use of the word. That is, a hypothosis that has been tested and has evidence to support it. In evolution's case, mounds of evidence. Would you care to elaborate on the many scientific examples of data that contradict the theory of evolution? Becasue the evidence supporting current evolutionary theories (not the same as Darwin's anymore... they've grown as our knowledge of the world around us has grown) has grown to the point where to ignore it means to ignore reason. It's not really a debate anymore, it's one side with facts, and one side with earplugs.

If there was more then one theory (scientific use of the word again here) that adequately explained the way species change, adapt, become new species, and how life arrived in it's current form, then I would be all for it, but currently there is not.

6 day, young/old earth "Theories" have no evidence to support them. ID offers nothing except the addition God did it(untestable conjecture) to an existing theory. If you want something taught in public school science class, pony up with a real theory, backed by real evidence.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[ranton]

Exactly. Don't force your atheism on me or my children, please.

Atheism is rarely forced on anyone, I do not know many atheists that go around trying to convert religious people. What atheists do is try to get people to think rationally about their beliefs, and this just so happens almost always conflicts with religious ideas. The end result is that religious people feel that they are being attacked, but no more than NeoNazis or any other group with rediculous beliefs.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Ced_Ex]

Or is it matter that didn't spring into existence.....


How would you prove something didn't exist?

"Matter that didn't spring into existence? Well... hmmm.... yeah... we would like to prove that it existed, but we don't have any of that matter... so umm.. we're stuck."

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[hackstraw]

Maintaining an aura of dignified debate unfortunately gives the false impression that ID is worthy of either dignity or debate (all it's really worthy of is laughing dismissal, a la astrology or flat-Earthism, of course) but looks better in the press.

I have tried to keep an open mind regarding the ID thing. At first glance, its easy to dismiss it, but I've read some pro ID material and "objective" writings about it as well, and I have dismissed it as anything real or a part of science. I think this quote from the summary says it all:

"The fundamentalists want to give a scientific meaning to words that had no scientific aim," he said at a Vatican press conference.

I'm repeating myself from the last time I posted here about ID (and I promised I stop reading and replying to ID stuff here, but here I am...), but here is a sound argument against ID (IMNSHO):

Lets play and pretend that ID is completely real. Its now proven by the "Intelligent Designer" having a one way worldwide simulcast in a language that every human being understands, and this "Intelligent Designer" says in effect, "Yeah people, I did it", and everybody is completely convinced by the conversation as they are that the sun comes up every day.

OK, now here is the fun part.

What would this information give the world? How would our life change? What would we do differently?

I don't see a single thing that would come from this proof. Regardless if you were previously an ID believer or not.

Would we stop teaching evolution in science class or derivative sciences like genetics? No. They would still would have value. In fact, just as much value as before we were informed by the "Intelligent Designer" directly. Basically, evolution is the theory that living things have genetic variations and that those variations that are best adapted to the current environment are more likely to survive over time.

A simple hypothetical example would be this: Imagine if the atmosphere around the Earth collapsed to the level that no human over 5 feet tall could live (yeah, people I guess could scoot around on their bellies like a worm, but just bear with me in this example).

OK, if that was intelligently designed, which it may have very well been. What could we do then with that belief? I guess, we would just accept it that there are no longer going to be people over 5 feet tall. The same thing if one believed in evolution.

Now, take another example. We have a pond that has always in recent past had many little green frogs in it. Recently, people have noticed that the number of frogs is very few, and those that are left have deformed arms and legs.

With ID being the now proven way of doing things, we would do what? Say, well the Intelligent Designer, wanted these frogs to have deformed arms and legs and for them to disappear just as they were designed to appear.

With evolution, we would assume that something was radically different about the local pond environment. We would look around and find something like a company illegally dumping toxic waste into the pond. Fine the company, and use the money to clean it up, and tada! frogs are back, and this is probably more healthy for people as well.

I could go on, but to me all of this makes complete sense. I'm not formally a religious person who reads religious texts to help me live or whatever. But I do believe in a God, Intelligent Designer, or GUT (Grand Unification Theory). Whatever you want to call it, doesn't matter to me. There does appear to be patterns in the universe instead of everything being random. In fact, ask a computer scientist about how difficult it is to generate a random number.

In other words, we can all get along here. We can use science to "find God" (debatable I guess). Or at the least, God and science are not mutually exclusive. Many of the famous scientists have been christians or religious in one way or another.

Its entirely possible that an "Intelligent Designer" designed everything. So what? That does not change how things are or how things exist or how people live.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Anonymous Coward]

And this proves that you simply do not understand the concept of a being who can exist outside of time (infinite).

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Moofie]

Are you unable to distinguish between harsh language and physical violence?

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[geoffrobinson]

I'm really wondering if this is a serious comment. Trying to interact with you is force?

Let's cut down on the hyperbole.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[yack0]

> we are certainly not trying to
> force fundimental changes in highschool science
> curriculums

You're not? Didn't you get the memo?

Well, I suppose you're right. We should be working on more fundimental [sic] problems like spelling.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[WhiplashII]

both be and not be simultaneously dosen't mean that God can't do it.

Thereby using quantum mechanics to build the definitive proof of the existence of god!

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[geoffrobinson]

Your comments show me how there are few to no consistent atheists. If God doesn't exist, who cares?

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Moofie]

I am a Christian, and a scientifically-minded individual. I believe science and religion address different questions, and do poorly when they are conflated.

"it is an affront to those who believe in Creation"

I'm sorry your feelings are hurt. Your beliefs are not scientific, so therefore, not relevant to science classrooms.

"There are many scientific examples of data that contradict the theory of evolution that are not explained"

Cite some. Don't use Behe.

ID is Creationism in a lab coat. It is no more scientific than a belief in the Tooth Fairy. You are absolutely free to espouse your beliefs in the Tooth Fairy, but you would be very dishonest were you to present those beliefs as scientific theory.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[letxa2000]

Every time someone has a different opinion than you, you scream trolling.

Not every time. Just when they are. You were not trolling. The other two people were. I think you can see the difference in the content of each post.

And with beliefs such as yours, it is no woner that you have alot of differing opinions with alot of people.

Actually, they don't differ with all that many... Except on Slashdot. Then they usually clash violently. That's what happens with a conservative Christian (NOT fundamentalist!) hangs around in a liberal, atheist stronghold.

Just because both religion and science have a different explanation for life does not mean both belong in a science classroom. All it could mean is that they both may belong in a class discussing the origin of life. But as for a science classroom, only science's theories should be discussed. As soon as another theory for the origin of life is found it will be discussed in classrooms right next to evolution. But no such theory exists.

Like I said, I would agree with you on virtually every point except on the origin of life. This is a place where religion and science intersect. I wouldn't be opposed to taking evolution out of science class and taking creationism/ID out of social studies and putting it in a single class called "The Origin of Life." That'd be fair. But I doubt it's going to happen. And to pretend that evolution is the only prevalent theory to the origin of life is to close your eyes to reality.

Religion's explanations should stay in sunday school classes and private religous schools where they belong.

What if those religious explanations are right? What if science is spinning its wheels by not accepting to even look at or consider a "larger picture" on this one issue?

What if science could eventually prove the existince of God? I don't pretend to know how that could happen and I don't feel like getting into a philisophical debate, but what if science eventually did that as a result of considering evolution as well as as how that might fit in with some religious beliefs that supposedly explain the origin of life? As it is now, science automatically shuts down as soon as someone mentions God. It artificially limits the potential expanse of science.

In the end, there is only one truth. I wonder if science will actually dare to find it or if it will avoid perhaps the single most important truth in the universe on philisophical grounds? Science, to some, IS a religion. And THAT is a problem.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[apt142]

The best way I've seen to address this issue is to show their methods as false and unworthy of discussion. That is, we don't argue with them. We don't acknowledge their theory. We just give a strikingly close theory that is obviously false but uses the same methodology.

The Flying Speghetti Monster is an ingenious method of pointing out their lack of scientific weight.

Ok, now time to take off the pirate attire.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Anonymous Coward]

When those who believe in Evolution present it and mandate it as a fact in schools, it is an affront to those who believe in Creation

"No, it is in fact not. Evolution isn't a belief, but a matter of observed fact, and as such we should teach it in school. Evolution as the method at which humans appeared on the planet is a scientific theory based on the observed realities. As a scientific theory it should also be taught in school, in science class. ID and Creationism are, along side with Astrology, belief in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy, belief systems with no basis in any observed reality. As such they should be taught in school too, but not in science class."

That's funny, I have never heard of any observed instance of an animal or plant changing into a totally different animal or plant over generations. I HAVE heard of adaptation, but not fundamental change from one thing to another..... I think you're confusing macro and micro evolution. Just because adaptation has been proven, doesn't mean that macroevolution is true, nor has it EVER been observed or proven

Your religion of Evolution requires more faith than my Christianity does.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[JWhitlock]

I find the best source for answering these kinds of criticisms is www.talkorigins.org , specifically the index to creationist claims. It is humbling to me to see the extent of the arguements, how the attacks and criticisms come from all sides, and yet there is a reasonable answer for almost all of them.

CF101 addresses the problem of First Law and the creation of the universe: "Formation of the universe from nothing need not violate conservation of energy. The gravitational potential energy of a gravitational field is a negative energy. When all the gravitational potential energy is added to all the other energy in the universe, it might sum to zero".

CF001 and subsections address the problems of the Second Law and evolution:

1. The second law of thermodynamics says no such thing. It says that heat will not spontaneously flow from a colder body to a warmer one or, equivalently, that total entropy (a measure of useful energy) in a closed system will not decrease. This does not prevent increasing order because
   • the earth is not a closed system; sunlight (with low entropy) shines on it and heat (with higher entropy) radiates off. This flow of energy, and the change in entropy that accompanies it, can and will power local decreases in entropy on earth.
   • entropy is not the same as disorder. Sometimes the two correspond, but sometimes order increases as entropy increases. (Aranda-Espinoza et al. 1999; Kestenbaum 1998) Entropy can even be used to produce order, such as in the sorting of molecules by size (Han and Craighead 2000).
   • even in a closed system, pockets of lower entropy can form if they are offset by increased entropy elsewhere in the system.
   In short, order from disorder happens on earth all the time.
2. The only processes necessary for evolution to occur are reproduction, heritable variation, and selection. All of these are seen to happen all the time, so, obviously, no physical laws are preventing them. In fact, connections between evolution and entropy have been studied in depth, and never to the detriment of evolution (Demetrius 2000).

   Several scientists have proposed that evolution and the origin of life is driven by entropy (McShea 1998). Some see the information content of organisms subject to diversification according to the second law (Brooks and Wiley 1988), so organisms diversify to fill empty niches much as a gas expands to fill an empty container. Others propose that highly ordered complex systems emerge and evolve to dissipate energy (and increase overall entropy) more efficiently (Schneider and Kay 1994).

An afternoon of browsing the lists should answer some of your questions, and help you form better arguments for and against evolution. For instance:

• CB200 - Irreducible complexity can come from evolution
• CIxxx - All the Intellegent Design arguments

I think evolution best describes the world around us. However, I haven't studied all sides of the issue. This index pointed out several claims that might have been convincing for me if I hadn't heard them before. It is a good reference for those who claim to believe in evolution, but don't know all the facts. In fact, it is a good idea to just poke around that site - there is more than a week's worth of arguments.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Danathar]

--
ID is simply fundamentalist's latest attempt into having evolution taught in highschool science classes.
--

Err....Now I'm Really confused. Are'nt religious fundamentalists AGAINST teaching evolution in science class?

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[flyinwhitey]

You know, i think it's funny that you hammer this guy for his ignorance, whe you have accepted this

"As for the weather, it isnt' a sign of the appocalypse, it's a sign of global warming"

as fact.

You sir, have simply replaced his religion with yours.

And no, I don't reject global warming. I reject the idea (as stated in this otherwise lucid post) that the cause of our current WEATHER is global warming.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Izaak]

I am interested in your statement "It isn't a
proven fact nor is it even supported by a
tremendous weight of evidence." When you say it
is not a fact, are you refering to micro-evolution
or macro evolution? Evolution as a force within
nature is a proven fact. We have witnessed it in
nature, reproduced it in the labratory, and modeled
it on computers. I personally have ran a simulation in
which simple one cell organisms evolved into fish
based entirely on random mutation.

The part of evolution we still call a 'theory' is
the macro-evolution side in which animals as we
know them today evolved from various common
ancestors in the past. Barring the invention of
time travel, we are inevitably working with
incomplete information here, but there is still
a HUGE body of evidence in the fossil record and
more importantly in the genetics of animals
themselves. As we decode the genome of more and
more animals, we find the footprints of evolution
everwhere we look.

The problem with Intelligent Design advocates is
that they take the inevitable areas where the
science is incomplete and using it as 'evidence'
for unsupported conlcusions (i.e. we don't know how
animal X evolved, so it must have been created
'as is' by an intelligent designer). That is as
silly as saying, I don't know how that car was
constructed, so Ford must created it with magic
pixy dust. Science is about what we can test and
prove. Evolution fits that model, Intelligent
Design does not. Perhaps God did create the
world 'as is' a few thousand years ago... but if
he did, he sure made it look like it was billions
of years old and that he used evolution in his
toolbox of creation. That is what all the
available evidence points to anyway. To try and
place Intelligent Design next to Evolution in the
classroom is to missunderstand and misrepresent
what science is. It does a disservice to both
science and faith.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[letxa2000]

You are saying that most Slashdot readers have a certain bias, but you are forgetting what Slashdot is. It is "News For Nerds", which generally implies it is built for a slightly above average in intelligence crowd. This may not always be true, but I am sure that your average Slashdot reader has at least slightly above average intelligence. Therefore it is pretty obvious that in such a society of smart people, religion is going to get a bad rap.

See, ranton, your OTHER post was not a troll. This is. And flamebait.

Your implication that only stupid, non-above-average people are religious is patently absurd and contradcits evidence to the contrary. Should we put together a list of extremely smart people over the ages that were religious?

I'd submit the opposite is true. Those that are smart enough to realize that the universe is infinitely incredible--and only becomes more incredible the more we supposedly learn--the less likely it is that this all just happened by accident.

Given that sicnce still don't have all the answers to the physical universe or even to our own planet, only a fool would presume to know that that same science could explain how it all began.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[ebyrob]

I have no problem with post-Darwinian Macro Evolution proponents believing what they believe or even teaching it to their own children, but I do have a problem with them trying to force their view into the science classroom at the pre-College level. Post-Darwinian Macro Evolution is not a solid scientific theory. It is an attempt to resurrect Darwinian "slow-change" Evolution which was disproven by the fossil record. The assumptions of Evolution by Descent are not supported by a body of evidence, are not testable* in any meaningful way, and require a leap of faith to accept. In short, they are not good science.

It is fine if you want to teach it in an advanced course where the students already have the basic logic, reasoning facilities, and overall balls to question the teacher, but to teach it in grade school as an absolute smacks of brain-washing. Assuming it deserves equal weight with other so-called "hard sciences" just because it can be classed a 'theory' reveals some fundamental weaknesses in the modern practice of science.

* "Natural Selection(TM)" when used for Macro Evolution uses "all of science" as a mechanism, and so includes the basic untestable assumptions of science into itself... Some of us who weren't brow-beaten with stories about colored birds in our childhood call this a tautology. Of course, this point of view is obviously controversial and clearly minority.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[kpang]

Doesn't this explanation just take things an extra step? Ok, so we don't know what created all this matter. Saying that an all-powerful being came along and created it doesn't really help much. The next logical question would be, "well, where did this creator come from?". One way or another you're going to have to assume something has existed for eternity (whether it be the matter that makes up the universe of the creator) for this all to work. I fail to see how the religious argument is any more helpful than the non-religious one.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[sfurious]

The side effects of contraception in general

Do you have anything to back this up other than correlation? A *lot* of things other than contraception changed in the past 70 years...

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[beeplet]

My arguments summarized:
1. The Big Bang cannot be true as it contradicts the First Law of Thermodynamics.
2. Evolution cannot be true as it contradicts the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

The Big Bang theory doesn't contradict the first law of thermodynamics because it says nothing about the origin of the energy which has since been expanding to form the universe.

Evolution doesn't contradict the second law of thermodynamics because that law applies to closed systems, and the biosphere is not. You could equally well argue that life in any form disobeys the 2nd law because animals are ordered systems... but they maintain that state of orderedness by taking in chemical energy (food) and expending heat, thereby increasing the entropy of the universe as a whole.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[WhiplashII]

In fact, 60% of scientists believe in God - and 50% of evolutionary biologists do!

The arrogance of some people here is just incredible.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you ever done any research.... *cough* sorry, I forget who I'm talking to.

Have you ever read any magazine article where they describe the process of human gestation?

The zygote, as it matures into a fetus, looks initially like a fish. Then a reptile. Then a lower-order mammal. Then eventually it becomes a human.

This does not contradict any part of evolutionary theroy.

But I'm curious why God would have designed human gestation to behave in such a manner.

Oh, I forgot, he works in "mysterious ways" and that's the end of the discussion.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Proteus]

Now there are those that will say, "Sure, but do it in a mythology class." Right there, that's an inappropriate judgement that just shows that certain people are afraid to have the debate at all. They feel safer if it is pre-ordained that creationism or ID is a myth.

Well, I've never seen that particular comment made. From what I've seen, the opponents of ID are largely scientists and the teachers the public schools have hired to teach Science courses; the proponents are typically religiously-motivated fundamentalists. This, to me, suggests that the motivation to teach creationism and/or ID in science class is based in a desire to teach a religious rather than scientific ideal.

Creationism as a scientific theory has been widely discredited, so why should it be taught in a science class, except perhaps as a historical note? I'd have no problem with creationism taught in the same manner as science references the theory of spontaneous generation. And no, I don't mean mocking it -- spontaneous generation was discredited because it didn't stand up to scientific scrutiny, much as creationism has been. Unfortunately, teaching it this way would offend many Christians who believe in creationism as a matter of faith. I think it's a fair compromise to simply avoid the topic. The unfortunate part of ID is that it's just a "kinder, gentler" version of Creationism.

I do happen to agree that the controversy and alternate viewpoints should be taught, but such things don't belong in a Science class. I'd love to see it taught as part of philosophy, comparative religion, or social studies. In the latter case, the focus would probably have to be on the controversy and debate to be topical.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Donkey Trader]

Sorry, dave (and many others here). ID is not simply about irreducibly complex biological features (such as molecular motors). And ID does not claim to disprove evolution -- this is a common misunderstanding.

In many ways, Intelligent Design is a complimentary science to Darwin's evolution. However, there are certain aspects of biology that pure evolution theory does not attempt to explain, such as molecular design or prebiotic life (i.e. chemical abiogenensis).

If anyone here truly has an open mind, I recommend reading the paper "DNA and Other Designs" by Stephen C. Meyer. This essay exposes a number of problems with abiogenesis research. More importantly, however, it details several aspects of biology that at least appear to exhibit design and how logical inferrence can lead to ID.

IMHO, it is incredibly close minded to simply dismiss ID as some attempt by the reglious-right to open the door to the teaching of creationism in public schools. ID is a very serious scientific effort to promote thought and perhaps help explain some of the defenciences that currently exist in the theories of abiogenesis and evolution.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[letxa2000]

Just so I'm clear, you want us to teach an idea (it does not rise to the level of a theory) that isn't science, in a science class. That's the gist, correct?

Personally, I'd go along with something ranton mentioned in another post--a class specifically called 'The origin of life' where all theories could be covered.

If that doesn't happen, though, the fact that science cannot completely and conclusively explain how life began does raise a sufficient amount of reasonable doubt such that it is not unreasonable to at least mention another theory that might explain what science has thusfar not been able to.

And by doing so, you're giving tacit approval of the idea, by making it appear that it belongs in a science class.

No, I'm giving tacit recognition that science has not been able to adequately explain the origin of life and that there are other explanations that someone interested in the truth might want to consider to explain that lack of explanation.

The only thing you've demonstrated in your post is a gross misunderstanding of what science is, and how it should be taught.

My views are obviously not popular at Slashdot. I expected no less and really don't care.

I do not misunderstand what science is. But I think we should at least agree that anything that is taught in school should be taught in an effort that some student, someday, might find the truth. You are doing a disservice to all students by intentionally excluding other explanations that, ultimately, might be right.

I agree science isn't the best place for the discussion--that's why I'd prefer a class called 'The origin of life' where all theories could be discussed, compared, and even complement each other. But if a special class on that topic isn't going to exist, the competing explanations for the origin of life need to be discussed where that topic is already being discussed. And that's currently in science class.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[WhiplashII]

Not all religions (even limiting to those that profess to be Christian) have a problem with that...

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Bilestoad]

I think what you're saying boils down to this:

It is no coincidence that ID also stands for "intellectual dishonesty".

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[TGK]

I would say there are a minority of Catholics that follow all church dogma, such as the anti-birth control stance, but nowhere in Catholic dogma or other writings does the church teach creationism. I think I can confidently say that any conforming Catholic school, run by Marianists or Jesuits post Vatican II, have taught the theory of evolution as fact.

That's what I said... ok, you said it better, but that was my point. Most American Catholics differ from the Church's established viewpoint on a few things - most significantly the morality of birth control. I agree with you, most Catholics don't ascribe to creationism and don't fit the "extremist" mold.

What I was trying to get at is that Catholics, like other religions in this country, have nuts and that those nuts tend to use their religion to support their belifes rather than their belifes to support their religion.

It's a big mess.

I also checked up on the capitalization bit, and was rather interested to find out that you're right. I'd always been taught that lower case "c" catholic meant christian... guess not. From Wikipedia: Capitalization is no sure guide to denominational affiliation. It may indicate formal affiliation with the Roman Catholic Church or it may not. Capitalization may merely indicate a wish to stress the holy and solemn nature of the spiritual body of believers and a desire for all Christians to be one.

It would be anachronistic to attribute significance to capitalization or lack of capitalization in printings of texts dating from before the last few centuries or in translations of those texts, since the originals were written in unmixed majuscule or minuscule letters. Translations even of modern texts into English often follow the usage of the original language. For instance, since French normally capitalizes only the first word of the title of an entity, the adjective "catholique", following the noun "Église", has a lower-case initial. Texts in Latin generally follow this usage, not the English practice.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[fractaloon]

However, whatever you have made has an obligation to you (for example, something as simple as a bookshelf whose job is now to hold books). God doesn't owe us anything. If He made us (which He has), then we owe Him our loyalties.

Wow, that's scary. I must be naive 'cause I never would have thought anybody actually felt this way.

This bookshelf theaory of yours makes no sense. These bookshelves did not sign any sort of contract saying they would hold your books if you made them. You make them and force them into servitude regardless of what they want to do. Maybe, just maybe, they'd rather be night tables.

It's one thing to be greatful for existence, it's another to be indebted for something you never asked for.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[sfurious]

You are in agreement with the Vatican

Actually, unless I'm reading him badly wrong (or the Vatican, for that matter), he is. "He tells Man (a special creation that did not come from 'lower' beings)" reads to me as being direct creation of man, not evolution. I haven't seen the Vatican insist that man did not arise via the mechanism of evolution, and I think you'd certainly have difficulty finding many scientists saying so either.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[ebyrob]

which generally implies it is built for a slightly above average in intelligence crowd

Above average intelligence is like above average driving skill. Everyone thinks they've got it and at least half of em are wrong. Being an elitist snot doesn't make you smart, it just makes you an elitist snot...

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[rnelsonee]

Just to nitpick, seeing as you got to post my usual favorite point before me (hypothesis vs theory).

Hypothesis, theories, and laws are not words that lie on some scale of certainty - a theory not only matches tested data (your point), but perhaps more importantly, is used to describe a set of facts. So they're on different planes - one is conjecture, and one is a description of a system built upon these former conjectures. This is why we can have both a law of gravity (mutual attractions between objects...) and a theory of gravity (the Earth revolves around the sun because...) in use at the same time.

Either way, the important thing here is that "Evolution is just a theory" is a worthless statement, because in this case, IDers are mistakingly using one of "theory"'s other (and quite unfortunate) definitions that treats a theory as a hypothesis (rather than using the scientific theory definition, which is discussed above).

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Eric S. Smith]

Except that there are certain systems which are irreducibly complex.

Sure, but only if "irreducibly complex" means "the result of evolutionary processes of which I cannot conceive due to a lack of imagination or insight."

The IDer (for sake of argument call Him God)

ID doesn't even get you that far. All of this trouble to grow a tiny fig-leaf for creationism, and even granted all of your own arguments you still can't honestly assert that your Intelligent Designer is the God of the Bible and not, say, the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

How irreducibly pointless...

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[demigod]

Except that there are certain systems which are irreducibly complex.

I always wondered what they mean when they say, irreducibly complex. I decided to find out..
I knew ID was weak, but they could have at least put some effort into it.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[vondo]

Reference?

I'm 99% sure that's not true.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[terjeber]

The side effects of contraception in general:
50% divorce rate
A high rate of marital infidelity
Significant decay of families

If this was related to religion etc, as the poster seems to imply, why is it that the more religion you have in a society, the higher the teen pregnancy rate is? The more relgion you have the higher the divorce rate and the higher the abortion rate. Why is it that the states in the US who have the most churches also have the most strip clubs?

The sheer number seem to indicate that if you remove God from a society it will become less criminal, less prone to infidelity and abortion and in general, nicer.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Anonymous Coward]

Why? Hmmm... a lifetime of indoctrination perhaps?

BTW, your "evidence" is typical of that presented by religious types in pushing their agendas. Which is to say that it comes without quoting verifiable sources, completely ignores the other side of the argument and is most likely a complete fabrication.

How the church can condone a chart while condemning condoms must be one of those Catholic Mysteries. Perhaps it's just that the Catholic Church failed to get in on the ground floor in any good contraception businesses. If they had, for example in a manufacturer or diaphragms, we would see that NFP charts were in fact the work of Satan while diaphragms would be available for just $1 from your friendly local minister.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Rolgar]

Not possible. The teaching of papable infallibility means that if something is believed infallibly (i.e. all dogmas), then it is true, and can never be shown to be false. For a pope to attempt to reverse a dogma, either the previous or new teaching would have to be false. This has never happened, and never will. If it should ever happen, the Church would rightly close its doors and shut down opperation.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[vondo]

There are people who genuinely believe in it. They treat the Bible literally in many places where they really shouldn't.

I think you just supported the GP's point. People who interpret the Bible literally are young earth creationists (6 days 6,000 years ago, Eve from Adam's Rib, etc.), not ID-believers. ID says that evolution occurs but that at some small, basicly undetectable level, there is an intelligence (God/Vishnu/Aliens/FSM) behind it.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Anonymous Coward]

Haha... a christian calling an atheist inconsistent. Now that's comedy. Have you looked at your bible lately?

As an atheist, I *care* when religious wackos shove their propaganda in my face all day long (church signs, billboards, bumper stickers, crazy people coming to my door proselytizing, teachers spouting unsolicited dogma at my child, etc.) to the point where it interferes with my life. Keep your fairy tales to yourselves and your own families, please. I mean, it's great that you can actually force yourself to be ignorant enough to believe all that crap, but there are still some of us left in the world who like to reason for ourselves, depend on ourselves, and blame ourselves when things go wrong, instead of latching onto some stuff that unknown parties wrote thousands of years ago about a magical sky man. We don't need your input, the government doesn't need your input, and most of all the educational system does not need your input.

P.S. When you die, you're going to turn to dirt and mush, just like the rest of us. Sorry.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[ranton]

See, ranton, your OTHER post was not a troll. This is. And flamebait.

While I did use a little more sarcasm in this post, I still do not consider it trolling.

Your implication that only stupid, non-above-average people are religious is patently absurd and contradcits evidence to the contrary. Should we put together a list of extremely smart people over the ages that were religious?

Actually I do imply that the smarter you are the more likely you are to not believe in religion. I do not think that is flamebait. There are plenty of studies that suggest this. Two such studies were done by James H Leuba in 1914 and a study done in Nature magazine in 1998. In Leuba's study he took the 400 leading scientists from the American Men of Science (AMS). 73.6% of the respondants claimed to be athiest or agnostic. He redid his study in 1933 and found the number rose to 85% of the scientists claiming to not believe in God. When Nature magazine redid the study using the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), they found that 93% of the respondants did not believe in God.

There are many other studies, these are just a few. While this does not mean that you are stupid if you believe in God, it does show that highly intelligent people rarely are spiritual. I am sure there are hundreds of exceptions, but the general rule seams to be that the more intelligent you are the less likely you are to believe in a God.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Dion]

> It isn't a proven fact nor is it even supported a tremendous weight of evidence.

Yes, yes it is.

The problem isn't that the christians want to teach their myths, it's that if the christians are allowed to do that then what about the muslims, the jews and raelians?

What about the FSM? Will the pastafarians have to be left out in your new inclusive system?

If you include the teachings of the noodly creator then what about the followers of the invisible pink unicorn?

The trouble is that there is no evidence at all for anything other than evolution and a lot of evidence for evolution and if you start to teach all sorts of stuff that there is no evidence for then you are going have to extend the school year about 7000% because there is a lot of crazy ideas out there.

Evolution is the best supported theory out there, if you have any evidence that invalidates some part of it then feel free to speak up so the theory can be updated to fit the evidence.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[J05H]

Excellent definition!

The linked article is more than just a "keep ancient stories out of science class" ruling from the Vatican. This is a refutation of the radical creatitionists and a shout out for the rational understanding of the Universe. The Church sponsored science for centuries, and it is good to see them siding with reason, observation and exploration instead of Irrationalism. They are assertting, again, that the physical Universe obeys certain rules. The Vatican openly supporting science puts 1.5 billion Catholics on the side of Smart.

This statement is much more important than last week's AAAS announcement of Kansas' copyright infringement. This is permission to continue advocating Science as an explainer, from the pulpit. This is very much against the Fundamentalist mentality.

I support Natural Philosophy. If you can't measure It, photograph it, weigh it or detect it, It doesn't exist.

Josh

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

['nother poster]

Well, hopefully some of those elitest snots understand the concepts of mean, mode, and median well enough to understand why your statement about drivers is incorrect.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Proteus]

Your comments show me how there are few to no consistent atheists. If God doesn't exist, who cares?

I do, if people insist on teaching the next generation that God does exist as though it were unassailable fact.

The core problem with discussions of this nature is that the extremes on both sides characterize each other as monsters, as is wont to happen with any emotionally intense debate. The extreme atheists (those who believe that anyone who has faith is an idiot) cast ID-proponents as blathering morons who are out to corrupt our youth into believing a lie. And the extreme ID-proponents cast atheists as people trying to corrupt our youth into being godless heathens.

The reality, of course, is that many ID-proponents are either misinformed or blind to their biases -- that doesn't make them stupid or evil (though, as with any sufficiently large group of people, there are many outspoken fools). Of course, the percentage of outspoken idiots in the Atheist camp would have you believe that religion and science cannot share proponents.

And, of course, most atheists are confused about why Christian conservatives think something like a lack of belief can be forced on anyone, and think faith is something personal and should be taught at home, not in public school. Of course, the percentage of outspoken idiots in the Conservative Christian camp (some of the most vocal ID supporters) would have you believe that relegating religious instruction to the privacy of the home is somehow "encouraging atheism".

So please, don't cast us atheists into the mold of the few outspoken idiots who haven't carefully considered their position, just as I refrain from casting conservative Christians into the mold of the "Christian Right Warrior" who would ignore the rights of everyone else to further their version of the truth. The respect must run both ways.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[ranton]

This does not mean that there are not groups that as a whole are above average. I am sure that NBA players as a whole have above average levels of fitness. Does believing that make them elitest snobs? I am sure that Mensa members have an above average level of intelligence. Does believing that make them elitest snobs?

It is possible to believe that you have above average intelligence and be correct.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Omestes]

Don't want to enter this debate, but I feel that I must.

Schools are based on rational entities. We don't teach religion in schools, it is not the schools job, unless you send your kids to a religious school. I will furnish my kids religiosity, it is not your, or anyone elses right or responsibility. If your christian do you want your children indoctrinated to be a muslim or hindu? No? Good.

Creationism and ID are both purely religious views. They presupose someone infinitely better than us, capable of creating the world/universe/life meaning a god. In this country this supposes the Christian God. Thus when you force these ideologies (not theories in the same sense as evolution, hence not using the word) upon my children, you are forcing your (Christian) religion upon my children.

Evolution is different since it is a scientific theory (not an ideology), meaning based on empirical evidence (not faith), is peer reviewed, and fact checked with new evidence (Evolution evolves). I want my children to get a heaping dose of science from schools, and all resultant methodologies. Rationality is what school is for.

If you want to give your children religiosity, do so at home and at church, where the rest of us can opt our children out.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[deadpoetJBA]

There is a common problem among most people involved in this debate, which has been going on for years and years, and probably will continue to go on for the rest of time. Basically, IDers have a religion that is built upon faith in an unseen God. Evolutionists build their ideas around a philosophy that what we see today can give us adequate reason to interpret what happened yesterday. However, both of these parties has a critical flaw in that so often they believe that their belief system and worldview can be proved completely based on absolute truths that are undeniable to everyone. There is a lot of evidence seen in various fossils that have been discovered in the world that points to a variation in species that oftentimes comes very close to appearing as if creatures evolved over time. Evolutionists take this and say that it shows that species absolutely did evolve over time. Creationists take this same evidence and say that it is not enough to claim that it has happened for sure based on lack of intermediates between species. They also claim that there are things we see today that are too complex to be dissolved piece-by-piece and still function in some way that would be consisten with Darwin's Survival of the Fittest theory. However, both of these parties really are taking facts that we see and making interpretations that go beyond what the facts actually can definitively prove. The theory of evolution is a great one, and to come up with that theory was a matter of intelligence on the part of Charles Darwin, however, because of the simple reality that it cannot be recreated in a test lab means that it cannot ever be "proved" in the strictest sense of the word. People who believe that God created the earth and everything that is in it "as-is" cannot prove that ideology either. Both parties are so convinced of their points that they miss the reality that the nature of the theory of Evolution itself makes it really unprovable from a grand and global scale because there would have to be a physical witness of the entire process the whole time. It has been said that theories in science cannot ever be proven but can only be disproven, and for people to make claims that something can be proven that is not observable shows that they have filled in transitions in their own minds that have not been observed in reality. My main point is that people who hold to ID ascribe their belief system on faith that there is a God and that the things that He created things the way they are to a large extent with some minor variations along the way. People who hold to Evolution ascribe their belief system on faith in their interpretations of the facts that they've seen. Both systems are built on faith because neither can ever prove based on observations how what we see today came to pass. It is very important that whenever these ideas are taught, that they are taught with the understanding that they have not and cannot be proven.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[feyhunde]

Of course, there is no proof that this will do any good. In particular, the extreme right-wing Catholics of the Mel Gibson variety, like many fundamentalist protestants, have already given up on the pope

Which by definition of Catholic as in union with the church makes Mel Gibson technically a protestant since he reject's the pope's authority over the church. I hate when they say rogue Catholic groups. You can say the same thing about Lutherans.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Anonymous Coward]

ID is simply fundamentalist's latest attempt into having evolution taught in highschool science classes.

hunh?
There must be something wrong with my understanding, here - since you were modded +5 Insightful... but it seems, to me, that you just suggested that "ID is... [an] attempt [to have] evolution taught in highschool science classes."(sic)

All this time, I have been operating under the, apparently, mistaken assumption that ID was an attempt to get Creationism "taught in highschool science classes."(sic)

As far as your proposition that [we] should "Attack the messenger", I would suggest that you spend a bit of time thinking about some of the historically documented results of religious intolerance, and antagonism. Try googling heresy, and inquisition, for starters.

<sigh >

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Rolgar]

The divorce rate for the last hundred years has been within a couple of points of being 1/2 the rate of contracepting couples. Unfortunately, I don't have a chart with both sets of numbers on the same graph. The significant increase of usage began in the roaring 20s, and really took off with the Anglican church approval of contraception in 1929, which was wildly denounced in major news publications of the day such as the Washington Post, the NY Times, and most major newspapers. The pope's 1930 announcement was a follow up to this event. The text of that document can be found at http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xi/encyclic als/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_31121930_casti-connubii_ en.html in which he predicted the downfall of family life if contraception became wide spread.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[ChodeMonkey]

Although I think that the ID people are nuts, the problem is that there are a whole lot of them and the US culture has a preference for allowing equal debate time to opposing sides of an argument even when one side is totally bonkers. This is done in the name of fairness. The trick is how to show that one side is totally bonkers.

Take a step back.

The true problem is NOT ID. In fact ID is just a smokescreen and the sooner we can all stop talking about it the sooner we can end the debate. ID requires a supernatural explanation for a natural phenomenon. This immediately puts it in the EXACT SAME camp as astrology, tarot cards, numerology, and the bodily humor theory of medieval medicine.

You will note that whenever some crazed school board starts trying to insert ID or creationism into their science classes that something else happens too. At best this something else gets a single sentence in mainstream media reports but it is actually the fundamental linchpin of the whole deal. Everybody yammers on and on about ID and evolution and misses how to shut these people down.

The linchpin is that they MUST change the definition of science to get their nutty ideas into a science debate. Science only works because it is based on NATURAL phenomena. The insane policy makers that want to push ID or whatever realize this and quietly change the definition of science to include everything BUT the requirement that phenomena be explained naturally (e.g. Kansas school board). Then they distract everyone with a fireworks show of VALID REAL TESTABLE GAP FREE DISCOVERY ID SCIENCE PROMOTED BY SOME REAL VALID BIOLIGIST AT LEHIGH UNIVERISTY vs. the GAP-ISH MISTAKE RIDDLED COMPLEXITY BEYOND REDUCABILITY EVOLUTIIIIOOOOONNNNNN! (only on pay-per-view).

Enough already. Strip away the distracting and emotionally charged bits and get down to the fundamental postulates! Stop debating ID vs. Evolution. Start debating natural vs. supernatural phenomena. Science is materialistic, supernatural phenomena (including ID and palm reading) are not. You must either say that ID is not science, or you must change the definition of science to get away from materialism.

It is my hope that once the public realizes that by changing the definition of science they give validity to things like future prediction through chicken entrails and will then back away from it. It is up to the readers of this note to make the connection between ID and future prediction through chicken entrails very clear to everyone they meet and in every discussion they have. ID and future prediction through chicken entrails are intimately connected because both are supernatural phenomena. If you vote for ID you are actually voting for supernatural phenomena and therefor getting a steaming plate of chicken entrails.

NO WAY OUTTA THAT!

Hope Michael Behe is hungry.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Flying Spaghetti Mon]

> you still can't honestly assert that your Intelligent Designer is the God of the Bible and not, say, the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

He Easily Can, Because I Say So.

I Am Not The Intelligent Designer.

(But I Touch You Anyway With My Noodly Appendage)

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[letxa2000]

Actually I do imply that the smarter you are the more likely you are to not believe in religion. I do not think that is flamebait. There are plenty of studies that suggest this. Two such studies were done by James H Leuba in 1914 and a study done in Nature magazine in 1998. In Leuba's study he took the 400 leading scientists from the American Men of Science (AMS). 73.6% of the respondants claimed to be athiest or agnostic. He redid his study in 1933 and found the number rose to 85% of the scientists claiming to not believe in God. When Nature magazine redid the study using the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), they found that 93% of the respondants did not believe in God.

You seem to be talking of a study of scientists, not a study of "smart people." While I will not disagree that scientists are generally smart out of necessity, these numbers tend to look at a subgroup of "smart people" that obviously have a potentially very different outlook on life--and that outlook could potentially even vary greatly depending on what area of science the scientists work in.

I'm personally skeptical of the 93% figure. Could you provide a link to that study so I could look at it's methodology? I know quite a few scientists and they are all Christians. Obviously my sample is non-representative, but I find 93% to be exceedingly high. I'd want to see it broken down by not just "National Academy of Sciences" but also on scientific specialization, geographic location, and age.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[terjeber]

It is simply not true that evolution has been proved beyond doubt

Evolution as a method has been more than "proved beyond doubt", it has been observed, and as such is not a matter of debate. Even the ID proponents have recognized this fact. Evolution as a theory to explain the appearance of man on this planet has not been "proved beyond doubt", but it is currently the only theory that explains the observed phenomena. Is that so hard for the religious people to understand? There are no other theories. There is superstition and conjecture, but no other theories.

he fact that evolution is taught in classrooms as mere fact is an affront to many Americans

Why should this matter? Should the fact that the majority of a group of people shows a tremendous amount of ignorance stop us from teaching children science? Why is it that you right-wing christians hate science so? Is it such a threat to the feeble foundations on which your world-views rest?

Answer this. Considering the fact that Evolution is the only scientific theory that explains what we see. It may or may not be right, it doesn't matter. Why are you so scared of it that you need to ban it?

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[caseih]

Yes. This was exactly my point. The same reasoning can be applied to all religions that have similar beliefs. Thus to call for change within the organization to certain core beliefs is really an admission that one believes it to be false anyway. Now changing the structure of an organization to adapt to the needs of a society is another thing. Anyway I have to wonder sometimes why certain folks stay in their belief system if they feel so strongly that a core dogma is wrong, as the entire belief system has been invalidated by their arguments.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Thunderstruck]

I don't care what your religion is or what you choose to believe, but when you try to force your worldview on me or society as a whole, I will attack you with whatever tactics I have at my disposal.

Where do you, personally, draw the line between an ID proponent "forcing" his or her ideas on you and simply telling you about them?*

*Disclaimer, from a scientific perspective, I don't buy into evolution or any other theory about how things got here. None can be proved by experiment. Perhaps you could call me origin agnostic.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[ValuJet]

The fact that evolution is taught in classrooms as mere fact is an affront to many Americans (85% believe in literal creationism/intelligent design guided evolution).

Your number of 85% seems high to me, but lets run with it anyway. Just because most people think that falls in better with their religious beliefs doesn't make it any more right (or wrong).

I bet a 1000 years ago more than 90% of all people believed the world was flat. That didn't make it true and neither does 85% of the population believing in ID/Creationsim make that true, or something that should be taught in schools.

Are there holes in evolutionary theory? Yes.

Does that mean we should fill those holes with the idea of an intelligent creator? No

The reason we should not do that is simple. It is saying we can never understand the how, so why bother. It is encouraging apathy by saying 'You cannot ever understand this, because it was done by some superbeing.' That is not an acceptable answer in science, even if it is correct.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Lifewish]

You're right, neither Macroevolution (aka Common Descent) or Design can be conclusively proven to be true (I'd question whether they rely on differing assumptions about the universe - care to supply more detail?)

However, Macroevolution can be proven to be false - all you have to do is find a fossil sufficiently out of place, or a species that's completely different, at a chemical level, to the rest of life as we know it. Design, by contrast, can be used to explain any state of affairs - if nothing else, supporters of the Design hypothesis can say "yeah, just like what you said, only God did it." As such, it can't be proven false.

And, if we have one hypothesis that is too vague to be proven false and one hypothesis that is specific enough to be easily kicked out if it's wrong, standard practice is to accept the simpler one. If you see 27 dots in a row, it's sensible to assume that they represent a straight line rather than an order-27 polynomial (apologies for this example, I've been doing maths work all afternoon). If you accept Design over Macroevolution, why not accept intelligent falling over gravity?

There's an even better reason in this case, which is that any attempt to pin the Designer down in more detail (that I've come across) has been refuted. For example, the very concept of Him as intelligent (as with Intelligent Design) is somewhat implausible - to use the old cliche, what kind of Intelligent Designer would run the sewer through the middle of a recreational zone? This is what the Designer supposedly did when creating a urethra running through the prostate gland in male humans. There are a number of other examples, such as the fact that the human eye could be massively more efficient if it incorporated a simple design change - one that's actually found in octopi. Why would that be the case if the same Designer had created both?

To conclude: both hypotheses can explain the available data. However, the Design hypothesis could explain almost any alternative data set, whereas the Macroevolution hypothesis could explain comparatively few alternative data sets. Additionally, all attempts to be more specific about the nature of the Designer have met with failure - the hypothesis can only explain the evidence by being completely vague. As such, the Macroevolution hypothesis is the only one worthy of the "scientific theory" seal of approval based on the available data, and is thus likely to be more accurate*.

-----
* I realise there's a leap of logic here, but it's fairly lengthy and basically boils down to the 27 dots example given above. If this bothers you, just ask.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[hey!]

Part of the problem with debating ID is that they can dart out to attack with some scientific jargon and carefully picked examples, and retreat the unassailable fastness of faith, which sadly terra incognita for most educated people, even religious educated people. If you don't know how religion works or what it might be good for, you don't have any map with which to engage them on their "home ground", nor any weapons that can hit them where they live.

The issue of faith is unexamined in most people's lives. Fundamentalists have a very sophisticated understanding of how to use exploit this mote in the eyes of the non-believers.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[FidelCatsro]

I was thinking of going round to their house in a lab coat and white hat , erecting a massive Pi symbol and setting fire to it .
Later we will hunt them down and stick them in a box with some potentially deadly materials and let them both die and not die .

Or more seriously I agree

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Zanth_]

You can be 100% sure it's not true. I'm a canon lawyer as well as a theologian. JPII never stated such a thing, nor even hinted at it. In fact in his seminal work on the theology of human sexuality (Theology of the Body) he goes to great lengths to assert otherwise. All such assertions of course being historical tenets of the Catholic Faith, not to mention being reaffirmed in the Encyclical Humanae vitae of Paul VI. Contraception is contrary to how Catholics view sexuality and the dignity of creation and the act of procreation. The use of contraception will never be sanctioned by the Church. Some theologians go so far as to claim Humanae vitae as an infallible document. Though not declared as such, it comes close to holding all the necessary elements to be infallible as per canon 749.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[jamesmrankinjr]

Sure, but only if "irreducibly complex" means "the result of evolutionary processes of which I cannot conceive due to a lack of imagination or insight."

How are "the result of evolutionary processes of which I cannot conceive due to a lack of imagination or insight" any better than saying "God did it"?

In one case you're saying "I don't have any evidence for how it happened and can't imagine how it could have happened, but I know evolution did it".

In the other case you're saying "I don't have any evidence for how it happened and can't imagine how it could have happened, but I know God did it".

What qualitative difference is there between those two statements?

Peace be with you,
-jimbo

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[xmod2]

In the past, whenever a people couldn't explain something, be it rain, the harvest, the seasons, they attributed it to a diety. Man, I'm sure glad those days are behind us.

Oh wait.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[mikapc]

Aren't you being a bit hyprocritcal with that last statement? Aren't you advocating tactics that force people to either accept the status quo or be persecuted?

Re: Attack the messenger (please)

[Black Parrot]

> If ID is completely baseless, then science can investigate, falsify and then ignore the whole thing.

What's to investigate? ID consists of nothing but propaganda, in the form of logical fallacies applied to misrepresentations of evolution.

> I think that it is particularly telling that materialists are threatened by the ID movement. Why do you think it is so upsetting?

The same reason we'd be offended if people suggested giving astrology, alchemy, Scientology, or Raelism equal status with science.

BTW, what has materialism got to do with it?

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[terjeber]

A true scientist will be open to new ideas, test them and evaluate whether they fit the facts or not. If ID is completely baseless, then science can investigate, falsify and then ignore the whole thing.

If ID was a new scientific theory, you are absolutely correct, that is what a scientist should (and would) do. ID isn't a new scientific theory however, it is a political move to ban the teaching of science from our schools. Barring such a ban, the goal of the ID proponent is to garble the teachings of science to such a degree that our children will leave school with a little knowledge as possible about anything that isn't written in the bible. In short, ID is the latest in a number of attempts to imprison and preferrably execute Copernicus.

Sadly, the currents in our society today is that each idea, as long as it is held by people with enough "faith" has equal value. In such times, ID and other nut-case ideas like UFO landings at Roswell and the like will gain a lot of momentum, and our children will suffer for it.

The current popularity of the religious right and all of it nutty ideas is, in the long run, a far greater threat to the US than is a bunch of religious lunatics running around the mountains of Afghanistan plotting to blow up our buildings. Bin Laden can tear down our houses and kill some of our children, the religious right is trying to destroy the very foundations that has made the US the country in the world where just about "everybody" wants to live.

Re: Attack the messenger (please)

[Black Parrot]

> My personal take on ID supporters is that in their arrogance they believe that they should be able to understand everything that is not supernatural. As a result if they don't get it it must be God's work.

I think you have that backwards. They start with the assumption that "goddidit", and then look for gaps in our knowledge to plug their god into.

(Actually, there are indications that the leadership is doing it for political reasons rather than religious regions. [Queue famous quotes from Marx, Napoleon, etc. about the political utility of religion.])

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[letxa2000]

If your christian do you want your children indoctrinated to be a muslim or hindu? No? Good.

No, but I would like them to be knowledgable of these beliefs since they are very important in the world. As much as some people at Slashdot hate it, many people believe in Creation and/or ID. Then there are others that don't necessarily believe in Creation/ID but also recognize there are some holes in evolution that doesn't explain the origin of life--it explains what happened after life began.

As such, evolution might be part of the answer--but it definitely isn't the whole answer. Big Bang vs. creationism is a much more valid debate than Creationism vs. Evolution. And even the Big Bang doesn't necessarily contradict creationism because it still doesn't explain how it all began for no reason.

Quite frankly, it's amusing to be where I am. I am amused by the fundamentalists that look silly trying to get evolution out of the school and it's amusing to watch others trying to prevent students from being exposed to other ideas that don't contradict science and may very well explain some things tha science can't.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[ConceptJunkie]

Therefore it is pretty obvious that in such a society of smart people, religion is going to get a bad rap.

I find /. to be populated in large part by self-righteous ninnies who let their perceived intellectual superiority blind them to their own ignorance and bigotry. Sure there are plenty of intelligent people on /. But there are not so many wise people on /.

Hardly a story goes by that does not mention religious or politics that I do not see a level of ignorance, hatred and bigotry (I suggest collectively calling them: bogotry), that is well above what I perceive in the world at large. /. is largely populated by college-aged or twenty-something people who (and I know this from personal experience) tend to think they understand a heck of a lot more than they do and confuse knowing a lot of facts or the ability to know a lot of facts with being educated. These same people (again speaking from my own experience as a former college student, now somewhat rehabiliated), that knowing a lot of facts does not mean you understand those facts... and it especially does not qualify you to speak on subjects you do not know about... and I can tell you for a fact, not too many people hear who criticize religion understand it or know much about it.

And that is what I see on /. Of course, if I thought /. was just a bunch of morons who need to move out their parents' basement and get out in the sun more, I wouldn't have stuck around all these years. There is plenty of thoughtful, provocative and challenging discussion to be had here. And even lots of useful info. But don't be fooled. It's a nerd club, and we know that most stereotypes are based, at least in part, on the truth.

Now, please excuse me, I have to go buy a bigger pocket protector and wax my sliderule.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Zanth_]

This comes directly from the properly translated commandment of "thou shall not murder" vs. the often mistranslated: "thou shalt not kill." In the case of abortion, the Catholic Church holds that it is always murder, whereas with the death penalty and in war, often times, it is not murder. Though in both the latter cases, obviously murder can still occur and thus the Church maintains a strong stance against both, though not opposing them outright.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[drinkypoo]

ID doesn't say that; SOME ID'ers believe that. Many ID'ers do not believe in evolution.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Anonymous Coward]

wow. quite possibly the most telling thing i've ever read. don't agree with someone? go after them personally.

yeah... what mode do you like? do you stop at verbally assulting someone... or do you take it up a few notches? i hear physical violence is good for that. of course... why stop there... maybe you should just kill those who disagree with you?

nice to see such an evolved world view.


You went from +4 Insightful to +1 (Over-rated/flame-bait) when I got back from lunch.

The Slashdot moderation system is truly broken.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[ebyrob]

It is possible to believe that you have above average intelligence and be correct.

True, but this is neither MENSA nor the NBA, both of which have strict entry criteria. (Those folks would actually be elite snots, or just elites, as the case may be...)

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't understand the problem. You admit that science and religion are different areas simply by saying "science has one answer, religion has another". Why is there a need to bring the religious one into the Science classroom? Science is about what we have observed and what conclusions people have drawn. In most decent classes, it's explained that any of it could be partially or even completely wrong.

Also, where are these mythical children who have NO IDEA that some people believe in a creator, and urgently need exposure to the idea?

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[ranton]

The study that I mentioned was from Nature Magazine, article 394(6691) 23 July 1998. They took a group that the "National Academy of Sciences" considered to be eminent scientists, not just a group of people with bachelors degrees in biology. I majored in Physics in college, but since I now work as a computer programmer I would hardly consider myself an eminent scientist. Another study mentioned in Scientific American, September 1999, did a study that gave different numbers for people with B.S. degrees and those considered to be "eminent" scientists. It gave 40% of people with B.S. in sciences are religious and 10% of eminent scientists are religious.

As for 93% being too high of a number, I agree that even I am a little skeptical of that number. But while I too know quite a few people from college that I consider scientists, none are on the caliber of even being nominated for the National Academy of Sciences. So any anecdotal evidence that I have would have no bearing on the caliber of people that this study used.

A few other studies include one done George Gallup in 1995. In this gallup poll it shows that 53% of people who have attended college believe that religion is important in their life while 63% of people with no college feel the same way. Also 48% of people who make $50k+ a year believe religion to be important, as opposed to 66% of people making less than $20k a year. While a college education and job earnings are not direct measures of intelligence, this again shows that on average you are less likely to be religious if you are of above average intelligence.

Norman Poythress did a study in 1975 regarding SAT scores and religious tendencies. He found the mean SAT scores to be: Strongly Anti-Religous(1148), moderatly anti-religious(1119), slightly anti-religious(1108), and religious (1022). This study was done at the University of Texas, but I am not quite sure how to get a copy of it.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you rationalize this one?

Yup. Shut up.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[ebyrob]

Um... I was talking about mean and I fail to see your point.

If no one actually falls within the mean then exactly 50% are wrong. If one or more are within the mean, then more than 50% are wrong... In either case this would be *at least* 50% that *are not* above average.

Obviously this would require my assertion: "Everyone thinks they're above average." to be true. It's called hyperbole.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[vondo]

Then they are creationists.

Some creationists (lots) back ID because they see it as a way to at least get some of their beliefs out there.

Take a look at http://www.discovery.org/csc/topQuestions.php#ques tionsAboutIntelligentDesign from the Discovery Institute, the think tank of ID.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[crumley]

I agree that groups such as Gibson are odd, but since they claim that they are still Catholic (or maybe more Catholic than Roman Catholic), it not clear that they should be called protestant. It is similar to how some fundamentalists groups try to claim Catholics (or even Mormons) are not Christian. Just saying it does not make it so.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear, Pope

I will not go so far as to say you are an idiot or a fascit git (CNN did that for me) I will say that while it's not entirely certain humans came from chimps, monkies, or my aunt mitilda. What is clear is that we shure as hell wuped up on what ever came before us. I'm sure your smart, and well educated. I think your fergot at least one zero: The earth is at least 3 MILLION years old. Sorry to point out that embarising mistake in your latest speach.

P.S. Get laid and send us a some call girls it's boring as all get out here in rome.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Anonymous Coward]

While you are ignoring them, educational decision makers are forced to hear their side without any opposing viewpoint, and they are dressing up their pseudo-science in very reasonable sounding language.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Cerberus7]

That's great! I will now refer to myself as "Rogue Catholic" instead of "Lutheran" when the topic of denomination comes up.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[MountainBoiler]

I am sick and tired of the phrase "irreducibly complex". Propenents (when saying it) think it means that - POW - something popped up via a miracle.

People listening to it hear "We can't explain how, so don't even bother. Big bad voodoo." Which is why ID so so viruntly anti-science.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[geoffrobinson]

The mere fact that you care is inconsistent with your worldview.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Libby Liberal]

How is it insightful? The comment attacks a personal opinion as if the original poster is not allowed to have it, then goes on to suggest that not only will his position naturally progress to one of violence, but one in which he becomes an ouright murderer.

THEN he has the absolute gall to hold the entire thing against Dvorkin as if HE had said it.

I'd say this is a rare example of where it DID work, except it's only going to REALLY work if he winds up at -1, Flamebait.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Burgerman851]

I did click the link before I posted my reply, but didn't find the evidence presented to be quite sufficient.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Omestes]

MY PERSONAL OPINION FOLLOWS (don't flame)

ID/Creationism doesn't actually explain anything, since God doesn't exist. Its amazing the so-called explationary powers that it looses once one acknowledges that there is a growing number of athiests in the world. Sure, we don't know what happened before life to cause life (there was no time before the big bang, so...) but this does not mean GOD exists.

END RANT

Fine, teach christian mythology in school, but don't take time out of a science class for it, teach it just as you phrased it "some people beleive in this, they are called christians, it is a religious point of view". Putting it in a science class, discredits everything science stands for, and some children might mistake it as real science, instead of pure religion.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't it true that there are very little differences between fundamentalist christians and the hard-core muslim terrorists that a lot of Americans are afraid of these days?

Both believe that their views are perfect.
Both percieve those who do not fit their view as "Evil" and want to either destroy or convert them.
Both want to enforce their values on others.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[letxa2000]

The study that I mentioned was from Nature Magazine, article 394(6691) 23 July 1998. They took a group that the "National Academy of Sciences" considered to be eminent scientists, not just a group of people with bachelors degrees in biology.

Ok. As I said earlier, it seems to me that this is not a statistically useful subset of the classification of "smart people." Most smart people aren't scientists let alone "eminent scientists." I almost wonder if the results are absolutely extreme because some extremely smart people literally get what is known as a "God complex" which could effect the way they answer that question.

Another study mentioned in Scientific American, September 1999, did a study that gave different numbers for people with B.S. degrees and those considered to be "eminent" scientists. It gave 40% of people with B.S. in sciences are religious and 10% of eminent scientists are religious.

Again, that just seems extreme. This article mention that 83% of Americans believe in the virgin birth of Jesus which (apparently) is three times more than the number that believe in evolution, 28% (I'm suspicious of that 28% number, but whatever). It even says that 47% of non-Christians in the U.S. believe in the virgin birth of Jesus. Then there's this article from just last month that says 51% of Americans believe in creationism, 30% seem to believe in what could be considered ID, and only 15% believe that Godless evolution is correct. Interestingly, someone here suggested that it's not surprising that "most people" disagree with me--it turns out, that same article suggests that most Americans do agree with me: 67% believe it is possible to believe in God and evolution at the same time. It seems the person that took issue with me and tried to depict as being in the minority is, in fact, in the minority himself.

Anyway, with such overwhelming numbers I have a hard time believing surveys that suggest that only 40% of B.S.'s are religious (although if they define "religious" as "going to church at least 3 times a month" then, sure, that's a different story). Although I guess a popular elitist position that some people at Slashdot would probably take is that "Well, 90% of Americans are as dumb as a rock" so it's entirely possible that 83% of Americans believe in the virgin birth of Jesus but only 40% with degrees believe the same thing. I think a lot of Americans are apathetic in general but I don't think that they're necessarily as stupid as would be required for the 83% figure and 40% figure to both be right.

As for 93% being too high of a number, I agree that even I am a little skeptical of that number. But while I too know quite a few people from college that I consider scientists, none are on the caliber of even being nominated for the National Academy of Sciences. So any anecdotal evidence that I have would have no bearing on the caliber of people that this study used.

Like I said, it would be inaccurate to draw conclusions about the beliefs of "smart people" based on such a select group as the NAS which is not at all representative of "smart people" in general. The B.S. survey you mention is closer to what we need, but I'd still need to see the methodology to accept the 40% figure.

A few other studies include one done George Gallup in 1995. In this gallup poll it shows that 53% of people who have attended college believe that religion is important in their life while 63% of people with no college feel the same way.

Going to college doesn't make you smarter, it makes you more knowledgeable. It also tends to make you more liberal and more atheist, at least temporarily. That's why I would want to see the same results broken down by age to see how much of that 10% difference "bounces back" after a few years out of college.

Also 48% of people who make $50

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[phlamingo]

when you try to force your worldview on me or society as a whole, I will attack you with whatever tactics I have at my disposal.

And that is exactly the position that the people pushing Intelligent Design are in. They feel that a subset of society is forcing an ideology down the throats of their children, and they are fighting back with every trick they can think of.

It's kind of silly of you to get all self-righteous about it.

Personally, I think Intelligent Design is an attempt to dress up Creationism in a lab coat, and I find it a little silly.

Full disclosure: I am a fundamentalist Christian, and I believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible. My objection to your post has more to do, however, with your inconsistent position and failure to understand the people you are disagreeing with.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[paRcat]

If I had points, I would mod you up. The essay you link to is something that is extremely compelling and well-written.

IMHO, evolution is a religion in itself. Those who insist that it is right and every other way is wrong, are as bad (or worse) than those they condemn. Being open-minded and honest about it is the only way to truly be taken seriously.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Anonymous Coward]

If you don't understand science, don't bother trying to be an expert.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Izaak]

> Religion has an explanation for the origin of
> life and science has an explanation for the
> origin of life. If you cannot see why it is
> foolish to discuss either explanation without
> mentioning the other, your intellectual
> capacity and desire to find the truth is so
> low that your opinion doesn't matter anyway.
> Thanks for trolling.

The problem is that only one explanation is a
scientific theory. Intelligent Design does not
stand up to the basic principles of evidence and
testability that evolution does, and thus should
not be discussed in a science class. If it were
discussed, it could best be held up as an example
of something that fails to be a scientific
theory... probably not the way most ID proponents
would want it handled.

I would welcome a discussion of Intelligent
Design and Creationism in school, as well as
other religious beliefs, areas of philosophy,
art, etc. just not in science class. If you
don't understand why, I don't think you
really understand what 'science' is.

Peace,

Thad

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[rizole]

Honey, sounds as if straight is so not how he needs to be set.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Anonymous Coward]

apathy != atheism

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[asdfghjklqwertyuiop]

There is a fundamental difference between abortion and the death penalty. As taught by the Church, Abortion is murder (taking of an innocent life), but the death penalty is not (presumably, the person is guilty).

The problem with that interpretation of that commandment is who decides who is guilty? Some humans do. So under that interpretation the commandment basically boils down to "kill whomever you want, whenever you want, as long as enough of you think it is OK".

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Burgerman851]

Just for the sake of clarification, are you referring to archaeological evidence or lack thereof? If you refer to archaeological evidence, please provide a link or links.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Anonymous Coward]

your analogy does not model the fundamental issue. how do you get from the set containing no numbers, to the set containing them all? the analagous question is not "which number is first", as you've posed, it is, "how did the numbers themselves come to be?"

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[asdfghjklqwertyuiop]

Until evolutionists can cite a primary source like the ID researchers and The Bible, then ID has a lot more rationality behind it.

What exactly is a "primary source"?

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[n54]

One is based on faith while the other should not be based on faith. After all I'm sure you would agree that science and religion are somewhat different right?

Now the problem as I see it is that some parts of science require faith rather than science, this applies to some parts of the theory of evolution (not everything but some important parts).

Is it fair to demand faith as a prerequisite for science? I don't think so, actually I find it decisively unscientific, and this opinion goes against both the larger claims of ID as well as the larger claims of the theory of evolution.

This is what the whole discussion should really be about but it seems to escape 99% of those who say anything at all. However it will make for great laughs in the future when people will look back at both sides much like we look at the flat-earthers (that is if anyone actually bothers to remember the embarrasing "debate" in the first place).

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Anonymous Coward]

"Natural Philosophy" is an old tyme name for "Science."

What you are describing is "Scientific Empiricism." Which basically says, "If I can't see it, it doesn't exist even if I need to use it to explain some scientific phenomenon." In contrast, scientific realists believe that to believe a scientific theory is to assert all that theory entails really exists.

An example debate being things like electrons. An empiricist would say electrons don't really exist because we can't really detect an individual electron. A realist says electrons are part of the electromagnetic theory that I believe, therefore there are electrons.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Anonymous Coward]

When did it become unacceptable to express an opinion?

April 19, 1995.

"But do not condemn people who work for the government. That's the kind of mentality that produced Oklahoma City."
-President Clinton
  June 1, 1995

What we now call "patriotic dissent" used to be "hate speech that encourages terrorism."

Because it's the right-wing that's full of hate.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[king-manic]

You know, i think it's funny that you hammer this guy for his ignorance, whe you have accepted this

"As for the weather, it isnt' a sign of the appocalypse, it's a sign of global warming"

as fact.

You sir, have simply replaced his religion with yours.

And no, I don't reject global warming. I reject the idea (as stated in this otherwise lucid post) that the cause of our current WEATHER is global warming.

Fact: The earth is getting warm.
Fact: Warmer weather is a result of havign more energy int he system. Energy power Hurricanes. This year we've had a marked increase in the severity of the hurricanes and weather patterns.

Contetnion: Is it us, or is it nature.
Contention: Is it goign to get worse? Is it goign to result in an ice age.

There isn't a dispute that temperatures have been rising continuously for some time. No scientist no matter how much of a shill can deny the temperature world wide is rising. The only contention is what does it mean and why. I only pointed out that right wing people generally deny there is a problem and some deny the data all together. As well contention doesn't mean it couldn't be true. It only means that there are some (minority) voices who say that it may be other causes beside us. As well there isn't any contention that warmer weather brings more hurricanes and violent storms.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[urulokion]

I just can't sit this one out. First off you are correct Energy can neither be created nor destroyed. Ergo the Matter and Energy of the Universe has been here since the Beginning of Time. The Beginning of Time according to latest Cosmological Theories is the moment of the Big Bang. Now where did all of the stuff of the Big Bang come from? What was before? We can't know because that it was before time zero. We don't know based upon out current scientific knowledge and theories. But not knowing doesn't invalidate the First Law of Thermodynamics.

And in regards to the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, you left off one big qualifier "Within a closed system...". At the scale of the entire Cosmos, the Universe is a closed system. If there Universe remains the same or keeps expanding, at some far, far point in the future the Universe will have achived Unity; Entropy equal to one; a dead, dark, lifeless universe.

Now on a much smaller scale and smaller system, lets take the Earth for example. According to the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics a closed system will tend towards entropy. Now what is a closed system? A closed system is one in which energy is neither being added nor subtracted. Guess what? The Earth is NOT a closed system. There is an enormous amount of energy being added to the Earth from a local thermonuclear furnace (That would be the Sun for the less cluefull.) Any added energy into a system drives the Entropy of the system down to towards 0.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[dbIII]

Intelligent Design proponents no more believe in their so-called theory

Their theory can be expressed in this form:

I don't know the answer Miss - the God ate my homework.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Black Parrot]

> In the abstract, looking for an intelligent creator is no different than SETI. Whether we are looking for signs of intelligence in radio waves coming from other stars/planets, or signs of intelligence in, say, the background radiation from the Big Bang, there is nothing theoretically wrong or unscientific with that line of inquiry.

Actually there's a vast difference. SETI starts with the hypothesis that if life arose on other planets it might have turned out somewhat like us, at least to the extent of making use of electromagnetic waves and mathematics. ID starts with a few gaps or perceived gaps in our knowledge and invokes them as "proof" that pretend-its-not-God had a hand in the development of life on earth.

If ID wanted to operate like SETI it would have to start with some hypothesis about how God would behave and then look for evidence of it. But that's futile, since God is supposed to have unlimited powers and an unknowable will. Anything you see at all is compatible with such a hypothesis.

> A serious study into the question of intelligence would be an interesting line of inquiry.

It certainly would. Too bad the Discovery Institute is more interested in promoting a social agenda than in investigating the nature of intelligence.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Anonymous Coward]

i disagree.

before going further, i'll mention that i have no issue with macro-evolution being true. none.

in fact, if it were true, it would be pretty cool.

as an intellually honest and demanding person, though, i expect evidence to line up and lead us to a conclusion...

the evidence proving macro-evolution occurred doesn't exist. it doesn't.

there may not just be "gaps" in the fossil record, there may reasonably be an entire "black hole."

there are very few fossils that are alledged to be transitional... and even the strongest of these arguments are pretty easily shot down... for example...

http://research.unc.edu/endeavors/spr97/bird.html

and this from a staunch evolutionary proponent!

but an honest and critical thinking one - not the political type that pushes an agenda instead of the detailed scientific process - wherever it may lead.

yes, many christian fundies are out of touch. yes, they have an agenda that is often not good for america. yes, some may not even care about the truth, but their goodness or badness don't change the scientific facts in this matter....

when viewed scientifically, the fossil record can reasonably lead one to conclude macro-evolution never took place.

this can be due to several factors...

1. the bad luck fossils.
2. it didn't happen.
3. it happened in a way that we don't understand (and surely can't prove right now).

unlike those who desire the answer so much they don't need hardcore evidence... i will sit on the sidelines and let the evidence lead where it may...

it barks "inconclusive" to those who will listen.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Kafka_Canada]

Abiogenesis researchers do not pretend that they can answer the question of how life on this planet developed from prebiotic organic chemicals, because even when they find a potential pathway, that might not be THE pathway. For all we know, there may be dozens of different means by which organic molecules began to function as self-replicating systems.

Hey, man, are you saying that a bunch of organic chemicals somehow evolved into different and higher-order chemicals? I'm totally guessing you can't prove it, which is why I believe that something intelligent must have designed them. Granted, He may have designed the world in such a way that molecules could evolve, or He may have created a world in which there are still remnant atoms in their original form before they evolved into organic chemicals, and various free-floating proto-molecules before they evolved into living cells, but......

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Gizzmonic]

/. is largely populated by college-aged or twenty-something people who (and I know this from personal experience) tend to think they understand a heck of a lot more than they do and confuse knowing a lot of facts or the ability to know a lot of facts with being educated. These same people (again speaking from my own experience as a former college student, now somewhat rehabiliated),

Thanks for playing the part of the anti-intellectual. You folks have a rich history in These United States, starting with the street preachers who rejected the educated gentleman pastors. "Sure them folks is smart with their book learnin', but they ain't got that good ole Country Wisdom, ya know?" ...knowing a lot of facts does not mean you understand those facts... and it especially does not qualify you to speak on subjects you do not know about... and I can tell you for a fact, not too many people hear who criticize religion understand it or know much about it.

Really? I find that many of my atheist friends are aware of the origins of particular religions-contrasted with some of my religious friends/associates who would like to believe that their religion is the sole representative of the truth, and that it sprung forth ex nihilo without any revisions or derivations from previous religions.

Personally, I think the oft-repeated attitude that "a little knowledge is dangerous," or "knowledge without wisdom is decadent" is just a nice way of saying smartness is dumb. And promoting yourself as someone who has true perspective, just like those smarty pants college kids is a little...ironic, don'tcha think?

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Anonymous Coward]

"My blanket dismissal for all IDers is that they are limiting the power of their god to that which they don't understand. My God is more powerful than that and not subject to my arrogent limitations - If He wants to violate non-contradiction He can. I don't know what that means, but just because I can't imagine a world where something can both be and not be simultaneously dosen't mean that God can't do it."

exactly. this is the point that everybody seems to miss.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[linuxrocks123]

"The Intelligent Designer knew Adam would need a mate but Adam did not. If you ever have kids you'll realize that they have to learn some things on their own but you can be there to help them along the way."

An omnicient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent creator wouldn't have to use this tactic, unfortunately necessary for lesser beings like humans.

Re: Attack the messenger (please)

[Black Parrot]

> The first is an attack on evolution itself. It is simply not true that evolution has been proved beyond doubt

FYI, evolution is as well supported as any other discovery of science.

> Haekel's embryos, Darwin's tree of life, the Miller-Urey experiemnt are all 'evidences' of evolution that in themselves do not stand up to scientific rigor.

Maybe instead of harping on that you should take the time to learn about some of the stuff that does stand up to scrutiny.

(BTW, I don't know what you mean by "Darwin's tree of life", and the M-U experiment was never offered as evidence for evolution in the first place. It was offered as evidence that organic materials relevant to life can be made by simple unintelligent processes. FWIW, the demonstration would be pointless today, as we have a long list of organic materials, including amino acids, that are known to form in deep space.)

> The second argument of ID proponents is that we need a system that will offer a view of the rise of life separate from Darwin's model of selective evolution.

That's a stupid argument. It's like saying we need a system that will offer a view of biology that doesn't involve atomic theory or chemistry. Why must we have a second view?

BTW, even of the two arguments you offer were correct, they wouldn't offer any support for ID. If you want to establish ID as a science somebody is going to have to quit relying on bad arguments against evolution and demands for equal time.

> certainly think that it is time a critical challenge was waged against Darwin's evolution, so that people can make a decision on their own.

Like people make their own decisions about whether 2+2=4, the earth orbits the sun, blood circulates, magma comes from below the earth's crust, chemicals are made of atoms and molecules, and all that other stuff we teach in school?

I was spoon> -fed Darwin's model of life through high school (from the liberal Bay Area), but came to see its flaws after going into biochemstry at UC Berkeley.

Really? Then how come you're offering stupid arguments about Haekel's drawings and the importance of an alternative view, rather than pointing out those flaws?

> Why is Darwin's theory so invincible, that you automatically dismiss any attempts to discredit it?

Why don't we ever see an attempt to discredit it that's worth hearing?

> Have you researched both sides of the Darwin argument?

What is the second side you refer to? Ignorance?

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[avlo]

that is not the posit of the previous poster. matter itself does not consciously decide to undergo process, as you've stated as being the alternate view, nor does it require a conscious creator to kick of the event in your view. primordial matter or energies, under sufficient conditions will undergo change as described by the laws that describe those entities. it's that simple. it's a fallacy to state that because we do not yet understand these laws that we never will, or that a because we don't yet understand them, we require conscious being to catalyze the event.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[ranton]

I really wish I could continue with this debate, but unfortunatly I am at work and that is just too much to respond to here. But I do want to make one point.

83% of Americans believe in the virgin birth of Jesus but only 40% with degrees believe the same thing. I think a lot of Americans are apathetic in general but I don't think that they're necessarily as stupid as would be required for the 83% figure and 40% figure to both be right.

I actually believe that the discrepency between "intelligent" people and "average" people really is that high. There is a saying that goes: In general the top 20% of a profession does 80% of the work. This isnt backed up by any studies that I know of, but in general people who are good at what they do are vastly better than the rest of the general public. Based on the above saying, the elite in our society could very well be 16x more productive than the rest of society.

Your average person in america has a 98 IQ. Your average graduate with a degree in science (engineering/physics/chemistry) has an IQ of 115, which is about one standard deviation for IQ scores. This means that your average B.S. student in science is in the 84th percentile of intelligence, while your average american is in the 50th percentile. This is a vast difference in intelligence. This is the difference between a person that struggles with fractions in school and a person who excels at calculus.

As for statistics, if you use 130 as the IQ required to be a "genius", you can see the difference between the average population and an average graduate with a science related B.S. degree. An average american has a 1.6% chance of being a genius, while the average science graduate has a 16% chance. This is a 10x difference. I know it sounds elitest, but your average graduate with a degree in something such as physics or biology is VASTLY more intelligent than your "average" american.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[sigmunll]

Side effects of the pill
Blood clots and heart attacks
Increased chance of breast cancer
30+% of women have their libedo nearly eliminated (1/3rd of those don't get it back after they go off the pill)

Hmm, none of the above problems are associated with condoms...

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Libby Liberal]

So first you attack Dvorkin's personal opinion on the matter, then you have the absolute gall to suggest - devoid of any suggestive or material evidence whatever (hell, you probably don't even KNOW him) - that he's going to naturally progress from being mean-spirited to being violent to being a murderer?

And you top it all off by calling him unevolved as if he was the one that had said all of that?

I smell a dirty stinkin' troll.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[samjam]

The FSM is a jackass method because the identify of the designer is actually irrelevant to ID theory.

The fact that some propents secretly label their variously imagined designer with the same label "god" is as irrelevant as the FSM is to the debate.

For all we know the FSM was one of the stages of evolution but hey, there's no evidence for it either!

FSM is a bad device to try and scare aware the less eloquent IDers and to fear into obedience the evolutionists who might be tempted tp lend unauthorized support to the IDers for any reasons.

FSM is not relevant to the actual debate.

Sam

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[CaymanIslandCarpedie]

Philosophers of religion haven't had a problem with this matter for a long time now.

Sounds like ID should stick to religion class then cause science has a pretty big problem with this.

Occam's Razor Test: which is simplier (and thus more likely).

1) On plane of existance A, complex things require an outside creator. However, on plane of existance B complex things don't require creators so a complex thing from plane B must have created everything on plane A

2)We exist on plane B.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Rostin]

I think you misunderstood what I meant. When I said that science wasn't "specific," I meant that the definition of science isn't easy to precisely nail down. I wasn't trying to say anything about the precision of the information it gives us.

Your explanation of why ID isn't science as defined is extremely vague. Basically all you've done is regurgitate bits of the definition and insist that ID doesn't make the cut.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[MightyMartian]

I'm saying that organic molecules organized into self-replicating systems. And the designer alternative, however true it might be, suffers from the flaw that it can't be tested. I can think of a chemical pathway and check to see if the chemistry works. How do you propose to test for God?

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[comcn]

No they don't ;-)

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[CharonIDRONES]

No, freedom of belief and worship is a human priviledge.

Humans have only one right, that is to die.

-Brandon

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[2short]

"Where do you, personally, draw the line between an ID proponent 'forcing' his or her ideas on you and simply telling you about them?"

When someone tries to pass laws requiring that what is taught in a public school science class be something different than the consensus amongst scientists in that field, they are over the line.

"None can be proved by experiment."
"Experiment" is not the halmark of science. "Evidence" is. Whether you force that evidence into existence with an experiment or collect it through observation does not matter. For example, you cannot experiment with plate tectonics either.

While we're at it, science never "proves" anything, so be as agnostic as you want. Nobody can really prove that the evidence their senses report has any relation to objective reality (because all evidence comes through their senses.)

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[KingEomer]

Then why did he punish Adam and Eve when they found out that they could mate?

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[dancpsu]

but the core foundation of ID seems to be "irreducible complexity."

No, the core of ID is that life is engineered, and well. The proof (or at least an argument in favor) of this engineering is "irreducible complexity". If a scientist believes that evolution is responsible for all life, then the search will be for "missing links", common ancestors, "vestigal" organs, etc. However, if the scientist believes that life is designed, then the organs will be studied for their purpose rather than written off as "vestigal". Processes will be studied for their differences than their similarities, and such.

ID, on the other hand, jumps to the conclusion of a supernatural creator.

The problem is you are either studying life under the belief that it evolved or that it was designed. The recent discoveries about "junk" DNA and "vestigal" organs show that what we had thought were artifacts of evolution are important to the function of the modern organism. Now you can propose a "smarter" evolution if you want, that includes no side-effects, transitions, or left-over garbage, or you can look to a new model to fit biology beneath, like ID.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[MightyMartian]

I would agree, with the qualifier that ID seems designed to attempt to bring in Theistic Evolutionists with special creation types. Guys like Michael Behe, on the surface at least, are pretty much theistic evolutionists with the exception that most theistic evolutionists I have talked to don't think that science can be used to tell when and where God manipulated organisms.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Anonymous Coward]

>> I personally have ran a simulation in
which simple one cell organisms evolved into fish
based entirely on random mutation.

I (and many other visiters of slashdot) would be very interesting in seeing some documentation of this - code would be even better ...

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[shutdown -p now]

Like I said, I would agree with you on virtually every point except on the origin of life. This is a place where religion and science intersect.

Science and religion intersect no more than physics and metaphysics do. This is by definition. Science is about knowledge. Religion is about faith. When faith becomes knowledge, religion becomes science. Until then, keep the two apart, as it is appropriate.

In the end, there is only one truth. I wonder if science will actually dare to find it or if it will avoid perhaps the single most important truth in the universe on philisophical grounds?

It will. Or rather, it will always keep trying to find a closer approximation to truth (because I am an agnostic, that's why ;).

Thing is, science has no real "philosophical grounds", nor, by extension, any philosophical objections to the existence of God. If we ever need that hypothesis, worry not, it'll find its way in. So far it seems we're doing well enough without it.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, so you don't have anything to back this up. Of course you don't!

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[lawpoop]

"If ID wanted to operate like SETI it would have to start with some hypothesis about how God would behave and then look for evidence of it. But that's futile, since God is supposed to have unlimited powers and an unknowable will. Anything you see at all is compatible with such a hypothesis."

You are going a little too far here. The phrase "Intelligent Design" does not have the word "God" in there at all. Also, people disagree about the properties of God -- it could be a limited God like Zeus or Thor.

All I'm suggesting is that should be a criteria or definition of intelligence (otherwise how could we know that we are intelligent, or any other animal is intelligent, or a signal is from an intelligent civilization), and we could apply that theory to the origins of the universe. Tests we could perform from those criteria could prove or disprove intelligent influence or causation in the origin of the universe, which would make this undertaking scientific. We could come up with either:

"Based on our understanding of intelligence, there is absolutely no evidence of phenomena arising out of intelligence before life arose on Earth."
OR
"In the early stages of the universe, there seem to be indications of phenomena of what we would call intelligence."

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[|/|/|||]

The problem is you are either studying life under the belief that it evolved or that it was designed.

NO

I'm sick of people misunderstanding this. Biologists don't study life under "the belief that it evolved." That's asinine. If they're doing science, they don't study life under any kind of belief. They look at observations OBJECTIVELY, and draw conclusions. Right now the consensus conclusion is that life on our planet has evolved to its current state via mutation and natural selection. There's no belief there. There are only conclusions based on observation.

You can believe whatever you want, but don't confuse belief with science. In religion, you start with the "truth" and make your observations based on that. In science, you start with nothing and build an approximation of truth based on observation.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[MightyMartian]

Remember two things about Creationists and the 2LoT claim:

1. They actually don't understand what 2LoT says, but cribbed it off some site or from some other guy who is either a) lying or b) as ignorant of thermodynamics as they are.

2. If evolution cannot happen because of 2LoT, then ask them to explain how crystals grow, and how life itself even exists. This feeds directly back into point 1, because Creationists simply don't know what 2LoT says, and therefore trump up some "order can't come from disorder" B.S.

The lesson here is that Creationists don't understand physics, evolution, or science in general.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem lies with conflicting definitions of faith - in the Bible, "faith is the assurance of things hoped for, a conviction of things not seen" (the book of Hebrews, I believe)- interpreted by many Christians as something like "faith is not only a knowledge and conviction ..." (from the Heidelberg Catechism). So your easy separation of faith and knowledge isn't quite that clear.

To make this clearer, much of what I know, I take on faith, having read it in a credible source (and not actually discovered it for myself, or even having repeated the experiments of the discoverer. And much of what I believe, I know is true, having experienced it personally (eg, I believe I'll get burned by touching a hot surface).

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[MightyMartian]

IC is the sole claim of ID that even approaches science. Unfortunately, thus far, Behe and his ilk have yet to produce an example that scientists haven't been able to demonstrate a pathway for. Behe, in particular, has been busted on the flagellum claim, though I hear he still makes it when thinks no one who can catch him in this bit of dishonesty is about.

Well, that is until Dover, when he revealed himself for a pretty major twit. I'll wager Behe's position as ID's credentialed star are in the decline, so I guess they'll be left with some engineers, doctors, lawyers and assorted cranks to prove how the scientific community "is moving away from Darwinism" or whatever bafflegab Big Lie claim they're making today at the Discovery Institute.

Re: Attack the messenger (please)

[Black Parrot]

> > If ID wanted to operate like SETI it would have to start with some hypothesis about how God would behave and then look for evidence of it. But that's futile, since God is supposed to have unlimited powers and an unknowable will. Anything you see at all is compatible with such a hypothesis.

> You are going a little too far here. The phrase "Intelligent Design" does not have the word "God" in there at all.

When you ask where intelligent designers come from you are inexorably led to supernatural creators. The entire ID argument is that certain types of complexity cannot arise by natural causes. If you allow that a creature could evolve by natural causes and then "design" stuff that couldn't have arisen by natural causes, ID becomes vacuous.

> Also, people disagree about the properties of God -- it could be a limited God like Zeus or Thor.

That hardly helps your position, since ignorance of what kind of god is in operation doesn't make it the least bit easier to constrain the outcome. Don't forget the "start with some hypothesis about how God would behave" part.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Anonymous Coward]

I just wish same voice came in matters of anticonception, homosexuality, birth control, possibly even limited support for abortion or euthanasia...

As for abortion, the Vatican has always been totally opposed to it in any form whatsoever. There ia no "health of the mother" exception because the ends do not justify the means - in this case, killing one innocent human being to save another. Even if the child is predicted to die soon, the situation is reduced to something like involuntary euthanasia for the sake of saving someone else. Would it be okay to kill off old man Wilson to harvest his organs and save little Timmy, since the geezer's going to die soon anyway?

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[jordandeamattson]

Hi Mox -

Actually, ID (if properly approached) isn't all that different from the position outlined by
Cardinal Paul Poupard as reported in the original article.

Cardinal Poupard is saying that the Vatacian accepts that God created the Universe and all living things and that evolution (and cosmology I assume) as currently understood seem to be the best explanation for the mechanisms God used.

I do have - and will always - have problems with those who are using ID as a cover to get Creationism back into the schools. On the other had, accepting that there is and was a Creator who used mechanisms understood through cosmology and evolutionary biology to create the Universe are positions not at all at odds for me.

The difficulty some have with how evolutionary biology is taught (and I saw this 25 years ago in High School science classes) is reasonable. I was taught - by a teacher I have respect for to this day - that cosmology and evolutionary biology completely explained how the universe and life came to pass and that there was no room in it for a Creator.

Yours,

Jordan

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[ConceptJunkie]

Really? I find that many of my atheist friends

Your point? I said said "people here". I know plenty of educated and knowledgeable non-believers, I just tend not to find them on /. So unless all your friends are on /., your comment is irrelevant.

And promoting yourself as someone who has true perspective

I don't recall saying that, but I can back it up. I didn't say "smartness" is dumb, I said "Education involves more than just facts." and a lot of people on /. are big on facts and little on clue. If you want to make me into an "anti-intellectual" that's your fabrication (or a completely incompetent reading of my post). As an example of exactly what I am talking about, you respond to what you want me to be (an easy target), rather than what I am actually saying.

This is typical for people who either don't know how to read, or argue, or think. I rest my case.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow! You (and not some silly PhD) have FIGURED OUT ALL OF SCIENCE. BRAVO!

(think about a snowflake sometime. By your reading of the second law, it shouldn't exist. The second law holds true, among other things, in a closed system. Our system is anything but closed)

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[loserface]

I know it sounds elitest, but your average graduate with a degree in something such as physics or biology is VASTLY more intelligent than your "average" american.

Or is VASTLY more adept at the skills necessary to perform well on IQ tests.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Anonymous Coward]

Now tell me the one about the talking snake.

Hey, No need to drag my boss into this!

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[steelfood]

I think this is the root of the problem: supporters of ID think that evolution is some kind of belief that one can choose to or not to subscribe in.

On the contrary, there is nothing to believe about evolution. There's no faith involved. If someone desputes evolution, that person can look up all the research done on and about it. And if that person can come to a conclusion through the information in the research that is both simpler and better explains the data, then that theory will be seriously considered as an alternative to evolution. However, at the moment, none of the data points to some intelligent designer, and on the contrary, points to a lot of random acts of mutation. Everything from genetic disorders to the physical similarities between all living beings (excluding virii, which are not considered living in most circles) points to evolution.

And, evolution through natural selection is testable and has been tested. The most recent example is the appearance of the superbug, a.k.a. the antibiotic-resistant strains of microbes that posters have already discussed far above. Because antibiotics kill off all the non-resistant strains of bateria, the ones that mutate and develop resistance to the antibiotics will have no competition and will propogate. This is why infections in hospitals are so deadly; antibiotics are used so often there that most infections are due to one of these superbugs. So yes, natural selection is tried and true. The only time natural selection doesn't work is when applied to humans, but that's not a failure of natural selection so much as it is an introduction of other factors into the equations of survival.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[letxa2000]

Its amazing the so-called explationary powers that it looses once one acknowledges that there is a growing number of athiests in the world.

I'm not sure that there is a growing number of atheists in the world, but even if it were true, it doesn't make them right.

Sure, we don't know what happened before life to cause life (there was no time before the big bang, so...) but this does not mean GOD exists.

No, it doesn't mean God exists. But it means we at least need to recognize that science hasn't been able to answer that fundamental question. Until it does, it is absolutely foolish to discount the explanations that do exist based solely on what you believe based on the information we have now.

If science somedays explains how it all started, great, you'll have a point then. Until then, we have no explanation of how life started and it is not unscientific to at least present those explanations to get people (future scientists, theologians, and philosophers) thinking about options.

Let's put it this way, hypothetically speaking: Let's assume for a moment that God does exist, He did create heaven and earth, and that His work basically consisted of putting all the building blocks where they needed to be (which might even be the Big Bang) and letting everything unfold according to His rules (which we now call physics). Being all-knowing, He did this knowing what would happen and that one day humans would come to be--but He did it in such a way that we would live in a universe that we could grow to understand up to the point of recognition that He started it all.

If the above is true (and you are in no position to claim that it isn't, we simply do not know), science does not help us get any closer to the truth and is, in fact, an obstacle to the understanding truth when used by people as an excuse to ridicule and discard religious explanations. On the other hand, science can be a useful tool that may one day cause the human race to conclude "There is no scientifically viable explanation for the origin of life and/or the origin of the universe." Or perhaps science will one day be able to replicate the Big Bang and we can witness life start all by itself just like it supposedly did billions of years ago. Creationism is falsifiable--just show me a Big Bang and life just happening all by itself. Can't do that? Then it seems that belief in a Godless Big Bang is just a much a leap of faith as religion.

So why is it acceptable to present a "scientific article of faith" in science but not present a similar "religious article of faith" that endeavors explains the same thing?

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[letxa2000]

We'll probably just have to agree to disagree. It is clear we have vastly different points of view on just about everything... including the intelligence of people, apparently.

For what it's worth, it seems to me that liberals and atheists tend to have a lot less confidence in their fellow man and his or her intelligence than conservatives and Christians. While a liberal will argue for big government because he believes the stupid population doesn't know how to best distribute its money, conservatives argue that people know how to spend their own money better than government. While an atheist will tend to believe they are "elitely" intelligent and that's why they don't believe in God, Christians will tend to have a more positive outlook of the ability of their fellow man to grasp the topics.

I think it all comes down to self-absorbed elitism and that's what atheists and liberals have in common--and both are threatened by ideas that threaten their perceived elitist status.

I'm thankful both are in the minority. :)

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[everythingeverything]

> If He wants to violate non-contradiction He can.

No he can't. Yes he can. So can I.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[dancpsu]

Right now the consensus conclusion is that life on our planet has evolved to its current state via mutation and natural selection. There's no belief there.

Very strange, but I believe what you are saying here is that evolution is a proven fact, and therefore biologists are not under some kind of "blind faith". However, you must admit that there is some contention between the idea that life is "designed" (whether by accident, by "Nature", or by some supernatural creator) and that life "evolved". A scientist looks for different things based on what they believe. And it isn't "faith" in gentic mutation, natural selection, etc. that I am talking about. It's the idea that life was not engineered, therefore assume life is faulty and ill-designed, or that life was engineered, therefore assume that life is well-designed. Then question within that framework.

Now you seem idealistic about scientists, but to form an experiment the hypothesis has to come from somewhere. You need a framework to start with or you have no idea where to go next.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[ShinyBrowncoat]

Intelligent Design, however, is not by any strech "science" and thus should be left out of science class.

But then what would they use as examples of not following the scientific method?

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[dancpsu]

Show life that has a bad enough design and you can get rid of the "intelligent" part.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[letxa2000]

Science is about knowledge. Religion is about faith. When faith becomes knowledge, religion becomes science. Until then, keep the two apart, as it is appropriate.

I can actually almost agree with you--at least the first three sentences. But religion will never "become" science if science refuses to analyze religion so that religion can become science. There is an artifically constructed wall that some people try to put up between science and religion. That wall shouldn't exist. As long as there are things that religion can explain that science can't, science isn't complete. And it won't be complete until that wall is torn down and science is allowed to consider religious explanations.

Call religion a very significant clue that could help humans better understand its world. Not every scientific theory has to be religious (of course), but intentionally ignoring the information the human race has available to it is decidedly unscientific.

Consider that nothing in the Bible (places, people, events, etc.) has been disproven by science. That's not bad for a book written thousands of years ago. That alone should cause an objective person to consider the possibility that that book has some valuable information that isn't limited just to religious doctrine, but also that it contains historical fact as well. And maybe, just maybe, it has some answers that science is desperately looking for but is afraid to consider.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Anonymous Coward]

This is completely false. The Catholic Church most certainly makes exceptions when the health of the mother is under reasonable threat.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Anonymous Coward]

to date every example of something irreducibly complex that has been advanced as evidence for a designer has turned out, upon examination, to not be irreducibly complex after all.

In other words, for every possible story of irreducible complexity, there is an equal and opposite story that explains how it might have happened naturally.

Neither side of this argument rises above the level of a metaphysical pissing match until there is some experimental data involved.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[blinder]

um no. i was being as foolish and stupid as the post i was responding to. the fact you fail to see that is simply, well... too bad.

i think i said his world view was unevolved... as any world view that suggests getting personal when dealing with those you disagree with.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Thunderstruck]

When someone tries to pass laws requiring that what is taught in a public school science class be something different than the consensus amongst scientists in that field, they are over the line.

Fortunately, this discussion was not about the narrow issue of public school science classes, but the treatment of ID proponents in broad public discourse.

While we're at it, science never "proves" anything, so be as agnostic as you want.

Good point, I should have said, neither can be disproved by experiment. If a "theory" is not falsible, it does not fall within the realm of scientific analysis.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Kafka_Canada]

It was a joke ;)

I just don't get why these asshats deny that humans evolved from monkeys when it's perfectly obvious that the same evolutionary process of survival and specialization takes place among atoms, molecules, societies, bacteria, ideas, etc., etc. It takes a special kind of stupidness to think that only humans are immune to logic.

Re: Attack the messenger (please)

[lawpoop]

"When you ask where intelligent designers come from you are inexorably led to supernatural creators."

Non sequitor. As a quick counter-argument, an intelligent designer could be eternal (and certainly need not be anthropomorphic, aside from the 'mind' or 'intelligence' aspect), which would negate the need for and endless hall of creators.

In any case, all 'creation' is supernatural, including the Big Bang. Questions like 'what came before the Big Bang' cannot have any answers based on naturalism, because the Big Bang was the beginning of nature itself.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Darby]

Religion has an explanation for the origin of life and science has an explanation for the origin of life.

Dude, seriously.

Religion has a *religious* explanation and science has a *scientific* explanation.
That is one of the reasons that the *religious* explanation has no place whatsoever in the *science* classroom.

Another major reason is that you would have to teach thousands of religious explanations.

Another reason is there are people out there who will go around murdering people if they give the wrong explanation.

These are just a few of the reasons that putting things that are inherently non-scientific in a scientific context will not work.

Add in the fact that teaching absolutely non-scientific explanations in a science class can only hurt education. Unless of course, you merely introduce it to rip it to shreds which is what science does to religion *if it is taught in a scientific context*.

Seriously, you're familiar with the Flying Spaghetti Monster idea?
When you try to put religion into the science classroom, you have taken your religion and every other religion and put it at exactly the same level. There is no way, scientifically, to distinguish, any religion from any other or from Pastafarianism.
That's the really sad and (to me ) sickening thing about these people trying to force creationism into the science classroom. They are so desperate to shove their beliefs down the throats of others ( little kids at that ) that they are willing to totally humiliate their own (supposedly) deeply held beliefs to do it.

Those are a *few* of the issues with teaching religion as science.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF? Radiation can totally change an animal or plant's next generation.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Chosen Reject]

"how did the numbers themselves come to be?"

I suggest that they always have been. Many theories put the beginning of our universe at somewhere between 13 and 20 billion years ago. They may be right but it also may be that is just it, only "our" universe. The first law of thermodynamics states that you cannot create matter, and we also know that matter and energy are interchangeable. My biggest beef with the big bang theory is that it flies in the face of the laws of thermodynamics. Not that science has never been wrong, and it could be here in both cases, but if we take the laws of thermodynamics into consideration then we must conclude that since matter is not created or destroyed, then it has always been here. And it always will be. Pretend we're at 0, then. The "beginning" occured at negative infinite, and the end will occur at positive infinite. But you can't ever declare a beginning or an end because then that wouldn't be infinite. I realize that thinking this way is hard, just like countably and uncountably infinite is difficult, but maybe we just have to accept that there was no "beginning", no creation of the universe, because it has always been, and will always be. Just like counting numbers.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, no, it's not. I don't need your god to make me care about things. Nor do any of the overwhelmingly non-christian majority of the planet. But otherwise, excellent refutation! You're obviously quite secure in your worldview.

I say again: "A christian calling an atheist inconsistent. Now that's comedy."

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Dimensio]

Atheism is rarely forced on anyone, I do not know many atheists that go around trying to convert religious people.

Part of the problem is that many creationists irrationally redefine atheism to mean "anything that isn't completely consistent or compatable with my personal religious beliefs". This means that exposure to evolution is "atheism", even though there are a good number of theists who accept the theory of evolution.

The key to understanding is to treat anything that a creationist says in support of their position as a lie. That's usually a good guideline.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Tyreth]

Both percieve those who do not fit their view as "Evil" and want to either destroy or convert them.

Speaking as a fundamentalist Christian I can assure you that we do _not_ want to destroy those who disagree with us. Our Saviour Jesus at the time was harshest against the religious leaders of the time, and kindest towards the unbelievers. There are commandments in the New Testament to love your neighbour, to teach the gospel, and make disciples. There is absolutely no instruction to destroy those who disbelieve. Such a statement shows ignorance.

Paul instructed Christians to eat and live with unbelievers, but not live as them in sin.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[schuttsm]

I like your Ad Hominem and straw man attacks on us (the "demonic" fundy's). And yes, I have read up on Evolution, very much so (I firmly believe that I should study all worldviews, even ones that I may disagree with, they may be right at times); as I assume you have done for Creation. In which case, you would know that the entire idea that a human zygote looks like a fish is based on an obselete and inaccurate photograph from several decades ago. In reality, a human zygote looks like a human zygote and a fish looks like a fish. One single fact cannot deal with an entire worldview. The Christian worldview must be examined in its entireity as the Atheistic Materialistic worldview must as well. This is well outside the scope of this post, however i am willing to discuss it. I appreciate the dialog, it is mentally stimulating for me.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

['nother poster]

First of all, I understand Hyperbole, I just think that only elitest snots use it.

Secondly, here is an example of what I'm talking about. What's the mean of the following sequence of numbers...

1 1 500 600 601 602 603

How many are above average? The "50% are above and 50% are below" only applies when the distribution curve is smooth.

That example is a gross over simplification, but ...

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Dimensio]

2. Evolution cannot be true as it contradicts the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

A common creationist canard that takes a total misrepresentation of the Second Law that fails to take into account that local entropy can decrease in an open system.

By creationist "logic", life itself is impossible because the development of a fetus from a zygote is "low order" going to "high order". But thinking was never a strong suit amongst creationists. And even those who have this explained to them repeat the false argument, because honesty is also not a strong suit.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Scarletdown]

Did you not click on the link? That's a God-impressing tower if I ever saw one.

I don't know if the Christian/Jewish/Islamic god would be impressed, but I have a feeling some of the other party-animal deities might take an interest in that; like Inanna or Aphrodite, for example.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[ebyrob]

Actually, I thought the problem was that supporters of Evolution are unwilling to admit to any kind of dichotomy between macro and micro evolution. No cherry picking please, take it all or go stand in the corner wearing the dunce cap.

On the contrary, there is nothing to believe about evolution.

You have to believe in the "lesser of two evils" and the excluded middle. ie: That bad ideas are good ideas if none better can be found, and you have to believe it to great extreme.

However, at the moment, none of the data points to some intelligent designer, and on the contrary, points to a lot of random acts of mutation.

How would data pointing to an intelligent designer differ from data pointing to randomness? One primary argument made against ID is that it *cannot* be tested against factual data. If you're trying to make a factual argument with me does that mean you don't agree with this assessment?

The most recent example is the appearance of the superbug, a.k.a. the antibiotic-resistant strains of microbes that posters have already discussed far above.

Ya, so given a few generations leopards can change their spots, birds can change color, and bacteria (who have some crazy genetics quite different from that of say mammals) can become resistant to antibiotics. If bacteria becoming resistant to antibiotics were as simple for them as changing the locks on doors is for humans this would hardly be macro evolution. (Let alone macro evolution similar to that of multi cellular life forms)

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Scarletdown]

Personally, I'd go along with something ranton mentioned in another post--a class specifically called 'The origin of life' where all theories could be covered.

How about being a little more inclusive there, and calling it something like:

'The origin of life' where all theories, hypotheses, speculations, viewpoints, legends, and myths could be covered.'

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Izaak]

I (and many other visiters of slashdot) would be very interesting in seeing some documentation of this - code would be even better ...

I don't have the source code because it wasn't code I wrote. It was the pHd research project of a friend of a friend... I simply loaned server resources and provided some computer consulting. I'll do some google searching and try and dig up a reference. In brief, though, the simulation consisted of cubic 'cells' that were linked at the corners with simulated 'muscles'. The number, arrangement, and rules governing the action of the cells would be randomly 'mutate' from generation to generation. The simulation treated the cells as if they were suspended in liquid and calculated the distance the bundle of cells would move from their starting point. The organisms that moved the farthest would be more likely to 'survive' and pass their genetic makeup on to the next generation.

The simulation started with a simple one or two cell organism and was then run for many thousands of generations. At the end, it had evolved creatures that looked and swam much like fish.

This was not a unique project by the way, the guy was basing his research on an earlier, similar study. I think the earlier study was even mentioned in a documentary (or so my friend claims), so it should be easy to find with some digging. I'll google on it and see what I can find.

This paper here looks related.

Cheers,

Thad

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Scarletdown]

The problem isn't that the christians want to teach their myths, it's that if the christians are allowed to do that then what about the muslims, the jews and raelians?

What about the FSM? Will the pastafarians have to be left out in your new inclusive system?

If you include the teachings of the noodly creator then what about the followers of the invisible pink unicorn?

Ah, and don't leave out the beliefs of the Jatravartids, who believe that the universe was sneezed from the nostrils of the Great Green Arkleseizure, and who live in fear of the Coming of the Great White Handkerchief.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Anonymous Coward]

"Since the first century the Church has affirmed the moral evil of every procured abortion" [emphasis mine].

Source: Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2271.

Check your facts next time.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[shutdown -p now]

But religion will never "become" science if science refuses to analyze religion so that religion can become science. There is an artifically constructed wall that some people try to put up between science and religion.

There is no "wall". See, science simply doesn't deal with faith - and, at least for now, God is all about faith. There are no hard facts about him to study. All "miracles" which were studied so far were proved to be outright falsified or have a much more mundane explanation (or most often, simply unrepeatable, so scientific observation was impossible); apart from that, what else is there to consider?

As long as there are things that religion can explain that science can't, science isn't complete.

But religion does not explain anything. Here's a simple example. In science we have, "The universe was created by itself". In religion we have, "The universe was created by God". Now, it is fairly obvious that the second statement is not really any better than the first one; it lacks the definition of God, and God, as we are told, is something too "big" for us to define precisely. Then you might just as well call it chance (or fate, or whatever suits you), and get the same meaning as we originally had. So what exactly, then, religion has to contribute to the scientific seeking of truth?

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Scarletdown]

Full disclosure: I am a fundamentalist Christian, and I believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible.

So you are okay with the genocide and countless other atrocities that that cosmic horror you worship sanctioned over the millenia according to that bible that you believe in so literally?

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Anonymous Coward]

An LA Times op-ed is your source? Wow.

That and a google search.

Solid sources! You should get a job at CBS News.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[aXis100]

Scientifically, a theory is something that lacks an absolute proof, and only has some supporting examples. Eg, all dogs ive seen so far have four legs, so I have a theory that all dogs have four legs.

If something has an absolute proof, then it is fact. Eg, that dog over there has four legs.

If something has a disproof, then it is false. Eg as soon as I see a three legged dog, my origonal theory becomes invalid and I have to modify it.

ID has no proof, so it cant be fact yet. If someone has found a disproof, then it is no longer even a theory, it's just a fairy tale.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Anonymous Coward]

ID propagandists must be attacked in the same way that, for instance, white-supremacist/neo-nazi/neo-fascist ideologues are attacked.

The problem with this type of "thinking" is that you risk becoming that which you claim to oppose.

Worse, you become a man with a hammer to whom everything appears to be a nail. Your talk about how to "deal" with "white-supremacist/neo-nazi/neo-fascist" types is typical of this mentality, which seeks the quick solution, when confronted by arguments or facts it cannot deal with, to label the opponent as a "white-supremacist/neo-nazi/neo-fascist" so as to silence him and to destroy him without the tiresome bother of dealing with him honestly in debate.

This kind of thinking creates far more "white-supremacist/neo-nazi/neo-fascist" types than would have existed otherwise, because if you keep dishonestly labeling people you disagree with, you're eventually going to make this accusation "true". Is that what you really want? Is it really so hard to admit that not everyone who disagrees with you is being dishonest or has some kind of "bad" motive?

I'm completely opposed to ID and creationism and these bogus anti-evolutionary schemes have no place in a science class, but I've been falsely accused of being a "white-supremacist/neo-nazi/neo-fascist" so often by self-righteous, fanatical leftist pricks, that I have absolutely no tolerance for the kind of "tactic" that you are advocating. All you are going to do, if you persist in this tactic, is drive the public into the arms of the creationist loonies.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Anonymous Coward]

When those who believe in Evolution present it and mandate it as a fact in schools, it is an affront to those who believe in Creation.

It's not being taught in Sunday schools, so this is irrelevant.

Evolution is a theory to explain what has happened.

This demonstrates two different mistakes that anti-evolutionary folks perpetuate.

First fallacy: evolution only occurred in the past. Evolution is occurring all around us, right now, can be observed and has been observed. Evolution explains antibiotic resistance in bacteria, observed changes to the widths of the beaks of seed-eating birds in response to good seasons and bad seasons, the adaptation to certain poisons by a small colony of feral wallabies on a Hawaiian island. Creationism, intelligent design and other alleged alternatives do not, cannot, explain any of these observations.

Second fallacy: the word "theory" means the same as the word "hypothesis". This is not true. Go read a dictionary and see for yourself. If your assertion was correct here, then the Theory of Gravity and Theory of Relativity would also be amenable to alternatives. If that's the case, where are these alternatives?

It isn't a proven fact nor is it even supported a tremendous weight of evidence.

False on both counts. You can even demonstrate it for yourself using common laboratory equipment, some bacterial cultures and common antibiotics. Incubate some bacteria in a flask. Add some antibiotics at regular intervals. Evolution predicts that the antibiotics will be effective at killing the bacteria early in the experiment but not later. To disprove intelligent design, keep the bacteria under surveillance and you will find that the bacteria change to an antibiotic-resistant form without any Martians sneaking into the lab late at night to tinker with the bacteria.

There are many scientific examples of data that contradict the theory of evolution that are not explained.

Prove it. Provide 20 journal citations of scientific articles from the last 10 years that do this. Your citations must include at least 5 papers published in reputable journals like Nature. I issue this challenge to all proponents of creationists and intelligent design, and all of them fail, every one of them.

So to have it presented the way it is is "forcing your world view" on us.

It's not being taught in Bible class so this is irrelevant.

If your view was to prevail, you are placing the lives of your children at risk. Have you heard of the bird flu? Evolution predicts that this virus can change to infect humans. There's no need to invoke the supernatural as an explanation. On the other hand, alleged science like intelligent design makes no such prediction. Even if the bird flu does not eventually mutate to a form that can spread easily among humans, it does not invalidate evolutionary theory. Evolution only predicts that changes can occur to organisms, not that such changes will occur.

It would be best to present multiple theories and state that is what they are. Broaden the minds of our children instead of closing out competition.

The Creation story is just one creation myth, and to "broaden the minds of our children", other creation myths must be taught. Children can learn from the Hindu myth of many universes, the Australian aboriginal mythology of the Dreamtime, American Indian mythologies, or for that matter, Big Bang cosmology. So to play by your own rules, children must be taught these other creation myths. To do otherwise would be a great hypocrisy.

The Bible is not 100% correct on every matter contained within its pages as demonstrated by 1Kings 7:23. Jesus used parables to demonstrate truth. That does not mean the people described in these parables all existed exactly as Jesus described them. In a similar way, why can't it be possible for Genesis to be interpreted the same way - as a parable for the power of the deity?

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Vo0k]

Condom reduce the woman's pleasure by some 60%. What about globules/spermicides?

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Vo0k]

What is possible though, is claiming "the previous teachings should be taken figuratively only. The new interpretation is..." and follow with explaining how white is black.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[meringuoid]

I can't imagine a world where something can both be and not be simultaneously

Too bad; you live in one. Or possibly you don't. With a probability of a|live_in_one> + b|dont_live_in_one> where a^2 + b^2 = 1.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[JonathanR]

It's not a 'mate' that Adam required. its just that the syllables got mushed together. He was really asking for a 'man date', you know, a reason for existing.

The problem is that it's taken till 2004 presidential elections to actually come up with one.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Big Nothing]

"NO ONE expects the Spanish Inquisition!"

Actually, these days I wouldn't be surprised to see the return of the inquisition. Although I doubt it would be spanish.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Anonymous Coward]

You would be funny, if you didn't sound so much like Hitler.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[ezeri]

What? Where did you come up with this idea?

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[ranton]

Yeah I guess we will probably always disagree. But I do find your last comment amusing, mentioning that elitists are in the minority. That is because elitists will always be in the minority based on the very definition of what makes them elitists. If they were not in the minority (of above average intelligence) then they wouldnt be elite.

And for every self-absorbed elitist there is another elitist that is out improving our world by inventing the light bulb or the radio. Having a dislike for the elite in this world is very similar to how people like me hated the football players in highschool, since they got all the cheerleaders. ;-)

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[geoffrobinson]

Given the assumptions of the atheistic worldview, there is no reason to have any sense of outrage, moral or otherwise. All is vanity.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[SirPavlova]

The extreme atheists (those who believe that anyone who has faith is an idiot) cast ID-proponents as blathering morons who are out to corrupt our youth into believing a lie. And the extreme ID-proponents cast atheists as people trying to corrupt our youth into being godless heathens.

Thing is, they're kind of right.

The extremem ID-proponents are trying to have kids taught their view as fact, which from the extreme atheists' point of view is corrupting the youth into believing a lie. The extreme atheists want everyone to cease believing in any god, which from the point of view of the ID-ers is corrupting the youth into godless heathens (by definition).

Unfortunately both extremes lump everyone on the other side in together, rather than only considering the opposite extreme, which is where their fears actually hold some validity.

So please, don't cast us atheists into the mold of the few outspoken idiots who haven't carefully considered their position, just as I refrain from casting conservative Christians into the mold of the "Christian Right Warrior" who would ignore the rights of everyone else to further their version of the truth. The respect must run both ways.

Thank you.

Re: Attack the messenger (please)

[mdwh2]

Non sequitor. As a quick counter-argument, an intelligent designer could be eternal

In that case, the Intelligent Designer himself would be God.

In any case, all 'creation' is supernatural, including the Big Bang. Questions like 'what came before the Big Bang' cannot have any answers based on naturalism, because the Big Bang was the beginning of nature itself.

Well talking about natural versus supernatural is a bit misleading, as it's just a matter of definitions. The important point is whether the beginning was due to an intelligent designer (ie, God), or not. If not, I would call it a "natural" start of the Universe, though even if you want to say it's supernatural, that doesn't make it the same as a God.

Re: Attack the messenger (please)

[lawpoop]

I don't know where you are getting this God fixation from. In all of my grandparent posts and arguments, I've never brought up God. In fact, I stated that an honest and open-minded inquiry into intelligence would be a different project than the fundamentalists who a proposes teaching ID in school. All I'm saying is some intelligence. I'm not saying omniscient, or omnipotent, or anything like that.

"Non sequitor. As a quick counter-argument, an intelligent designer could be eternal

In that case, the Intelligent Designer himself would be God."

Why does that follow? Are you claiming that God is the only thing that can be eternal? Why couldn't some other force in the universe be eternal?

"The important point is whether the beginning was due to an intelligent designer (ie, God), or not. If not, I would call it a "natural" start of the Universe, though even if you want to say it's supernatural, that doesn't make it the same as a God."

It seems you are stating here that any intelligent designer is the same as a God. Well, it doesn't have to be. The definition of a God from various religions carries a lot of extra baggage that we can't assume here -- things like God being just, God loving the universe or people, God caring a lot about people. An intelligence being or system that happened to have created the universe as we know it need not have any anthropomorphic characteristics, other than the intelligence.

Here's a question. Would you say that human beings are a natural phenomena? Since we have intelligence, intelligence is therefore a natural phenomenon. So, why wouldn't intelligence at the beginning of the universe be a natural phenomenon? Are you saying that the universe has to go from simple to complex, or that intelligence *must* arise out of non-intelligent systems?

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Mr Guy]

It isn't that your logic is spectacularly flawed. Even as a Christian myself, I don't care deeply whether or not Genesis was intended as a literal translation or a figurative story. The problem that grates on me is the assertion that is very popular that you'd have to be a fool to believe it. That's not the case, you simply need to start with a different set of suppositions. Evolution is the current best accepted secular theory of origination. Whether or not it will remain so is up for grabs.

The problem with your specific points of design is that they try to associate intent with intelligence. People who specialize in specific fields often look into other fields and wonder why things were not done differently in order to better suit their particular field. For example, human eye sight puts a limit on how aggressive we can be as a species. How much more dangerous would humans be if our ability to hunt was magnified even more through physical enhancements? While this is just an example, it illustrates that a system can be misunderstood because the viewer understands the purpose differently.

For your other example, having a largely sterile liquid periodically cleanse the vital reproductive tract isn't a particularly bad design either.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Libby Liberal]

Sarcasm does not travel well on the Internet and your comment was no exception to that rule. While you may not care, that was still your mistake in conveying the message, not mine in receiving it.

Anyway, the point was that you are attacking his opinion. He did not actually slander anybody in his statement, if I recall correctly.

Also, note that the simple fact is that I.D. is not worthy of academic discourse within the field of science. It simply is not science, so there's no value in discussing I.D. anymore than there is in arguing over whether or not aliens built the pyramids.

Since I.D. is nothing more than a popular story, the problem is not the idea of I.D., but the proponents who are arguing for it as something more than a story. There is nothing to attack in I.D. because it simply isn't science, but there are plenty of things to attack about the proponents ranging from the fact that practically none of them are subject matter experts (or even scientifically trained) to the rampant dishonesty used to push the philosophy.

The proponents are what pose a threat to science, not the idea. The idea is nothing to science. It is not science and can simply be ignored as a result. The proponents, however, are actively engaging in a smear campaign to try and discredit science in the minds of the public, so they are the problem and, far from it being invalid, attacking them is the correct way to handle the situation.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[blinder]

look... this is getting boring.

i don't give a flying fuck if we are talking about id, politics, sandwich bread. YOU DO NOT GET PERSONAL when discussing/arguing/debating over issues. only small minded little twerps do.

sheeesh... i cannot believe some people around here JUST DO NOT GET THAT!!!

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[RailGunner]

Libby Liberal = the_mad_poster.

I'm sure you already figured that out though.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[|/|/|||]

I believe what you are saying here is that evolution is a proven fact

Then you completely misunderstood me. What part of "consensus conclusion" implies a "proven fact"? Nothing in the physical world can be proven -- things can only be supported by evidence.

It's the idea that life was not engineered, therefore assume life is faulty and ill-designed, or that life was engineered, therefore assume that life is well-designed.

No again. There are no assumptions, except in order to, as you say, explore where to go next. An actual theory isn't based on assumptions, it's based on observations. There are no observations that imply a designer. Yes, that includes the faulty observation of "irreducible complexity." Even if you somehow proved that an entity was "irreducibly complex," it wouldn't give you evidence of a designer. All you would know is that the entity's existence is unexplained. It's like the universe itself -- we don't know (and really can't know) how or why the universe exists, but we have to leave that as an unknown. It could have been created, but that is just one among an infinite number of possible explanations. Since we don't have any evidence that can distinguish between the possibilities, we cannot propose any theories.

Let me sum up - scientific theories are not based on faith or on assumption. They are based on observations of physical reality. Irreducible complexity is not a theory on its own because it doesn't give any explanations -- all it does is (incorrectly, as far as I can tell) point out that something is not explained by any theory. ID does give an explanation, but it is based on the assumption that there is a supernatural being involved. Sorry, but that's not a scientific theory either. Do you see where I'm coming from? Science is not excluding ID because scientists want to see evolutionary theory "win". Science is excluding ID because ID breaks the rules. Look at relativity and quantum mechanics! Those were totally off the wall theories that defied our perception of the universe, and yet they were accepted because they matched experimental data better than newtonian physics. They are scientifically useful. ID is not.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[2short]

"Fortunately, this discussion was not about the narrow issue of public school science classes, but the treatment of ID proponents in broad public discourse."
  Ahh, good point. In public discourse generally, ID proponents should be treated just like anyone else trying stenuously to convince others of ideas that have no evidential backing. I don't particularly care if this means they get treated like preachers or crazy people.

  "If a 'theory' is not falsible, it does not fall within the realm of scientific analysis."
    So true. Which is why ID can never be science; no evidence could possibly run against it. But I do wish you would say "evidence" rather than "experiment". Otherwise you've got to junk most of (off the top of my head) Astrophysics, Geology, Meteorology, Anthropology, and Biology. The core of all those sciences is not subject to experiment; we have to get by with just looking at evidence that already exists, which luckily is a perfectly good way to learn about the world. If you withold judgement about 90% of science, I think you're too cautious. If not, why pick on evolution? The evidence for it is much more diretly available to the lay person than that for plate tectonics or heliocentrism. Are you "Agnostic" on heliocentrism?

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Libby Liberal]

Maybe they "dont get that" because you're not making a coherent argument. Attacking a person is not the same as slandering or libeling them if that's where you're getting confused. You can attack a person to undermine their credibility without insulting them, and it's a perfectly valid tactic.

In the legal field, you can partially discredit a witness by showing that they are not qualified to be speaking on the subject on which they are speaking. For example, if they were drunk at the time they witnessed something, you can point it out to the jury. It rightly debilitates the message without ever once actually attempting to discredit the message itself by calling into question the legitimacy of the speaker.

In a debate, you can call into question the credentials of the other speaker to help your case. If you're arguing over deep sky anamolies, and you are an astrophysicist and the other person is a gym teacher, it's perfectly legitimate to inform the audience of this fact so that they don't have a propensity to accept speculation and unproven statements on the mistaken assumption that the speaker is an expert who knows what he/she is talking about.

There is nothing new about any of this. The problem is the people who continue to push their agenda, so the important thing is not to waste time on something that isn't even academically worth considering. If the people are being dishonest, you point it out. If the people are poorly or not at all qualified to be speaking on the subject, you point it out. If you didn't do this, the only threshold for making a valid statement would be that you made it and nobody else had yet "disproved" it, which is certainly a ridiculous way to go about things.

There is absolute nothing invalid about this, there never was, and there never should be. Not everyone's opinion on every subject is equally valid, so pointing out that some people are speaking non-authoritatively for the purpose of adjusting the impact of their message appropriately is, was, and always shall be perfectly legitimate.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Anonymous Coward]

Hah! I won't even bother to respond to that. Suffice it to say that your ignorance is surpassed only by your arrogance. But this, of course, is nothing out of the ordinary for christian personalities.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[varith]

If you have a basin that holds 100 gallons of liquid, and you've measured the inflow to be exactly 1 gallon per minute (into the top, no pressure issues), and you've measured the current contents to be exactly 50 gallons. Approximately how long has the container been filling? The correct answer is, of course, you have no idea. You have absolutely no idea what you started with, whether the current conditions have been continuous, whether any liquid has been removed, what conditions have changed, or any number of other factors. Bad analogy. Bad, bad, bad. The rock checked in geology have fairly reliable indicators of age (at least for igneous and some metamorphic rocks) so those are testable and decay rates of radioisotopes are testable and repeatable. That gives a starting point for a lot of other testable and repeatable experiments. So again, explain to me why evolution is faith based (other than some people want it to be).

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[cpeterso]

What exactly is a "primary source"?

primary source: an original fundamental and authoritative document pertaining to an event or subject of inquiry; a firsthand or eyewitness account of an event

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Lifewish]

That's not the case, you simply need to start with a different set of suppositions.

The suppositions that give rise to an acceptance of Macroevolution as the best scientific theory available are limited to a scientific approach to evidence. In partular, objectivity and Occam's Razor ("one should not increase, beyond what is necessary, the number of entities required to explain anything"). Again, which of these assumptions do you not accept? I don't see any set of even remotely rational suppositions that are both non-self-contradictory and support Intelligent Design.

Regards the "you'd have to be a fool to believe": I've already agreed that just because something is the scientific consensus doesn't mean it's true but I will say that, by the very nature of the scientific community (I can go into more detail here if this statement seems odd), it is better positioned to find the truth behind the universe we sense than any other community. It has the track record to prove it - chances are you and I wouldn't be alive today if not for the technologies resulting from its work. Given its unparalleled record at discovering the nature of the universe we live in, I would say that it *is* foolish to fence off an area of the world in which you're not willing to apply scientific precepts.

Of course, if you believe firmly enough that you have information the rest of us aren't privy to then you'd be justified in concluding differently from the rest of us. But even then, if your data isn't peer-reviewed by an objective community, you'll never know for sure whether your data is accurate or just subjectivity kicking you in the cerebellum. So yes, I'd say that disbelief in the consensus of the scientific community is foolish, unless you have a damn good reason to think otherwise which also includes a reason why the scientific community wouldn't have twigged to the truth of your belief.

The problem with your specific points of design is that they try to associate intent with intelligence.

No, that's what the Intelligent Design advocates are trying to do. I'm merely pointing out holes in the argument. If they're allowed to say "look how beautifully life is designed, therefore it must have had a designer", I'm allowed to counter.

For example, human eye sight puts a limit on how aggressive we can be as a species. How much more dangerous would humans be if our ability to hunt was magnified even more through physical enhancements? While this is just an example, it illustrates that a system can be misunderstood because the viewer understands the purpose differently. Firstly I'd note that the second sentence here expands Intelligent Design to cover every single possible state of affairs the universe could find itself in, and hence renders the hypothesis down to a completely useless "yeah, whatever, but God did it OK?"

Secondly, the first sentence still doesn't indicate any sort of intelligence on the part of the designer, as He then supposedly gave us the brains to produce physical enhancements of our own. Yes, it's possible that He had some obscure reason which He'll never share with us. But as I said, this complete lack of specificity removes all possible predictive value from Intelligent Design and leaves it a meaningless "God of the Gaps" truism. I'd have thought that, if there was an all-powerful Creator floating around, He'd have a little more impact on the world He supposedly created.

For your other example, having a largely sterile liquid periodically cleanse the vital reproductive tract isn't a particularly bad design either.

The problem that arises is that when, as happens with depressing regularity, the prostate becomes infected, the resultant swelling cuts off that lovely yellow shower, causing severe pain to the victim. Given that the prostate has ducts connecting it to the urethra anyway (i.e. the whole system isn't being flushed out) why not lengthen those ducts, set the prostate back a little and avoid the screaming agony? No-one can think of a good reason, except for the evolutionary one of: it started off that way and there's never been quite enough evolutionary pressure to fix it.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[ebyrob]

How many are above average? The "50% are above and 50% are below" only applies when the distribution curve is smooth.

Well, if there's a non-normalized scale used to judge driving skill I stand corrected.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Alsee]

I do have a problem with them trying to force their view into the science classroom at the pre-College level. Post-Darwinian Macro Evolution is not a solid scientific theory.

It is as solid as any other field of science, and if you are not aware of the mountains of evidence then it is because your highschool failed to reasonably address the subject.

Want to leave "evolution" out of a science class? Ok. Simple teach the students about the existiong facts of Ring Species. If you are not familiar with Ring Species, it is as I said a failure of your highschool science curriculum. I invite you... I encourage you... to you investigate and become more informed about the science and evidence. Ring Species are an absolutley facinating subject.

And you can certainly teach the facts of Ring Species and never say a word about evolution, but the Ring Species are blindingly obvious examples of living evolution in action. Don't event talk about the theory of evolution, just describe them. They are a living chain of intermediate forms with the tips of the chain getting farther and farther apart. And the moment anyone ask what if the ring were to break at some point, the entire class is faced with the obvious fact of an evolutionary speciation event, even if you do not call it an evolution speciation event. If the intermediates in the ring dropped dead, you are simply faced with two separate species.

And any minimally competent biology class *MUST* teach the various catagories of life like mammals and reptiles and amphibians and fish etc etc etc and the catagories of plant/animal/bacteria kingdoms, and the division of phylums within kingdoms, and the division of classes within phylums, and the division of orders within classes, and the division of families within orders, and the division of genuses within families, and the division of species within genuses. And you draw a tree of these divisions branching down to species at the leaves, and you teach that everything below each branch in that diagram shares certain sets of traits that that genetic analysis shows that every creature within each group under any given branch always carries certain shared sets of genes, and you teach basic genetics that any child inherits its genes from it's parents... and actively avoid any mention of evolution and you play stupid and and don't say anything about that diagram being a family tree, and don't say anything about all mammals carrying the same mammory gland gene because they all inhereted it from their parents and the lines of inheritance laeading back to that single point in the tree, back to a common ancestor with that gene. And you show the fossil record about how different traits appeared over time and more and more similar creatures appeared with those new traits and later creatures systematically adding new traits on to the old traits, and sequentially losing some old traits, and showing sets of fossil skeletons of modern giraffs and fossils of a million years ago and two million years ago and 5 million years ago and 10 million years ago of different creatures that happened to have different length necks and that the neck lengths just so happen to increase in time order, and the oldest in the smooth sequence looking like a pretty ordinary non-giraff deer type thing. And you teach how whales are mammals with mammory glands and all of the other traits that define mammals, and you show skeletons of modern whales and various unique traits they have, and then you go back in time with a sequence of fossils where those peculiarly whale type traits dissapear one by one, and where you see fossiles of whales with tiny leg stubs and older ones with small almost useless legs, and older ones with fairly normal legs, back to some land mammal that oddly just so happans to have oddball trait that only whales have. And in that sequence you see things like the nostril holes in the skull migrate from the tip of the nose half way up the face, and then all t

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[asdfghjklqwertyuiop]

The bible doesn't meet that definition. It was written by men who can't be firsthand eye witnesses to their own creation. It a authoritative.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[asdfghjklqwertyuiop]

The bible doesn't meet that definition. It was written by men who can't be firsthand eye witnesses to their own creation. It also isn't authoritative - its accuracy isn't widely acknowedged. Quite the contrary, that's what this whole story is about.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Alsee]

It is well established that the internet population is very signifigantly skewed in IQ representation. If you want to be a pain in the ass about it I'm sure I can Google up documentation of that obvious fact. At a very minimum it is obvious that the illiterate and the barely literate are going to be almost completely absent, and in fact he representation skew extends all the way up the scale. Genious IQs, while rare, are substantially over represented on the internet.

So on that measure alone one can pretty well say that the Slashdot population has above average IQ. And while I have no explicit documentation, I find it hard to beleive that anyone would seriously argue that the Slashdot population was not itself further skewed towards higher IQ representation than the internet population at large.

And as for "elitist", where exactly is the line between someone being obnoxious about their IQ score or whatnot, and someone saying heay... I *want* my president to have genius intelligence and to be "educated elite"? saying I *want* the federal reserve chairman guiding our national economic policy to have genius IQ and to be "educated elite".

I'm seeing a very VERY disturbing anti-intelligence and anti-education streak in our society. Excuse me, but when the heck did it become a bad thing to be smart or intellectual or to have a good education? One of the things that made the United States a global superpower was that we WERE educated elite as a population. That we did have the many of the best colledges and that we did provide our children excellent educations.

I am absolutely sickened every time I hear somebody use "educated elite" as if it were some sort of insult. When people talk as if "intellectual" is somehow a slur.

And this evolution battle is a peculiarly American anti-science anti-education anti-reason phenomena. The United States is the *ONLY* First-World nation with any signifigant conflict. The only nation with any signifigant group of people with the rediculous notion that evolution somehow conflicts with God. People trying to push the rediculous idea that you have to pick evolution or God. No different than the Galileo solarsystem conflict, as if you have to pick between a God and the sun centered solarsystem. There is no conflict. It is all a false choice.

People attacking evolution who have absolutely no idea what they are talking about. People who themselves had no highschool education in the subject, or who had an abysmally bad education in the subject, and thinking they are properly equipped to critique the field. As if people who have never taken a chemistry class were properly equipped to criticize chemistry. People who's understanding of evolution amounts to little more than that they've casually picked up through bad hollywood movies and TV shows. People who are not only ignorant in the field, but who remain deliberately ignorant in the field. Peopel who are not familiar with the moutains of evidence supporting evolution, and who actively do not want to learn about it.

When people have no proper education and understanding of a subject then any attacks they make are generally going to be embarrassingly flawed attacks, and they are generally going to be based on a misunderstanding of what the science actually says. Chemistry says water contains oxygen and that we can breath water and *I KNOW* we cannot breath water, therefore I proved chemistry wrong! And of course the problem is that chemistry does not say we can breath water. And when someone points out that their attack was rediculous and based on ignorance of chemistry, well that person is not only an elitist intellectual they are an atheist scientist oppressing them forcing Godless chemistry on their children.

Yep, those chemists are all atheists. Chemistry says there is no God. No one has any evidence for chemistry. There is tons of evidence for chemistry but it is all fabricated. Chemistry is a vast conspiracy to exterminate God. Chemistry is a vast conspiracy to turn your children into Satan Worshippers.

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Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Alsee]

How are "the result of evolutionary processes of which I cannot conceive due to a lack of imagination or insight" any better than saying "God did it"?

First of all you are changing the meaning of "I" in that sentence. The fact that the *ID proponent* says *he* cannot conceive how it would have happened due to *his* lack of imagination and *his* lack of insight and *his* desire not to understand is an entirely vacuous argument when I or someone else does understand and can conceive of how it happend and provide an explanation.

And that scenario has been played out countless times. ID make some claim that something like the eye is Irreducably Complex and as far as they can conceive impossible to evolve, and someone else comes along and provides what (at least in my oppinion) is extremely reasonable explanation of said evolution through simple steps.

In most cases the ID logic to show it is "impossible" is to break the item into X big fat parts and to show that removing any one of those X part makes that thing useless for that function. Of course the fallacy there is assuming/claiming that the only possible step to reach the current design was by adding one of those X big fat parts in one fell swoop. Sometimes the last step is to remove a part - something can build up stepwise to an elaborate system, and then remove peices into a more elegant and effective system. Sometimes two or more peices gradually changed in concert. Sometimes the function of the structure changed - the previous function of wings was for walking, and that is why the bone structure of wings is a match to the bone structure of arms and hands.

And secondly, it would hardly be earthshattering for science to say hmmm... I haven't figured that part out yet but the theory has made hundreds of other predictions that have been tested and conclusively confirmed, so I quite reasonably expect that that part will be figured out as well. Back when chemists still had a few undiscovered elements leaving a couple of holes in the periodic chart, it was hardly an argument against chemistry to point to those holes as proof that chemistry was somehow wrong. Chemistry correctly predicted many elements that were discovered and chemistry was supported tremendous evidence of all sorts, and it was perfectly reasonable to say yes, we do need to keep looking for that element. The evidence supporting evolution is staggering.

The way to shoot down evolution is exactly the same way you shoot down any other scientific theory like relativity. You either find some prediction it makes (and evolution makes tons of predictions) and you test it and prove it wrong, or you come up with a better scientific theory that can explain all of the evidence and which itself makes predictions that can be tested, and you test those predictions and proove your new theory is better supported and more effective than the old theory. Not only has ID never been supported by a single test, ID does not make any testable predictions at all.

But as I said, to the best of my knowledge ID'ers have been proven wrong every single time they attempt to claim any example in nature as unexplainable by evolution. Oh there are certainly things we *COULD* see in nature that would pretty well nuke the theory of evolution, things we *COULD* see in nature that would not be explainable by evolution. However we do not see anything unevolvable in nature. What we *DO* see are tons of examples showing us exactly how various things did evolve step by step... for example bones fossilize quite well and show us exactly how many bone structures did change over time... and we see things that quite easily could have evolved. Soft tissues do not fossilize very well, and obviously we don't exactly have detailed fossils of bacteria and microscopic structures, so in those cases we wouldn't expect to always have a detailed record carved in stone of how it happened.

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Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Alsee]

My primary source beats your so-called primary source.

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Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Thunderstruck]

You make an interesting distinction between evidence and experiment....

If you withold judgement about 90% of science, I think you're too cautious.

I probably am too cautious. Then again my college geology professor once put a candle under glass, and asked us all why it went out. When none of us offered a saturation of phlogistan as the answer, he explained that we'd all have failed the class just a few generations back. He did this to illustrate the point that one cannot rely too heavily on the popular scientific ideas of your day.

If you look carefully, however, I state that I withold judgment "from a scientific perspective." Indeed I believe from a strict scientific perspective, all must withhold such judgment.

why pick on evolution? The evidence for it is much more diretly available to the lay person than that for plate tectonics or heliocentrism.

For the lay person, or indeed for any idividual interested in resolving for themselves what to believe, the scope of "evidence" is not limited to that which can be derived from scientific analysis. Philosophy, for example, is also available. A reasonable person has no problem observing (a) that all new complex systems in his experience come from "intelligent design," and (b) that living things are complex systems.

Alternatively, from a scientific perspective, meteorology or astrophysics at least enjoy repetetive, observable phenomena. We do not need to extrapolate weather patterns from the movement of a few water molecules in a jar, we can observe whole hurricanes form and disperse. The origins of life do not provide us with such a handy reference. To date, we have not managed to watch single celled organisms form from inert matter, or develop into finches.

Perhaps what it boils down to is this: What I know of history, I learned from books. The origin of life, the universe, and everything, is history. The books on this subject conflict. As a reasonable person, the improbability of evolution on the grand scale is simply too great for me to believe it. From a scientific perspective, we can't test it any more than we can measure how many angels can fit on the head of a pin. The choice is yours, will you take the infinintely improbable, or the utterly unprovable?

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Alsee]

Small changes can be seen all over the place, but nothing big.

Of course, you are confiming Evolution. Lots and lots of small changes accumulating over time.

Heck, look at the chain from primates to humans. Not one single "big" change. Just a series of little changes. Bigger braincase. Longer legs. Hell, humans even have the exact same number of hairs as apes, we just have short fine hair rather than thick fur. Some minor tweaks to the back and pelvis aiding upright posture. There's some minor tweaks to our vocal box that obviously aid in speach. And of course there is subtle neual tweaks in the brain that yeild a quantum leap in intellectual range. I'm sure you can add a few other minor tweaks here and there, but not a single "big" change between humans and primates.

And hell, several of those changes are simply more proof that we evolved from other primates and have not fully adapted to these changes. Why do human women have such difficult childbirth, even to the extent of a substantial risk of DEATH in child birth? Because of the bigger braincase at delivery. Humans found larger brains an advantage. The many fossils between primates and humans shows a surge in skull size over the last million years. At birth human babies have abnormally huge heads at delivery compared to other species. The pelvis and birth canal have a difficult time handling that abnormal delivery size. At some point it becomes physically impossible to deliver the baby, and both mother and child die. Bigger brains was an advantage, but birth mortality from *too big* skulls was a disadvantage and limiting factor. A signifigant number of women would (and do) die today from the inability to deliver those large heads if absent medical care and C-section deliveries. Humans are still adapting to that problem, increasing the pelvis channel and other birth related adaptions.

Another indication of the incomplete human adaptions is in the recent shift to upright walking. The human spinal column is still not fully modified to this, and this is the reason back pain - particularly lower back pain - and other back injuries, are such common human maladies. Our skeletal structure is still almost identical to that of apes and their knuckle-walking posture. Virtually any doctor will tell you that the human back structure isn't quite right.

Seriously, what the heck are you demending from the fossil record that we don't already have? What sort of "big" change are you looking for? Whales with legs? Is that "big" enough for you? Because we certainly have those fossils as well. We have several good fossils on the whale line, and as big as teh change is from land mammal to whale, it's still nothing buts a series of small steps. We have fossils of teh legs shrinking and dissappearing, we have fossils showing the nostrils migrating from the snout like normal animals and up the skull in steps, and on up to the top of the skull to the current blowhole location. We see the series of modifications to the whale ribcage. We see the evolution of the spine from a walking mode to a swimming mode. Whales also have extremely distinctive ear structure, and the fossil series beautifully shows that unique ear structure smoothly evolving back to a land mammal. And of course whales have a large number of individual small adaptions to thair soft tissues that generally do not fossilize. they have thinker fat layers in their skin as insulation, but is is still the exact same fat layer ordinary land mammals have. And they have the exact same mammary glands that they inherited from origainal land mammals. And of cource every other trait defining mammals.

So-called macroevolution is nothing but a huge number of microevolutions. Over ten or twenty million years a heck of a lot of microchanges can pile up. One key adaption can trigger pressure for other rapid changes to go along with the new lifestyle and new enviornmental pressures. When birds started gliding there was huge pressure to dig out variations that assisted that new lifestyle.... su

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Alsee]

So basically you're saying that, back before the science of nuclear fusion, that there should have been an "origin of the elemnts" class addressing religious beliefs in schools because chemistry could not explain the origin of elements and did not even attempt to adress the origin of elements.

Because that is really what you are doing. Evolution does not explain the origin of life. Evolution does not include the origin of life. The origin of life has absolutely nothing to do with evolution, no more than nuclear fusion has anything to do with chemistry.

It is nor more a failing of evolution that it does not include and does not explain the origin of life than it is a failing of chemistry that it does not include and does not explain nuclear fusion and the origin of elements inside of stars. Once upon a time chemists (and science in general) had all sorts of evidence and absolute confirmation of chemistry with absolutely no solid evidence explaining the origin of elements. Well, we now have all sorts of evidence and absolute confirmation of evolution, and no solid evidence explaining the origin of life. Same exact thing.

It is not some sort of fatal flaw in science to look at some other problem and say "we haven't figured that out yet". What happened in the earlist moment of the universe and before the big bang? I dunno. Exactly what did the first simple replicator on earth look like? I dunno.

Evolution does not address origin. It only addresses evolution. And if you check the non-scientific definition of evolution, it means change. Evolution explains how life changes over time. Evolution explains how an initial living thing can and will evolve into the incredibly rich and complex variety of life we see today. The theory of evolution begins with an initial living thing, just as chemistry begins with the existance of the elements.

Investigating and explaining that initial living thing is a tough nut to crack. It was a singular microscopic event shrouded in the depths of time, and it left no direct trace for us to examine. Abiogenesis is indeed a very poorly developed and poorly supported field of science. It really isn't appropriate for more than minimal coverage in a highscool science curriculum.

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Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[2short]

You geo profs demonstration makes a good point. But note that those "few generations back" would be about ten generations. And that the phlogiston theory made useful and correct predictions, but still fell before long in the face of contradictory evidence. (And "fell" is maybe a bit strong; fairer to say it was revised by the realization that "phlogiston" was actually "lack of oxygen", it was wrong in the same way electrical theory was wrong about which way stuff flows) Evolution also made useful, correct predictions, but differs in that it has continued to do so for the last 150 years or so. When it comes to survivng test after test without significant overhaul, evolution is the all time champ. Darwin got it righter earlier than the big guns in any other field. "popular scientific ideas of your day"? Evolution isn't the latest flash in the pan; it's the basic underpinning of everything we know about biology.

"all new complex systems in his experience come from 'intelligent design', "
Not at all. Termite mounds are quite complex. I observe that humans design neat and tidy, but often fragile systems. Whereas natural ones tend to be messy but robust. The natural systems I'm aware of are not much like the designed ones at all.

I observe that every living thing on earth uses the same chemical reactions to metabolize oxygen in it's mitochondria, despite the fact that others are available. I note that every water-breathing sea creature has a cartilgeonious skeleton, whereas every air breathing one has a bony one (that resembles that of land dwellers to boot.) You want a repeatable phenomenon? Find a fish and cut it open; does it have a bony skeleton?
The nerve that controls your voice box emerges from your spinal column at the back of your neck, travels down into you chest cavity, loops under your aorta, and goes back up again to end a couple inches from where it started, without having connected to anything in between. That does not strike me as the work of a competent designer. But of course, if it evolved that way it would make perfect sense. Do living things really seem designed to you? I find that odd.

Every living thing has in their DNA huge amounts of junk that never gets transcribed by RNA and made into protiens. It doesn't do anything at all. Why would a desgner put it there? Even better, why would a designer put the same junk in different species, carefully distributing it so that the similarity in the junk was exactly proportional to the similarity in the non-junk? You have almost all the same junk in your dna as a chimp does; less but most of the same as a gorrilla. A fair bit less in common with a cow. You've even got some in common with a fly that a tree doesn't have. Why? There's no reason for it; all that junk could be changed to just spell the desgners name over and over or something. So it seems to me if there is a designer, all life was carefully designed to exactly mimic what it would be like if it actually evolved, and at that point the designer seems like an unecessary complication that adds nothing to my understanding.

Where you learned something makes no difference at all; the fact that it happened in the past does not make books authoritative.

"As a reasonable person, the improbability of evolution on the grand scale is simply too great for me to believe it. From a scientific perspective, we can't test it..."
I'm not sure why you find evolution improbable at all, but we absolutely can test it, and do so constantly. Think of some thing evolution would imply, and go check it out. I'll tell you what; I don't actually have any idea what percentage of junk DNA humans share with cows, but I'll bet you any amount you name it is greater than the percentage either shares with any non-mamal. Want to bet? If you really don't beleive evolution you should bet in a second. There are huge numbers of non-mamal species whose genomes are well known enough to settle this bet. The odds are stupendously in your favor, u

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Alsee]

there are some holes in evolution that doesn't explain the origin of life--it explains what happened after life began.

A bit of a contradiction there. You are right that evolution is strictly about how life evolves, evolution starts with the existance of life. And that is exactly why the origin of life is *not* a hole in evolution.

Chemistry does not explain the origin of the elements. Prir to the theory of nuclear fusion, that "hole" was in no way a criticism of chemisty nor a justification to teach religion in science class as an explanation of the origin of elements.

it's amusing to watch others trying to prevent students from being exposed to other ideas that don't contradict science and may very well explain some things tha science can't.

If it's not science then it does not belong in the science classroom. There is absolutely nothing wrong with a teacher answering a question with "We don't know that".

And outside of a science class, the public schools cannot be hijacked to push a particular religious beleif. It is certainly possible to teach about religion, but unfortunately almost any teacher or school board that actually has a particular desire to do so is exactly the teacher or schoolboard that most needs to be prohibited from doing so. It is certainly possible for a teacher to give a perfectly appropriate overview of religion in general and to teach and discuss issues about religion and involving, but virtually anyone especially motivated to establish such a class is almost invariably motivated by the desire to use that class to further their own religious beliefs and religious agenda.

Just as any english teacher who attempts to use the Bible as literature (in theory perfectly acceptable) is unlikely to have genuinely selected the Bible solely for it's literature value.

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Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe in a literal 6 day creation. Do not attack my beliefs here

You are a fundamentalist - your beliefs are not only insane, but dangerous and should be attacked regularly to prevent them getting a foothold in manstream society (which is undoubtely your wish).

[Evolution] isn't a proven fact nor is it even supported a tremendous weight of evidence.

The only proven facts are in mathematics and logic, and they relate to abstract things. However, evolution IS supported by a tremendous weight of evidence, more so than most of what is taught in schools and MUCH more than your fundamentalist christian dogma.

So far, no christian-invented theory has reached Evolution's level of scientific integrity. If that happens then fine, it will become part of the scientific world view and enter school curriculums. But if you think you can use your right to hold fundamentalist christian views yourself to argue that unscientific theories based on religious fairytales should be imposed on children, forget it. I'll fight you as hard as the parent commentor.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Alsee]

neither can be disproved by experiment. If a "theory" is not falsible, it does not fall within the realm of scientific analysis.

Evolution can indeed be disproved by experiment. Evolution has been subject to many thousands of tests and has been validated every time. That is why evolution has won over complete acceptance in the scientific community. It is as well supported as any other field of science.

If you want a few lite examples of evolution's predictions and tests look here. If you are up for a far more in depth listing of many evolutionary predictions and how they have been tested countless times, including a specific section on each one explaining how eache test *could* have been a falsification of evolution had the results turned out otherwise, then look here.

Ever since the development of genetic analysis the evidence establishing evolution has become an absolute torrent.

Oh, and a side note... I noticed in some of your other posts you talk of origins. Evolution is no more about the origins of life than chemistry is about the origins of the elements. Evolution is about teh evolution of life.... and the non-science definition of evolution is change. Evolution is the science of how life changes once it exists, and it explains how an initial living thing can and will evolve to produce the incredibly rich and complext variety of life we see today. Just as chemistry is the science of elements, give that they exists. The theory of the origin of life from nonlife is abiogenesis, and it is a very poorly developed and poorly supported field. (It is naturally quite difficult to study a singular microscopic even shrouded in the mists of time and which left no direct trace.) Just as nuclear fusion is the science of teh origin of the elements.

And any poorly developed and poorly supported field like abiogenesis deserves no more than minimal space in a highschool curriculum.

And that is no more a valid attack or failing of evolution than a lack of nuclear fusion explanation would be a valid attack or failing of chemistry.

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Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Anonymous Coward]

Then he should have just designed Adam with that knowledge/understanding in the first place.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Alsee]

Do not confuse what the central ID propents are saying with what they believe or what they are actually trying to accomplish.

If you want to understand the current Intelligent Design Movement the I suggest you read It leaked out and can be found under the title "Wedge Document" and it lays out their twenty year plan that they call their Wedge Strategy.

Then come back and tell me that this has anything to do with science or truth, that is it anything other than a PR campaign to get the government to push their religious ideology in public schools and to defend Society Itself against the Forces Of Evil, a meglomanic scheme to mould society itself in their religo-moral image.

Yes that sounds rediculous, but read the link. Or just Google for "Wedge Document" and you'll find it all over.

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Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Thunderstruck]

I noticed in some of your other posts you talk of origins. Evolution is no more about the origins of life than chemistry is about the origins of the elements.

Right, and if you read my posts in this thread carefully, you'll see that I confine my discussion to the application of evolution to the origins of life, to which, as you state, it does not apply. Darwin was very much correct when he noted, "Gosh, it sure is easy to breed animals for our own purposes." However, since this discussion is about whether it is reasonable to assert that evolution, or anything else, was the origin of life, I think I'm missing your point.

If you're up for an interesting study by an evolutionary biologist which indicates that the time required for change due to environmental stimuli grows exponentially the farther one drifts from the original "ideal," (such as would suggest that evolution as origin is mathematically problematic,) try:

http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/98/16/9157

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Thunderstruck]

You geo profs demonstration makes a good point.

This is the same (public university) professor that liked to show us a petrified tree which ran through layers of rock that should have been millions of years apart.

"all new complex systems in his experience come from 'intelligent design', "
        Not at all. Termite mounds are quite complex. I observe that humans design neat and tidy, but often fragile systems. Whereas natural ones tend to be messy but robust. The natural systems I'm aware of are not much like the designed ones at all.

I think you're making a false distinction here. Are the termite mounds not simply a party of the termite system? While we're on the subject, did you read that article about how the mars rovers have lasted so long? Did you see the "whining engineer" comments about how, because they lasted so long, they must have been wastefully over-engineered? Whether or not the flying spaghetti monster created the universe or not, you MUST find the parallel amusing.

Why? There's no reason for it; all that junk could be changed to just spell the desgners name over and over or something.

You're not seriously bringing out the tired old vestigal organs argument, are you? People used to think the thyroid didn't do anything either.

The odds are stupendously in your favor, unless of course cows and humans shared a common mamalian ancestor.

I'll concede common origin, but not necessarily ancestor. I can find immense commonality among all of DaVinci's paintings too.

But an invisible evolution-simulating super-hero is no problem?

At what point did I say I believed in this either. You can't make an argument FOR evolution as an origin of life by attacking creationism, at least not to me, because I'm not defending the creationists.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[2short]

"This is the same (public university) professor that liked to show us a petrified tree which ran through layers of rock that should have been millions of years apart."

And did he have an explanation for this? Or was it yet another case of, "hey, here's this weird thing; If it is what I say it is, it doesn't fit with current geologic theory, therefore, that theory must be entirely wrong"? Maybe he's wrong about what his sample is. Maybe there is some other explanation. I don't know any of the facts of the case, or care to (I'm not a geologist), but I'd guess that it is not the earth-shattering refutation of geology that is implied, or others would be interested. I simply don't beleive in a great plate-tectonicist conspiracy.

"did you read that article about how the mars rovers have lasted so long?"

The rovers are a perfect example. They are a fabulous feat of design, there is not an ounce abord them that could be done without; whoever said they were "over engineered" didn't know what they were talking about. They are not at all like a natural system. Using my favorite voice-box nerve example, you can bet the rovers don't have a two foot wire where a two inch one would do. On the other hand, we're all impressed the rovers have lasted a couple years. To consider a natural system successful, I'd expect Mars to be teeming with their descendents a couple million years from now.

"You're not seriously bringing out the tired old vestigal organs argument, are you?"
No, I'm not, even though it's a perfectly good argument.

"People used to think the thyroid didn't do anything either."
    They thought that 200 years ago; I don't think the thyroid could have been much misused as you suggest, since the discovery of its function dates to pretty close to the discovery of evolution. If you're just going to reject all scientific advances from the last two centuries as being on shaky ground, you'll have a hard time getting by in the modern world.

In any case, I wasn't talking about vestigal organs. I was talking about "junk" DNA. Here's a brief primer, since I gather you're not too familiar with how DNA works: You've got these massively long strings of DNA in the nuclei of your cells. Certain small sections of these get copied into RNA molecules which go off somwhere else in the cell, and then smaller sections of the copies are used to produce proteins. The sections that get copied are called Genes. But there is quite a bit of DNA that never gets copied by RNA at all. It never reacts or interacts with anything except that it gets copied over when the whole strand does, and passed on to offspring. And of course, random mutations cause it to change very slowly so the level of similarity of it between species is a great indicator of how far back they had a common ancestor. Because the "junk" dna doesn't do anything, these mutations are never selected for or against. Of course, that's assuming some things I realize you don't necessarily accept, but sorry, you just can't talk meaningfully about molecular biology without accepting evolution.

"I'll concede common origin, but not necessarily ancestor. I can find immense commonality among all of DaVinci's paintings too"

But common origin doesn't explain why you would have more in common with a cow than with a fish or bird, and more in common with them than with an insect. If you share a common ancestor with a cow more recently than with a fish, that explains it quite nicely.

"You can't make an argument FOR evolution as an origin of life by attacking creationism, at least not to me, because I'm not defending the creationists"

Excellent. I was just reacting to what I took to be your sugestion that an evolution-simulating designer was more probable that evolution itself.

But if you're not coming from a religously inspired belief in Creationism, I've again got to ask, why evolution? I guess I never got an answer to whether you were "agnostic" on heliocentrism or plate tectonics; I've just been assuming you accept them. Have you personally made any observations that would support heliocentrism? Certainly, a being capable of designing life on earth could easily fake the evidence for plate tectonics. Do you question these?

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't work too hard at this ... the parent poster has been posting the same drivel all day long, with his hands over his ears. If you make a good point, trust me - he'll ignore it, press rewind, and hit the play button again.

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[Alsee]

the application of evolution to the origins of life, to which [] it does not apply.

Agreed.

this discussion is about whether it is reasonable to assert that evolution, or anything else, was the origin of life ::Confusion::

I thought we just agreed that it is not reasonable to apply evolution to the origin of life.

The only ones (falsely) trying to tie evolution to the origin of life are the activists trying to insert ID into the public school system after being thwarted in attempting to insert their explicit version of Biblical Creationism into the public school system. A leaked internal fundraising document details how they explicitly built "ID theory" in order to undermine what they view as anti-God science. They also lay out their twenty-year plan to insinuate themselves into the school system, to gain influence and control of the legislature, and ultimately to reshape society in their religo-moral image. If you haven't read it before, you should. The Wedge Strategy." They have raised millions to run a PR campaign and wage a culture war.

Maybe I am not fully grasping what you are trying to say about origins in relation to evolution. You do seem to be discussing them in some relation to each other. If you are saying "life, the universe, and everything" leads you to believe in God, therefore evolution is false, well that is a fallacy. That makes the assumption that there is some sort of exclusive-or relation between God and evolution. That is exactly the false assuption that the ID activists are pushing. Exactly like the people who once tried to push God exclusive-or a sun-centered solarsystem. In both cases the problem is fundamentalists claiming their "literal" interpretation of the Bible that attempts to place limits on how God could have chosen operate. People saying that God could not have done it the way science shows us it happened because their literal reading of their scripture says he didn't.

If God created the universe then the overwhelming evidence we see is that a sun-centered solarsystem was his chosen means of providing the earth with light and creating night and day and the seasons.

If God creted the universe then the overwhelming evidence we see is that evolution was his chosen means of creating the vast array of life we see today.

If anything I would say the far more awe inspiring God is a Perfect God who placed a Perfect Universe in motion that would operate exactly as designed and itself produce exactly what he intended it to produce. That is far more impressive than a god creating an imperfect universe in which he constantly had to meddle to keep it running and manually insert additional creations.

If I'm still not understanding what you mean about origins and evolution, ummmm.... I dunno.

an interesting study by an evolutionary biologist

I read the page. A bit of hard slogging, jumping into the particular jargogn out of context, but I think I pretty well understood what he was saying. It doesn't seem to me that it really said anything that was any sort of problem for evolution.

For one thing it was restricted to linear adaption in a single quantitative trait. While that sort of change is extremely important and effective in adapting to and optimizing some other non-quantitative evolutionary innovation, merely tuning the dial on linear traits isn't really what some people would call "macroevolution". A bird may adapt a bigger or smaller beak, but you don't generally go 10,000 years constantly making that beak biger. The bird wouldn't be able to walk, much less fly. Chuckle. And the increase in human brain size... it could only make just so much of a linear increase befor it ran into the limit of the human birth canal to deliver the infant. Human babies are born with abnormally huge heads for a bigger brain, but the heads got so big that women could not physically deliver them, and mother and infa

Re:Attack the messenger (please)

[carlos_benj]

Well, not as creative, but certainly an effort.....

Would have commended you sooner but I was out sick. Not really sick, but for medical stuff.

Have it your way then...

[Anonymous Coward]

And I reject the Vatican. :-)

Thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank God for rejecting Intelligent Design!

Re:Thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed, let us give thanks for its creation of evolution. I wonder how many ideas were rejected before god came upon this one?

Re:Thanks

[The Lord God]

Indeed, let us give thanks for its creation of evolution. I wonder how many ideas were rejected before god came upon this one?

No problem. That whole intelligent design idea never worked quite right. In the end it was just too brittle. Then one day I was near a river and saw haw the water would adapt its flow to accomodate the shape of the rocks and sediment, and it just hit me. How simple! If I let everything adapt then I don't have to figure it all out in advance! It will take care of itself. Let me tell you, that was one happy moment. I started to shout "eureka" and run around naked, but then I thought "no, I'll let someone else have that."

Re:Thanks

[Robotbeat]

ID isn't necessarily about "Creationism."
Evolution is a pretty established theory, and not all ID people deny Evolution. Part of what I believe, for instance, is that life may have evolved slowly, and at certain points in time, God has intervened to suit God's own purposes (ala 2001: A Space Odyssey). I also think that, although it is possible that life started on its own, it is far more likely in my opinion that life on earth was created by a superior being (similar to how we as humans might someday create artificial intelligence inside the cyber-world). On a personal note, I've been looking at all angles to this (the puzzle of the origin of life) almost non-stop for close to a decade.

Re:Thanks

[ch-chuck]

On day zero, God thought, "Well, that universe isn't going to create itself".

Re:Thanks

[tratten]

Why do some people always got to have a dictator to be ruled by? Is it that bad to make up your own life and how it should be lived?
If "God intervened to suit God's own purposes", then people should overthrow that fascist regime and take control over their own destiny.
You only have one life, don't waste it.

Re:Thanks

[MrCreosote]

What I want to know is:

If the universe is only 6009 years old, and God is eternal, what was god doing in the eternity that preceded the creation of our universe?

Re:Thanks

[sunwukong]

what was god doing in the eternity that preceded the creation of our universe?

Levelling up, of course! Why do you think Evercrack and WoW are so popular?

Re:Thanks

[jc42]

... what was god doing in the eternity that preceded the creation of our universe?

Pilot studies. But they all failed miserably at the job of creating the intellectual companions that God was looking for. Rumor is that He's about to give up on this one, too, reduce it to a pool of quarks, and move on to test model Aleph-3.

Re:Thanks

[ElectroBot]

You're welcome. God P.S. Johnny I know that was you, don't try to hide from me.

As seen on TV

[Anonymous Coward]

"I reject your reality and substitute my own." -Adam from MythBusters.

Re:As seen on TV

[Anonymous Coward]

The quote is orginally from the movie "the dungeonmaster" from the 80s

Re:As seen on TV

[Anonymous Coward]

The best definition of reality I've ever seen:
Reality is what remains when I stop believing in it

Re:As seen on TV

[Anonymous Coward]

Excellent, another Mythbusters related topic on Slashdot! :) I, for one, welcome the inevitable onslaught of Kari pictures.

Re:As seen on TV

[agentkhaki]

I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks she's kind of hot. Assuming, of course, she's the one I'm thinking of -- in the episode where they bust the myth of a man being electricuted by static electricity whilst sand-blasting a PVC pipe, she shocks Adam on the ass using their home-built Van de Graaff generator.

A few points

[AKAImBatman]

1. Hemos, I find your sarcasm disappointing. There are quite a few factions when it comes to different religions, and you've just compared two related, yet completely different religions to one another. i.e. It's about the same as if you mentioned that Chrisitians are bemused by Mormons. The two religions don't think of one another as "correct" even though one builds on the other. The only difference is that the Jewish and Christian faiths tend to be much more amicable toward one another.

2. The Vatican embraced the evolutionary theory several years ago under Pope John Paul III. Opponents like to point out that the Vatican also accepted a geocentric view of the Universe. As a result, only devote Catholics take the Vatican seriously on matters of science.

Amusingly, quite a bit of science in history was done by priests and other church members. However, the Vatican regularly declared heresy against anyone who challenged the accepted "facts" of the Universe. Galileo is often cited as an example, but that was partly his own fault. He used satire to insult the pope (a good friend of his) and the pope was forced to respond. Galileo should have counted himself lucky to only get house arrest.

3. If you're going to mention Yahweh (aka YHWH, aka Jehovah, aka God of Israel) in proper Jewish context, you need to mark out some of the letters as a sign of respect. e.g. "Y-WH" or "G-d"

4. Save your flames. This is intended as an informational post only, and I probably won't respond to any replies. Don't like it? Too bad. Find some objectivity.

Re:A few points

[FortKnox]

Quick points:
1.) You mean JP II (there is no JPIII, yet).
2.) This claim comes from up top, so its basically the view of the vatican unless Pope Benedict contradicts it
2.5) JPII pardoned Galileo

(Yes, I'm registered member of the Catholic faith)

Re:A few points

[Nick of NSTime]

The "mark out" (i.e., G-d) is not a sign of respect so much as it is an observance of a mitzvah. Specifically, the mitzvah that tells us to not take G-d's name in vain.

Re:A few points

[BushCheney08]

Mod the goddamn parent up!

Re:A few points

[Manchot]

Amusingly, quite a bit of science in history was done by priests and other church members.

For a nice example of this, look up Georges Lemaitre, also known as Father Georges Lemaitre. His claim to fame is that he created the "hypothesis of the primeval atom," now known as the Big Bang theory.

Re:A few points

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you meant Pope John Paul II...not III.

Unless there's a new pope or something.

Re:A few points

[frankie]

RCC embraced scientific evidence MUCH longer ago than JP2. Both of my parents were taught evolution in 1950s Catholic schools. John Paul II merely took it one step further and officially declared that evolution is not just the most likely theory, but about as close to guaranteed fact as anything can be in this imperfect world of ours. He also finally pardoned Galileo, IIRC.

Roman Catholicism has many Many MANY flaws, most of which we all know quite well, but I.D.-iocy in the classroom is not one of them.

Re:A few points

[Otter]

Also, I would add that while Hemos is correct that non-literal interpretations of Genesis have been widely (if not universally) accepted in Judaism for thousands of years, his overall understanding of Jewish theology as expressed here is so head-spinningly mistaken that I'd advise him to pick less public opportunities to hold forth on it.

Re:A few points

[brilinux]

Amen. And I should point out that it was a Jesuit who came up with the Big Bang...

(I am too)

Re:A few points

[Turn-X Alphonse]

I was under the impression YHWH was just his name nothing "respectful". You just weren't ment to say it. If I'm wrong please tell me. I'm always intrested in learning more on mythological things and gods etc.

Re:A few points

[the_ed_dawg]

However, the Vatican regularly declared heresy against anyone who challenged the accepted "facts" of the Universe.

I have a friend at a Catholic seminary right now. He's told me that they actually teach some watered-down versions of some really difficult sciences, so priests can avoid a lot of the mistakes that the church has made in the past. He actually had an introductory course in quantum mechanics!

On the whole, a good parent post. No flames required. :)

Re:A few points

[Anonymous Coward]

Good troll, sir!

It's about the same as if you mentioned that Chrisitians are bemused by Mormons. The two religions don't think of one another as "correct" even though one builds on the other. The only difference is that the Jewish and Christian faiths tend to be much more amicable toward one another.
All the Chrisitians I've ever met are completely friendly with everybody of every other religious domination, inasmuch as no "Chrisitians" can be said to exist.

The Vatican embraced the evolutionary theory several years ago under Pope John Paul III.
Yes, but "the new pope has indicated that he wishes to put the Catholic Church back onto a more conservative footing. He has pledged to allow celibate men and women to become priests (rather than just married men and women, under current practice) and to add abstinence to the list of permitted birth control methods." I'm sure creationism isn't far from the top of his agenda!

However, the Vatican regularly declared heresy against anyone who challenged the accepted "facts" of the Universe. Galileo is often cited as an example, but that was partly his own fault. He used satire to insult the pope (a good friend of his) and the pope was forced to respond. Galileo should have counted himself lucky to only get house arrest.
For the first time in my brief life I have seen a summary of Galileo's life more divorced from reality than Brecht's (brilliant) fictionalization. Good job, sir.

3. If you're going to mention Yahweh (aka YHWH, aka Jehovah, aka God of Israel) in proper Jewish context, you need to mark out some of the letters as a sign of respect. e.g. "Y-WH" or "G-d"
I think you know the rule but don't understand it. See, whenever you write down the name of God, you can't erase it. I had to open another Slashdot window just to read the comments -- and now I can't close this one either. Goddamnit. Bastard never should've penned the Torah in the first place!

Re:A few points

[Fallus Shempus]

1. Considering Genisis is a Jewish text I think it is perfectly fair to get a Rabbi's viewpoint on this.

2. a. It was John Paul II
b. They do not still hold with the geocentic view of the universe; they also believed the earth was flat once.
c. Only an idiot discounts another persons point of view because of who they are.

3. Is this like Life of Brian "All I sayed was That meal was good enough fo Jehovah"

4. My right to reply; not a flame, objective criticism.

Re:A few points

[Erwos]

"3. If you're going to mention Yahweh (aka YHWH, aka Jehovah, aka God of Israel) in proper Jewish context, you need to mark out some of the letters as a sign of respect. e.g. "Y-WH" or "G-d""

He shouldn't have written that, period. Observant Jews don't EVER pronounce or phonetically write that name. G-d will do fine, thanks.

Back on topic: Orthodox Jews can't take creation literally, because it anthropomorphizes G-d. How does G-d rest? He has no body, and, if you go for non-Maimonidean thought (popular these days in the yeshiva world), the world wouldn't exist without His constant divine intervention. Ergo, a literal account of creation cannot be true. The Orthodox question is more along the lines of just how allegorically should it be taken, and how to handle the calendar issues. There have been remarkable books written on both sides of the argument.

-Erwos

Re:A few points

[nutshell42]

They do not still hold with the geocentic view of the universe; they also believed the earth was flat once.

They didn't (of course that depends on the definition of "they". I mean high ranking church officials and the RCC as institution). That were strawman attacks, especially popular in the Enlightenment.

Re:A few points

[morgan_greywolf]

1. Hemos, I find your sarcasm disappointing. There are quite a few factions when it comes to different religions, and you've just compared two related, yet completely different religions to one another. i.e. It's about the same as if you mentioned that Chrisitians are bemused by Mormons. The two religions don't think of one another as "correct" even though one builds on the other. The only difference is that the Jewish and Christian faiths tend to be much more amicable toward one another.

The Jewish and Christian faiths may, in fact, be different religions, but they are not inseparable. Like it or not, Jesus was an Essene Jew. This is an historical fact. His message was intended for the Jewish people. He worked and lived His life according to the Torah, the Jewish Law. Almost the entire Christian Bible (yes, including the New Testament, with the exception of Paul's letters) was written down by Jewish people who were practicing what they viewed as the Jewish faith.

2. The Vatican embraced the evolutionary theory several years ago under Pope John Paul III. Opponents like to point out that the Vatican also accepted a geocentric view of the Universe. As a result, only devote Catholics take the Vatican seriously on matters of science.

John Paul II. There is no John Paul III. Additionally, why should anyone listen to the Vatican or to Rabbinical Counsel or to the Hare Krishna or to the Most High Pastafarian Pirate Priest, for that matter, on matters of science. Those folks' area of expertise is on matters of religion. You surely wouldn't care about what Professor Stephen Hawking had to say about whether or not the Gospel of Thomas should be included in the Bible, now would you?

4. Save your flames. This is intended as an informational post only, and I probably won't respond to any replies. Don't like it? Too bad. Find some objectivity.

I did. See my response to point 2.

Re:A few points

[derflammenhund]

To the best of my knowledge, taking the lord's name in vain includes written works, because if you were to write God's name on paper, that paper could become crumpled or soiled... this amounts to an affront to God, so an alternative is to blank letters such that everyone knows what you mean but you don't actually take the name.

Re:A few points

[Anonymous Coward]

The only difference is that the Jewish and Christian faiths tend to be much more amicable toward one another.

Yeah, that whole Nazi thing, 'twas a mere tiffle.

Opponents like to point out that the Vatican also accepted a geocentric view of the Universe. As a result, only devote Catholics take the Vatican seriously on matters of science.

They also burnt scientists at the stake and made Galileo recant his observations... HUNDREDS OF YEARS AGO! The world might have changed just a little since then.

Amusingly, quite a bit of science in history was done by priests and other church members.

Of course, Gregor Mendel's work is the foundation of genetics. However, I don't see what's so amusing about it. Being a priest, itself, does not change the truth value of one's words.

Galileo is often cited as an example, but that was partly his own fault. He used satire to insult the pope (a good friend of his) and the pope was forced to respond. Galileo should have counted himself lucky to only get house arrest.

"Of course the Pope did that, he has a tough job and was just letting off some steam. And he honestly believed there would *be* weapons of mass destruction in that telescope."

Save your flames. This is intended as an informational post only, and I probably won't respond to any replies. Don't like it? Too bad. Find some objectivity.

You know, I probably wouldn't have responded to your post if you hadn't said that. What's the surest way to know something's flamebait? When it plainly says "save your flames."

Re:A few points

[Golias]

Also, there's no need to mark out any letters from "YHWH"

That spelling is already omitting all of the vowel characters (and, if traditional teaching is to be observed, most of the name is omitted here as well. "YHWH" simply means "I am", which was the only part of God's true name for Himself which Moses was premitted to write down.)

Re:A few points

[Anonymous Coward]

Good troll, sir!

All the Chrisitians I've ever met are completely friendly with everybody of every other religious domination, inasmuch as no "Chrisitians" can be said to exist.

Christians and Mormons alike tend to be amicable people. That doesn't mean they're amicable toward each other's beliefs.

For the first time in my brief life I have seen a summary of Galileo's life more divorced from reality than Brecht's (brilliant) fictionalization. Good job, sir.

You have obviously never heard of the Galileo's published works or the matters pertaining to Galileo's trial. ("Galilei had publicly insulted the Pope and any others who would not accept Copernican heliocentric theory as a fact. ") Yet you presume you do know such things. Good job, sir!

Re:A few points

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe the whole "mark out some of the letters" refers to marking out the vowels. Just as Yahweh has no vowels when it is spelled in the bible (actually spelled similar to YHWH but in Hebrew).

So YHWH already has the mark up.

Re:A few points

[AKAImBatman]

1.) You mean JP II (there is no JPIII, yet).

Indeed. The extra 'I' was unintentional.

2.) This claim comes from up top, so its basically the view of the vatican unless Pope Benedict contradicts it

That is the view of the Vatican. However, Christians don't necessiarly take their beliefs from the Vatican. Once it was heresy to disagree with the Vatican on such matters. Today, the Vatican doesn't have any power in such matters, and there are far more Christians than just Catholics. All the Vatican can do is state the position of the Catholic Church.

2.5) JPII pardoned Galileo

Correct. As I said, the Pope and Galileo knew each other. The heresy charges levied against him were more because the Pope felt he was required to file them, not because he wanted to.

(Yes, I'm registered member of the Catholic faith)

You'll have to forgive me if I see things from a different perspective. I'm non-denominational, but I do occasionally enjoy a Pentecostal services, and visit a local Lutheran church regularly.

Re:A few points

[Ithika]

You mean everyone else knows who you're talking about but God hasn't cottoned on? That sounds ... a mite unlikely.

Re:A few points

[Red Flayer]

TFA & submitter seem to miss a very important point -- most of the Christian fundamentalists who are proponents of ID are not Catholic.

Furthermore, they don't take guidance or leadership from the Catholic church.

This is one of the reasons that the Xtian Fundies are so hard to convince of anything -- they aren't likely to take guidance from a hierarchical power. Instead, the individual (or the congregation) is supposed to interpret God's word themselves -- as related in the Bible, which is the source of their entire faith. Invalidating any part of the Bible therefore invalidates the Bible as the true word of God, and therefore invalidates their faith.

It's easy (relatively) for Catholics to accept that the Bible isn't literal; they have a hierarchy of leadership, and a set of dogma, that means that their religion is more than just the words in the Bible. The authority structure allows the Catholic faith to, as a whole, reinterpret the Bible as necessary.

So please, don't conflate Catholicism with Christian Fundamentalism.

Re:A few points

[rainman_bc]

They do not still hold with the geocentic view of the universe; they also believed the earth was flat once.

The ancient Greeks also believed in that myth. It's been around longer than the New Testament. Same with the geocentric view of the solar system.

Re:A few points

[halltk1983]

Yes, I'm registered member of the Catholic faith

does this mean you get spam from the catholic church? Or do they have a different registration process?

Re:A few points

[KDN]

It's about the same as if you mentioned that Chrisitians are bemused by Mormons. The two religions don't think of one another as "correct" even though one builds on the other.

Um, Mormons view themselves as Christians, so how can they confuse themselves? Christians as defined as those who follow Jesus Christ, of which the Mormons call themselves "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints", which to me appears that they follow JC. (And no, I don't mean Jimmy Carter :-)).

The LDS (as they call themselves) I think also believe in evolution. There was a quote, that I can't find right now unfortunately, that said to leave evolution to the scientists. That their purpose was the salvation of mankind. That matches my own believe that evolution and creationism are answering two different questions: How did we get here? and Why are we here? Does the lack of dinosaurs in Genesis make a difference to the salvation of mankind?

Re: A few points

[Black Parrot]

> The "mark out" (i.e., G-d) is not a sign of respect so much as it is an observance of a mitzvah. Specifically, the mitzvah that tells us to not take G-d's name in vain.

However, God's name isn't "God".

Also, how does that bit of censorship work. Can you use "G-d" or "YHWH" in vain? Do you have a lawyer that's going to tell God you weren't really using his name in vain, because you made a typographic substitution?

Re:A few points

[AKAImBatman]

Thank you for that correction. It seems Hemos was correct in this case (though others have pointed out that most Jews much prefer to use the term 'G-d'), so I withdraw that particular point. :-)

Hemos, if you're reading this, my apologies. However, I would still ask that you stop confusing things by pulling different religions into the mix.

Re:A few points

[Anonymous Coward]

1.) You mean JP II (there is no JPIII, yet).

What do you mean? I saw JPIII! Of course I didn't waste my money to see JPIII in the theater, but those dinos made it to TV in not too long.

The fact that JPIII has dinosaurs must mean that the church endorsed evolution and extinction theories.

Re:A few points

[AKAImBatman]

1. Considering Genisis is a Jewish text I think it is perfectly fair to get a Rabbi's viewpoint on this.

The New Testament is also a Jewish text. Those of the Jewish faith don't believe it, nor do Christians fully accept the Jewish position on the old Testament. QED.

2. a. It was John Paul II

Indeed. My typing is getting pretty terrible these days. But it's fast! ;-)

b. They do not still hold with the geocentic view of the universe; they also believed the earth was flat once.
c. Only an idiot discounts another persons point of view because of who they are.

The point is that the Vatican's credibility is pretty much shot based on historical experience. Since their credibility is shot, many Christians tend to ignore their position on scientific matters.

4. My right to reply; not a flame, objective criticism.

Which is why you're receiving a reply. Slashdot tends to be very anti-Christian, regardless of the truth of the post. This tends to come out in hateful flame posts. If you had flamed me, you would have been ignored. Since you chose the path of discussion, I'm actually replying. :-)

Re:A few points

[molarmass192]

"... there are far more Christians than just Catholics."

You must mean denominations, not practictioners, right? There are 1.5 billion Roman Catholics out of a total 2.1 billion Christians world-wide.

Re:A few points

[The employee can cho]

Ahem.... No JPIII???

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0163025/

Re:A few points

[AKAImBatman]

I'm actually speaking figuratively. Not "Other > Catholic", but as in "Catholics are not representative as a whole. There are a lot more Christians out there." I don't have any clue as to the worldwide figures.

However, the U.S. figures are here. It's difficult to state that these figures are anything more than a reasonable approximation, but they do show that other churches combined outnumber the Catholic church in the U.S. It's quite likely that the spread is greater than those numbers would have you believe, as it doesn't include a large number of community churches that have no denominational affiliation.

Re: A few points

[GungaDan]

"Do you have a lawyer that's going to tell God you weren't really using his name in vain"

This would require a non-hellbound lawyer. Please try again. ;-)

Re: A few points

[Black Parrot]

> > Do you have a lawyer that's going to tell God you weren't really using his name in vain?

> This would require a non-hellbound lawyer. Please try again. ;-)

I'm sure lots of lawyers would volunteer just to get the "Get out of hell free" card.

Re:A few points

[AKAImBatman]

Um, Mormons view themselves as Christians, so how can they confuse themselves?

Other Christians, however, do not view them as such. The last chapter of Revelations has this to say:

"18 For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book: 19 And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book."

The Mormons have added to the Bible with their Book of Mormon, and thus are considered separate, just as the Jews consider Christians to be separate. In any case, the non-Mormon Christians don't accept Joseph Smith's claims of "finding the book" anyway. All other books in the Bible were written by verifiable, living people who were accepted to be given a divine right to add their books to the Bible. (Though I have to say, having that many authors makes for a very interesting book. On one hand you have commandments "Thou shalt not kill," while on the other hand you have erotic poetry. One has to be concious of the author of each book if one is to understand the Bible. Even if you're only interested in it as literature, and don't believe in it.) AFAIK, no one has ever verified the existence of the authors of Smith's gold plates, nor does anyone other than the Mormons accept that Smith was a prophet. Not to mention that there are problems with the technology of known history vs. the records in those plates.

The Bible tells Christians that "Many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many." (Matthew 24:5, also Luke 21:8) Also, many of the points (e.g. Polygamy) are contrary to the Christian Biblical view. This makes them in violation of Galations 1:6-8: "I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you by the grace of Christ, for a different gospel; which is really not another; only there are some who are disturbing you, and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even though we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to that which we have preached to you, let him be accursed."

Re:A few points

[phoenix.bam!]

That's great to know. I actually feel better about the church reading your post and in conjunction with the topic of this news story I've go to say, The Catholic church deserves some respect.

Re:A few points

[Anonymous Coward]

You are wrong on multiple points... ...
2. There has not been a Pope John Paul III. The previous Pope, John Paul II expressed that Catholics can believe in evolution so long as they believe that the work was by God's effort and plan. I.E. he wrote the rules and planned for life to become life. The Catholic church doesn't often talk about science since she has stated that she can only make judgements 'on matters of faith and morals.' If someone in the Church does express something about science, it is either with regard to one of the crossroads of science (generally more of a commentary type of role) and religion, or they are expressing their own opinion.
3. Yahweh is often spelled YHWH because the Torah (Old Testament to Christians) has no vowels. They is why it is such a milestone for a young Jew to read from the scrolls. Not because they can read hebrew, but that they can read it without the vowels.
4. This is less for the original author of the above comment, but for other readers.

Re:A few points

[king-manic]

However, the U.S. figures are here. It's difficult to state that these figures are anything more than a reasonable approximation, but they do show that other churches combined outnumber the Catholic church in the U.S. It's quite likely that the spread is greater than those numbers would have you believe, as it doesn't include a large number of community churches that have no denominational affiliation.

Only in the US, in Canada the catholics out number the protestants and in a world wide context the protestants are a 1/4 of all of christianity. This stems from many early American settlers being Puritans and other protestants.

Re:A few points

[Anonymous Coward]

No, the actual reason to spell God without all of its letters is that once it is created, it must be properly destroyed. Like torahs, there are similar disposal rules for things like American flags -- usually these things must be buried or cremated in a certain way. Just as drawing an image of Stars and Stripes on your computer screen does not mean you have created a flag, drawing the word "God" on your computer screen does not mean you have created anything, so it does not require proper disposal.

The only time you need to write God as "G-d" is when writing something physical (like a piece of paper) other than a torah or bible.

dom

Re:A few points

[Anonymous Coward]

Guess what, there are still some pentecostal preachers that still believe that the sun revolves around the earth.

Re:A few points

[Sensible Clod]

Actually, YHWH is God's name as written in Hebrew (as you said, without vowels, because back then Hebrew had no vowel pointing); however, it does not mean simply "I am". It is a verb: causative form, imperfect state, of the Hebrew HWH (ha`wah, "to become"). Therefore, it means, "He Causes to Become." It identifies Him as, among other things, the Creator, the One who causes himself to become the Fulfiller of promises, the One who always brings his purposes to realization.

Also, Moses et al wrote God's name down many times; in fact, in the very oldest manuscripts uncovered, the personal Name YHWH has been found about 7,000 times; however, due to a superstition that arose among certain scribes many centuries afterwards (see Matthew 23 for examples of some of the attitudes prevalent at the time), the commandment "Thou shalt not take up the name of YHWH in vain" was taken too literally (sound familiar?), and YHWH came to be considered unpronounceable, although it had been used for about 1,500 years after Moses wrote down the Pentateuch. After vowel pointing was introduced into Hebrew, these scribes put the vowel points for Elohim (God) or Adhonai (The Lord) over the letters YHWH in the manuscripts, and the Name was so replaced with Elohim or Adhonai when reading it aloud. Thus, the original pronunciation for YHWH was lost, and in fact many scribes replaced YHWH entirely when copying manuscripts; this is why the Name is all but nonexistant in the KJV et al.

The common English pronuncation is of course Jehovah, and there are transcriptions for every language into which the Bible has been translated.

Re:A few points

[Carewolf]

The name of God is not God, it's the tetragamatron you so like to have marked out. The entire reason we say God at all is to avoid using the name, so starting to mark out god which is supposed to be the proper replacement for his name, is just incredibly stupid.

Re:A few points

[Golias]

The point is that the Vatican's credibility is pretty much shot based on historical experience. Since their credibility is shot, many Christians tend to ignore their position on scientific matters.

You're making the same mistake that scientologists make about psychiatry.

"Because Freud was so off base about so many things, and because they used to use vibrators to treat women for 'hysteria', the psychiatric community's cretibility is pretty much shot with regards to mental health care."

The fact that some Catholics happened to be wrong about some things doesn't mean that JPII and the Popes who followed haven't been making an honest effort to wrap their heads around modern scientific models of the universe, and ellucidate such information for their followers.

Disclaimer: I'm not a Catholic myself, but I'm also not a fan of ignorant bashing.

Re:A few points

[Golias]

Those folks' area of expertise is on matters of religion. You surely wouldn't care about what Professor Stephen Hawking had to say about whether or not the Gospel of Thomas should be included in the Bible, now would you?

Funny you should mention that, since Prof. Hawking once attended a Vatican council on the matter of the Creation of the universe. IIRC, he writes and account of the experience in "A Brief History of Time", though I could be confusing it with one of his other texts. (As has been established in another thread, I seem to have a knack for getting books mixed up today.)

Re:A few points

[Nick of NSTime]

That is technically true. I didn't want to get into all that because I didn't think the grandparent poster would read it anyway. My understanding of the origination of ceremonial destruction of something with G-d's name on it is rooted in the mitzvah itself. A few years ago, I was reading about how the things we post on the internet can't really be destroyed, but the intent is the same. In other words, what one would write on paper for others to see, he likewise posts on the internet. So the usage of "G-d" is appropriate. It's definitely not required, and anyone who knows anything about Judaism will know that not every Jew will agree on this. Like the old saying goes, put two Jews in a room and you'll have three opinions.

Re:A few points

[Golias]

Yeah, that whole Nazi thing, 'twas a mere tiffle.

Hitler was an occultist. You need to watch more PBS specials.

The Nazis killed lots of Christians in the death camps, too.

Re:A few points

[Nick of NSTime]

That's your opinion, and I respect it, but in your case, it's just a matter of simple ignorance.

Re:A few points

[Golias]

"18 For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book: 19 And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book."

My Fundamentalist friends rely on this line a lot, but the thing I can't get past is that "these things" and "the book of this prophesy" and "this book" clearly can only be speaking of the Book of Revelation.

The entire Bible didn't exist as a single tome at the time those words were written, so if you apply that line to, say for example, any of Paul's letters, you are committing the exact blaspheme which that line is warning against.

Re:A few points

[AKAImBatman]

Stupid or not, it's common Jewish tradition. Pick up a Jewish paper sometime and you'll find the word "God" marked out as "G-d" everywhere. The name which we translate as "Jehovah" is almost never used.

Re:A few points

[AKAImBatman]

I didn't want to get into all that

Just as I shortened the explanation to "respect". The actual Jewish law is irrelevant to Hemos as it seems unlikely that he is a praticiing Jew. So as a gentile, "respect of Jewish tradition" is the best reason for him to observe the blotting out of the name. :-)

because I didn't think the grandparent poster would read it anyway.

No worries, I tend to read all the responses. I eventually may decide to stop responding if the discussion is beyond hope, but I do read everything. :-)

Re:A few points

[Mad_Giggler]

Take this how you will, but I find that most "Christians" fail to accept Mormons because we disagree with the Athanasian Creed.

As for your other points, I can quote scripture too. :)

1. Deuteronomy 4:2
2. Amos 3:7, Ezekiel 37:19-20, Isaiah 29:11-14
3. Genesis 30:1-9

Quoting obscure passages of scriptures has generally gotten me nowhere in helping people see my point of view, because people tend to believe what they want to. I thought I'd reply to you anyway. Have a nice day.

Re:A few points

[serano]

Regarding 2.5: When considering scientists from earlier years, e.g. Galileo's time, it's important to remember the social context they lived in. People were killed for heresy. It was not safe to think or espouse views too contrary to the dogma of the day. Considering that there might be no god was an option they really did not have. Saying they supported the religious doctrine of that time should be evaluated in this light.

Re:A few points

[Digz]

..and the contradictory ongoing revelation (mark of Cain, so forth and so on), the "as man is, God once was.. as God is, man will become" line, the physical insemination of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and many others.. These all form to totally seperate Mormonism from Christianity.

Re:A few points

[hey!]

You're a Jesuit Geek? Do you no Br. Consolmagno from the Vatican Observatory?

Re:A few points

[AKAImBatman]

The fact that some Catholics happened to be wrong about some things doesn't mean that JPII and the Popes who followed haven't been making an honest effort to wrap their heads around modern scientific models of the universe, and ellucidate such information for their followers.

But in many ways they're making the exact opposite mistake as they made before. Since they're trying to make up for the whole persecution of scientists thing, they accept things as canon that really shouldn't be accepted as such. Evolution is a perfect example. Is the theory complete? (No.) Is it proven? (No.) Then HOW can you say that anything contrary is heresy?

The Catholic church would do best to *STOP* taking canon positions on things. I realize it simplifies the whole, "Well, what do you think of science?" question, but it tremendously complicates the whole, "How do we enforce canon?" problem. If the Catholic church wanted to say, "We believe that Evolution has merit. As such we will pursue it from a scientific standpoint and educationally teach it as a possibilty for Genesis until we can confirm or deny it."

You're making the same mistake that scientologists make about psychiatry.

1) I do not appreciate the comparison to Scientology.

2) Psychiatry is a field of scientific study. The Vatican is not a field of scientific study. The Vatican is an entity that should be treating ALL science with the appropriate amount of skepticism that the field requires.

3) I do NOT appreciate the comparison to Scientology.

Re:A few points

[brilinux]

Sorry, I am not a Jesuit geek; the "I am too" meant that I was a Registered Catholic too. But the Jesuits are awesome.

Re:A few points

[Mad_Giggler]

Sure.

The mark of Cain thing is something I've never heard talked about in church, but I've read it in a couple of books, some of which were revised after leaders got around to reading them.

"as man is. . ." is what I meant by Athanasian Creed.

I have no idea what you're talking about when you say "the physical insemination of the Blessed Virgin Mary" because I've never, ever heard that one before, and I've heard plenty of things about Mormons - including that we have to shave our horns on a monthly basis to fit into society.

Re:A few points

[helix400]

1) Mormons accept that many do not view them as Christians. But some do. It's the same for Roman Catholics, Greek Orthodox Christians, liberal Christians, Jehovas Witnesses, 7th Day Adventists, etc. Who gets to decide who is Christian and who is not?

2) The Bible is a compliation of books. The condition in the last chapter of Revelations applies only to the Book of Revelations. The Book of Revelations wasn't compiled with the rest of the Bible until hundreds of years later when the Catholic church decided what is and what is not canonical, and the ordering of the included books. To say that those 2 verse apply to the entire Bible is flat out not correct.

3) All of the books in the Bible were written by verifiable, living people? Not to be rude, but I would be interested if you can show me proof of Moses. Or the even the exodus from Egypt. I keep an eye out for such things.

4) Polygamy is not contrary to the Christian Biblical view. Prophets of the Old Testament were polygamous. Again, it depends on interpretations of the Bible and Christianity, and there is no one authority for that.

5) The LDS church, and virtually all Christian denominations, are harmonious with Galataions 1:6-8. All those verses say is that people were quickly falling away from the teachings of the apostles and Jesus Christ, and to only trust authoritative sources that preach the same gospel they heard before. As I mentioned, all Christian denominations believe theirs is teaching a correct gospel.

Heh, don't take this as an argument. I just want to clarify some common misunderstandings.

Re:A few points

[Anonymous Coward]

There has not been a Pope John Paul III.

He already stated it was a typo. How many more people will keep chomping at the same bit?

The Catholic church doesn't often talk about science since she has stated that she can only make judgements 'on matters of faith and morals.'

Um, that's why the Vatican has a Chief Astronomer and other scientific positions? The Vatican often takes a scientific position on things. They shouldn't, but they do.

3. Yahweh is often spelled YHWH because the Torah (Old Testament to Christians) has no vowels. They is why it is such a milestone for a young Jew to read from the scrolls. Not because they can read hebrew, but that they can read it without the vowels.

Again, it's already been hashed, rehashed, hashed again, signed in triplicate, lost in the mail, rewritten, and finally buried in the compost.

Re:A few points

[Anonymous Coward]

3. If you're going to mention Yahweh (aka YHWH, aka Jehovah, aka God of Israel) in proper Jewish context, you need to mark out some of the letters as a sign of respect. e.g. "Y-WH" or "G-d"

In my limited understanding of the tetragrammaton, the usage of YHWH -IS- the result of marking out some of the letters.

4. Save your flames. This is intended as an informational post only, and I probably won't respond to any replies. Don't like it? Too bad. Find some objectivity.

Same goes for mine.

Re:A few points

[Anonymous Coward]

"But the Jesuits are awesome."

Shit yeah, motherfuckers. Iggys (anyone who has attended a school named for St. Ignatius of Loyola) rock the house like a storm, bitches. Who else can get drunker than the Christian Brothers and not end up wearing those silly C.B. frocks? Iggys, that's who.

AD MAJOREM DEI GLORIA! w00t! Where the Lutheran women at?

=P

Re:A few points

[MobyTurbo]

Amen. And I should point out that it was a Jesuit who came up with the Big Bang...

And an Orthodox Jew (Peniaz), working at Bell Labs, found the microwave background radiation that proves the big bang; thus winning the Nobel Prize in Physics.

Re:A few points

[Anonymous Coward]

Observant Jews don't EVER pronounce or phonetically write that name

Maybe the parent isn't an observant Jew. Maybe he's intelligent enough to realize that the word "God" is just a symbolic representation of a concept, and it differs in now way to "G-d". One is spelled with the a circular symbol, and one with a horizontal line. But make no mistake, they represent the same thing and are only different to humans who follow a belief system that one is more correct than another. God is not this stupid (nor most of us, fortunately).

Re:A few points

[Anonymous Coward]

> Then HOW can you say that anything contrary is heresy?

But they DON'T say anything contrary is heresy. They just say that evolution is not incpompatible with their faith, and leave it to scientists to decide if evolution IS actually true or not.

Re:A few points

[AKAImBatman]

Mormons accept that many do not view them as Christians. Who gets to decide who is Christian and who is not?

As you said, they generally accept themselves as separate. Most non-Mormons accept them as separate as well. So the majority of the vote is that they're separate. That's what defines it. That contrasts directly with situations like Lutherans and Catholics who accept each other as fellow Christians. Combining Christianity and Mormonism is usually only done for things like statistical purposes.

The Bible is a compliation of books. The condition in the last chapter of Revelations applies only to the Book of Revelations.

Your statement is not a statement. It's a theological argument. The general consensus among Christians (as defined to be separate from Mormons) is that the verses refer to the entire Bible.

Not to be rude, but I would be interested if you can show me proof of Moses. Or the even the exodus from Egypt.

While this webpage fails to do justice to the discovery, the Altar and the former Israeli camp near Mount Siani have been believed to be found. I imagine it will take quite a bit of archelogical work before it's "proven" beyond a doubt, but we definitely have a good start.

In 1993 the existence of King David was proven by an archelogical find. The Israeli geneolgy records are also extremely complete on the matter of their ancestors. (Which is really what the Bible is about. It tracks Jesus's lineage. Or if you're a Jew, it tracks the lineage of the coming savior.) As the Smithsonian stated in that link:

"Much of the Bible, in particular the historical books of the old testament, are as accurate historical documents as any that we have from antiquity and are in fact more accurate than many of the Egyptian, Mesopotamian, or Greek histories. These Biblical records can be and are used as are other ancient documents in archeological work. For the most part, historical events described took place and the peoples cited really existed. This is not to say that names of all peoples and places mentioned can be identified today, or that every event as reported in the historical books happened exactly as stated."

Polygamy is not contrary to the Christian Biblical view.

Jesus described the relationship between a man and his wife as the relationship between him and the Church. He only defined it as one Church. Not many.

Paul stated in Titus 1:6 "An elder must be blameless, the husband of but one wife."

Jesus also made clear that many things that were allowed by Moses' time were not the way things were intended. In the beginning, there was one man and one wife. This didn't change until much later.

Prophets of the Old Testament were polygamous.

Prophets generally didn't marry. In fact, I can think of one (Moses), if you consider him a prophet. I can't think of ANY that were polygamous. Plus, one MUST refer to the New Testament if one is considered a Christian. Paul was very specific about one man and one wife.

The LDS church, and virtually all Christian denominations, are harmonious with Galataions 1:6-8.

LDS is not harmonious if one accepts several of the problems presented above. Non-Mormons do not accept the Mormon interpretation, thus another point for them being considered separate. Unsurprisingly, Mormons don't see any problem. :-)

Re:A few points

[dcam]

Nice, well reasoned comments.

Prophets generally didn't marry. In fact, I can think of one (Moses), if you consider him a prophet.

Hosea also married:
2 When the LORD began to speak through Hosea, the LORD said to him, "Go, take to yourself an adulterous wife and children of unfaithfulness, because the land is guilty of the vilest adultery in departing from the LORD." 3 So he married Gomer daughter of Diblaim, and she conceived and bore him a son.

Re:A few points

[AKAImBatman]

Hosea also married:

Good call. Hosea was the exception that proved the rule, as God was trying to make a point through his marriage.

Nice, well reasoned comments.

Thank you. :-)

Re:A few points

[helix400]

You didn't respond to my points directly. You danced around them. You are stuck in a mindset where your opinions are the one true measuring stick. A great example of this is your comment "Your statement is not a statement.". You called something a statement and then said it was not a statement. You do not argue, you blabberingly define "the right opinion", and use all manner of logical twists to support your one right way. Unfortunately, religious opinions are relative, until they can be proved. Just because you think one opinion is obvious does not mean you are right or you have proved anything.

A majority vote does not define Christianity. If so, Catholics could easily pull most "Christian" doctrines in their favor by their sheer numbers. I personally do not think that Jesus Christ gave the majority of his followers the authority to define his gospel. Also, a majority of Biblical scholars do not accept your rather fundamentalist view of the promise in Revelations. In fact, you are one of the first people I've heard in years who still believe in that argument from Revelations and the baggage it carries.

I also specifically asked for proof of Moses, to follow your claim that "All other books in the Bible were written by verifiable, living people". You did not verify Moses.

Next, Jesus describing the Godhead and his followers as One does not mean he defined marriages in that context as well. And Titus 1:6 (and 1 Timothy 3:2) explains that elders and priests must at least be married, while probably limiting those two priesthood offices to one wife only. Intrestingly, the Greek Orthodox church interprets 1 Timothy 3:2 as saying everyone but bishops can be married. Does that mean Greek Orthodox are not Christian, because they lose the majority rules vote? Overall, I see no New Testament teaching forbidding polygamy. At the same time, I see no New Testament teaching supporting it either. Unfortunately, the New Testament is lacking in doctrinal detail. Often, the apostles will causally mention various doctrines, because the people knew the full details of it. But when search for these full details, we discover they are missing. The detailed definition of marriages is one such thing that is not found.

King David was polygamous. 2 Samuel 12:7-8 shows God himself gave David his wives. 7 And Nathan said to David, Thou art the man. Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, I anointed thee king over Israel, and I delivered thee out of the hand of Saul; 8 And I gave thee thy master's house, and thy master's wives into thy bosom, and gave thee the house of Israel and of Judah; and if that had been too little, I would moreover have given unto thee such and such things.

Now, you don't have to accept that plural marriages existed after Old Testament times, but I find it strange when people do scriptural gymnastics to discount David's or Abraham's marriages as not really marriages or not supported by God in the scriptures.

And finally "Non-Mormons do not accept the Mormon interpretation, thus another point for them being considered separate." Non-Catholics do not accept the Catholic interpretation. Non-Jehovahs witnesses do not accept that interpretation. You can see where this leads. Just because one's person opinion is that anothers is not harmonious enough to be Christian, does not mean they become the sole authority on who is a Christian and who isn't.

So the question should again be asked. Who is Christian? It depends on who you ask. :)

Re:A few points

[Anonymous Coward]

Your friend is clearly attending just a beginners' course. All Catholic priests are expected to study sciences more deeply, and many do. Benedict's clergy for all means and purposes constitutes a geek culture and the pope himself is a no-holds-barred uber-geek of theology, humanities and European languages.
 
Be certain the Catholic "high church" have as much contempt for IDiots as we do. After all, they can name hundreds of similar radical groups that appeared throughout church history, and point out none of them managed to survive for even a tenth of the time the Catholic Church has. ID is as unrelated to theology as it is to science.

Re:A few points

[Darby]

Hitler was an occultist. You need to watch more PBS specials.

Do we even know if Hitler actually killed anybody himself?
I'm certainly not trying to exonerate him in any way, but he wasn't in the camps tossing people into gas chambers.

The Nazi regime was wholeheartedly, explicitly, and aggressively Christian. Feel free to disagree that it was "real" Christianity, whatever that means, but they most certainly talked the talk.
The entire holocaust was following a script laid out by Martin Luther, the father of Protestantism.

Linky

You need to look at more than PBS specials, and realise that one man acting alone could not have done that.

The whole society was culpable, which the German people realised and have done a lot of work to address since. Some would argue they went overboard on free speech issues related to that, but it's not an argument I'm prepared for.

Re:A few points

[Darby]

As for your other points, I can quote scripture too. :)

Oh can you really? Then prove it.

Dude, those aren't quotes, they're references ;-)

Re:A few points

[Darby]

Mormons accept that many do not view them as Christians.

As you said, they generally accept themselves as separate. Most non-Mormons accept them as separate as well. So the majority of the vote is that they're separate. That's what defines it.

Come on now, Dude. Basic reading comprehension is all I'm asking.
Mormons consider themselves to be Christian, but they know that some other people do not. That doesn't mean that they are not Christians or that the fact that they are aware of an aspect of reality means that they cast their votes on that side.

Then you answer this question that he asked: "Who gets to decide who is Christian and who is not?" by saying essentially, "I do".

You might make some other good points, but this was completely deceitful.

And this is coming from a heathen who at least understands basic logic.

Re:A few points

[Scarletdown]

Specifically, the mitzvah that tells us to not take G-d's name in vain.

I've often wondered if that command has been greatly misinterpreted. Is it possible that taking God's name in vain might actually refer to using God to justify self-serving actions? Examples could be:

1: "God told me that if I don't raise 1 million dollars by April 1st, he will take my life."
2: "God told me to invade Iraq."

Re:A few points

[meringuoid]

I have a friend at a Catholic seminary right now. He's told me that they actually teach some watered-down versions of some really difficult sciences, so priests can avoid a lot of the mistakes that the church has made in the past. He actually had an introductory course in quantum mechanics!

It's partly the Galileo thing. The Church is really determined not to make that mistake again.

Also, considering what the Roman Church is - by far the largest and richest religious organisation there's ever been - it's no surprise they support scientific study. No new Scripture is coming, so how are we to learn more of the mind and the nature of God? Why, by close study and understanding of his masterpiece, creation itself. The Vatican even runs an observatory and sponsors serious research in cosmology. You don't survive as an institution for nearly two thousand years by ignoring reality.

It has to be said, the god revealed by modern science is a whole lot more impressive than the Bible ever made him out to be. Evolution is a magnificent hack that all of us here should appreciate, a blindingly simple system that does all the hard work automatically. Nucleosynthesis in supernovae has incredible artistic audacity, the whole relativity and quantum thing is a mindfuck we still haven't got to the bottom of, and quite what he's up to with inflation and dark energy has us all baffled.

And the fundamentalists would ignore all this in favour of the dumbed-down-to-Bronze-Age version. It's an incredible tragedy.

Re:A few points

[Digz]

"Now remember from this time forth, and for ever, that Jesus Christ was not begotten by the Holy Ghost" (Journal of Discourses, vol. 1, p.51). - Brigham Young

"The birth of the Savior was a natural occurrence unattended with any degree of mysticism, and the Father God was the literal parent of Jesus in the flesh as well as in the spirit" (Religious Truths Defined, p.44). "Christ was begotten of God. He was not born without the aid of Man, and that Man was God!" (Doctrines of Salvation, vol. 1, p.18). - Joseph Fielding Smith, Jr.

"These name-titles all signify that our Lord is the only Son of the Father in the flesh. Each of the words is to be understood literally. Only means only; Begotten means begotten; and Son means son. Christ was begotten by an Immortal Father in the same way that mortal men are begotten by mortal fathers" (Mormon Doctrine, 1966, pp.546-47). "And Christ was born into the world as the literal Son of this Holy Being; he was born in the same personal, real, and literal sense that any son is born to a mortal father. There is nothing figurative about his paternity; he was begotten, conceived and born in the normal and natural course of events, ... Christ is the Son of Man, meaning that his Father (the Eternal God!) is a Holy Man" (p.742). - Apostle Bruce R. McConkie

The fleshly body of Jesus required a Mother as well as a Father. Therefore, the Father and Mother of Jesus, according to the flesh, must have been associated together in the capacity of Husband and Wife; hence the Virgin Mary must have been, for the time being, the lawful wife of God the Father: we use the term lawful Wife, because it would be blasphemous in the highest degree to say that He overshadowed her or begat the Saviour unlawfully. It would have been unlawful for any man to have interfered with Mary, who was already espoused to Joseph; for such a heinous crime would have subjected both the guilty parties to death, according to the law of Moses. But God having created all men and women, had the most perfect right to do with His own creation, according to His holy will and pleasure: He had a lawful right to overshadow the Virgin Mary in the capacity of a husband, and beget a Son, although she was espoused to another; for the law which He gave to govern men and women was not intended to govern Himself, or to prescribe rules for his own conduct. It was also lawful in Him, after having thus dealt with Mary, to give her to Joseph her espoused husband. Whether God the Father gave Mary to Joseph for time only, or for time and eternity, we are not informed. Inasmuch as God was the first husband to her, it may be that He only gave her to be the wife of Joseph while in this mortal state, and that He intended after the resurrection to again take her as one of his own wives to raise up immortal spirits in eternity (The Seer, p.158). - Apostle Orson Pratt

I don't see the big deal behind intelligent design

[InsideTheAsylum]

I'm not a devout religious person, but I believe in a God and that he(yes, he), had a hand in creating the universe and guiding progress along. I don't have anything against evolution nor intelligent design and I don't see why other people like that. I don't see why the two theories can't be merged. *shrug*

Evolution isn't a theory about the start of life.

[Ieshan]

Evolution isn't a theory about the start of life. Evolution is an attempt to explain variability (and patterns of variability) among and within different species, and how that variability is systematically affected by certain factors.

Now that we've gotten that out of the way, commence flame war.

And given the Hindus, some agnostics, etc., etc.

[geoffrobinson]

who are involved or receptive to the message of the Intelligent Design movement...that would make this article pertinent how?

my tagline

[MrByte420]

ssia

Re:my tagline

[geeper]

Because your tag line represents micro-evolution, not macro-evolution which is being discussed here. You should know the difference, considering your tag line.

Re:my tagline

[RingDev]

Well, >I thought it was funny!

-Rick

Re:my tagline

[|/|/|||]

Offtopic? How, exactly? Let me quote the poster's sig:

If religous zealots don't believe in Evolution, then why are they so worried about bird flu?

Excellent point, IMO. I guess there's a large group of people in this country that we don't need to stock up vaccine for. They certainly don't expect a new flu strain to arise via random processes and selective pressures, do they?

Yet another example of people taking advantage of scientific knowledge while simultaneously thumbing their noses at science itself. Fuck 'em. Let's take away their cars and electricity, too.

Re:my tagline

[Foobar of Borg]

Because your tag line represents micro-evolution, not macro-evolution which is being discussed here. You should know the difference, considering your tag line

The only difference between micro-evolution and macro-evolution is time.

Re:my tagline

[MrByte420]

Really whats the difference tho? The theory of evolution says the same forces are at work whether we're talking macrosopically (say, a germ that gains the ability to spread easily to between humans will be more successful at being the best germ it can be then the germ that does not, hence giving that germ an upper leg to become the predominant species present) or an anmial that develops the abliity to respond to light (see, may have you) is at an advantage over species that cannot in some habitats. Its really all the same thing...

Am I the only person

[osullish]

who read that as "Orthodox rabbits"??

Re:Am I the only person

[Hangin10]

No, no, you are not. And we are sad. Some more from heartbreak than others.

and just because this is Slashdot, I am obligated to say ' "Orthodox rabbits" are still getting more than anyone around here.'

Re:Am I the only person

[j-turkey]

and just because this is Slashdot, I am obligated to say ' "Orthodox rabbits" are still getting more than anyone around here.'

Yeah, but that's because all the Orthodox lady-rabbits are totally easy.

Re:Am I the only person

[theonetruekeebler]

> describe machine
It's a Tee Remover.
> put rabbit in machine
Okay, the rabbit is now in the machine.
> press button
With a cry of "Mazel tov!" the rabbi leaps from the machine
and runs off into the distance.
>kick trent
That game cost me a lot of GPA back in 1988.

Re:Am I the only person

[pkalkul]

It was the mice, not the rabbits. They commissioned the whole thing.

TOOI (reposted!)

[General Alcazar]

I like to think of ID as the Theory Of Our Own Ignorance (TOOI).

Mr. Science: "Today, class, we are going to test the Theory Of Our Own Ignorance, sometimes also known as Intelligent Design, or ID. OK, who wants to volunteer?"

Johnny: "I will, Mr. Science!"

Mr. Science: "Fine, Johnny. Now, I want you to look at this bird. Do you know what kind of bird this is Johnny?"

Johnny: "Yes, sir. It is a finch."

Mr. Science: "Very good, Johnny! Now, can you tell me how the wings of this bird came to be?"

Johnny: "I suspect that they grew, Mr. Science."

Mr. Science: "No, no, Johnny. I mean, do you know how the wings of this finch evolved?

Johnny: "Gosh, no. No, I don't."

Mr. Science: "Very good, Johnny! You have confirmed my test."

Johnny: "What test is that, Mr. Science?"

Mr. Science: "I was testing to see if you knew how the wings of this bird evolved. The Theory Of Our Own Ignorance predicted that you would not know, and since you did not, this validates our theory - that we do not know how this bird developed wings!"

Class: "Awesome!"

Re:TOOI (reposted!)

[Anonymous Coward]

My name is Johnny, and you still haven't answered my question on airspeed velocity.

Re:TOOI (reposted!)

[dpilot]

This thread is on finches, not swallows! You're off-topic!

Re:TOOI (reposted!)

[at_slashdot]

Mr. Science: "I was testing to see if you knew how the wings of this bird evolved. The Theory Of Our Own Ignorance predicted that you would not know, and since you did not, this validates our theory - that we do not know how this bird developed wings!"

Actually this should be: "this validates our theory - that the wings were designed by somebody (we don't say who ;-) ) and birds could not have evolved wings.

That's what ID theory would say.

Re:TOOI (reposted!)

[HorsePunchKid]

The idea already has a name, actually. Read about the "God of the gaps".

Re:TOOI (reposted!)

[jc42]

... wings were designed by somebody (we don't say who ;-) ) and birds could not have evolved wings.

That's what ID theory would say.

Actually, if you read that exremely literally, biologists would agree. That is, birds themselves didn't themselves one day decide to evolve wings. They didn't (and still don't) have the brain power to make such a decision. Their evolving of wings was in fact directed by an outside "actor" - which we call "natural selection". Darwin understood quite well why this would upset the religious force, since the director of his evolutionary process is something that has no intelligence, does no designing, and has no goal or purpose.

One clever way I've heard it expressed is that the verb "evolve" isn't transitive. That is, birds didn't evolve wings, and giraffes didn't evolve long necks. They didn't do anything at all to their wings or necks. Those critters just went about their lives, trying to eat and reproduce, without a thought as to what their descendants would look like. And this totally mindless "natural selection" process modified each generation to be slightly different than the parent generation. Nowhere in the process is there a mind that's "evolving" something transitively, with a purpose.

What I haven't read yet is how the ID people get out of the infinite regress that their "theory" produces. How did the Designer come to exist? Created by an even more intelligent designer? Presumably someone has tackled this, but how do you google for their answer?

Re:TOOI (reposted!)

[Anonymous Coward]

This thread is on finches, not swallows! You're off-topic!

European or African finches?

The key to fitting in Genesis with Evolution...

[Anonymous Coward]

Could be fixed if a "day" wasn't taken so literally.

Re:The key to fitting in Genesis with Evolution...

[BCW2]

I heard an interesting comment on the subject: Could God's time be different from our time? Probably.

On the overall subject if you read Genisis, it really doesn't say how creation was done, the message is why it was done.

Keeping in mind that the Old Testament was passed down by word of mouth for hundreds of years before it was written down, taking it literally is probably not a good idea.

Re:The key to fitting in Genesis with Evolution...

[devilsadvoc8]

No it can't. Simply replacing day with year, decade, eon, whatever, still implies the influence of a higher power in creating the universe. Evolutionary theory/science is still peeling back the layers without the easy out of "some higher power nudged it along here".

By removing the religious drive behind ID, you are still left with laziness.

Re:The key to fitting in Genesis with Evolution...

[bentcd]

Keeping in mind that the Old Testament was passed down by word of mouth for hundreds of years before it was written down, taking it literally is probably not a good idea.
Ah, but you see, that is hardly relevant. Even if errors crept into the oral tradition, even if the translation to latin, or english, or whatever, was flawed and even if the selection of the books to go into the bible was random: all you need to do is declare everyone who had a part in changing the text as prophets, and you're good to go. This way, the constant tweaking of the text becomes a bonus, because it gives god a chance to alter it along the way to fit changing circumstances.

Peirs Anthony Explained incarnations series

[haplo21112]

The menaing of day is somewhat muddleded by time....the "day's" from the bible are not to be translated literally...but more a spans of time while "god" or whatever you beleive in calling a supreme being worked on creation. So Day can equal Millions of years...

Re:Peirs Anthony Explained incarnations series

[JonathanBoyd]

Actually, the words morning and evening are used to indicate literal days and such an interpretation is confirmed in Exodus 20 when the Sabbath is explained to Moses.

Re:Peirs Anthony Explained incarnations series

[oncebitten]

Clarence Darrow beat him to that explanation many years beforehand.

See the Scope's Monkey Trial, particularly the section about Darrow's cross examination of Bryant.

Actually, anyone arguing for or against ID should refresh their history of the case since it's basically being fought again.

Re:Peirs Anthony Explained incarnations series

[Anonymous Coward]

Jack Chick says you are a sinner and will burn in hell!

Re:Peirs Anthony Explained incarnations series

[Chas]

Look up. That thing, whizzing over your head? That's you missing the point.

First off, you have your scripture messed up. Exodus 20 is the laying of the 10 Commandments. Nothing in it states that God mandated that the "days" he used to create the world have ANYTHING to do with the days in use by humanity by the time of Exodus.

At that point, day, night, etc, was well established.

During the creation of Life, The Universe, and Everyting (42!!), day, night, etc were meaningless concepts. The Big Dude took however long he wanted to take. And his method of compartmentalizing time may or may not have been different than how we badly xeroxed images of him compartmentalize time.

And, because I'm completely anal about shit like this... (pun intended).

• Exd 20:1 And God spake all these words, saying,
• Exd 20:2 I [am] the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.
• Exd 20:3 Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
• Exd 20:4 Thou shalt not make unto thee any graveimage, or any likeness [of any thing] that [is] iheaveabove, or that [is] ithe earth beneath, or that [is] ithe water under the earth:
• Exd 20:5 Thou shalt not bow dowthyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God [am] a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upothe childreunto the third and fourth [generation] of them that hate me;
• Exd 20:6 And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.
• Exd 20:7 Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God ivain; for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name ivain.
• Exd 20:8 Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.
• Exd 20:9 Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work:
• Exd 20:10 But the seventh day [is] the sabbath of the LORD thy God: [iit] thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that [is] withithy gates:
• Exd 20:11 For [in] six days the LORD made heaveand earth, the sea, and all that ithem [is], and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.
• Exd 20:12 Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upothe land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.
• Exd 20:13 Thou shalt not kill.
• Exd 20:14 Thou shalt not commit adultery.
• Exd 20:15 Thou shalt not steal.
• Exd 20:16 Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.
• Exd 20:17 Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that [is] thy neighbour's.
• Exd 20:18 And all the people saw the thunderings, and the lightnings, and the noise of the trumpet, and the mountaismoking: and whethe people saw [it], they removed, and stood afar off.
• Exd 20:19 And they said unto Moses, Speak thou with us, and we will hear: but let not God speak with us, lest we die.
• Exd 20:20 And Moses said unto the people, Fear not: for God is come to prove you, and that his fear may be before your faces, that ye sinot.
• Exd 20:21 And the people stood afar off, and Moses drew near unto the thick darkness where God [was].
• Exd 20:22 And the LORD said unto Moses, Thus thou shalt say unto the childreof Israel, Ye have seethat I have talked with you from heaven.
• Exd 20:23 Ye shall not make with me gods of silver, neither shall ye make unto you gods of gold.
• Exd 20:24 An altar of earth thou shalt make unto me, and shalt sacrifice thereothy burnt offerings, and thy peace offerings, thy sheep, and thine oxen: iall places where I recor

Re:Peirs Anthony Explained incarnations series

[JonathanBoyd]

First off, you have your scripture messed up. Exodus 20 is the laying of the 10 Commandments.

I'm quite aware of what Exodus 20 contains, which is why I referred you to it.

During the creation of Life, The Universe, and Everyting (42!!), day, night, etc were meaningless concepts.

But Genesis was written when they were meaningful concepts. The words 'morning' and 'evening' were there and the meaning they would have had for the readers of Genesis would have been that every day is marked by a morning and evening, therefore it is referring to a standard day.

And, because I'm completely anal about shit like this

Well, that's helpful. Saves me typing it up :^) I would have used the English Standard Version, since it's a slightly better translation, but the KJV is more than adequate for this purpose.

Exd 20:9 Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work
Exd 20:10 But the seventh day [is] the sabbath of the LORD thy God: [iit] thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that [is] withithy gates
Exd 20:11 For [in] six days the LORD made heaveand earth, the sea, and all that ithem [is], and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.

God says to take the sabbath day off because he made the world in six days and took the seventh day off. Uses the same word. The standard meaning of the word in Genesis is of literal days. There are much better and clearer words to use if 'epoch' or 'period of time' were intended.

Re:Peirs Anthony Explained incarnations series

[Chas]

The problem is, the word used in the original Hebrew does NOT mean "day". It means "a period of labor".

So please, do your homework a bit better.

Re:Peirs Anthony Explained incarnations series

[JonathanBoyd]

Actually, according to the Strong's dictionary I have, which also includes information from various lexicons and Vine's expository dictionary, the word 'yowm' or 'yome' means either a literal or figurative day. We know it is literal because it is used in the literal sense in Exodus 20.

If you're interested in a mature and rational discourse, you could start by being polite and stating sources, rather than simply calling someone wrong in an insulting manner.

Um, why?

[flyinwhitey]

"Of course, it'd probably be best if fundmentalists actually talked to, say, the rabbis who wrote the whole thing down."

Why? I mean apart from them being dead for thousands of years, would it really be enlightening in any way to hear a different, yet equally self serving account of a fictional event?

Sorry,

[Gannoc]

The fundimentalists stopped listening to Jews in A.D 33

Re:Sorry,

[Anonymous Coward]

it's fundamentalists

Re:Sorry,

[Burb]

It may be a troll, but I will bite. Rarely has a short comment had so many errors in it. And I don't mean spelling errors. "Fundamentalism" in the way it's understood by many modern Western Christians is a relatively new phenomenon, and certainly it has very specific overtones that relate to 19th/20th century American Christianity. As for "stopped listening to Jews" perhaps the poster should acquaint himself with the book of Acts in which some of the discussions and controversies between Jews and Christians are described. Some of this was by way of preaching and dialog and, yes, some was by less pleasant methods. Judaism as we know it today is different from the Jewish faith practiced in the early 1st century if only because of the destruction of the temple in AD70. AD33 is an approximation since no one is entirely sure of the crucifiction/resurrection dates. And Hemos, leave out the editorialising. It's not necessary.

Re:Sorry,

[Anonymous Coward]

AD33? AD=After Death - that would be 33 years after Christ's death. You must have meant AD0 ?

Re:Sorry,

[Anonymous Coward]

Holy Christ, you're an idiot.

Re:Sorry,

[Ithika]

He's an editor - what else, apart from editorialising and editing, does an editor do?

Re:Sorry,

[qengho]

AD=After Death - that would be 33 years after Christ's death.

A.D. is Anno Domini, Latin for "Year of Birth".

Re:Sorry,

[NathanBFH]

A common misconception. A.D != 'After Death". It stands for the latin phrase "Anno Domini" or "In the Year of the Lord". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anno_Domini

Re:Sorry,

[bentcd]

"Annus" means "year" and "dominus" means "master" or "lord". "Anno domini" means "in the year of our lord".

Re:Sorry,

[Mark_in_Brazil]

The fundimentalists stopped listening to Jews in A.D 33

It is with great sadness that I agree with you. If only they listened to the Jew who died around that time, whose teachings they claim to follow, but cheerfully ignore as they do things that would horrify Him.

Re:Sorry,

[Foobar of Borg]

He's an editor - what else, apart from editorialising and editing, does an editor do?

Posting stories as many different times as possible?

Re:Sorry,

[ConceptJunkie]

Thanks for correcting that, Nathan. I can't believe people on /. don't know the basis of our own calendar. I was amazed people didn't know this when I was in fifth grade. I don't pretend to be some kind of genius, but geez people, read some books once in a while.

(Yes, this is flamebait. I've had 50+ karma since back when Karma was still counted in points, so I've earned some flamebait.)

Re:Sorry,

[thadman08]

AD is not an acronym for 'After Death,' but rather 'Anno Domini' (Latin: In the Year of Our Lord).

Re:Sorry,

[qengho]

Lord", right. Thanks.

Re:Sorry,

[schon]

"Annus" means "year"

umm, I'm sure theres a goatse joke in there somewhere.. :o)

Re:Sorry,

[Phreakiture]

The difficulty here is that the Latin phrase that would most likely indicate the period before Christ's birth would probably be "Ante Domini" (Before the Lord), ergo you would have a clash of abbreviations, since "Anno Domini" and "ante Domini" both abbreviate AD. Ergo, one phrase ends up in English, the other in Latin, purely by convention. Alternately, the politically correct terms (and the terms I use as a non-Christian) of BCE and CE, for "Before the Common Era" and "Common Era" eliminate this error.

BTW, this is most emphatically not an attempt to push the politically correct names on anyone. If you are comfortable with BC/AD, use them. They have the same definitions.

Re:Sorry,

[iabervon]

For that matter, Jesus was a left-wing radical who chewed out the relatively conservative and fundamentalist heads of organized religion. His big thing was really, "Forget about all this religious law stuff. Just be good people." That's about the least fundamentalist possible position. I'd put the start of fundamentalism at the Council of Nicea in 325, where dogma became something to be officially decided rather than discussed endlessly for the edification of the participants.

Re:Sorry,

[Anonymous Coward]

And I don't mean spelling errors. "Fundamentalism" in the way it's understood by many modern Western Christians is a relatively new phenomenon, and certainly it has very specific overtones that relate to 19th/20th century American Christianity.

It's a new term...but there have always been people who have taken their religion too far. History is rife with these jerks.

As for "stopped listening to Jews" perhaps the poster should acquaint himself with the book of Acts in which some of the discussions and controversies between Jews and Christians are described. Some of this was by way of preaching and dialog and, yes, some was by less pleasant methods.

Preaching and "less pleasant methods" doesn't involve listening to anyone. They involves telling them how to think/live, and forcing them into thinking/living in a certain way. IIRC, Acts didn't include too much in the way of actual meaningful dialog between the Jews and Christians. It did, however, have to do with the use of Judiasm in order for the Romans to allow Christianity.

I'm also not sure where you're going with your talk of Judiasm not being the same as it was 2000 (or so) years ago. Can you explain to me what that has to do with Gannoc's comment about fundamentalists not listening to Jews since 33CE?

Finally, in this instance, I rather like Hemos' editorial remarks.

Re:Sorry,

[bentcd]

Apparantly, according to wikipedia, they used to use "aCn" for BC, short for "ante Christum natum" or "before the birth of Christ". One wonders why they didn't just use "post" and "ante" and be done with it but that would probably be too simple I suppose.

Re:Sorry,

[Darby]

It's a new term...but there have always been people who have taken their religion too far. History is rife with these jerks.

Yep, and they won. Winners write the history.
That's why all modern interpretations of religions are based on whatever the most ruthless of the users (against the believers ) of the religions felt would serve them best. Sad but true.

Re:Sorry,

[Burb]

Forget about all this religious law stuff. Just be good people.

BUZZ - Incorrect

Jesus had enormous respect for what we now know as the Old Testament. When asked what the "greatest commandment" was he certainly didn't say to forget the regigious law stuff. What he did reject was the mass of accumulated pharisaical law that had accumulated on it like barnacles. He certainly advocated more of a personal relationship to God (addressing him as Abba - "Daddy" - in some situations) rather than feeling that God could only be approached through ritual. But he respected the core traditions and teaching of the O.T. He said he came not to overturn the old scriptures, but to fullfill them.

You are at liberty to agree or disagree with this as you will, but at least take the time to read the gospels before you make sweeping statements like that.

Not that I'm 100% a fan of the council of Nicea myself, you understand, as it tended to cement the Church to the civil authority in a way which was not wholly helpful through the middle ages.

Try reading the Epistle to the Hebrews to see ways in which the early church sought to reconcile it's approach to Jewish thought and scripture.

Re:Sorry,

[Phreakiture]

that would probably be too simple I suppose.

Most likely.

Re:Sorry,

[Anonymous Coward]

One wonders why they didn't just use "post" and "ante" and be done with it but that would probably be too simple I suppose.

I am not a historian nor a theologian. But I think the reason may be that Jesus has existed since the beginning of time (this is supported by the Gospel of John and stated explicitly in the Nicene Creed), and became man (human) at a specific moment. So it would be inaccurate to speak of a time before Our Lord.

Also, historically, Europeans typically dated events as occurring after a certain time. (e.g., the Roman 'ab urbe condita', etc.) So I suspect that aCn and BC were added on a lot later than AD was, and thus some inconsistency is not surprising.

Re:Sorry,

[bentcd]

You're probably on to something. I keep forgetting: history wasn't designed, it just happened :-)

time to stone Hemos I'm afraid

[Gothmolly]

Hemos, you have been found guilty, of uttering the name of our Lord, and so... as a BLASPHEMER, you are to be stoned to death!

Re:time to stone Hemos I'm afraid

[osullish]

A Stoning!! "Are there any women here?"

Re:time to stone Hemos I'm afraid

[MrByte420]

Nobody is to stone anyone until I say so - even if they do say JAHOVA. (i know - bad spelling)

Re:time to stone Hemos I'm afraid

[minus_273]

except that would really happen if it were Allah he had mocked.

Re:time to stone Hemos I'm afraid

[Anonymous Coward]

Fatwa?

Re:time to stone Hemos I'm afraid

[Hangin10]

Jahova starts with an I!!!

Re:time to stone Hemos I'm afraid

[drewzhrodague]

Okay, okay, I'll pack the bole *again*...

Re:time to stone Hemos I'm afraid

[Troed]

God, Jahwe and Allah are all the same entity. All three religions count Abraham as their ancestor.

(But maybe you did know that)

Re:time to stone Hemos I'm afraid

[minus_273]

depends on who you ask. keep in mind that the story of abraham is very different in islam. In fact muslims believe Ismael and not Issac was to be sacrificed which is a major difference. ( you might not have known that. )

Re:time to stone Hemos I'm afraid

[Troed]

Oh I knew :) I'm one of those white people living in a civilized western country who's actually _read_ the Quran to better understand the conflicts people sometimes attribute to Islam (which is largely false).

However, claiming (as you do) that there are people (and I hope you mean reputable sources) who do not believe Jahwe, God and Allah to be the same religious entity brings a burden of proof upon you.

The current fascist war regime in the US becomes so much more fun when you know that Bush is saying "Allah bless America" every now and then.

Re:time to stone Hemos I'm afraid

[minus_273]

another dhimmi moonbat flaps his wings. What tranlation of the koran did you read? the ones i have read tend to vary widely depending on the person translating it. And yes, some versions do call for the ritual killing of non believers which is extended to other people of the book (ie jews and christians).

feel free to be a dhimmi, its not my problem.

Re:time to stone Hemos I'm afraid

[Troed]

Feel free to reply again when you can back up your initial argument.

no

[Anonymous Coward]

*raises paw*

Unintelligent design

[Anonymous Coward]

Having looked at the design of life, especially humans. It is pretty obvious that the word "intelligent" cannot be applied to the design. I have also concluded that "survival of the fittest" based evolution possibly couldnt have resulted in such a weak and chaotic design. Therefore, I conclude that he only rational theory is that of unintelligent design.

Finally!!!

[xutopia]

I'm very glad they finally did this. It's about time IMO. The Catholic Church shouldn't continue to fight losing battles. Now please let women get ordained and priests get married.

Re:Finally!!!

[Ironsides]

I'm very glad they finally did this. It's about time IMO. The Catholic Church shouldn't continue to fight losing battles. Now please let women get ordained and priests get married.

Evolution, women becoming ordained and preists getting married are three entirely different subjects.

Evolution is scientific.

Women being ordained is theological. (By the way, can you find any instance of a judaic priest? rabbi!=priest)

Preists getting married is a thousand year old rule (not doctrine or theological in anyway) that was instituted by Pope Gregory VII so that priests would have more time to carry out theological work instead of having to take care of a family.

Re:Finally!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

The Catholic Church was one of the first to accept evolution - it's been taught in her schools for decades - so your ignorant statement that she "shouldn't continue to fight losing battles" is foolish. As for how you would like to restructure the Church, who asked you? Women can't be orthodox rabbis, aren't allowed to touch torah scrolls, or be scribes. So why not grace them with your uninvited suggestions on how to run their religion.

Re:Finally!!!

[Astatine210]

Now please let women get ordained and priests get married

...to each other, if they're so inclined.

Re:Finally!!!

[MaskedSlacker]

John Paul II did the same thing a while back, 1996 I believe. Pius XII made a similar declaration back in the 1950s(though not so thoroughly in favor of evolution, simply claiming that genesis was metaphor and allegory and depending on certain criterion evolution need not conflict with that).

Re:Finally!!!

[Foobar of Borg]

Preists getting married is a thousand year old rule (not doctrine or theological in anyway) that was instituted by Pope Gregory VII so that priests would have more time to carry out theological work instead of having to take care of a family.

It also had the added advantage of getting rid of nepotism, which was becoming a bit of a problem in Pope Gregory VII's time. It was kept later because the reasons you mentioned are still good reasons.

Re:Finally!!!

[Creedo]

Finally? Pope Pius XII issued the encyclical "Humani Generis" in 1950, which said that discussion of evolution SHOULD happen. And Pope John Paul II made his statement in 1996. And the Catechism(the official teaching manual of the Church), says:

"The question about the origins of the world and of man has been the object of many scientific studies that have splendidly enriched our knowledge of the age and dimensions of the cosmos, the development of life-forms and the appearance of man. These discoveries invite us to even greater admiration for the greatness of the Creator, prompting us to give him thanks for all his works and for the understanding and wisdom he gives to scholars and researchers" (CCC 283)

There has never been a pronouncement from the Vatican in opposition to evolution, only to the atheistic interpretation thereof.

As to priests and marriage, married priests are allowed in the Catholic Church. Suprised? Look up the Eastern Rite Churches, or the priests who converted from Lutheranism or Episcopalianism. It is a discipline in the Latin Rite(what most people think of when they think Catholic), but disciplines are not doctrine, and can be changed or modified at any time. And it's not like anyone is forced to be a priest in the first place.

As for ordaining women, that is, as JPII pointed out, a lack of authority. Jesus didn't ordain any women, so the Church doesn't either. If you find this unfair, feel free to become Episcopalian.

Re:Finally!!!

[king-manic]

Evolution, women becoming ordained and preists getting married are three entirely different subjects.

Evolution is scientific.

Women being ordained is theological. (By the way, can you find any instance of a judaic priest? rabbi!=priest)

Preists getting married is a thousand year old rule (not doctrine or theological in anyway) that was instituted by Pope Gregory VII so that priests would have more time to carry out theological work instead of having to take care of a family.

Also to stop preists from willing away church land to their children/wives/mitresses.

Re:Finally!!!

[Darby]

Jesus didn't ordain any women, so the Church doesn't either. If you find this unfair, feel free to become Episcopalian.

Or alternatively, dedicate your "moral" organization to raping children and covering it up. For centuries.

Re:Finally!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

But In The Da Vinci Code It Says...

kidding, but serious: did JC actually say women were not allowed to be his followers?

ID doesn't threaten Evolution...

[Anonymous Coward]

...It threatens Materialism.

Re:ID doesn't threaten Evolution...

[Anonymous Coward]

...It threatens Materialism.

I find your ideas fascinating, where do I subscribe to your newsletter?

Actually, ID doesn't threaten...anything. It's intellectually bereft.

Fascinating Esquire Article...

[leviramsey]

The current Esquire (in which Jessica Biel is crowned Sexiest Woman Alive) features an article on how intelligent design is more of a threat to Christianity than it is to science. I don't have the print publication handy, but that was basically the gist of it.

Online version of said article, but the meat of it is subscription only.

Re:Fascinating Esquire Article...

[osullish]

By meat - you mean the Jessica Alba part??

Science and religion

[thewiz]

I was raised to be a Roman Catholic and even went to an all-boys Catholic school. Funny thing is the priests taught us evolution in science class. In theology, they taught us that the story of Genesis was a euphemism that was used by the writers of the Bible to explain how the universe came to be because they didn't understand the universe as we do today! (and, yes, we still have much to learn ourselves)
There is nothing incompatible between religion and science since, as a newspaper columnist pointed out recently, science is about HOW we came to be here and religion is about WHY we are here. Unfortunately, the rise of the televangelists and other people who claim that a literal reading of the Bible is the only way to understand it miss some of the points that the stories try to make. For example, the story of the loaves and fishes isn't about Jesus "magically" making more bread and fish appear to feed a crowd. The story is about Jesus leading by example, giving what little food he had to the crowd and the each person in the crowd adding what little they had to it to feed everyone. Showing that being charitable is the way to encourage others to do the same is the "miracle". This is the kind of stuff I learned in Catholic school.
I also find it funny that so many evangelicals are willing to believe Jesus did "miracles" (aka magic) but don't want their kids reading Harry Potter books because magic is "Satanic".

Re:Science and religion

[Jeff DeMaagd]

On the flip side, I had an English teacher in high school that went to Catholic schools and had never heard of evolution until she went to college. She said that she was completely caught off guard.

Re:Science and religion

[marcop]

I believe in the literal translation of the Bible. I believe that the Bible is God's words (penned by men who were moved by the Holy Spirit) and thus must be followed because it is what God wants for us.

If we say that it is open to interpretation because it only has some nice stories, then what parts do we follow and what parts are just there as example? This leaves a wide door open for man's imperfect interjection of man's own beliefs.

For me, I have faith in the Bible because (by faith) I have chosen to believe it is God's literal word. As such, I will follow its teachings the best I can. However, if I believed that the Bible had man's interpretation in it, then I would view it as any other book. For me it's all or nothing.

BTW, this doesn't forbid me from learning and understanding the theory of evolution. I commend your school for teaching both in their respective classes. As many people here on /. has said - keep science in science class and religion in a theology class. Teach students boths sides then let them decide what to believe in.

Re:Science and religion

[BewireNomali]

I went to a catholic school too. They too taught evolution. Genesis was pitched to us as a metaphor.

interestingly enough, much of religious fervor came from the women. The sisters and nuns were more fundamental and had more literal interpretations of scripture. The brothers/priests/etc. tended to accept that Catholicism was more a paradigm for a way of living as opposed to an exact accounting. One priest even told us that he thought that the Jesus story was highly inaccurate, and sincerely doubted that the ressurection occured. We looked at him, dumbfounded, and he continued as if he'd never said it.

I stopped believing in God when I was ten. It scared me: I went to my math teacher at the time, a really nice guy named Mr. Bain. I told him I'd stopped believing in God. He told me that he didn't really believe in God either, but that he occasionally played both sides of the fence in case God was really this angry spiteful uberbeing. Coolest teacher ever. He also told me not to tell the nuns and to pray and stuff like everything was normal.

The point of this post is to say: Religious institutions are hindered by the lowest common denominators in their populations, much like any other group. Those who refuse to let go of antiquated notions hold up the entire institution. In my experience, it was the nuns at Holy Name of Jesus; in the case of religion in general, it's the fundamentalists and hardliners.

Is there virtue in religion? Yes. Many people would not be able to justify a life outside of a religious context. This is not good. Those of us who are comfortable outside of that context shouldn't necessarily try to undermine the entire lives of those who are not. I don't think it's constructive.

Re:Science and religion

[grixnair]

I have to agree with this, leave evolution in the science class and put intelligent design back in theology or philosophy where it belongs. It's not a scientific theory, it's a philosophical one.

Re:Science and religion

[MBCook]

I went to a Catholic highschool about 5 years ago and as a senior in biology there was a girl in my class that was the same way (which amazed me).

But in my Catholic school, teaching evolution went something like this: "I'm about to teach you evolution. The Church supports it. You don't have to believe it. (teach evolution like a public school would)". I don't even think that was neccessary.

Re:Science and religion

[Dixie_Flatline]

It's worth noting that Gregor Mendel was a monk, obviously religious, and now is someone so important to our knowledge of basic genetics that we all learn about him in high school. Scholars of all kinds have come out of Churches and religions, so it's depressing how big a step back we're starting to take. If Mendel had been an IDer, he would have given up the moment he saw two different breeds of peas and declared the whole situation unknowable.

I've started to notice a different breed of religious person that I like to call the rational religious. I'm sure they've existed throughout the ages, but they seem to be scarce. Thankfully, they're becoming more populous. Of course, these are the people that understand not only science, but their faith and themselves. More and more, I've seen that people that don't understand science don't understand their church or themselves either.

Re:Science and religion

[djward]

But, if you take it literally as written, how do you resolve the conflicts between various passages without some amount of interpretation?

Re:Science and religion

[alan_dershowitz]

I also find it funny that so many evangelicals are willing to believe Jesus did "miracles" (aka magic) but don't want their kids reading Harry Potter books because magic is "Satanic".

Why is this hard to understand? One comes from God, the other from Satan. It's not the magic, it's the source.

What I find funny is how in Catholic schools (at least the one I went to, university-level) the pastors teach what you are talking about, that most of these stories are metaphors, but you have to believe in transubstantiation, that in Holy Communion, the sacrament is LITERALLY transformed into the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ. Talk about selective blindness.

Re:Science and religion

[uncoolcentral]

science is about HOW we came to be here and religion is about WHY we are here.

I don't know about that.

Though I'm pretty comfortable with your science assessment, the religion tag is somewhat off.

Religion, like politics and perhaps even science on some levels, can be reduced to the $oma of controlling (or at least influencing) masses.

To where is it that good intentions pave the path?
So many things look great on paper.

"What a world. What a world." -Wicked Witch (West)

Re:Science and religion

[garcia]

On the other flip side, I had English teachers in high-school that told us how to properly "interpret" and answer questions about specific pieces of literature. It wasn't until college that I was told that "interpretation" meant free thinking. I was completely caught of guard.

Re:Science and religion

[Anonymous Coward]

On the flip side, I had an English teacher in high school that went to Catholic schools and had never heard of evolution until she went to college. She said that she was completely caught off guard.

So? I've met lots of teachers who seem to have slept thru most of their schooling, just like
the rest of us.

Re:Science and religion

[jsebrech]

For me, I have faith in the Bible because (by faith) I have chosen to believe it is God's literal word.

Tell me, what version of the bible is the literal and entire truth, and why is it only that version and no others?

Re:Science and religion

[kin_korn_karn]

They've always been there, but they are by nature quiet and thoughtful people. The apocalyptic rantings of the zealots are forcing them to speak up.

Re:Science and religion

[Surt]

Why not just open yourself to the holy spirit, and let that guide you like those who wrote the bible, rather than trust that no man since two thousand years ago has been able to introduce corruption into the text of the bible.

If you don't believe the text of the bible can be corrupted, I'd be happy to demonstrate otherwise.

You should put your trust in god, not the bible.

Re:Science and religion

[CheshireCatCO]

So if you take all of the Bible literally, how do you handle things that we KNOW aren't accurate? Like "floodgates of heaven" to explain rain? Or a value of pi that's exactly three? The fact that the Bible pretty explicitly supports a geocentric universe, if you don't allow for any interpretation?

The way I see it, you can't refuse to allow any interpretation. If you do, the book is clearly wrong and therefore it's all suspect. So unless you're really keen on ignoring reality, you need to ask how *much* interpretation to allow. You might disagree with other people on where to draw the line, but that's a very different beast from saying that the Bible is literally true, no interpretation allowed.

Re:Science and religion

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, this is how the bible SHOULD be interpreted. C'mon, that is just as bad fundamentalism. I can think of three reasonable, alternative interpretations of the same parable. Which is great, but please start such posts with 'what I think...' or 'in my opinion', rather than saying 'so and so IS NOT' or 'so and so IS'. I happen to believe in magic.

Re:Science and religion

[MaskedSlacker]

Older time, curriculums change with Papal Bulls. Catholicism is hardly set in stone, unlike some of the evangelist protestant religions.

Re:Science and religion

[geoffrobinson]

There is a difference between saying Genesis Chapter 1 is not trying to give a detailed scientific explanation and saying the point of Jesus' story was about leading and not magic. No, the people who knew Jesus believed he performed miracles. They claimed to see him risen from the dead. And they were writing those books to relate what they saw and heard. And then went out and died for what they were talking about.

Re:Science and religion

[MightyMartian]

A science class is meant for science, and not for religious claims. ID isn't science, and doesn't belong in a science class.

As to teaching students both sides, we don't teach them geocentrism vs. heliocentrism or the Holocaust vs. Holocaust Denial. Why should your religious beliefs be given some special place while other "competing" ideas do not? Teach your own kids whatever you like, call whatever science that disagrees with your theological premises false. But in the science class, only science ought be taught, and even more importantly, a public school should not be a place of religious indoctrination. We have churches, temples, synagogues and the home to do that. I want my kids to understand science, and not to be given the false idea that Intelligent Design is some sort of equivalent and equal assertion to evolutionary theory.

Re:Science and religion

[Anonymous Coward]

I find it interesting that your email is lazyrus...

Re:Science and religion

[Anonymous Coward]

Its nice to know that the science geeks can speak with authority on the biggest mysteries of the universe. Why are we here? As for the bible, many faithful believe that the bible is the will of God expressed through the hand of man. For many faithful, the bible is devine and the stories of miracles are true. As a believer, who am I to decide what is truly from God and what is not. Do I have to interpret Genesis literally? Maybe, but I am pretty sure Jesus said love thy neighbor, among some other revolutionary things. Not debate the first 10 books of the bible forsaking all other actions. I am grateful that Jesus died for my sins, and I pray that I can continue to do his will.

If you call me narrow minded, please re-read what I have said. There is not one "you" in the above paragraph. Please stop being bigots in terms of what people choose to believe. I think a fundamental belief of the American Republic is Freedom of Religion.

Now.. back to linux discussions.

Re:Science and religion

[DrYokomohoyo]

For me, I have faith in the Bible because (by faith) I have chosen to believe it is God's literal word. As such, I will follow its teachings the best I can. However, if I believed that the Bible had man's interpretation in it, then I would view it as any other book. For me it's all or nothing.

The bible as it is read now is mostly based on the King James version or some relatively recent variant of the same. Even though great effort was made to make an accurate translation obviously english was not the language these stories was written in by the original authors and hence much is presumably lost during the effort.

I respect the fact that you have chosen to believe in the bible as a literal work. But certainly it must be clear that the book did not come shipped directly from GOD in your favorite language, and that man has had a hand in organizing both content and the language as he sees fit. Diff King James version and some of the more recent Methodist texts for a good example of use of clever editing.

Re:Science and religion

[bentcd]

The "rational Christian" has always been around, and in the 13th century, Thomas Aquinas finally finished the work that others had begun before him and delivered a good philosophy of how and why Christianity and science were to go hand in hand. This has been the Catholic church's official policy ever since, even if church politics have gotten in the way from time to time (such as during the counter reformation when things could get really nasty).

Re:Science and religion

[Chrononium]

Transubstantiation is a cornerstone of the faith because it underlies the importance of a Sacrament. Each of the Sacraments requires you to interact with God in some intimate way. The Sacrament of Reconciliation means something because Catholics believe that God really does forgive your sins when the priest absolves them. Mysterious? Yes. Magical? No, because we believe the source is God.

Perhaps the stories are metaphors or perhaps the stories are literally true. But if Jesus is more than a man, then it should be possible that the stories are true (at least NT).

A different way: the Bible is a collection of books, each written by humans and copied many times over by humans. Catholics (the only Christian church at the time) determined the order and set of books to be regarded as the Bible. The Bible is a Catholic book. The included books were selected by committee, but it is believed that the Holy Spirit (ya know, the third person of the Trinity, sometimes referred to as the Holy Ghost) guided the committee by guiding those individuals. Without that piece of faith, it all looks arbitrary (or in your words, selectively blind).

Re:Science and religion

[Anonymous Coward]

This post is somewhat offtopic.

While most of the parent post is correct, the Catholic Church has declared that the story of the loaves and the fishes cannot be interpreted as the parent suggested. Regretfully, he may have been taught that in Catholic school, but that only indicates that the school was not faithfully transmitting Catholic teaching.

The loaves and the fishes represented a miracle, prefiguring the miracle of the Eucharist, and the literal reading is the correct one. Even without the guidance of Sacred Tradition to rely upon, the proposed figurative meaning does not make any logical sense. Why would the apostles be so amazed to collect more leftovers than they started with if it merely showed how people had been induced to share? Why would the author of the gospels include the loaves and the fishes among Jesus's other miracles if it was merely an example of using human psychology? After all, the gospel writers had seem Him perform miracles such as touching His cloak causing healing, turning water into wine, restoring the dead to life, and rising from the dead. Why would an obvious trick of psychology impress or surprise those who had seen Him perform real miracles? Nor would the account have been written as it was. Only the literal, miraculous interpretation of this passage makes any sense, and from the official Catholic perspective, any other interpretation is heretical.

Re:Science and religion

[cens0r]

I believe in the literal translation of the Bible. I believe that the Bible is God's words (penned by men who were moved by the Holy Spirit) and thus must be followed because it is what God wants for us.

So what do you do when it contradicts itself?

Re:Science and religion

[Xophmeister]

I also find it funny that so many evangelicals are willing to believe Jesus did "miracles" (aka magic) but don't want their kids reading Harry Potter books because magic is "Satanic".

This is going to sound a bit low-brow compared to the other replies on this thread, but the Harry Potter idea has come to me... It's a very popular book (although this argument could apply to anything suitable: LotR for example). It has a large fandom and cult status. Maybe it won't last, but what if it does? What if it does and the fiction of it is some how lost? Imagine a future where Harry is worshipped as some ancient, prodical son.

I realise this is glib, but what if whoever penned the Bible was that day-in-age's JKR?

Re:Science and religion

[IWorkForMorons]

Diff King James version and some of the more recent Methodist texts for a good example of use of clever editing.

Got any links to the differences? I have been invited to a Bible study group and noticed that we're using different versions. I am not a fundie, nor do I even identify as a Christian, but I like the idea of discussing the stories from an intellectual point of view without the religion clouding the interpretation. So I'd definately like to find something that points out the differences.

Re:Science and religion

[Zathrus]

I believe in the literal translation of the Bible.

I presume that you mean that you believe that the Bible is the literal word of God -- the rest of your statements support that. Using the word "translation" there is a bit confusing because...

If we say that it is open to interpretation because it only has some nice stories, then what parts do we follow and what parts are just there as example?

So you're reading the original Hebrew and Greek texts? Because anything else is an interpretation. Or do you think that one particular translation (into language of your choice) is the correct and ordained one? If so, which?

And if you do read the original Hebrew and Greek texts... well, first -- congradulations. Second, how do you understand them? See, the problem is that the ancient dialect of Hebrew that was used was a bit... ambiguous. It did not capture the entirety of human language, and was essentially the equivalent of modern day shorthand. In modern translations the exact same source word can be translated to wildly different English words.

Re:Science and religion

[alan_dershowitz]

How do you deal with things like Leviticus 11:19 where Moses says that Bats are a type of bird?

Or for that matter, if you literally have to believe that the "Bible" is perfect, which one do you mean? Because there have been many, many versions with misprints, including the first Vulgate Bible, that had so many errors that it was recalled because it was making people question how a Bible could be the perfect word of God but have typos?

Which version of the Bible? Over the years many books have had verses changed and redacted. The catholics and the protestants have different books. The book of Job was (intentionally) mangled so badly in the King James Version that it is literally WRONG. As in, it was intentionally changed for political reasons to remove the actual actions and motivations of Job, because he questioned GOD HIMSELF and got away with it. If you can question God, this brings up two points, namely that you don't need an intermediary to talk to God, and secondly, If you can question GOD'S authority, that de facto gives you the right to question any authority.

I'm not trying to trash on your faith, that's good that you have something to believe in that gives your life purpose and makes you want to be a better person. I just don't see how you can fall back on the Bible being the literal word of God, it just can't be, there's too many problems. I had the same mindset for a long time, all or nothing. I had to throw that away to keep my faith. If you believe in God, I assume there is a reason. I know there is a God because I received irrefutable proof. What I don't have proof of is the literal truth of the Bible, and in fact I have proof of the contrary. Maybe you have had an affirming experience like this, maybe you haven't. You might be afraid that you know a lot less about God than you are comfortable with if the Bible is not literally true. Looking the other direction is not faith, it's blindness. Real religion is as tough as real life.

Re:Science and religion

[Rich0]

Regardless of how you feel on evolution, creation, the bible, etc, this argument sounds like telling people just to follow their consciences and not worry about what the law says. After all, laws were created based on the consciences of various people, so why look at the law when you have your own conscience to follow. Of course, that would lead to chaos.

Do you really want a world where morality is defined as whatever the Holy Spirit tells somebody to do? Nobody could hold up or condemn the behavior of another person since there would be no way of knowing whether the Holy Spirit really did tell them to kill somebody. Right now when people make that claim religious leaders typically debunk it on the grounds that the documents that this action was inconsistent with God's behavior as it is revealed in that religion.

Your solution seems to fix the problem with every religion having different teachings on some topics with every religion not having any teachings on any topics...

Re:Science and religion

[Anonymous Coward]

That's why my sect believes in *only* in literal Biblical text as scanned directly from the original scrolls, converted into electronic form using the Apple Newton's text recognition software, and translated into English by Bablefish. This procedure is completely unbiased, as it has eliminated the possibility of anyone interjecting their own flawed interpretations into the text.

Re:Science and religion

[DrYokomohoyo]

Perhaps this might help, there are some verse by verse comparisons of different wording. Although there appear to be greater gaps in other texts pertaining to Mary which I am unable to find right now.

Re:Science and religion

[Bogtha]

Funny thing is the priests taught us evolution in science class. In theology, they taught us that the story of Genesis was a euphemism that was used by the writers of the Bible to explain how the universe came to be because they didn't understand the universe as we do today!

Now apply that reasoning to the rest of the Bible.

There is nothing incompatible between religion and science since, as a newspaper columnist pointed out recently, science is about HOW we came to be here and religion is about WHY we are here.

Well that depends on which religion, doesn't it? If a particular religion claims that a god (has|will) interfere(d) with day-to-day life, then it can easily contradict science.

Re:Science and religion

[Fallingcow]

One priest even told us that he thought that the Jesus story was highly inaccurate, and sincerely doubted that the ressurection occured. We looked at him, dumbfounded, and he continued as if he'd never said it.

Ever watch Father Ted?

That guy sounds like Father Dougal. Some quotes:

Father Dougal: God, I've heard about those cults Ted. People dressing up in black and saying Our Lord's going to come back and save us all.
Father Ted: No, Dougal, that's us. That's Catholicism.
Father Dougal: Oh right.

Father Ted: There he is so. Risen from the dead. Like that fella... ET (OK, this one wasn't Dougal)

Father Dougal: Do you believe in God, then Ted?

Re:Science and religion

[Anonymous Coward]

The story is about Jesus leading by example, giving what little food he had to the crowd and the each person in the crowd adding what little they had to it to feed everyone. Showing that being charitable is the way to encourage others to do the same is the "miracle".

A key point of this, which I'm afraid most people will overlook, is that Jesus' charity was based on free will. He did not employ coercion, as government does, as a means to achieve his goal. He achieved his goals of charity through persuasion, not coercion.

My point is that advocates of the welfare state (and state power in general) don't support charity, despite what they claim. If they actually did support charity, then it would be achieved through free will. On the contrary, what they really support is coercion, which of course is exactly what hides behind their smokescreen of "charity".

Re:Science and religion

[Surt]

I can't really see how this is different from what we have now.

Since you cannot take in information without interpretation, you must in fact interpret the bible. Literalists try to interpret as little as they can, but even they wind up in severe disagreements about what the bible says, or which translation is correct.

As to being told to kill: God told people they should kill in the bible. Why shouldn't that happen today? And frankly, if you are a true believer, you shouldn't care what society says is right, you ought to listen to what God tells you is right. There are plenty of examples in the bible where the prevailing belief is wrong, and God tells a small sub group what the right thing to do is.

A better model for knowing what action is moral is the Kohlberg scale, it frees you from having to worry about whether your society or your religion has gotten things quite right in their understanding of what God wants.

The law (society's) exists to offer combined force to enforce behaviours we deem preferable as a group. God's law offers even greater force to enforce his desired behaviours. As a person, you typically decide which one you will give preference if they are in conflict. Supposing you choose God's law as your highest preference: if God tells you to kill, you better obey, and you should do so sure in the knowledge that God will reward you for doing so, and you should do so without fear of society's punishment, because presumably you have confidence that God's threat is so much greater.

The real problem, which I think your post is pointing out, is that there is no way to trust any particular religion's teachings as being directly connected to God's law. Better to either trust a personal connection with God, or perhaps better yet to go with society's law, or maybe even the best to get a deep understanding of the Kohlberg stages.

A good summary of the Kohlberg stages for anyone who doesn't know what they are:
http://faculty.plts.edu/gpence/html/kohlberg.htm

Re:Science and religion

[mcsestretch]

The Bible is meant to give us insight into the mind of God. It is a "dumbed down" version of God's will to mankind. Why "dumbed down"? Because human beings are stupid, selfish and sinful. There's no way we can understand God because he is holy and righteous and we aren't anything remotely close. We definitely should listen to the Holy Spirit for many reasons (He's the author, He understands God, etc.). However, we should also turn to the Bible because it gives guidance for our everyday lives.

Re: Science and religion

[Black Parrot]

> I believe in the literal translation of the Bible. I believe that the Bible is God's words (penned by men who were moved by the Holy Spirit) and thus must be followed because it is what God wants for us.

You know, someone could with equal rationality make the same claim about the Enûma Elish, The Poetic Edda, "The Call of Cthulhu", the writings of Rael or Hubbard or Flint.

Re:Science and religion

[dubious9]

He told me that he didn't really believe in God either, but that he occasionally played both sides of the fence in case God was really this angry spiteful uberbeing.

Sounds a bit like Pascal's Wager

Re:Science and religion

[lieut_data]

In a day and age with Google, you'd think one would research just ever so slightly before making false claims.

Answers in Genesis

"It is thus abundantly clear that the Bible does not defy geometry with regard to the value of p, and in particular it does not say that p = 3.0. Skeptics who allege an inaccuracy are wrong, because they fail to take into account all the data. The Bible is reliable, and seeming discrepancies vanish on closer examination."

Re:Science and religion

[halivar]

The differences between versions are largely a matter of preference. The New International Version places emphasis on phrasal translation, while the New American Standard emphasizes a tighter word-for-word translation (good for referencing against hebrew or greek, but otherwise hard to read). More contemporary translations also try to update some of the more archaic idioms that confuse modern readers.

There are very few translations that most Christians consider "wrong". The King James Version, for instance, was written without access to many of the oldest original language texts we have today, and the style of English it is written in has... well... passed on. The English language as presented is no longer spoken today. Other versions, such as the New World Translation written by the Jehovah's Witnesses, makes deliberate changes to support doctrines not espoused by the original language. Most such bibles, however, are dismissed because there is little to known expert involvement. Most widely accepted bibles today are translated by a large board of academics in philology (and other stuff like that with big words that escape me right now).

In general, the wide variety of bible translations presents no trouble at all to the modern church. The pastor preaches in one version, I read in another. It's no biggie.

Re:Science and religion

[thewiz]

I believe in the literal translation of the Bible. I believe that the Bible is God's words (penned by men who were moved by the Holy Spirit) and thus must be followed because it is what God wants for us.

Did you ever think that God had the foresight to realize that the men He chose to write the Bible wouldn't understand something as complex as evolution? Have you ever considered that a being, supposidly one who is omnescent and infinite, would realize that He had to explain things to His followers in a way and with words and concepts they'd understand? If you really believe that ALL of the Bible is absolutely true, I invite you to go teach a tribe in the deep Amazon quantum mechanics without giving them the requisite college education first.

I'm as Christian as you are, but I really wonder about people like you who seem to think God meant for this universe to be static and unchanging. I don't know if you've noticed, but this whole universe is about learning and growing; He wants us to become more than we currently are, not stagnate. Questioning your faith and what is written in the Bible is perfectly acceptable as it deepens your faith and understanding of what He wants for us and of us.

Try using the mind God gave you to understand His word. Also realize that He gave us all free-will and He wants people to believe in Him of their own free-will, not to be mindless slaves.

Re:Science and religion

[mcsestretch]

"Floodgates of heaven" is a modern phrasing of ancient text. "Floodgates" is the word arubbah (pardon the spelling) which can mean lattice, window, dove cot, chimney, sluice (with openings for water). It's a figurative statement to help the reader understand. No modern translation is perfect. Heck, most are probably wildly inaccurate about small details (7 "days" to create the world should have been 7 "lengths of time", etc.). However, one thing IS clear, regardless of translation: Jesus Christ was the son of God and God personified. He came to earth to save you and me from our sins. All we have to do is to accept him as savior. That is made abundantly clear in all versions and there is no contradiction of that.

Re:Science and religion

[Fiver-]

I respect the fact that you have chosen to believe in the bible as a literal work.

Respect? Really? That's the word you meant to use? Ah!, perhaps it has a different definition in your part of the world. Okay. I too respect his choice. I respect his complete lack of critical thinking. I respect his slavish adherance to the fairy tales of his childhood.

I think Orwell himself would be jaw-droppingly astounded at the kind of Double-Think that must go on in the minds of Bible literalist. The kind of self-censoring that must occur in order to keep the truth of those stories intact. Fuck! the sheer amount of information one would have to ignore or cast out! And all for nothing.

Re:Science and religion

[russellh]

I believe you. You are awesome. But bible literalism and ID is no better or worse than catholic statues crying blood or relics from the crucifixion. ignorance is always a huge problem - the biggest problem. the televangelists just play it up. no different than any other corrupt religious leaders.

Re:Science and religion

[flyinwhitey]

"If we say that it is open to interpretation because it only has some nice stories, then what parts do we follow and what parts are just there as example?"

Well, I suggest you start with stoning the homosexuals to death, then go from there.

Wouldn't want to be accused of injecting your own beliefs.

Re:Science and religion

[vertinox]

Tell me, what version of the bible is the literal and entire truth, and why is it only that version and no others?

Personally, I like the version that was commisioned by a suspected homesexual who wrote about Demonology and attended witch trials.

*coughs*

Re:Science and religion

[carlcmc]

The bible is accurate. Try reading with an understanding that there are multiple ways to say things.

I don't suppose you go around accusing people of lying when they say it is raining cats and dogs do you?

Re:Science and religion

[CheshireCatCO]

I've read the relevent passages, here. They say what I indicated. Your link provides only hand-waving arguments to the contrary. I think we all agree that pi rounds to three, but that still means that the Bible is not the literal truth. I mean, come on: the word "approximately" should have been inserted if they wanted to be perfectly accurate and still write thirty and ten.

Re:Science and religion

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny thing is the priests taught us evolution in science class. In theology, they taught us that the story of Genesis was a euphemism that was used by the writers of the Bible to explain how the universe came to be because they didn't understand the universe as we do today!

So...in your view, your god is incapable of ensuring that what he wants to communicate is communicated properly.

God is capable of and did communicate specifically what He intended us to understand. He created the universe and everything in it in 6 24 hour periods and rested on the 7th. Precisely as the Hebrew states and in direct denial of the OP's claims.

There is nothing incompatible between religion and science since, as a newspaper columnist pointed out recently, science is about HOW we came to be here and religion is about WHY we are here.

The problem is not one of 'compatibility' between science and religion. It is one of assuming man's wisdom exceeds God's and thus that we do not have to believe God. God created the universe and all that is in it, including man. Yet man has the audacity to assume his wisdom is greater then God's.

[...] the story of the loaves and fishes isn't about Jesus "magically" making more bread and fish appear to feed a crowd. The story is about Jesus leading by example, giving what little food he had to the crowd and the each person in the crowd adding what little they had to it to feed everyone.

Wow! As many times as I have read the accounts of the feeding of the five thousand, I missed this?!?!?! Please ... enlighten us: where exactly do you get that idea in the Bible? In doing some reading, I find that the accounts of the feeding of the five thousand (Matt. 14:13 - 21, Mark 6:30 - 44, Luke 9: 10 - 17, John 6:1 - 14) and the feeding of the four thousand (Matt. 15:32 - 38, Mark 8:1 - 9) all clearly state that the people did not have anything to eat of their own. Jesus did perform the miracles you deny, He created the foodstuffs in abundance for those who where there. For the Creator of the universe this presented no difficulty.

I also find it funny that so many evangelicals are willing to believe Jesus did "miracles" (aka magic) but don't want their kids reading Harry Potter books because magic is "Satanic".

Miracle != magic. Miracles are God's direct action in the world to show His approval of the messanger and to bring glory to God. Magic is man's attempts to imply or invoke supernatural actions on his behave to bring glory to him. A miracle always works good to its recipient.

The 'magic' of Harry Potter is clearly self-serving and, by definition, Satanic. The evangelicals you attempt to ridicule have it correct. But if you had read your Bible, you would have known that.

Re:Science and religion

[Anonymous Coward]

except the JRK wasn't trying to write a story to control the masses... or maybe you are right and she will be the next L.Ron Hubbard

Re:Science and religion

[CheshireCatCO]

No, but I believe that I am allowed to interpret that expression and that I should take what people says as literally true. Which is the point here, isn't it?

Re:Science and religion

[Anonymous Coward]

Or how about the difference of the number of books between the Old Testament sections of the Catholic and Protestant Bibles, and again the Hewbrew Torah? What about the Dead Sea Scrolls?

Or we could even get into the whole Angel thing which find the vast majority of their information in a distinctly non-Bible book. The whole 7 Choir thing was made up afterwards

Or even the entire Satan thing. (Quoted from here) The Satan of the Hebrew Bible -- who appears briefly in Job, Zechariah, and Chronicles -- is not the "fallen angel" or "prince of Hell" we find in Christian tradition. Rather, he is in literal Hebrew an "adversary" in the Lord's service whose job is to provoke proud mortals to overplay their hands. If the serpent who tempts Eve is really Satan, it never says so in Genesis. In fact, there is no "devil" at all in the Hebrew Bible. The Devil mythology was created in the Middle Ages by a church that needed a way to control the masses.

Look, I was born and raised Catholic, went to the requisite All-Boys School in Chicago and like a previous poster, the Brothers taught us that Evolution was HOW we got here and the Bible told us the moralities of WHY we are here and HOW TO ACT.

The Bible, just like the Torah and the Koran and Holy Books in the sense that they tell us how we should act towards each other; Don't kill each other, be nice to each other, act kindly.... Get Along!!! It's when those books are read as literal when we start getting into trouble. I don't think I need to explain the results of reading those books in a literal manner.

ID is an intersting hypothesis but it is by no means science. If a Bible Study group wants to talk about it to it's members, more power to them, but it has no place in the Class Room where Science is taught.

Re:Science and religion

[CheshireCatCO]

I'm not arguing with that part of the Bible. Nor am I saying that the entire work is BS. If you read what I wrote carefully, you'll see that all I'm saying is that you need to interpret what's in there. You seem to be agreeing with this without realizing it.

Re:Science and religion

[walmartshopper]

For example, the story of the loaves and fishes isn't about Jesus "magically" making more bread and fish appear to feed a crowd. The story is about Jesus leading by example, giving what little food he had to the crowd and the each person in the crowd adding what little they had to it to feed everyone. Showing that being charitable is the way to encourage others to do the same is the "miracle".

If Jesus Christ is God in human flesh, as the Bible clearly portrays him, why do you have a hard time believing that He can do actual miracles? What about walking on water? Or healing Peter's chopped off ear? The dominant message of the New Testament, besides the Gospels, is having FAITH. Who cares if there is no scientific explanation for what He did. The whole point of the Gospels, especially John, is that Jesus IS God. You shouldn't have any problem believing that He could do something above and beyond science. Being charitable and encouraging others to do the same is not a miracle at all. How then, would you explain the ressurection of Christ? The whole faith rests on the truth that Christ raised from the grave. Catholics believe that Christ raised from the dead. This is a much greater miracle than feeding 5000+ people with 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish. It's an a fortiori argument. If Christ can do the greater miracle, why couldn't he do the smaller miracle? Just some food for thought.

Re:Science and religion

[jsebrech]

The protestant bible has fewer books than the roman catholic bible. Are you saying those books just don't matter? Or are protestants just not christians in your opinion? If so, why not? Why don't they have it right, with what books belong in the bible?

Or how about the torah? It is what the old testament is based on, yet not identical in content. Several books were dropped to make the old testament. If god meant for the torah to be "part one", why were those books dropped? And if god didn't mean the torah as part one, why did it end up in the bible?

And that's not even getting into the varied recordings of how the orthodox faction in the early christian church supposedly drastically re-engineered the bible canon several times, adding and dropping whole books.

Re:Science and religion

[FooAtWFU]

I'm curious: If your belief in the bible is literal, what do you make of John 6:48-58 and other distressingly Catholic passages?

Re:Science and religion

[olewis]

Let me first say that Catholics, and therefore the Pope, do not speak for all of Christianity (just in case anyone is not clear on that).
Next, let me say that newspaper columnist missed something. Yes, religion is about why we are here, but, in the case of Christianity and the bible, we are also told how we got here. God wanted more than relationship with the angels he had created. He wanted something that had free will and could choose to commune with Him or not.
You can not take away the Genesis account of creation. To do so invalidates all other portions of the scriptures. You can not interpret the six days of creation as anything but six 24 hour days. God defined the day and night right at the beginning so there would be no question. Genesis shows God's plan for us from the beginning and how Jesus would defeat death and Satan by taking on our sins on the cross and making a way for us to be forgiven and live eternally in heaven with Him. Take away any part of Genesis, and you destroy the rest of it.
Science and religion can go hand in hand. Scientists/biologists/archeoligists are constantly proving the bible right.
I can't speak for others, but my problem with Harry Potter is that it teaches/supports/popularizes witchcraft, which is satanic (does not bring honor or glory to God). Jesus gives all honor and glory to God in all he did and does.

Re:Science and religion

[agent4043]

You can believe the bible to be the inspired word of God and without error while not taking everything literally. After all, it isn't all theology. There are many forms of literature from poetry to history all with different intentions and for different purposes. When you interpret the bible you need to consider things like the culture, the language, the audience, the author's circumstances, etc.

The majority of the Old Testament is written in Hebrew which is a highly emotional and poetic language. Many words sound the same or have multiple meanings. Taking theology straight from the OT is asking for misinterpretation. What the OT serves to do is introduce you to who God is, how he works, and the emotions that go with Him.

The New Testament however was written primarily in Greek and is a very precise language therefore it can be interpreted much more literally. This is why it was chosen for theology. There are still stories and parables but the language allows you to do much more thorough word studies to understand the exact nature of each word.

Re:Science and religion

[Anonymous Coward]

Well... the original!
The one that was given to Israel more than 3000 years ago.
Or, if you want to decide based only on physical evidence, the one that is at least 2200 years old (evidence: Dead See Scrolls).
All translations are non-literal. That's why we call them "Translations"!

Re:Science and religion

[CheshireCatCO]

" You can believe the bible to be the inspired word of God and without error while not taking everything literally."

I do believe that you're making my point. The fact that you pretty much HAVE to accept that parts need to be interpretted doesn't make that the whole thing is bunk. It just opens up the debate about how to interpret. But the view that the book is all literally true is untenable and is also too dogmatic to allow for any real discussion.

Re:Science and religion

[UtucXul]

which is satanic (does not bring honor or glory to God).

Interesting definition of satanic. I thought it meant "of or relating to satan". Does your posting on slashdot bring honor or glory to god? How about eating a sandwhich? Doesn't that make both of them satanic by your definition?

Re:Science and religion

[aqfire]

So if you take all of the Bible literally, how do you handle things that we KNOW aren't accurate? Like "floodgates of heaven" to explain rain? Or a value of pi that's exactly three? The fact that the Bible pretty explicitly supports a geocentric universe, if you don't allow for any interpretation?

Well, besides the fact that I don't remember the value of pi being defined in the Bible, the text should be interpreted precisely like any intelligent person would interpret text. Determine the purpose first. For example, Psalms are poems, and so they are largely allegory, while Genesis is taken more literally since its purpose is to account history. I hope you can see that in a book designed to recount history, a sentence like:

Genesis 7:11 In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, on the seventeenth day of the second month--on that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened.

should be taken as a description, literal in context but not literal in subject (as if there were actual flood gates in the sky). The writer relied on our discernment to understand that. Was he mislead to assume you could tell the difference?

No one would say the Bible is "literally" true if they allowed you to define literally the way you did. But, you found another way to make us spend more time redefining our terms and less time defending a 'literal' interpretation of the Bible. Congratulations.

Re:Science and religion

[king-manic]

On the flip side, I had an English teacher in high school that went to Catholic schools and had never heard of evolution until she went to college. She said that she was completely caught off guard.

On the other flip side, I went to catholic school (primary, secondary, highschool) and I didn't hear about micro/macro evolution until I started posting on slashdot 3 years ago. I also took 2.5 years of genertics without ever hearing about the macro.micro evolution.

Re:Science and religion

[DrCode]

I've often wondered if many of the bible stories weren't originally made up as entertainment while people were waiting for TV and the internet to be invented.

Re:Science and religion

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll point out some serious issues here not yet touched by the others.

1. You are putting your faith in a book - not in god. It is just a book. There are thousands of books available that can get you closer to god as well as no book at all. Divinely inspired writers or not they are still just books.

2. Faith is the belief in things unseen - NOT - belief in something that someone wrote down for you to believe.

3. Even Jesus states that instructions in the bible are false teachings and misinterpretation in some cases (e.g. Moses' [not god's] allowance for divorce because hardness of heart of the jews).

4. Most people's insight, when it comes to the bible, I've found, comes not from reading the word but experiencing life and then interpreting the word through that experience. Thus no two people will have the exact same interpretation/translation of the salient points of the bible.

5. Many of the stories within the bible are meaningless without knowing the history and sociopolitical climate of the time and location. This information is extrabiblical (and in some cases lost to us). Thus the bible cannot, in and of itself, provide all wisdom and insight into the nature of god or ourselves. It is flawed as an accurate reference.

6. We continue daily to try to translate the bible more accurately. Scientists are still matching pieces of the Dead Sea scrolls to one another. We have proof that many errors were introduced into earlier versions - some purposeful and others not. We have evidence showing that certain key stories were borrowed from other cultures or "re-imagined" in the bible (e.g. the story of Noah/Gilgamesh).

7. Then we have the differences between what's written and what we practice. I hear people all the time say that they believe that the bible is the entirely accurate, undeniable, immutable word of god - as they sit in their new cotton/wool blend outfit eating clam bisque and talking about how they were blessed god to find the right man the second time around and other such oxymoronic statements. The bible is not a rigidly defined set of instructions for daily life. They are stories about other peoples lives. Ones that you might learn something from, but still just stories about someone else. The ten commandments may be the closest set of instructions we have somewhat directly from god. However even moses destroyed the first writings and started over because of the behavior of his people (see point 3).

Re:Science and religion

[olewis]

No, everything I do (probably 99.9% of everything I do) does not bring honor to God. That is something I strive for.
I try to bring honor to God in my posting on slashdot (or anywhere else). You CAN honor God with all of your actions, think about it.
If you are not glorifying God, you are glorifying satan, like it or not. Since the fall, it's our nature.

Re:Science and religion

[CRCulver]

If we say that it is open to interpretation because it only has some nice stories, then what parts do we follow and what parts are just there as example? This leaves a wide door open for man's imperfect interjection of man's own beliefs.

Christ founded an organization called the Church and ordained men who would along the way help ensure the correct interpretation of Scripture. Through the centuries, oral tradition has always gone hand-in-hand with written tradition. This can be confirmed just by looking to the Bible. See in the epistle where St. Paul admonishes the congregation to stick to Tradition, both that which is written down and that which was given to you by word of mouth.

So, Christ instituted dependable authority, that of the Church in general. In Protestantism, there's no security about anything, because one man's interpretation is as good as anyone else's.

Re:Science and religion

[DrYokomohoyo]

Respect? Really? That's the word you meant to use? Ah!, perhaps it has a different definition in your part of the world. Okay. I too respect his choice. I respect his complete lack of critical thinking. I respect his slavish adherance to the fairy tales of his childhood.

Its not in my job description as a human being to judge others beliefs. Feel free to cast the first stone.

Re:Science and religion

[poot_rootbeer]

If we say that it is open to interpretation because it only has some nice stories, then what parts do we follow and what parts are just there as example? This leaves a wide door open for man's imperfect interjection of man's own beliefs.

You mean like a man's (your) belief that "the Bible is God's words (penned by men who were moved by the Holy Spirit) and thus must be followed because it is what God wants for us"?

Re:Science and religion

[div_2n]

I believe in the literal translation of the Bible.

Here is an exercise for you. Pick up a KJV and an NIV version. Now turn to Mark 1:2 in both and notice first that they don't say the same thing. Second study your history and notice that the scrolls used to create the NIV are OLDER than the KJV. Third understand why this is significant. Hint: scribes hand copying the scrolls noticed a problem.

Yes, I said problem. Here is your final task. Find that quote in Isaiah as the author of Mark instructs you to do per the NIV version. Good luck. You won't find it there. You WILL, however, find it in Malachai. Oh yeah, the precious writers made a clerical error. The scribes inevitably responsible for the KJV scrolls noticed and edited the mistake out. Makes one wonder how many other things were edited over the years . . .

Re:Science and religion

[UtucXul]

No, everything I do (probably 99.9% of everything I do) does not bring honor to God. That is something I strive for. I try to bring honor to God in my posting on slashdot (or anywhere else). You CAN honor God with all of your actions, think about it. If you are not glorifying God, you are glorifying satan, like it or not. Since the fall, it's our nature.

I still think your definition of statanic diverges from the dictionary definition. You also do not seem to allow for any purely neutral actions (which was sort of the point I was trying to get at with the sandwhich example).

It does amaze me that people talk about the positive aspects of relgion (finding meaning in life, good works, comfort, and so on) and yet your religious view of the world and of people seems unbelievable more pessimistic than my non-religious view of the world and people.

Re:Science and religion

[Fiver-]

Um, I thought I did.

I'm tired of this "you can believe anything you want" philosophy. Those beliefs affect other people! And passively condoning irrational fantastical beliefs is irresponsible and harmful to society at large.

Re:Science and religion

[mugnyte]

Exactly. With the amount of interpretation (or indifference) to certain passages, you could substitute quite a few *better* books than the bible.

Basically, the fever of religion kept the bible going through history, but many other texts/stories survived. Gparent post is lost to the details of myth origination, morphing and transfer.

Do we give up? It's been this way for so long, and grown so out of control, they're changing how lives should be run (across many religions and areas). It may be mankind's curse of intellect to imagine unreal influences, then fight over how to appease them. Perhaps we'd be better off a few evolutionary steps backward. (see I _can_ get back on-topic)

Re:Science and religion

[thing12]

The Bible is not God's word -- it can't be -- the languages in use 5000 years ago were not sufficiently advanced to describe the world. So it's fine for you to take it on faith that God spoke to the writers, or put the thoughts and ideas and words into their minds, depending on the case. But the languages were not evolved enough to describe every concept, so what we have is a set of texts that are tied to the era in which they were written, both in context and in language.

They can only be interpretted because reading IS interpretation. The only question is where is the line where you understand the intent behind the text and beyond which you're putting your own (or someone else's) spin on to it? Look at Scientologists -- one of their core beliefs is that if you don't understand and believe what's written, then you obviously don't understand the meaning of the words the author used. So you look up the definitions of every word. Still don't get it? Look up the definition of every word in those definitions, ad infinitum... until you either "understand" or just take it on faith that what's written means what "they" say it means.

And the problem is that you're saying that science and religion are teaching different sides of the same issue, which they aren't. Science and religion aren't in competition with each other. God created the natural world and science is a process by which we understand and explain that world?

As far as following the teachings as best you can.. if you believe it word-for-word then you know you'd better do better than that. You must follow His every commandment if you want the rain to come, and if you don't, you'll feel His anger and you'll see no rain. It's those types of all-or-nothing statements that are the logical falacy in taking the Bible literaly.

Re:Science and religion

[CheshireCatCO]

So why can't Genesis be an allegory if Psalms are, too? Please, tell us how you can definitely tell what's literally true and what isn't. Because that does appear to be the crux of this issue. A lot of reasonable people disagree about which parts are factual and which parts are metaphor. The trouble is, people sometimes see their view as dogmatically correct and cannot even fathom an alternate point of view. Which is why you resort to insults rather than actually adding anything to the discussion, I suppose.

Re:Science and religion

[johansalk]

"If we say that it is open to interpretation because it only has some nice stories, then what parts do we follow and what parts are just there as example? This leaves a wide door open for man's imperfect interjection of man's own beliefs." - Ah, utilitarian truth! How marvellous! We don't want a truth that's reallly true by itself, but a truth that serves what we want. It goes like this "What will happen if this is true? Oh shit! It will lead to things we won't like! No, it can't be true then! Let's choose a truth that leads to what we like!"

Re:Science and religion

[TheFlyingGoat]

You're just trying to be a tool.

I used a number of textbooks (math, economoics, history) in elementary, middle, and high school that rounded values to make them more understandable. I've read a number of non-fiction works that while are extremely accurate, are written in such a way to make it easier to understand and more artistic. That says nothing about the accuracy of those books, since they were written for a specific purpose.

More interestingly, I have a version of the periodic table on my wall that doesn't quite include all the elements that are on current versions. Does that mean I shouldn't take the previous version literally? The numbers are wrong? No... it just means that the data, although 100% accurate, isn't 100% complete.

Nice try, though.

Re:Science and religion

[olewis]

I still think your definition of statanic diverges from the dictionary definition. You also do not seem to allow for any purely neutral actions (which was sort of the point I was trying to get at with the sandwhich example).

I understood what you were trying to get at with the sandwhich example, but, to me, that is the way life is. I'll try to explain: Our existance on this earth is for one purpose - to bring glory to God. We are His creation, made in His image (yes, God is a male, and yes, God looks like a human). God wanted someone to communicate with, in a one-on-one relationship. Read Genesis, it's in there. Adam and Even blew it, and all of humanity has had to pay for it ever since. Since we're human, we have to eat/sleep/etc. How does eating a sandwhich bring glory to God? Did you give thanks to God for allowing you the resources (ingredients, money, etc.) to be able to have that sandwhich to eat? Did you share that sandwhich and perhaps have an opportunity to witness to someone? How could eating that sandwhich dishonor God? Are you a glutton? Basically, our existence either honors or dishonors God.

It does amaze me that people talk about the positive aspects of relgion (finding meaning in life, good works, comfort, and so on) and yet your religious view of the world and of people seems unbelievable more pessimistic than my non-religious view of the world and people.

I'm not sure I understand what you are saying here. Please let me know if I miss something. I don't think I have a pessimistic view of people. It's simple: we are all basically evil (yep, even me). It's nothing that we do or don't do, we are all born into sin (rom 3:23). You can't get around it (once you've reached the age of accountability, knowing right from wrong). Because of the original sin, we are all inheriters of the sin nature and held accountable for that sin. Are there good people on earth that aren't christians? Definitely (good by human definition), but they will still go to hell when they die if they haven't accepted Jesus as their saviour (those in the old testament were granted salvation because they put their faith in the promise of Jesus, Hebrews 11).

Re:Science and religion

[hey!]

On the flip side, I had an English teacher in high school that went to Catholic schools and had never heard of evolution until she went to college. She said that she was completely caught off guard.

Hmm. So what region of the country was this in? Not to put too fine a point on it -- Red State or Blue?

Who do you have more in common with -- a Baptist from NYC or a Congregationalist from GA?

Re:Science and religion

[CheshireCatCO]

" You're just trying to be a tool."

No, I'm not. But thanks for presuming to tell me what I am thinking. It definitely helps further the discussion, doesn't it?

You're making a straw-man, here. On several levels. First of all, I'm not saying that the entire Bible is wrong, just that you need to interpret it. There's just reasonable way to read it, otherwise. But once you allow for that point, you have to accept that there will be some debate about *how* to interpret it and where the line is drawn. I'm making no attempt to draw that line, merely saying that it's a debateable point.

And no one should be taking your high school textbooks, or any other of those boosk, as the literal word of god. Unfortunately, the claim under discussion here is that the Bible is exactly this and that there is no room for interpretion. (Including allowing for things to be written in more poetic terms or in ways that are metaphorical to help with comprehension.)

And the fact that the period table on your wall lacks elements in no way contradicts atomic theory in any way. At worst, it means that the theory was incomplete when the chart was created. More likely, the chart was simply not expaned to include all of the possible elements that the theory predicts but we've never seen. That in no way compares to a chart that has incorrect information on it, which would be the legitimate comparison.

So, that having been cleared up, would you like to try again. This time, with a reasonable argument rather than name-calling and straw-men?

Re:Science and religion

[Anonymous Coward]

Literalism. Commitment to strict exactness of words or meanings in translation or interpretation. Most often literalism is used in connection with biblical interpretation. Since the Reformation at least two main trajectories of thought have come to be associated with literalism. One approaches the text in such a strict, unimaginative way that word and letter are permitted to suppress the spirit of the text. Interpretation becomes a mechanical, grammatical, logical process.

The other employs different attitudes and methodologies, seeking to apply interpretative principles and rules with a sense of appropriateness and sensitivity. In addition to grammatical and philosophical investigations, it uses information about the author's historical and cultural situation that may aid in interpretation. Differing literary forms and genres are handled with methods suitable to their type. Here "literalism" means to seek the plain meaning without exaggeration, distortion, or inaccuracy.

The above is from The Concise Evangelical Dictionary of Theology (p. 283). I know of no evangelicals or fundamentalists who take the first approach to understanding the text, as you seem to be suggesting.

Re:Science and religion

[thewiz]

Bravo! Couldn't have said this better!

Re:Science and religion

[CheshireCatCO]

And yet I know some people who do. At least they argue that we should as long as the passages in question support the conclusions that they like.

All I'm saying is that some room for interpretation HAS to be allowed. You seem to agree with that. But given that, you then need to accept that there will be debate about what to interpret and how to do so.

Re:Science and religion

[dustpuppy_de]

If we say that it is open to interpretation because it only has some nice stories, then what parts do we follow and what parts are just there as example?

You're right, that's a problem. But, then again: God gave us not only the bible, but also the church and the pope to do the interpretation for us. We're supposed to believe what the pope tells us to believe, and if we don't, we're heretics. It's that easy! :)

(And yes, that little fact comes straight from scripture: Mt 16, 18-19)

Re:Science and religion

[Cro Magnon]

Well, I suggest you start with stoning the homosexuals to death, then go from there.

I'm waiting for one who is without sin to throw the first stone. I think I'm in for a long wait!

Re:Science and religion

[xmod2]

No you see, you are just reading the words wrong. The bible is completely accurate when you can make the words mean whatever you want. Fricken infidels.

Re:Science and religion

[Anonymous Coward]

> In modern translations the exact same source word can be translated to wildly different English words.

This is an interesting point. There is one passage where (modern translators believe) it says "beams of light" emanated from Moses' head, but for years, people translated that as "horns." So people thought Moses had horns, as evidenced by Michelangelo's famous statue. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelangelo's_Moses

Re:Science and religion

[smellsofbikes]

Anyone who doesn't think the Bible is interpreted, doesn't know the Bible. I have yet to meet a Christian, including some of my old-time-in-six-days unreconstructed fundamentalist friends, who lives like the Bible says people are supposed to live. They all rely on interpretation, and more particularly their personal interpretation (as evinced by them living the way all their friends do without having ever rigorously thought about why they're doing what they're doing) to get them through the day.

Next time you meet a guy who claims to be a literalist Christian, ask him how he justifies cutting his hair.

Re:Science and religion

[Anonymous Coward]

> Showing that being charitable is the way to encourage others to do the same is the "miracle". This is the kind of stuff I learned in Catholic school.

True enough--I doubt you'll find many non-Catholic Christians who would necessarily reject that interpretation. Although there are other miracles that are not explainable on such terms.

> I also find it funny that so many evangelicals are willing to believe Jesus did "miracles" (aka magic) but don't want their kids reading Harry Potter books because magic is "Satanic".

It comes from a belief as to who or what the source of that power is. Naturally, they believe that these things are either frauds, or have a source of power that is not God. The former are misguided, and whether there actually are any of the latter is questionable, at the least. I think they're more against the notion of miracles not from God than anything, although what few reports there are of such things (plaster Hindu statues that "drink" [absorb] liquids like milk) are ridiculous.

Re:Science and religion

[kldavis4]

Do you believe in God? If so, then why is it hard for you to imagine that God could multiply the fish and the loaves? If the (non-)miracle was just that everyone shared the food that they had, then why did the disciples ask Jesus to send the people away so that they could buy food to eat. Furthermore, if it wasn't a miracle, then why did Jesus refer back to it in Matt 16:9, pointing out that it didn't matter if they forgot to bring bread? And why did Jesus in John 6:26 say "Most certainly I tell you, you seek me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate of the loaves, and were filled." The only thing insightful about your post is how much it reveals of your ignorance of the Bible.

Re:Science and religion

[aqfire]

The trouble is, people sometimes see their view as dogmatically correct and cannot even fathom an alternate point of view. Which is why you resort to insults rather than actually adding anything to the discussion, I suppose.

If you didn't see the value in what I wrote above, then you didn't realize that people are picking apart the definition of "literally" to the point of making the discussion worthless. I attempted to bring clarity to the issue, but if clarity is not what you're looking for, then you've succeeded. You successfully called me 'dogmatic' 'self-righteous' and 'closed minded' without adding anything to the discussion, and now, rather than adding anything else of value to the discussion, I'm having to defend my character and motives as well. Congratulations.

Re:Science and religion

[prefec2]

Your logic is flawed.

Lets say an almighty God, speaks to a primitve creature. then this God has three possible ways of doing so:
1. Talk to it in a language which can be understood by that creature. (type 1)
2. Talk to is in God-Language, which would not be understandable by that primitive creature. (type 2)
3. Make the creature intelligent enough to understand him/her.

A language is, semantics, syntax and meaning of words. So we are able to describe things around us. But these languages have to be expanded with new words to describe new things, because otherwise we are not able to handle it.

So if the language is of type 1 of my own hierarchy, then the language is not capable of transmitting the facts of the universe took 7 trillion years (or more or less) to form, because I wouldn't be able to express the numbr to the guy 6000 years ago. And even if I could write it down, he would understand.

So God made him such an intelligent guy, you could say. Ok, lets see. Then this guy is intelligent enough to understand the fabric of space, and the creation of the universe and now he wants to tell this to his friend. A, shit, his friend is still this dumb fool, the guy was some lines above.

Now God in his great power make him intelligent too, so he can understand the thing about the univers, life and the rest. Lets say they tried to told it to the women around them too. So we use induction and can conclude, we knew and we know exactly how the universe came into existance and we know exactly how it works.

But in fact we don't know, so God must have stopped with his make people intelligent program somewhere in the past. Or he didn't started at all.

To the point: God can make a language, which is so simple (e.g. only a few facts) that a shepherd can understand it and transmit the fact of the creation of the universe.

Lets say, this is possible, he is the almighty remember. Now we know, the bible is not written in the language, it is written in Hebrew and Greek. And by all means, these are human languages which are not more expressive than any other spoken or dead human language.
(See language theory for reference.) So we reached the same point again. Somebody writes Gods words down in an inferior language. And so they messed up.

But as God is not an idiot, he knew this, so he used methaphors ot explain. So we know, there was an initial creational task, done by him. And on the other hand isn't it possible that God created natural laws just in a way that evolution and the rest could happen in the way we knew today?

Greetings
      Reiner

Re:Science and religion

[sammy baby]

Catholics believe that Christ raised from the dead. This is a much greater miracle than feeding 5000+ people with 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish. It's an a fortiori argument. If Christ can do the greater miracle, why couldn't he do the smaller miracle? Just some food for thought.

Well, maybe he was a vampire. Vampires appear to come back from the dead all the time, but they don't feed multitudes with loaves and fish.

Although in The Lost Boys, Kiefer Sutherland's character does that one thing where he makes it look like the Chinese food is made of worms. That was pretty cool.

Re:Science and religion

[boojum.cat]

So you're reading the original Hebrew and Greek texts? Because anything else is an interpretation. Or do you think that one particular translation (into language of your choice) is the correct and ordained one? If so, which?

As they say, if English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me!

Re:Science and religion

[ExMember]

it was intentionally changed for political reasons to remove the actual actions and motivations of Job, because he questioned GOD HIMSELF and got away with it.

The way I remember it God himself spends several chapters throughly rebuking Job for questioning him. "Who is this that darkens my council with words without knowledge? Gird yourself up like a man, I will question you and you will answer."

Job, of course, didn't have any answer except "Sorry, dude. I'm a real idiot. I said a lot of shit, but I'll shut up now."

Re:Science and religion

[julesh]

Stoning isn't required. The only thing is that they shall be "put to death".

If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them. (Leviticus 20:13)

I'd recommend reading Leviticus. It's very enlightening. :)

Re:Science and religion

[TheFlyingGoat]

A strawman, huh? You need to look into what that really means. The grandparent poster provided a link that gave sufficient responses to the original pi post, and you brushed them off as "hand-waving arguments". I wasn't arguing the original post about how literal the Bible should be taken, I was arguing your poor attempt to brush off a perfectly legitimate reply. Hence, no strawman.

Now, if you wanted the point of your 2nd post to be about taking the Bible literally, perhaps instead of repeating the same point you gave in the original post (you know, the one that someone provided a perfectly legitimate response to?), you could have given a different example of how the Bible should interpreted properly.

For the record, I'm a fundamentalist Christian and I don't believe that the Bible should be literally interpreted in every way. However, I do believe its erroneous to ignore entire sections of the Bible (say... Revelations?) based on the assumption that they just need to be interpreted properly. I also think it's a bad idea to try teaching ID in school. My biology teacher in high school did it properly by saying that he holds certain religious beliefs that lend to one view of how we came to be, but those beliefs aren't founded in science and as such he focused on evolution. I think that's both honest to his beliefs and honest to science.

Re:Science and religion

[BenEnglishAtHome]

So you're reading the original Hebrew and Greek texts?

It's amazing what dedication and religious fervor can get you. My grandfather was a hardshell Baptist evangelist in Mississippi and Alabama during The Depression. Yet because he was so devoted to his faith, he taught himself Greek and Hebrew so that he could read older (and presumably less corrupted) versions of the Bible. I always admired him for that. In context, I consider it an amazing achievement. I'm not sure how it profited him, but he certainly thought it was worth the effort.

Re:Science and religion

[walmartshopper]

Sure, if you believe that the resurrection was hokey, then obviously the feeding 5000 story doesn't have much merit either. But I was replying to the original author, who claimed to be raised Catholic. And the official Catholic belief is that Christ did in fact raise from the dead. My argument was that if you're a Catholic (who is supposed to believe in the resurrection), it seems odd to believe that He wasn't capable of feeding 5000, a lesser miracle.

Re:Science and religion

[neighter]

I would trust an all-powerful, all-knowing being before i trusted the very church that has sheltered child molesting priests. We can never know what alterations have potentially occured to the "bible" or any ancient texts unless we look at the original copies and can read the language. Now who did I lend my first edition Torah to?

Re:Science and religion

[Anonymous Coward]

Dead See Scrolls

I see dead people who see scrolls!

Re:Science and religion

[hamilton76]

You dare to mention Orwell and make accusations of doublethink and then deny freedom of conscience?

Do not perhaps your beliefs affect other people?

And who are you to decide that condoning certain beliefs is "harmful to society at large" and that condoning yours isn't? Who, also, are you to hold yourself up as the arbiter of thought? Suppose "society" doesn't want your protection?

And how would you go about compelling people to believe the "right" things anyway?

And lest you wonder, no, I am not a Biblical literalist: I do not believe in the fundamental inerrancy of the Bible or that it must be taken absolutely literally. So you needn't go there.

Re:Science and religion

[drgonzo59]

I probably would be such a person. I am an Orthodox Christian, yet I have never heard of ID or that Evolution is bad. I was never taught that science and math are evil or wrong by the church. I am a scientist and love science and but I am a Christian too, except when science touches ethical issues, I never felt any personal conflict among the two.

Also note, current Televangelists and Fundamentalists are all advocating a literal interpretion of the Bible. But when the Bible was written and composed, they didn't exist for another 1000 years, and the people who wrote and composed the Bible (the early Christians which the Orthodox and the Catholics are the direct present day followers) never interpreted it literally.

I guess the point is that a couple of crazy ID nuts from Kansas don't represent Christianity, and I wish others would see that way too...

Re:Science and religion

[UtucXul]

Since we're human, we have to eat/sleep/etc. How does eating a sandwhich bring glory to God? Did you give thanks to God for allowing you the resources (ingredients, money, etc.) to be able to have that sandwhich to eat? Did you share that sandwhich and perhaps have an opportunity to witness to someone? How could eating that sandwhich dishonor God? Are you a glutton? Basically, our existence either honors or dishonors God.

I will grant you that eating may not count as a truely neutral act. I was anticipating possible objections to it involving either some ethical vegiterianism or possibly something involving starving people all over the world. But I still think one could in principle have a truely morally neutral act. Of course the fact that animals (which are basically amoral being in most western religious views and most versions of secular humanism and the like) eat adds some weight to the arguement that eating can be a neutral act.

I don't think I have a pessimistic view of people. It's simple: we are all basically evil

Thinking everyone is basically evil sound very negative and pessimistic to me. I am not arguing whether or not you have theological reasons for that view, or even if that view is true. I am just saying that it is a more negative and pessimistic view of human nature than the (non-religious) views I hold.

By the way, this is a surprisingly civil discussion of religious vs. non-religious world views. These types of things usually get much nastier (from both sides).

Re:Science and religion

[lieut_data]

1Co 11:14 "Doth not even nature itself teach you, that, if a man have long hair, it is a shame unto him?"

Re:Science and religion

[halivar]

The only set of books that Catholic Bibles have that protestant ones don't is the Apocrypha. These books were left out because they, in many cases contradict other books of the bible (II Daniel, for instance, gives a completely different account of the lion's den event). In the contest between which conflicting books were chosen, the protestants chose the books quoted by Jesus. There's a pretty good reason why the Catholic church always separated those books by themselves.

As for the difference between the Jewish and Christian texts, I think you will find that where we both use the same book, we translate very closely (because Jews and Christians use many of the same original texts). BTW, the Torah is only, and ever has been, only five books. They exist in their entirety in the Christian Old Testament. Many Jewish texts, such as the Talmud, Mishnah, and Zohar, postdate the establishment of the Christian church, and there is no reason to include those texts.

Re:Science and religion

[www-xenu-dot-net]

"Moses says that Bats are a type of bird"

How about blaming that one on the translator?

Do you believe the scientific classification of animals was done before Moses time? I thought that people like Linné came up with the classification systems like 2000 years after he died.

Re:Science and religion

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe read all of the text. Rather than just what you want to use. But, you seem to be like the Fundies that take a piece of the text to support their beliefs.

Re:Science and religion

[bcrowell]

Augustine wrote an entire book called The Literal Meaning of Genesis, the point of which was to explain that Genesis literally means ... something completely different that you would have thought just by reading it literally :-)

Re:Science and religion

[terrymr]

hey, if we're quoting leviticus remember that if your wifes-sisters-husband dies you must take her in and treat her as your wife too.

Re:Science and religion

[brian0918]

"In modern translations the exact same source word can be translated to wildly different English words."

Such as, for an actual example, whether Mary was a "virgin", or just a "young woman". The first version sounds much more miraculous, so if I were wanting to inspire future generations, I'd go with that translation.

Re:Science and religion

[brian0918]

"I thought that people like Linné came up with the classification systems like 2000 years after he died."

You have evidence that Moses died? Outside of the Bible, nobody has ever found any evidence that he ever even lived, let alone died.

Re:Science and religion

[Kafka_Canada]

The IPU isn't fond of your ideas.... I think She wants me to do something about it..

Re:Science and religion

[drgonzo59]

The real trick is to know what to interpret literally and what is a type or symbol or a parable. The Bible quotes Christ as saying "I am the door" - which interpreted literally is a 7 foot wooden plank. But then also there are some events that are described by the 4 evangelists (Luke, Mark, Matthew and John) that are consistent and can be taken literally.

So who decides what can be interpreted literally and what cannot? I think the people who wrote it and composed the Bible out of its many books would know. We don't have them today, the best we have though is their descendants: the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Chruch. Besides the Bible the early Christian also wrote other books like commentaries and they kept alive the oral tradition that was transmitted from generation to generation. The Catholic Church later on changed the creed (the statement of belief), added indulgences, came up with purgatory and other things that ultimately led to the Protestant split, which gave birth eventually to the present day American Evangelists and Fundamentalists.

The point is that the Bible that Fundamentalists tout as "the only literal source of truth" has never existed in a vacuum by itself all those thousand+ years until they came around. It had a rich oral tradition and interpretations that sourrounded it. Unless they follow along with that, the interpretations they came up with in the last 100 years will probably be off and cause confusion and a big mess, just the way ID nuts have done.

Re:Science and religion

[Fiver-]

And who are you to decide that condoning certain beliefs is "harmful to society at large"

I'm an intelligent, rational person who thinks it's pretty fucking obvious when someone's beliefs are harmful.

Re:Science and religion

[Kethinov]

I know there is a God because I received irrefutable proof.

Which is what exactly?

Re:Science and religion

[Anonymous Coward]

I apologize. I was a bit unclear in my message. What I meant to say, despite what most evangelicals and/or fundamentalists say, they apply the second methodology outlined in the definition of literalism. There are cases where they do employ the first methodology, but overall they apply the second. So, yes, I agree there is room for interpretation.

Re:Science and religion

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank God someone believes in the Bible literally.

Now, lets get together, and start burning witches, and get the laws fixed so we can rape virgins and only have to pay that virgin deflowring fee -- thats one of my favorite Laws of Gods Holy Book, that we ought to be able to go around raping virgins...

Re:Science and religion

[Moofie]

"I also took 2.5 years of genertics without ever hearing about the macro.micro evolution."

Huh? You can't be serious.

Did you go to the Billy Graham Bible College?

Re:Science and religion

[mfrank]

After Jesus told the crowd that "those of you without sin, cast the first stone", a rock wizzed by his head and knocked down the adultress. Jesus turned around and said...

"Mom, please stay out of this".

Re:Science and religion

[Moofie]

I'm willing to be held accountable for my choices. If I stand before the Throne, I'd rather say "I chose to be this way", rather than "I did what some book told me to".

Particularly when that book tells me to kill witches (or thieves, depending on your translation) and tells me not to wear two different kinds of cloth at the same time.

Re:Science and religion

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, your complaint about having to defend your character would probably carry a lot more weight if
a) The GP actually attacked you
b) You were actually forced to reply, as opposed to chosing to do so, and had replied with some content rather than whining
c) You weren't so demeaning in the GGP

As things stand, it is pretty clear that you aren't interested in having a discussion and you just want to insult people you disagree with. Comically, your skin is too thin to allow for even that.

Re:Science and religion

[MarkCollette]

If we say that it is open to interpretation because it only has some nice stories, then what parts do we follow and what parts are just there as example? This leaves a wide door open for man's imperfect interjection of man's own beliefs.

Since Jesus taught almost exclusively in parables, one would think that would answer your question of whether to follow a literal interpretation or an allegorical one.

Plus, Jesus made a point of superceding all those anal little rules with two very simple yet broad and interpretable ones. ( http://www.bible.com/bible/Bcommand.html )

So, I'm sorry, but if you want to call yourself a Christian ( ala Jesus Christ ), then you pretty much have to deal with these questions of interpretation, and ditch the literal cop-out.

Re:Science and religion

[TeaQuaffer]

How do you deal with things like Leviticus 11:19 where Moses says that Bats are a type of bird?

Actually, it says that bat is a "oph", or flying creature.

Why on earth did you think to apply the Linnean classification to the Scriptures? This is the equivalent of a creationist saying "yeah, well, evolution is a theory, not a fact" and sitting back proudly. If you want to discuss the inerrancy of Scripture, please email me. I'm sure the discussion can move past Birds & Bats. ;-)

Re:Science and religion

[gv250]

Do you really want a world where morality is defined as whatever the Holy Spirit tells somebody to do?

Yes. Absolutely and without reservation. I desperately want a world in which each person's morality is defined by their relationship with the Holy Spirit, starting with my own.

"Let there be peace on Earth, and let it begin with me."

Re:Science and religion

[Anonymous Coward]

Strawman - n. a weak or sham argument set up to be easily refuted

I think Cheshire's application of the word is correct. He's referring to your argument concerning textbooks rather than the posted link concerning PI. Your argument entirely misses Cheshire's original point.

I used a number of textbooks (math, economoics, history) in elementary, middle, and high school that rounded values to make them more understandable. I've read a number of non-fiction works that while are extremely accurate, are written in such a way to make it easier to understand and more artistic. That says nothing about the accuracy of those books, since they were written for a specific purpose.

Cheshire's overall point is that the Bible cannot simply be taken literally and is in need of interpretation. The textbooks that you refer to fall under the *exact* same problem, therefore coinciding with Cheshire's whole point. You cannot take such textbooks literally, otherwise you might believe that PI is exactly 3.14.

The problem is that if such books are in need of interpretation, how does one know when one's interpretation is correct? You are already looking at such books as the absolute authority for information. Where else can you go to for answers? Fortunately with textbooks, you can always ask a teacher/professor. No such luck with the Bible.

Now, if you wanted the point of your 2nd post to be about taking the Bible literally, perhaps instead of repeating the same point you gave in the original post (you know, the one that someone provided a perfectly legitimate response to?), you could have given a different example of how the Bible should interpreted properly.

The reason Cheshire repeated it is because you appeared to completely miss it the first time around. The fact that you did not know what "strawman" referred to thereby shows that you completely missed Cheshire's point yet again.

I'm not going to argue whether or not the posted link is legitimate. The logic is iffy, but I think its a silly point to belabor, so I'll give it the benefit of the doubt. The problem is that that Bible is filled with all sorts of similar problems, including inconsistencies and self-contradictions. Its great that someone can properly respond to the issue of PI, but this was just a single example of a larger issue. Going on about how PI was properly addressed does not accomplish anything.

Re:Science and religion

[IdntUnknwn]

Sorry that was me, for some reason browser didn't log me in.

Re:Science and religion

[Quixadhal]

For me, I have faith in the Bible because (by faith) I have chosen to believe it is God's literal word.

Two points here. I assume you mean that you read passages from the Old Testament in their original Hebrew, and that you read passages from the New Testament in their original Greek? Any other language will impose imperfections of translation, even assuming none of the many hands they passed through in the copying process ever re-interpreted any phrases to account for changes in vocabulary over the centuries.

There's a reason the King James version is called that. It was a re-written interpretation of the Bible into modern English, and specifically in such a way as to grant the maximum political benefit to the authority of the King of England, and the Church of Rome (as the most powerful political entitiy of the time, and the accepted literal voice of God on Earth).

Point number two. Accepting any human crafted work as the literal Word of God is nonsense. Those who were inspired by God to write the Bible put down the best textual description of what they Saw. NO written language can adequately describe a divine experience, just as no mortal mind can fully understand the infinite Will of God.

You, reading the Bible, are seeing the many-time re-interpreted and translated text of an account written by many hands (not all of which were selected to become part of the Bible, by the way) of a divine revelation, which itself was the shadow left from a brief communion with God.

You are, of course, free to disagree... but that's my take.

As many people here on /. has said - keep science in science class and religion in a theology class. Teach students boths sides then let them decide what to believe in.

This is highly amusing to me. You do realize that it's only been in recent times that the two were ever considered seperate? A great deal of what we call science was done by logical men who were trying to find ways to understand God by understanding His creation.

The division of science and religion came about only a few centuries ago, and it happened for political reasons. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the Church emerged as the most powerful uniting force in Europe. That unity splintered with the formation of the Church of England, and the gradual trend towards industrial growth and nationalism.

As men like Galileo began putting forth ideas that described a new way to look at God's creation, the Church singled them out as heretics -- not so much because what they said couldn't be a valid way to view the scriptures, as because it removed authority from the Church. As the Quakers would say later, if everyone can personally commune with God, what need they a Church? Likewise, if everyone can think for themselves, the Church isn't required to explain how things work.

Again, you're free to believe what you will. The above is simply what I take from my studies of the evolution of language, and the history of Europe some years ago.

Re:Science and religion

[Anonymous Coward]

I frequently see posts like this highly moderated... because it is a feel-good, works well for both sides of the debate sort of approach. That is great but I think that it is a bit difficult to say that one should put one's trust in God and not the Bible, since the Bible is supposed to be His holy word and is really the only direct communication line from God. How exactly do you let the Holy Spirit guide you if it is not somehow (even if through the mouth of a pastor) based on information taken from the Bible? What does it mean otherwise? How do you not know your ideas are a figment of your imagination? Where do your morals come from then? The Bible is supposed to be the authoritative source for all of this, for Christians.

Re:Science and religion

[dcam]

I believe in the literal translation of the Bible. I believe that the Bible is God's words (penned by men who were moved by the Holy Spirit) and thus must be followed because it is what God wants for us.

As a christian I understand your perspective and your fear.

My only problem is that people who push for a literal interpretation of the bible don't actually apply it.

Picking out a passages in 1 Timothy:
"9I also want women to dress modestly, with decency and propriety, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or expensive clothes, 10but with good deeds, appropriate for women who profess to worship God."

Are you married? Does your wife wear a wedding ring? Is it gold? Do you rebuke (in love) members of your congregation when you see them wearing gold? Or braided hair? Or pearls?

Or to pick from Matthew 18:
"8If your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life maimed or crippled than to have two hands or two feet and be thrown into eternal fire. 9And if your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into the fire of hell."

How are you reading this? How is it possible that you still have two eyes? How can you type your reply without hands?

Re:Science and religion

[r00t]

"If we say that it is open to interpretation because it only has some nice stories, then what parts do we follow and what parts are just there as example? This leaves a wide door open for man's imperfect interjection of man's own beliefs."

Good question. Bible-Christians are kind of stuck with a problem here. Catholics accept that God guides the pope in matters of faith, and thus are not faced with this difficulty.

Re:Science and religion

[Shelled]

That's how they end up teaching English.

Re:Science and religion

[Shelled]

Though my beliefs are diametrically opposed, I can greatly respect a man who put that much work into his devotion. So unlike today's lazy TV Christianity.

Re:Science and religion

[olewis]

I will grant you that eating may not count as a truely neutral act. I was anticipating possible objections to it involving either some ethical vegiterianism or possibly something involving starving people all over the world. But I still think one could in principle have a truely morally neutral act. Of course the fact that animals (which are basically amoral being in most western religious views and most versions of secular humanism and the like) eat adds some weight to the arguement that eating can be a neutral act.

Everything we do (excepting those basic fundamental things we have to do to live: eat, drink, breath, bathroom, etc.) we have a purpose for. Often times, probably most of the time, we don't think about it or realize it. Those purposes may or may not be evil, but they are there. I try to think about what I'm doing and who gains from it. I have to work to survive and the human side of me says, "I need that money or I can't provide for my family, I can't eat, I can't afford the house/car/etc., ...". The spiritual side says, "God will provide for my needs, I just have to trust Him and trust in His promise to take care of me. What will I do with my life that can further the kingdom of God and lay up treasures for me in eternity?" Now, extrapolate that into all other areas of your life. Am I being silly? I don't think so. It's a major life change, and one that only Jesus can bring into your life.

And yes, eating is probably a neutral act most of the time, but I wanted to show you that you CAN bring honor to God in almost every thing you do.

Thinking everyone is basically evil sound very negative and pessimistic to me. I am not arguing whether or not you have theological reasons for that view, or even if that view is true. I am just saying that it is a more negative and pessimistic view of human nature than the (non-religious) views I hold.

In human terms, 'evil' has a very negative connotation, and most would not like being called that. But in God's eyes, we are all the same: sinners. And that sin condemns us all to hell. God doesn't put any value or rank on the sins we commit (we do that). We're born into it and unless we do something about it (rom 10:9-10), it dooms us to hell. You may live a long and wonderful life and never do anything 'evil' or bad (by human standards), but by God's standards, we are all pathetic and have no hope. You can't be good enough to get to heaven. And that doesn't mean that God is out to get us. On the contrary, God loves us so much that He did the only thing He could do to make it possible for our sins to be atoned for and make it possible for use to live in eternity with Him. He made the rules, He will not change those rules, and that's the way it is.

By the way, this is a surprisingly civil discussion of religious vs. non-religious world views. These types of things usually get much nastier (from both sides).

Agreed!

Re:Science and religion

[king-manic]

Huh? You can't be serious.

Did you go to the Billy Graham Bible College?

Micr/Macro evolution are ID/Creationist ideas. Evolution does not actually contain those distinctions. Not the evolution outside of the states.

Re:Science and religion

[Fengpost]

Agreed. Ever since the Catholic Church came to terms with the roles of science and religion they have reconcile their separate roles in society. There are a lot of scientists in the Catholic Church today. This is one of the few areas the Catholi Church is doing well today.

Re:Science and religion

[Moofie]

Oh, I see what you mean...drawing the distinction that "micro happened, but macro is a figment of Darwin's imagination."

Gotcha.

I was going to be pretty suprised that you got anywhere in genetics without somebody at least mentioning natural selection... : )

Re:Science and religion

[Anonymous Coward]

in particular it does not say that p = 3.0

1 Kings 7:23, describing Solomon building a temple -

Then he made the molten sea; it was round, ten cubits from brim to brim, and five cubits high, and a line of thirty cubits measured its circumference.

Hmm, my calculator says thirty divided by ten equals three. Looks like the Bible is saying pi = 3.0 to me.

Re:Science and religion

[coaxial]

The problem with the literal interpretation school of thought is that it assumes that the writers of Bible had no concept of symbolism or even the ability to explain via examples. For the vast majority of history people were illiterate. So if you wanted to teach a moral, you told an easily rememberable story that illustrated that moral. Aesop's fables have lasted 2600 years. Does it matter if there was a lying shepard boy? No. What does matter is moral that if you keep lying, no one will believe you when you tell the truth. This isn't a heretical idea, since the Gospels themselves state that Jesus spoke in parabels. Does it matter if there some guy got mugged on his way to Jerhico, and a Samartain helped him? No. Of course not. The moral of being compassionate is what matters.

Being concerned about the minuet is to miss the greater truths. The most obvious case is the Jesus throwing the money changers out of the Temple. The different books of the Bible has the event occuring at different times. Who cares when it happened. What matters is that places of worship should not be defiled by buisness.

If we say that it is open to interpretation because it only has some nice stories, then what parts do we follow and what parts are just there as example? This leaves a wide door open for man's imperfect interjection of man's own beliefs.

I'm sorry, but if you have that much problem in learning the morality of Bible, then you have not been taught Christianity, and should find a new church pronto.

Given that the Bible has been translated and retranslated for thousands of years there have been plenty of times. Sometimes for mundane reasons like, to have a translation in another language, other times for political purposes (e.g. the King James Version). Honestly, how many modern English translations do we need? (New International? New American? Why do Americans need their own translation, what was wrong with the old version anyway?) A new translation comes out every couple of years. Each new translation targeted at niche audiences. It makes you wonder how many are motivated by faith, and ho many by money. Many times in protestant churches, differenent members of the congregation have different translations, which were chosen for purely personal reasons.

St. Athanasius pretty much dictated what would be in the New Testament and what would not be. He ordered all other non-canon material destroyed, yet the Gospel of Thomas survived by being placed in a jar. Even the compilation of the New Testament, controversy reigned. Many, including Martin Luther, suggested that Revelations should not be included since it was too likely to be manipulated due to its alegorical nature. Martin Luther moved certain books of the New Testament to basically an appendix. It was a political decision.

Re:Science and religion

[HaggiZ]

I was about to ask the exact same thing. Having completed all of my studies at Catholic schools I've had numerous bibles, all with their own variations on the various passages. How dismayed I was when I discovered Ezekiel 25:17 wasn't exactly as read by Samuel L Jackson in Pulp Fiction ;)

And for the record, in all those years NEVER were we taught that Genesis was a literal truth on the creation of the universe. Moreso a symbolic reference to a "creator"

Re:Science and religion

[Darby]

For me, I have faith in the Bible because (by faith) I have chosen to believe it is God's literal word. As such, I will follow its teachings the best I can.

Seriously, how do you deal with the fact that the editing (of the new testament at least) was done by various groups of Bishops in power struggles throughout the Roman empire who used other groups refusal to accept their interpretation as an excuse to murder their opposition?

There were lots of writings from the time, and many (Gnostic) from hundreds of years earlier. Only certain ones were put into the "official" version and they were decided by murderers as a way to consolidate their own power.

I'm genuinely curious how you justify your faith in the editing skills of ruthless evil men to pass on to you a message of love.

However, if I believed that the Bible had man's interpretation in it, then I would view it as any other book. For me it's all or nothing.

It did. Man was the editor. Perhaps you believe that God told them which writings to pick. How then, do you justify the mass of people that God ordered tortured and murdered to get it accomplished in such a way as to put the torturers and murderers in charge? Seems contradictory to me, but I'm just a poor unenlightened heathen.

Re:Science and religion

[Darby]

You should put your trust in god, not the bible.

But which one or ones of the thousands of gods should I put my trust in?

Re:Science and religion

[Darby]

Yes. Absolutely and without reservation. I desperately want a world in which each person's morality is defined by their relationship with the Holy Spirit

So if my holy spirit told me to beat you down, tie you up, and rape and murder your family in front of you you would be happy that there would be no consequences from society?

I think that was kind of the OPs point.

You did say without reservation.

Re:Science and religion

[Darby]

Why "dumbed down"? Because human beings are stupid, selfish and sinful.

That's the created in God's image bit?

There's no way we can understand God because he is holy and righteous and we aren't anything remotely close.

So he fucked us over for his amusement? I'm failing to get the "in his image" bit. Or possibly, you are?

Those are serious questions. Do you have answers?

Re:Science and religion

[Darby]

When you interpret the bible you need to consider things like the culture, the language, the audience, the author's circumstances, etc.

The author is God. If there is anything that needs to be taken into account, he already knew that, and he knew every way it would be interpreted *and* misinterpreted.
Kind of totally fucks up the whole no killing bit.
That is the inescabable reality of trying to attribute divine anything to anything so tragically flawed.

Re:Science and religion

[Darby]

The fact that you pretty much HAVE to accept that parts need to be interpretted doesn't make that the whole thing is bunk. It just opens up the debate about how to interpret. But the view that the book is all literally true is untenable and is also too dogmatic to allow for any real discussion.

But exactly the same flaw you point out is inherent in interpretation only multiplied by everyone who reads it.

Re:Science and religion

[Anonymous Coward]

Errr. Why can't bats be birds, it's a relatively arbitrary distinction. The concept of birdness has no physical reality.

Re:Science and religion

[Darby]

Yet because he was so devoted to his faith, he taught himself Greek and Hebrew so that he could read older (and presumably less corrupted) versions of the Bible. I always admired him for that. In context, I consider it an amazing achievement. I'm not sure how it profited him, but he certainly thought it was worth the effort.

Did his views and interpretations change based upon his work?
If so, how?

Just curious.

Re:Science and religion

[Darby]

I know there is a God because I received irrefutable proof.

No you didn't. You would be the most famous person in the history of the world, or you would be denying that proof to everybody else.

You had an experience that you chose to interpret that way.

If I'm wrong, prove me so.

Or was it just for you. Why does God love you so much more than pretty much every other person that ever lived?

Re:Science and religion

[Kjellander]

There is nothing incompatible between religion and science since, as a newspaper columnist pointed out recently, science is about HOW we came to be here and religion is about WHY we are here.

Incorrect. You can't have a religion without making scientific predictions.

In the case of christianity, it predicts that there is a magical soul inserted
into humans at conception, but only for humans. And there are tons of other predictions.

Re:Science and religion

[Darby]

I'm as Christian as you are, .... <interpretation>explaining how he's not as equally Christian<interpretation>... I don't know if you've noticed...He wants us...Questioning your faith and what is written in the Bible is perfectly acceptable

And right there is the inherent problem in any dogmatic religious system.

Oh, you probably won't start blowing each other up and shit. Well, you know that about yourself (presumably) Do you know that about him? Does he know that about you? You do realise that a metric assload of people were tortured and murdered by people "As Christian as you are" over the years over far more trivial differences?

Why is it that you can't accept the simple fact that nobody knows the answers? How about we try to find them out but without creating a power structure to dogmatize it and without adding in the tremendous profitability of scamming the believers and coercing them into hideous acts of torture and murder?

It has everything you claim to believe in, but without the smug certainty.
Why not that, rather than insisting that some fucking desert nomads magically got the answers directly from a god that has since fucked off leaving evil fucking bastards to use that dogma to fuck people over constantly ever since?

Seriously, think it through.

Re:Science and religion

[Darby]

Well, I suggest you start with stoning the homosexuals to death, then go from there.

You god damned heathen.
Stone the shrimp eaters first *then* the homosexuals.
What kind of a fucked up MegaloChurch did you go to anyhow?

Re:Science and religion

[Darby]

Maybe read all of the text. Rather than just what you want to use. But, you seem to be like the Fundies that take a piece of the text to support their beliefs.

Ummm... Dipshit, that's the only part the Fundies read. That's the point.

Re:Science and religion

[Darby]

, so what we have is a set of texts that are tied to the era in which they were written, both in context and in language.

What that leads to is a God who has chosen to tie himself to that era.
He for his own reasons chose to tell all before and all after to fuck off. They are not as important as one particualr group at one point in time.
He's all powerful. He obviously could have chosen to get do otherwise. He could have prevented a lot of the killing he hates so much. Instead, he caused it on purpose.

Any other interpretation makes him less than god.
Really sad people buy into that purely evil crap.

Re:Science and religion

[BenEnglishAtHome]

Did his views and interpretations change based upon his work? If so, how?

Unfortunately, by the time I was old enough to begin having serious questions in this area, Alzheimers (or something similar; he was never formally diagnosed) had taken his mind. I know from my father that his father had been a traveling evangelist and had also owned a grocery store from which the majority of his living was derived. In his later productive years, he chose to close the store (and formally forgive a large amount of debt on the books that he had extended to poor families over the course of the Depression) and preach, basically, full-time. His faith was, perhaps, insufficient to sustain him during WW2, a time when he had 4 sons all simultaneously overseas in battle zones. Three were in Europe, two as grunts on the ground and one as a glider pilot for the Normandy invasion. (Later in life, I observed to that particular uncle that I never knew he was insane; he just smiled.) My dad spent most of his service in the Japanese-occupied Phillipines. The only communication my grandfather ever received were ridiculously redacted letters that reportedly threw him into fits of horrible depression. If the Army wouldn't let his sons talk to him, even in letters, what danger must they be in? That question drove him over the edge at times, perhaps even more than if he had known the truth that his sons were, indeed, in incredible danger much of the time. During those years, the removal of his sons also meant the removal of his support network, so he sank into abject poverty (as did the whole family) while living with a daughter in-law. The stress of the war years left him a shell of a man; nothing productive ever came from him again.

I have to think that he fulfilled a purpose with his life but I don't know what it was. I know he paid a terrible price. According to my father and some others who knew him, my grandfather possessed a depth of Biblical knowledge that, during his active preaching years, allowed him to counsel the troubled with an appropriate chapter, verse, and resultant distilled wisdom, all without hesitation. He reputedly could calm and comfort anyone, in any situation. Perhaps that was his gift. Perhaps that was why he studied so hard. I'll never know for sure.

Thanks for asking. It's been too long since I thought of the man.

Re:Science and religion

[Surt]

... or so the bible claims, if it has not been corrupted by the hand of man. That's the core problem: there's no way to trust that the Bible doesn't contain deliberate misinformation supplied by God's enemies among man.

You differentiate the will of the holy spirit from a figment of your imagination by noting the qualitative difference. If you ever experienced the will of God you'll quickly understand the difference. In the worst case, then, you might be completely insane, but if that's the case you aren't capable of being responsible for your actions anyway.

Re:Science and religion

[Surt]

The one who speaks to you. If none of them do, you'd probably be best off just doing no wrong, as that generally leads to the most pleasant sort of life for the most people. You could also try being a completely selfish bastard, but evidence seems to suggest that leads to a high probability of long term loneliness.

Re:Science and religion

[thing12]

What that leads to is a God who has chosen to tie himself to that era. He for his own reasons chose to tell all before and all after to fuck off. They are not as important as one particualr group at one point in time. He's all powerful. He obviously could have chosen to get do otherwise. He could have prevented a lot of the killing he hates so much. Instead, he caused it on purpose. Any other interpretation makes him less than god. Really sad people buy into that purely evil crap.

I'd guess that God isn't evil, nor are there any chosen people. People just want to think they're the chosen ones. It's like saying the whole rest of the universe is lifeless. We just have to face the facts that the bible was written down by human beings between 1800 and 5000+ years ago. Human beings who didn't know that the earth revolves around the sun or that the earth wasn't flat. I'd say it's all part of some master plan gone wrong...

• God creates universe.
• God waits.
• Long time passes.
• Humans evolve, thrive, and develop culture.
• God notices the sentient beings and reveals self to humans in various ways.
• Humans don't understand God and interpret the revelations how they see fit.
• Humans create hundreds of religions.
• God continues to reveal self for some time.
• Humans continue to misinterpret him.
• God gives up.

Re:Science and religion

[jsebrech]

It seems very arbitrary to be God's will, that's all that I'm saying. Especially the catholic/protestant divide. In the end there are real differences between the religions, and if someone is right, I can't really say who it is.

Re:Science and religion

[Darby]

Sounds like an incredible man.

Thanks for the response.

Re:Science and religion

[Anonymous Coward]

You should, perhaps, keep in mind that biblical scholars tend to agree that the Revelations (it's plural, not singular) are essentially anti-roman propaganda. Much of the New Testament is irrelevant, in that the epistles were written by someone to a group of people meant to address unknown circumstances. They cannot and should not be applied everywhere, otherwise you're following the teachings of Paul, not Christ.

Re:Science and religion

[Darby]

If none of them do, you'd probably be best off just doing no wrong, as that generally leads to the most pleasant sort of life for the most people.

None of them do, and that's basically what I do.
Occasionally, I even try to do some right.

You could also try being a completely selfish bastard, but evidence seems to suggest that leads to a high probability of long term loneliness.

Tried it, it just didn't work for me. In part for the reasons you gave ;-)

Hmmm.... I'm feeling a Fight Club moment...I don't remember registering your account..Tyler?

Re:Science and religion

[WiFiBro]

"You differentiate the will of the holy spirit from a figment of your imagination by noting the qualitative difference. If you ever experienced the will of God you'll quickly understand the difference."
Sorry for my late reaction, this is a huge topic and I can only concentrate on 50 messages at a time. But you really need to elaborate on that.

About a year ago i discussed with a christian who claimed he had felt God. I asked him to explain. He described feelings he had which made him feel in touch with God. I then answered that I had the exact same kind of feelings from simple experiments with kundalini as well as with harmless visualisation and yoga, and felt they were just coming out of my own brain.
And that I was pretty sure there are muslims, jews and people from other religious backgrounds that also experience such feelings when praying or worshipping.

He then had the guts to tell me I must have been misled by some sort of evilness, as for sure a demon tried to mislead me.

For a Christian this may sound like good advice, for an ex-christian like me it sounded totally indoctrinated. Such self-righteousness is the root of intolerance of different cultures and religions and hence of holy wars.

I do not believe you can ever be sure it is God speaking to you. The human mind is rather capable of imagining, self suggestion, hallucinating.

Re:Science and religion

[Surt]

I always read my replies, so the delay doesn't matter.

The difference is easy to explain though: either you've had an experience so mind shattering that you can not allow the possiblity that it was not God, or you haven't had such an experience. If you've had such an experience, you have no choice but to accept that it was God. Whether it was God, a stroke, an alien force, or the government, you're still left with no choice but to accept that it was God that did it, because your brain has been fundamentally and permanently rewired to believe that way. To put it another way, such an experience takes away your free will to believe it was anything other than God.

So if this is not the sort of experience people are describing to you, then it probably wasn't God.

Re:Science and religion

[WiFiBro]

Thanks for checking your replies!
Your line with the aliens and the government seems to be funny, was that intentional?

Your definition is unfortunately still very ambiguous. For some people getting a child might feel like that, to others a narrow escape. An intensive physical experience (I'm not (necessarily) referring to sex). Drugs. What's the autograph of God? Having no choice seems so vulnerable to naiveness and indoctrination.

Does God grant such religious experiences? If so to whom?
Have you experiences such a thing?

Re:Science and religion

[Anonymous Coward]

A nice summary of the moral dilemma for those losing the sweet promise of afterlive reward and.... revenge (to the bad guys).

Somehow though selfishness in a group seems to be rewarding to quite some people. :( They seem to be happy enough.

Re:Science and religion

[Surt]

It's meant to be mildly funny, but the point I'm trying to make with the humor is serious: I'm completely convinced that there is no way to know whether or not you are under mind control of some kind. Descartes is wrong when he argues there is any way to ration or logic your way to knowledge of whether or not your mental experience reflects reality, or if you are just a brain in a vat being fed artificial stimulation.

If you accept that assumption, and given an experience that you are incapable of denying, then I think you reach the conclusion that either some external entity has directly modified you, whatever you are (whether you are a conventional person as we think we understand that, or if you are just some brain in a vat, or who knows what else we might actually be), or you reach the conclusion that your mind has been naturally (calling a stroke natural) modified. One way or another, your mind has been altered. Either that happened internally or externally. The internal possibilities are basically stroke, drug reaction, accident to my knowledge. The external possibilities are intelligence in 3 flavors: man, not-man-but-not-god (aliens), or god. Anything external but not intelligent I threw into the internal accident category for convenience (ie icepick through the forehead isn't exactly internal, but the effect is roughly the same as a stroke for purposes of this discussion).

So the question then becomes, can you rule out the internal category? You can try, but ultimately you can't be sure. You can go to the doctors to try to rule out a stroke / drug reaction / accident. Ultimately, you'll never be sure, but you can gain as much confidence as external confirmation can give you.

All right, suppose as an individual with such an experience, you've visited the doctor, and done your best to rule out the internal causes. Can you narrow down the external cause? I'd say at this point, no, you're stuck. You can't know for sure whether it was God or the Aliens (or the Government). Maybe you can rule out the government to some degree, because you visited the doctor and asked around and no one else seems to think that this scenario is realistic. The government becomes less likely. Maybe the aliens become less likely also by the same argument. Still, you can never be sure, you're always relying on the external confirmation or denial.

So now the question is: are you better off trusting that the people who wrote down the bible had a more direct experience of God than you did, and that no one since has tampered with the message, or are you better off listening to your own personal message?

I'd argue that even if you could make a decision about whether to believe the bible or your personal experience, you're way better off listening to your personal message, the bible path seems fraught with the possibility of corruption by comparison. And again, I'll point out that if you've really had one of these experiences, you can't even consider the possibility that the bible is right and you are wrong.

Finally, I don't know who God grants such experiences to. I've had one, and the doctors couldn't find anything wrong with me.

Re:Science and religion

[Surt]

I doubt you'll see this since you posted AC, but they seem to be happy enough, until you marry a psychologist, and then you hear the stories about how messed up these people really are inside. It's more than enough to make you sad for them.

Re:Science and religion

[WiFiBro]

Ah thanks for this clarification. At first i was under the impression that you were trying to defend every person who claimed he or she was in touch with God.

I would like to add one more possible cause to your list of internal causes, i once read about. I suppose your doctors ruled it out: stimulation of the angular gyrus of your brain. Well at least i read electrodes could trigger an out-of-body experience in (AFAIK) one experiment.
Nature published it (http://www.nature.com/news/2002/020916/full/02091 6-8.html, need subscription, i don't have a subscription so i cannot read it now. As far as i remember it was a report from a brain surgery in Switzerland, a woman had an out of body experience while they were tracking locations of certain functional fields in the brain by stimulating them with electrodes. Reductionists craved that news.). This stimulation was done in an artificial way but i suppose scar tissue in the brain could also do this, as this can also cause epileptic seizures.

Anyway i wanted to add that i think you are dealing with this pretty rational, even though that's almost impossible with such things.

Re:Science and religion

[Surt]

Certainly there are a number of possible internal causes, all essentially having 'something wierd happens to brain' as their categorical description. The doctors game me a clean bill of health, but that obviously doesn't rule out internal cause.

My experience didn't tell me to kill anyone nor to convert anyone, nor really to take any other irrational-ish action, so it hasn't really crippled my ability to reason, the way that say organized religion tends to with a lot of people.

Re:Science and religion

[ccp]

Perhaps a little late, thanks for sharing your grandfather's history. I found it strangely moving.

Cheers,

Carlos Cesar

I know, use the PET PSYCHIC!!!

[StressGuy]

oh wait...you said Rabbi's

nevermind

Re:I know, use the PET PSYCHIC!!!

[flyingsquid]

You wascally wabbi!

I just had an image of Elmer Fudd pointing his gun at an Orthodox Jew with a Bronx accent who then jumps down a hole... man, I am just not getting enough sleep these days.

Duck Season! Rabbi Season! Duck Season!

Re:I know, use the PET PSYCHIC!!!

[sgt_doom]

The College of Cardinals, after analizing the number one proponent of "intelligent design," George W. Bu$h, wisely decided that there had to be some incredibly malevolent and idiotic force behind his creation - certainly nothing intelligent about his design.....

The Church of the Fyling Spaghetti Monster

[juanfe]

An open letter to the Kansas School board arguing that the creation story provided by the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster also needs to be recognized...

Re:The Church of the Fyling Spaghetti Monster

[Sycraft-fu]

Funny though the FSM thing is, it's tactics could work, though not the FSM theory itself. If the ID thing ever comes to the school district here, I'll be making a trip over to all the reservations and talking to any tribal leaders that will listen. I suspect I'll be able to get them to come and argue that fine, if Christian creation is taught, their creation has to be taught as well (and it varys per tribe). They can also play the all-powerful race card if people try to shut them down.

Re:The Church of the Fyling Spaghetti Monster

[General Alcazar]

It looks like temperatures are cooling in Somalia:

http://www.news24.com/News24/Africa/News/0,6119,2- 11-1447_1821590,00.html

Re:The Church of the Fyling Spaghetti Monster

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you are on to something. Instead of teaching in schools, we should just stop talking about everything scientific, religious or anything relating to the origins of the universe or critical thought. As a matter of fact - what exactly is the point of public education again?

Good plan.

Re:The Church of the Fyling Spaghetti Monster

[cpeterso]

As a matter of fact - what exactly is the point of public education again?

To subdue the Proletariat masses?

Re:I don't see the big deal behind intelligent des

[MankyD]

[blockquote][i]I don't see why the two theories can't be merged. *shrug*[/i][/blockquote] If someone wants to believe in ID, by all means, that is your choice. However, the reason the scientific community is reticent to "merge" the two is that their is no scientific fact or observation supporting ID. It is a tautology, stating that there' must be a Designer because the world can't exist without one. That's just bad science.

Sad.

[SatanicPuppy]

When you're more religiously conservative than the Vatican, that should be a big freakin clue sign that your theory sucks. I mean, they don't believe in contraception, but they think evolution is plausible, and doesn't contradict orthodox theology.

To me, that should be end of story.

Re:Sad.

[shutdown -p now]

Roman Catholicism is not particularly conservative these days, actually. Eastern Orthodoxy and Protestant fundamentalism are much more so.

Re:Sad.

[digidave]

I know somebody who believes that the Bible is the infallible word of God. His view is that the Vatican in far too Liberal and he can point out many examples of where the Vatican has turned its back on traditional thinking.

My friend is a hard right-winger and thinks of the Vatican as quite Liberal.

Yes, he believe everyone is either right wing or left wing and that the two don't agree on anything. No, pointing out that the Vatican once rejected Gallileo's proof and now accepts it won't convince him that it's the same with evolution.

Re:Sad.

[SatanicPuppy]

The thing that gets me about Fundamentalism is the whole evangelical influence and all that comes with it. You know you don't really have to have studied anything to be a baptist preacher? Required religious background = zero. Contrast that with the Catholics, who make their priests study for-fricking-ever, and then make some pretty serious lifestyle sacrifices.

Say what you will about the Catholics, they're not anti-intellectual.

Re:Sad.

[Shakrai]

Say what you will about the Catholics, they're not anti-intellectual.

This guy would probably disagree with that statement if he was still around. Granted, I'll take Catholic ritual and tradition over Baptist fundamentalism any day. Of course there's a reason why most of my family that's religious is Episcopalian -- all the ceremony and half the guilt as my Mother says.

in other news...

[middlemen]

In other news, George W. Bush rejects the Vatican and has called Evolution a Weapon of Mass Destruction.

Re:In other news...

[Pig Hogger]

The Vatican has also come out against the idea that thunder is caused by angels bowling.

My mother used to joke that when it rained, it was the virgin Mary who was scrubbing her floor.

Re:In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well duh... everyone knows that the thunder is when Thor swings his hammer.

Re:In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL... that the best come back ever... I think I'll make that my e-mail tag line!

The clockmaker hypothesis

[PIPBoy3000]

It sounds like they're leaning towards the Clockmaker hypothesis. Of course, as a scientific theory, it's basically unproveable, which makes it a lousy theory in my opinion.

Re:The clockmaker hypothesis

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Of course it's a lousy theory. As an article of faith, though, it's just fine; it lets believers believe what they want to believe, while not interfering with the work of scientists, regardless of their individual belief or lack thereof. Thus presenting a favorable contrast to ID, which is active interference with science.

Re:The clockmaker hypothesis

[lionheart1327]

As long as it motivates them to support science in order to find out the clockmaker's works, I really don't care.

Re:The clockmaker hypothesis

[PIPBoy3000]

It's going to be interesting to see how science and religion dance around each other in the future. Perhaps we'll see moves by the larger ones (like the Vatican) to draw lines between what's proveable and what's not. Anything that can't be proveable one way or the other, that's the domain of religion.

I think I'm with you. I don't particularly care about their thoughts about the afterlife as long as they leave scientific research and teaching alone.

Re:The clockmaker hypothesis

[kentmartin]

While I agree, in this case.. well - do I even need to bother explaining.

However you raise a point worthy of thought in your post. I tend to disagree... simply because a theory is unprovable, doesn't make it a lousy theory, simply one that isn't yet (dis)provable.

There are plenty of mathematical theorems which are unprovable, yet appear to hold true. In that case I guess, at least you have a body of evidence supporting your position. But, to be fair, that is what the fruitloops^H^Hrepublic^H^Hrelig^H^H advocates of I.D. are claiming they have.

Hmmm.. ID debate in US, ID cards in UK... is that evidence of something?

Re:The clockmaker hypothesis

[MaskedSlacker]

More importantly its unfalsifiable. Every theory is unproveable, what is important is that a theory is falsifiable.

Re:The clockmaker hypothesis

[JeffTL]

Nobody (or at least nobody sensible) ever said that the Clockmaker hypthesis, or really any form of intelligent design, is supposed to be a scientific theory; it's all a matter of philosophy and/or theology. Why? It's inherently unfalsifiable.

Re:The clockmaker hypothesis

[bentcd]

No scientific theories are provable. More to the point, however, the clockmaker hypothesis isn't falsifiable and as such it's not just a "lousy theory": in scientific terms, it's not a theory at all.

Re:The clockmaker hypothesis

[DrXym]

Not just a lousy theory, but not a theory at all. The dimwits of the ID (creationist) movement don't have a theory of any kind. Their entire explanation for everything is - "God did it". Don't try to explain, don't investigate, just accept that God did it and that's that. Their god exists in the gaps in our understanding - the more science strips away the mysteries of the universe, the smaller their god of gaps becomes and the more threatened they feel. And evolution is the worst of all as far as they're concerned since it pulls the rug from any literal interpretation of the Bible. Even worse is that evolution is a demonstrable fact as well as a theory and is supported by an insurmountable pile of evidence spanning across multiple fields of science.

A more level headed person might start to think that the Bible shouldn't be taken literally (especially since it can't be). The fundies aren't rational so they feebly wrap their own non-theory up and call it ID. Worse is the total hypocrisy that accompanies this, since the creationist movement spouts outright lies and distortions to further their cause. Talkorigins.org maintains an extensive list of the lies and quote mining creationists do to push their agenda. So in addition to being irrational, creationists are bald faced liars too.

I wonder what the Bible says about lies and dishonesty.

Re:The clockmaker hypothesis

[PIPBoy3000]

Good point about the theory not being falsifiable.

I'd probably hesitate to claim "it's not a theory". Instead, I prefer to judge theories on how well it can be tested, what evidence supports it, and so on. There's a fair number of researchers looking into what might have happened before the big bang. It's likely these ideas aren't ever going to be testable, but they're thought provoking and I'd tend to call them theories.

Sometimes the line between a wacky idea and an accepted scientific theory is a thin one. Just ask the guy who won the Nobel prize for his research on ulcers, drinking a mixture of bacteria to prove a point.

Re:The clockmaker hypothesis

[Foobar of Borg]

ID debate in US, ID cards in UK... is that evidence of something?

Also, ID software has made three versions of DOOM. I think we can see a pattern forming here...

Re:The clockmaker hypothesis

[bentcd]

Fair enough, but you really should take some care how you use the word "theory" in the company of scientists. "Scientific theory" is a very well defined term, and if something is not falsifiable, then it's simply not a scientific theory - with no room for personal preferences.
It can still be a "theory" in the colloquial sense, but it is not advisable to mix two completely different meanings of a word in the same discussion - and doing so as part of an argument is a fallacy.

Re:The clockmaker hypothesis

[Eustace Tilley]

A theory is lousy if the predictions it makes prove fruitless. The "Beneficent Creator" theory inspired the founders of Organon Pharmaceuticals to research the food-animal organs discarded at the slaughterhouses on the grounds that a Creator would not have made useless parts, and thus discovered a plenitude of medically useful compounds. That the "Beneficent Creator" theory in its simplest forms appears to fail to account for the suffering of innocents or the relative abundance of the elements does not render it useless as a framework in the areas where it has proven successful. "The Beneficent Creator has a wonderful plan for your life" may lead to better outcomes that "Natural Selection is essentially finished with you the moment you reproduce."

Re:The clockmaker hypothesis

[FooAtWFU]

Of course. The clockmaker hypothesis is a theory of philosophy, not of science. But I wouldn't say that the Catholic Church would go so far as to say that the divine clockmaker stepped away from his work and just left it running, as is traditional in this sort of hypothesis- instead, he tinkers with it occasionally, perhaps adjusting a piece here or there, holding back a pendulum for a few moments, winding a spring or two, and other subtle interventions.

Yes but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Orthadox Rabbis are fucking loonies.

I know. I am Israeli.

Vote Shinui!

Re:And given the Hindus, some agnostics, etc., etc

[uujjj]

The guy who financed the ID side of the recent trial in Pennsylvania was a Catholic (the Domino's Pizza guy), as was one of their main witnesses (Michael Behe). This was a clear attempt to slap them down. Basically, the Church is telling these people to stop claiming that their religion opposes evolution.

catholic school

[P3NIS_CLEAVER]

My son goes to Perochial school, they teach religion and evolution. I guess they figure that one day he will make a decision for himself.

Re:catholic school

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you read RTFA, the two aren't exclusive! Hopefully your son can realize that both can exist together and you don't have to throw one or the other out. Sorry.

Re:catholic school

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, I went to a parochial school too.
There was an old fading copy of the earth's history on the wall.
That was about as much exposure as we got to it in our required biology class.
The rest focused on the intricacies of biology without its history.
And plenty of opposing exposure everywhere else. 6000 year old earth was in the library, the religion classes,
the required religious services and the humanities. It was just treated as a given.
Unless you're in one of those schools and willing to find things out for yourself,
or in a discipline where they have to teach those things for you to actually be able to function as a scientist,
you'll end up like the rest of the U.S. population.
Ignorant, proud of their ignorance, and bound and determined to spread it.

Re:catholic school

[schon]

My son goes to Perochial school

Cool - so like they teach everything via Greek mythology there?

Not ...... exactly.

[khasim]

#1. Show how ID is not scientific because it cannot be falsified.

#2. Because of #1, the people who try to push ID as an "alternative" "scientific theory" should be identified as fundamentalists intent upon using the classrooms to push their own religious beliefs upon students.

There's nothing wrong with being a fundamentalist and believing in ID.

There is a LOT wrong with trying to use the classroom to indoctrinate students with those fundamentalist beliefs.

Re:Not ...... exactly.

[theStorminMormon]

So I'm curious - how could evolution be falsified?

Note: I'm not a fundamentalist/IDer or anything. I dont' have any trouble with the theory of evolution: I'm just not an expert on evolution.

Re:Not ...... exactly.

[derflammenhund]

If evolution is taken to be the natural development and advancement of traits beneficial to a species' long term survival, falsification of evolution would require you to analyze fossil records, DNA patterns, and so on to prove that there were no progresses within bloodlines. It's possible, but it would either take a long time to observe from here forward or a long time to analyze from here backward.

Re:Not ...... exactly.

[SatanicPuppy]

Easy. Find fossil evidence that debunks the idea of evolution. A couple of 200 million year old Homo Sapiens skeletons would do it, or proof that large mammals coexisted with dinosaurs, stuff like that.

Evolution depends on progression, and if you can proce that things didn't happen in progression, but randomly, then evolution as a theory will have to be changed to reflect that.

The thing that makes evolution such a strong theory though, is that everything actually DOES seem to happen as a progression, and usually a progression that can be charted by pressures put on by environmental factors, and competition with other species.

Re:Not ...... exactly.

[LO0G]

If it could be shown that a significant change occurred in a species without a series of intervening mutations, that would falsify evolution.

Of course, the challenge would then be on the discoverer to propose an alternative that would also explain all of the things that evolution describes, and all the experimental evidence supporting it.

This HAS happened in the past. For instance, when Einstein proposed his Theory of Relativity, he threw out Newtons Theories of motion. But Einstein's theory was able to supercede Newtons theory by including all the existing experiments - Einstein's theory only becomes significant when your dealing with velocities close to the speed of light, and none of the previous experiments validating Newtons theories were executed close to that speed.

There is a huge volume of scientific evidence in favor of Evolution, just as there was a significant body of evidence in favor of Newtons theories of motion. Just like Newtons theories, it would be quite hard to falsify it, but it COULD happen.

Re:Not ...... exactly.

[Loonacy]

Perhaps by finding fossilized half digested human remains in the belly of a dinosaur fossil?

Re:Not ...... exactly.

[AvitarX]

I would think you would use gaps in the fossil record to claim that clearly there was no intermediate (how big a gap is valsification, I do not no).

You would try to demonstrate that there is not selective process (except any creationist I know believes taht species can change, just not dramatically and even split necisarily, fruit fly experiments demonstrate how quickly an isolated group can speciate, it is harder to show a hot to cold blooded example in fossil records since it is hard to determine)

You would find examples of "impossible" evolutions (oppsosable thumb, some beattle that squirts hot liquid).

These are all examples I have heard, I do not agree with them.

I think part of the difference is not just that it is falsifiable, but that it explains things. ID does not explain how anything happens, it says it is impossible and therefore was a series of miracles. Evolution says it is a matter of lucky bithdefects. We can make predictions based on Evolution, we cannot on ID.

Re:Not ...... exactly.

[Cpt_Kirks]

Would the steaming pile of doo with the satellite phone from JP2 do it?

Re:Not ...... exactly.

[Anonymous Coward]

Try and teach "COULD happen" to kids who take everything in class as truth and are just facts to be memorized and regurgitated. Like others have posted, ID is worse for the worlds religions than it is for science. It has brought science into the limelight more than anything else i can think of has done.

Re:Not ...... exactly.

[Grab]

Only by proving that it would not be possible for multiple changes to happen to DNA over multiple generations. Evolution requires that over many generations, the many DNA changes mount up to result in new species.

ID proposes that species are fixed - in other words, a certain amount of DNA changes are possible (so Darwin's finches, moths/flies and other quickly-evolving species are covered), but DNA changes to the extent of new species being created are not possible. So micro-evolution but not macro-evolution.

So far this looks, well, unlikely. Everything we know about DNA says this is possible. Unless the ID crowd come up with a specific chemical for each species that says "stay a bird" or "stay an insect", ID is basically screwed.

ID also proposes that certain features of nature are "irreducably complex", in other words that if you took out one part then it would stop working. The eye was the famous case, although they've relinquished that because it was phemonenally easy to prove that there was a spectrum of qualities of light detection from earthworms to eagles, and each step was an improvement. The latest case is the "flagellum" which propels bacteria - remove one protein and it stops acting as a propulsion mechanism. But it's very close in structure to a secretory attack mechanism, so what you most likely have is something which mutated and then turned out to be useful for something else (like bolting a snowplough on a truck changes what you can use it for). Until they can find something which is utterly unprecedented, again ID is basically screwed. And even then, ID would only be one hypothesis for bridging the gap, the other hypothesis being "it just mutated that way" (ie. randon chance) - this would reduce evolution and ID to the same level, but wouldn't give ID an edge in any way.

When you really get down to it, the only sure proof of ID is to catch God making the changes. I wish them luck...

Grab.

Re:Not ...... exactly.

[operagost]

That approach would not work because we already have extant species such as alligators that have not advanced for millions of years-- and this is attributed to them having a highly optimized design. They are certainly efficient killing machines, at least as long as you keep them away from pythons.

Re:Not ...... exactly.

[derflammenhund]

I want to say "not advancing isn't evidence advancement isn't possible" but I'm not real sure how to go about saying that in a logically laid out fashion. Suffice it to say there are creatures like birds and deer and god knows what else that've changed around. Deer kind of suck, and if nature happened to give them a way to stop freezing up in headlights, the... whatever, I don't need to tell you that.

Contemptable pythons.

Re:Not ...... exactly.

[Braino420]

For impossible evolutions, have you ever considered the eye? As complex as the eye is, I wouldn't assume that it was formed by mutation; going from nothing to something extremely complex and that works is hard to believe. It couldn't have started with something that didn't work and then evolved into something that did work, by evolution; half an eye that doesn't work wouldn't do any animal any good. So how do we explain the eye with evolution? I'm not trying to start some heated debate, I would just like an answer to my question. I have found that philosophical debates are hardly constructive and definately don't change ANYONES views.

Re:Not ...... exactly.

[Anonymous Coward]

If it could be shown that a significant change occurred in a species without a series of intervening mutations, that would falsify evolution.

What part of that is falsifiable? Proving that fosils don't and haven't existed isn't possible.

Re:Not ...... exactly.

[conJunk]

since when did relativity throw out newtonian laws of motion? i took elementary school science classes in the 1980s, a good 70 years (give or take) since the publications of theories of relativity...

we still demonstrated f=ma by rolling a ball down a ramp and measuring its force... we still demonstrated inertia and measured friction... to say that einstein "threw out" newton is rediculous

Re:Not ...... exactly.

[AvitarX]

The ability to detect light and dark has advantage in some situations (presumably liklyhood of being close to plant matter) (one light sensitive cell).

Next is the ability to directionally detect light (to seek plant matter) (a few light sensitive cells in different places).

After that is the ability to detect shapes (many light sensitive cells).

What I find more suprising is the pervasiveness of 2 eyes per a body, but if it was very benificial real early on it would have stuck.

I've heard the eye as an impossibility example, but it just seems so easy to explain (unlike wings for example).

Re:Not ...... exactly.

[hoggoth]

That's not even a particularly difficult evolution to imagine.

1. Creature has a single photosensitive cell. This creature can tell night from day, exposed from shadowed, and can navigate using the sun. Great advantages over it's peers for such a simple mutation.

2. Some descendant of that highly successful creature has a few photosensitive cells. Better sensitivity/accuracy. More redundant in case of damage.

3. Some later descendant can distinguish when some of the cells see light and others dont. This gives direction, and leads to the future ability to create a 'picture' from light.

Future refinements are just improving the ability to focus and use those cells.

Note that there currently exist organisms with abilities at each of these levels of sophistication, lending credence to the idea of a gradually evolved eye.

BTW Humans are not the highest level of evolution with regards to the eyes. Many birds of prey have vision so keen they can see a field mouse from a mile away.

Re:Not ...... exactly.

[terjeber]

to say that einstein "threw out" newton is rediculous

No, it isn't. f=ma is true, but not for all values of f, m and a. Newton assumes that f=ma doesn't change for values of these variables, but once it was observed that it does, we had to disregard Newton for Einstein. Since the values of f, m and a for which Newton is wrong however are not very relevant for our daily life, we still use Newton as a good approximation, and somewhat easier to work with than Einstein.

Re:Not ...... exactly.

[AndersOSU]

The eye was the famous case, although they've relinquished that because it was phemonenally easy to prove that there was a spectrum of qualities of light detection from earthworms to eagles

Really the IDists have relinquished an argument? Someone should really let the men in the trenches know because in my experience IDists just spout the same tired old arguments regardless of merit.

Re:Not ...... exactly.

[WhiplashII]

I don't really disagree with you, but I would caution you - a common failing in science (if not THE common failing) is that scientists regularly discount data that doesn't match their expectations, until the evidence is overwhelming. That's why new, incredible theories such as QM and relativity are often looked down on as junk science early on.

Re:Not ...... exactly.

[vondo]

Basically correct. I would not say we "threw out" it's just that Einstein found a deeper theory, which, in the limit of low velocities, is exactly Newton's theory. The same happened with quantum mechanics.

Re:Not ...... exactly.

[ConceptJunkie]

No, it isn't. f=ma is true, but not for all values of f, m and a.

f=ma is true, but for only certain values of true.

Doesn't it make a whole lot more sense to say that f=ma is a reasonable approximation, and until you reach velocities close to the speed of light or masses on the scale of a star or so, the error is wholly unmeasurable.

Newton's Laws were thrown out. But as it happens, they are still extremely accurate approximations for practically anything you would be doing on human scales.

It is quite possible that Einstein's laws (e.g., e=mc^2) will get thrown out too, in favor of laws for which Einstein's laws are extremely accurate approximations for anything but the most extreme conditions (e.g., 1 femtosecond after the Big Bang).

Re:Not ...... exactly.

[Anonymous Coward]

4. A thin transparent layer develops over that cluster of photosensitive cells, to provide better protection from damage. 5. The thin transparent layer becomes thicker in the middle, giving some primitive lensing. 6. The photosensitive cells form a layer at roughly the focal plane of the "lens".

Re:Not ...... exactly.

[Chris Mattern]

As additional note, the human eye--and all vertebrate eyes--have a design flaw that can only really be explained by evolution. There's a blind spot where the optic nerve attaches to the retina, because the neural net in the retina is *in front* of the retina, not behind it. So the place where all the neurons gather to run the cabling back to the brain can't have any retinal cells there, causing a blind spot. The neuronal net itself also causes minor degradation in vision. It's a not a big problem--and was less of one when the eye was less developed, which is why the fault was never evolved away. But squids do it right--the nerves are behind the retina, and a squid's eyes have no blind spot. Ultimately, this is because our eyes evolved from brain tissue, while a squid's evolved from skin tissue. Evolution explains it very nicely. So can anyone who believes in Intelligent Design explain to me why God screwed up our eyes, but got squid eyes right?

Chris Mattern

Re:Not ...... exactly.

[Anonymous Coward]

Debunking evolution doesn't make the argument for ID any stronger. The supporters have created a false dichotomy; namely that there are only two possible theories for the origin of life.

The key mistake of the IDers is that most of their "scientific" evidence is pointing to problems with evolution. The logic goes like: here is a problem with evolution, so evolution is false. Then they make the giant (unsupportable) leap: if evolution is false, then the alternative, ID, must be true. Using the scientific method, actual evidence for ID needs to be shown.

The problem, of course, is that there is no evidence, since ID can be summarized as, "since there are no other possible explanations (e.g. evolution), then by default it must be God, oops I mean The Designer".

Re:Not ...... exactly.

[SatanicPuppy]

That's not so much a failing of science, as a failing of humanity. The Jews didn't actually react well to Jesus' revolutionary ideas.

This country in particular has had a lot of trouble with new scientific ideas. We were one of the last countries in the world to start teaching the theory of continental drift...almost to the point where it was possible to prove it, and we held on to the catastrophe theory of geology much longer than most other countries.

And this damn evolution debate has been raging here for-freakin-ever, when most of the world thinks we're freaking crazy.

The thing about science is that, given time, the good theories and the bad theories sort themselves out. It's like logic...If you follow good methods, it's hard to keep reasoning with bad premises, so eventually, you have to recheck your early assumptions.

I can only wish the same held true with religion.

Re:Not ...... exactly.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not quite.. you'd have to show that there were changes within bloodlines that cannot be explained by evolution.

Re:Not ...... exactly.

[Geoff St. Germaine]

I'd agree with this. F = ma is a suitable first order approximation for objects moving at velocities less than about 10% of the speed of light. Newton's laws were shown to be an approximate form of a more complex dependence.

Re:Not ...... exactly.

[Anonymous Coward]

See 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution at the talk.origins archive. Each claim is accompanied by a "potential falsification" section.

Re:Not ...... exactly.

[mfrank]

Find a bird with compound (insect) eyes. Or that lays eggs that, when they hatch, have lizards in them.

Find human fossils in a rock layer 100 million years old.

Find an animal incredibly unlike anything currently existing that has no trace in the fossil record (that's why the duck-billed platypus caused a buzz when it was first discovered).

Re:Not ...... exactly.

[linuxrocks123]

"There's nothing wrong with being a fundamentalist and believing in ID."

Depending on what you mean by "wrong", I would dispute that. Sure, it's not morally objectionable to hold these delusional and absurd beliefs, but it does indicate a complete rejection of rational thought and, imho, a desire to willfully close one's eyes to enlightenment. I find this to be a wrongheaded attitude, and it saddens me that there are so many people who would turn their back on learning so that they can retain the false comfort of delusion.

Re:Not ...... exactly.

[Anonymous Coward]

Intelligent design is falsifiable. All we have to do is find examples in biology where the design looks cobbled together from existing parts instead of being well put together.

For example, if human jawbones were too small to hold the teeth in them and the last ones had to be regularly pulled. Or if a small bag were attached to the large intestine and susceptible to swelling and rupture resulting if fecal matter getting spread throughout the abdominal cavity. Or setting up spermatogenesis to require a optimal temperature below body temperature and instead of providing a functional cooling system, just dangling the testes in a sack vulnerable to damage.

Not if any of these exist in nature, we can say that those organisms weren't intelligently designed and we've falsified ID.

Re:Not ...... exactly.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hint: If you can't "go about saying it in a logically laid out fashion" then that means it is irrational. Wake up and smell the coffee. Evolution isn't falsifiable either.

Re:Not ...... exactly.

[ezeri]

The ability to detect light and dark has advantage in some situations (presumably liklyhood of being close to plant matter) (one light sensitive cell).

Thats by far the simple part of an eye. The part that Behe and others would say is ireducably complex is the chemical signaling pathway.

Re:Not ...... exactly.

[nkr1ptd]

The interesting part of this "There is a huge volume of scientific evidence in favor of Evolution..." is only somewhat true. There is an equal amount of evidence proving Evolution incorrect. The geologic column for instance does not really exist, it is a theory that has never actually been discovered in real life. Come to think of it most of the "evidence" that supports Evolution are actually theories themselves. When fossils are discovered they categorize them by where they are in the geologic column, however many times the geologic column is defined by the age in which the fossils are found....circular reasoning. Then there is the actual title of Darwin's book which you never see in today's textbooks and it is NEVER mentioned in full ... "Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life ..." Darwin racist? Maybe, I will leave that one up to someone else. Also there is the continued discussion of Dinosaurs..I find it funny that people constently question the term when, there is a reasonable explanation ...the word dinosauar is relatively new considering it came into existance in the 1800s prior to that it did not exist and the word used was "Dragon"...the word dragon is used a couple times in the Bible. The word dragon has taken on a new meaning compaired to the old english word meaning large serpent or large reptile. It is also a fact that lizards grow their entire life and never stop growing like humans....so lets say that Adam lived to be roughly 900 years old like the Bible says, if Reptiles/Dragons/Dinosaurs lets use an Alligator grew for 900 years imagine how big it would be. So if this is true then that means Adam (man) walked on the earth with the Dinosaurs...maybe that explains why in the Grand Canyon they have discovered images on the walls created by the Native Americans that dipict DINOSAURS. Interestingly enough the scientists that discovered it made the comment that if facts do not match the theories then new theories need to be created. I think the Bible define exactly how the earth was created in six days. I also think it very interesting that many of the theories and thought about how the earth evolved are being proved wrong and many "discoveries" are being discovered as hoaxes. I think the problem has been that Christian have had to believe soley on faith for the past decade because there were no facts to reinforce their beliefs. This is no longer true. I believe that to show others that the Bible is backed up by Scientific facts. If you believe me or not..check out the book "Case for the Creator" it was written by a former aethiest converted by his own discoveries and discussions with scientists that disprove the theories supporting the evolution theory. Also check out www.drdino.com for some good audios and videos that help Christians to see the scientific facts that backup their beliefs. There are also countless articles and supporting information for proof of the Creator (G-D). The problem with many evolution backers is they stuggle to tell you how the Bible is false, when they have no proof of their own religion (evolution). Most people dont want to believe in a creator because they dont want to be accountable for thier actions. Without the theist belief our society fails in so many ways, fundamental ideas like right from wrong. If evolution is in fact true how did we come up with right from wrong? In the evolution idea there is none, it is truly survival of the fitest. The fundamental beliefs used by most societies are based on the laws in the Bible...and if you dont believe that then prove me wrong...where did the first laws come from? And be able to backup who made those laws and how they came up with the ideas for the laws they created. Other things to think about....Big Bang, is not logical...something comes from nothing? hmmm that is not even logical within itself, yet it is commonly accepted. Other ideals like the fact that evolutionist will question that

Re:Not ...... exactly.

[Grab]

I'm afraid so. Sooner or later, even IDists get tired of getting kicked in the nuts the same way. One of these days they'll work out that by changing their ground they're just getting kicked in the nuts a different way, but hey, that's their choice. It's a free world - or at least it will be so long as IDists keep their beliefs to their religious studies classes and don't try to elbow them into science classes.

Grab.

Re:Not ...... exactly.

[Alsee]

how could evolution be falsified?

Do some genetic analysis and find two or three distintive items that directly contradict the established tree of common decent.

All mammals have essentially the same gene for mammary glands, all derived from a common ancestor. Find that gene somewhere outside the mammal line and evolution has a problem. Find unrelated form of that gene within the mammal line and evolution has a problem.

Occationally ordinary viruses accidentally insert their DNA into our DNA. In fact our DNA is loaded with inert virus DNA in hundreds or thousands of locations. Any particular string of virus DNA was first inserted into a particular ancestor in a particular location. For example chimpanzees are our closest living relative, and humans and chimpanzees share a handfull of these random inert viruses in a couple of exactly matching locations in our DNA. We do not share that particular quirk with any other species on earth, because that insertion happened recently in that particular and uniquely human-chimpanzee ancestor. Going back a bit farther you will find a handful of such unique insertions that are shared exclusively by humans and chimpanzees and our next closest primate relatives. Going back a bit further there are inserstions that are uniquely shared by all primates and ONLY by primates.

The tree of common decent imposes an extremely STRICT pattern on the inheritance of DNA and the inheritance of these sorts of genetic anomolies. Finding a particular virus insert in humans and chips no where else in other primates pins that insertion down as a very recent event exclusive to humans and chips. It would then be a huge problem for evolution if you were to discover that virus in the exact same spot in a cat. It would also be a big problem if you found a virus in the exact same spot in humans and in apes but *not* in chimps. If that virus was inserted far enough bact to be on both the human and ape line then it must by definition be on the chip line as well. It could not be passed down to us without passing through the human-chimp common ancestor.

And that is just scratching the surface of the torrent of iron clad genetic analysis evidence supporting evolution. It is possible to analize each and every gene independantly, and those genes *must* all establish the exact same tree patern of inheritance. Not only must the presense and abscence of individual mutations match the inheritance tree, the raw count of mutation differences in that gene in two species is a rough clock in how long ago the species diverged from the common ancestor. The DNA timeline has to match up as well. Note that this "clock" is not a perfectly smooth clock and sometimes it "runs faster" or "runs slower", but is is still a decent time estimator and we are improving our skills in calibrating and reading that clock, but any serious discrepancies in this clock would still represent a serious challenge to evolution.

In the last couple of years we have automated the machinery for doing genetic sequencing, and thus far all of the evidence has been in complete support of evolution, and that evidence continues to pour in at a staggering rate. We are sequencing entire genomes of more and more species, and we are running broad surveys sampling some particular gene as it exists within a swath of species.

All of this genetic evidence is direct support for Common Decent, and by extension it represents evidence of so-called "macroevolution" and essentially every other element of evolution. If you nail down Common Decent you've nailed down he entire ball of wax.

The fat lady has sung, and her name is DNA.

-

Typical of fundamentalist thought

[Omnifarious]

They tend to reject rationalism and go in for magical thinking whenever it suits their purpose. It is a creed that is devoid of any value to humanity. It would be much better if they simply stated "All this change, we're worried that it isn't right, and we should carefully rethink our aims and values!". Because basically fundamentalism in America is all about fear of radical social change.

Of course, it doesn't help that many (on all sides) see public school as a ground for indoctrinating young people with their particular values. It was reprehensible when we hauled Native American children away from their families and forced them into western style schools. It's similarly reprehensible to force diversity training and acceptance of homosexuality and all kinds of other social things down the throats of young people who's parents don't agree.

I, personally, think all these are fine values. But I think it's wrong to force them on others. They will come to them in time, since I believe strongly that these values have much greater utility and survivability in the long term than the ones they replace.

As River puts it so eloquently in Serenity: "People don't like to be messed with."

Re:Typical of fundamentalist thought

[DataCannibal]

So, by your argument, forcing integration down the throats of southern parents and school boards was wrong as well ?

What is the point of having values if you dont try to teach them to anyone?

Re:Typical of fundamentalist thought

[Omnifarious]

Yes, more or less.

IMHO, the solution to the problem is to not have schools that are directly publicly funded. That way parents can choose a school to send their kids to instead of having money ripped out of their pockets to pay to teach a value system to which they are violently opposed.

That would've also solved the 'separate but not equal' problem because the government could no longer preferentially allocate money to a school based on whether or not black people attended it. If black people were really determined, they could get together and use their education allocations to fund a really nice school that wass better than any the white people had.

Don't try to force people to change. Arrange the system so that they stupidity of their choice comes back to haunt them. They'll change soon enough.

I also think the Civil War was a bad way to solve the slavery problem. Black people in the south would've eventually revolted, or the south would've eventually collapsed economically because slavery is very economically inefficient. Either way we would've ended up with a much better situation than we had. People in the south would've wanted to change things instead of having that change forced upon them from the outside.

After the south broke away, the north would've stopped having any justification for returning slaves to the south anymore, and would've been free to treat posse's looking for escaped slaves as an invading foreign army and wiped them out as they deserved. Heck, the escaped slaves could be lent the weapons to do it themselves, since it would be clearly a case of self-defense.

Governing people without their consent is wrong.

Re:Typical of fundamentalist thought

[Omnifarious]

Also...

What is the point of having values if you dont try to teach them to anyone?

Seems to me that values are for living by, not forcing others to adhere to. Turn the tables. Suppose the fundies take over government, which isn't at all an unlikely scenario. Would you like your kids to be forced to learn all about creationism and how homosexuals are evil, and the only good sex is sex that leads to a child being born?

It goes both ways you know. You give the government a power, and it gets to be used by the will of the majority, or at least by the will of the people who manage to get in power. If you really want the government to have the power to decide what value system your children are indoctrinated with, you deserve what happens.

Re:Typical of fundamentalist thought

[maxume]

Re integration, you could argue that the insult to the values of the white parents was offset by the equality restored to the blacks, it was the lesser of two evils.

As far as teaching values, the argument isn't about teaching values, but about what values are appropriate for a public school.

Another Point

[geoffrobinson]

This article is about how the Vatican thinks Genesis 1 was intended to be taken. I agree as a wacky "fundamentalist" (cue spooky music) that Gen. 1 is not meant to be a science textbook and is not written as such (although there may be general points that apply to science), what does this have to do with Intelligent Design as I said in my post above.

Intelligent Design isn't about having a set interpretation of Gen. 1 and forcing it into science. There are Roman Catholic IDers, agnostic IDers (few, I admit), etc., etc.

So I think that the Vatican is reacting to newspapers articles about ID instead of ID.

So, yes, Gen. chapter 1 is not a science textbook and is trying to make general points. Bully for them. My socks are white.

Intelligent Design is neither!

[SisyphusShrugged]

As an intelligent Christian I find these fundamentalists to be annoying and damaging to the reputation of christianity.

Intelligent design is illogical and unneccessary, as the ed said, the Genesis story is NOT SUPPOSED TO BE TAKEN LITERALLY! (Unless you genuinely believe that women are created out of a rib, somehow)

Please fundamentalists, stop damaging everyone else who is actually able to accept the scientific logical explanation for life on this planet and still believe that the idea of an cunctipotent entity that follows more the strands of deistic tradition ( a la Benjamin Franklin) is possible.

Re:Intelligent Design is neither!

[VolciMaster]

I would have a hard time believing you to be an "intelligent Christian". And it's not directly becuase you don't believe in a literal understanding of the creation account in Genesis.

Analytcally, the assumption in reading any text (be it from the Bible or not) is to assume that the authors meant precisely what they said. If there is no way that the text can be understood literally, then you move on to attempting to understand it in a figurative sense. This is basic hermeneutics. In many places in the Bible, the creation account is summarized and/or referenced as having been accurate - and literal (the 4th commandment springs to mind when God directly gives the reason for keeping the sabbath holy to Him: "For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day.")

When God comes out and says the account is correct, it's very dangerous ground to say that it is "NOT SUPPOSED TO BE TAKEN LITERALLY".

Re:Intelligent Design is neither!

[Anonymous Coward]

frankly, that is a retarded argument. The bible was written by several individuals over a long period of time. It would be hard to prove the bible was written by one person. Having said that, there are numerous inconsistencies in the bible resulting from multiple authors. The tone of the old testament is an angry god, but the new testament is a forgiving god. Within the old testament, the various books also have different styles and tones. How about really studying the bible and answering the incosistencies in both old and new testament. In the new testament, Jesus it is by faith alone one is saved, whereas the old testament teaches that "good works" leads to salvation. Which one is it? Both, one, or neither. In the old testament, women's roles were limited and created an inequality between the sexes. The new testament as preached by Jesus teaches the reader that neither familial, sexual or state ties are good. That is a very radical and liberal perspective. F-ing read the damn bible and actually take 20 years to understand it. Not that I understand it, but I atleast take the time to really analyze and think about it.

Re:Intelligent Design is neither!

[mpathetiq]

...cunctipotent...

Wow. A Slashdot post that made me actually look up a word's definition. Thank you, SisyphusShrugged. You are my new Word-Of-The-Day Calendar.

Re:Intelligent Design is neither!

[Rydia]

Actually, most text is meaningless if taken literally. Taken literally, the butter battle book is all about people who really like bread. And somehow Bloom got a sex change and then another real quick sandwiching one chapter in Ulysses. Literal meaning is often the worst interpretation, because authors speak in metaphor and allegory, not just writing.

That aside, there are really good reasons to take the bible as allegory. For one, it was written waaaay post hoc, during the babylonian exile, after being handed down by oral tradition. Then there's the added fact that the tone for almost all of the bible, excluding the books of the prophets, IS allegory. They go right out and say it. Jesus' stories, legends of the exile and all that. Aside from disparate fundamentalist groups, this is accepted and widely taught.

Re:Intelligent Design is neither!

[Anonymous Coward]

Check out Isaac Asimov's Guide to the Bible for a more historical perspective on how the Bible and it's stories came to be.

Re:Intelligent Design is neither!

[RaymondRuptime]

Since you invoke basic hermeneutics... That's a bit of a gloss. I would remind you and the readers that there are many tools (sometimes called "criticisms") available and almost universally accepted by scholars of the Bible and other bodies of literature.

Form criticism, for example, shows us how to analyze a text and determine its "form" or archetypal nature, and this teaches us how to begin to read it. It would not be necessary, to illustrate with a different book, to attempt to determine whether or not one could understand the Psalms literally; it is clearly a body of poetry, and should be read as such. Any attempt to read a "non-literal" form (like poetry) in some "literal" sense is simply nonsense.

One may reasonably state that the Book of Psalms is "true" (contains spiritual truth), divinely inspired, divinely dictated, or divinely approved--and thus could be claimed as "the Word of God"--without nonsensically saying that it should be taken literally. Any statement that a library of books which are of a variety of forms should be taken literally should simply be set aside as ignorant.

If one stipulates this simply notion, then the argument becomes (more interestingly): which books or portions of books are intended to be factual, and are they accurately factual? From a churchy point of view, another important question is: what is the truth contained in these different documents?

To expand on that last just a wee bit more... Jesus told many parables. Many would say that they are "true", in that they tell us something which is true about God or ourselves, etc. No credible scholar would suggest that they be taken literally. But one could certainly take them seriously--could seek and find the intended lesson.

I hate to add to the pedantry, but there is a danger in oversimplifying this stuff; and conversely, there is a real opportunity to discover the richness of a large, well-preserved, ancient body of literature that has been the foundation of many cultures by using more of the tools that scholars have developed.

Re:Intelligent Design is neither!

[sribe]

Intelligent design is illogical and unneccessary, as the ed said, the Genesis story is NOT SUPPOSED TO BE TAKEN LITERALLY! (Unless you genuinely believe that women are created out of a rib, somehow)...

Well, actually, you apparently have to believe both that, and that Adam & Eve were created together, and that this apparent contradiction requires no interpretation whatsoever. Or else you have to convince yourself that to say the first account in Genesis is literal truth, while the later account in Genesis is abbreviated or metaphorical, is somehow not interpretation. And that's just plain dysfunctional--IMHO of course ;-)

Re:I don't see the big deal behind intelligent des

[Skiron]

Tut. Evolution is a scientific theory. Religion _isn't_ a theory - it is utter fantasy like Father Christmas or Lord of the rings.

If religion did have any basis on fact, then we would have only one religion - except we don't - all we have is religion[s] trying to kill the other religion[s] off - WAR.

The sooner religion is dropped from mainstream and moved to a pigeon hole like star trek fans (et al), the World would be a better place.

Re:I don't see the big deal behind intelligent des

[Crosma]

So... you're saying that evolution should contain references to God to appease people who believe in Intelligent Design? You cannot be serious. ID is a tool created by ignorant fundamentalists to stop the advance of science. Its supporters can't stand that science is replacing superstition, so they're trying to do something about it.

I thought they already settled their problems...

[TheWhaleShark]

Let me preface this by saying that I am a scientist, a Bacteriologist for New York State to be precise.

(residents of New York State, you are paying me right now to post on Slashdot; thanks)

I went to a Catholic grammar school from 3rd to 8th grade (I'm 23 now, so you can get a reference as to roughly when I went to school), and I remember being SPECIFICALLY taught in my Religion classes, by nuns no less, that there is NO conflict between scientific evolution and the creation story, so long as you believe the soul was created by God. Since the soul cannot be touched by science one way or another (cannot prove or disprove), that's absolutely fine. There shouldn't be any conflict whatsoever; Genesis is a version of how everything got here, and evolution tells you how what is here changes. No problems, at least in theory; it seems that fundies just keep trying to drag up the old debates.

Re:Evolution isn't a theory about the start of lif

[Vo0k]

But OF COURSE the theory of evolution is all wrong!

Proof: http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/5001/5001_01.a sp

(make this post either +5 flamebait or -1 informative please.)

Re:And given the Hindus, some agnostics, etc., etc

[Infonaut]

that would make this article pertinent how?

I'm not sure I get your point. One of the most powerful religious organizations in the world has reiterated its commitment to separation of faith and science. I'm not a Catholic, and I consider this to be a rather important statement which will hopefully make some Christians rethink the scientific validity of "intelligent design." Since there are more than a few Christians around the globe, I'd say this has ramifications beyond the Catholic Church.

Maybe if we're lucky, some influential Hindus and agnostics will make their own similar declarations.

the problem with an allegorical interpretation...

[buddyglass]

The problem with interpreting the creation story allegorically is that the Old Testament provides seemingly literal genealogies for various figures (including Jesus) tracing their lineage back to Adam. So, it's not simply a matter of interpreting the cration story as allegory. By doing so, one demotes to fiction entire swaths of the Old Testament. For less conservative Christians, including perhaps the Vatican, this isn't a problem. For others, including but not limited to extreme fundamentalists, it is a slightly more disturbing proposition.

Re:I don't see the big deal behind intelligent des

[ad0gg]

[blockquote][i]I don't see why the two theories can't be merged. *shrug*[/i][/blockquote] If someone wants to believe in ID, by all means, that is your choice. However, the reason the scientific community is reticent to "merge" the two is that their is no scientific fact or observation supporting ID. It is a tautology, stating that there' must be a Designer because the world can't exist without one. That's just bad science.

Theories can't be merged because evolution uses slashot forum system and ID uses UBB forum system. Posts are incompatbile with each other.

Stretching it a bit too far...

[Red Samurai]

They didn't exactly REJECT intelligent design, they just brought up a few points backing evolution. Geez...

Re:Stretching it a bit too far...

[BarryNorton]

They didn't exactly REJECT intelligent design

Hence the question mark... Or are you talking to the Italian press?

Re:Stretching it a bit too far...

[CyricZ]

What does a man of your academic stature think of intelligent design?

haha

[Anonymous Coward]

i find it amusing that people take any of the fluff in that book as truth.

In other news...

[Microsift]

The Vatican has also come out against the idea that thunder is caused by angels bowling.

Wh-t?

[jfengel]

Actually, YHWH already has some letters struck out, specifically the vowels. In Hebrew it's spelled yod-hay-vav-hay; YHWH is a rough English transliteration. Since the vowels are missing nobody can say how it's pronounced. In fact it's usually pronounced "Adonai", which is a different name entirely.

I've never known any observant Jews to drop a letter from YHWH, but observant Jews of my acquantiance usually write it as G-d when they write it in English.

Re:Wh-t?

[msdschris]

If spelling it out aloud it would be yud-kay-vav-kay.

Re:I don't see the big deal behind intelligent des

[geekwithsoul]

Because evolution is *science* and the belief in a creator of the world/universe/your belly button is *faith*

Science offers theories that are testable and match the facts available. Faith offers beliefs that are not only untestable, but that are not in the least effected by not having facts available to match it up.

The "debate" about evolution vs. ID is stupid on the face of it. It would be like saying astronomers and astrologists need to find some common ground.

Re:I don't see the big deal behind intelligent des

[flyinwhitey]

"I don't see why the two theories can't be merged"

Well, let me try to illustrate my perspective.

If you were to make the following statement in mixed company

"I believe in The Flying Spaghetti Monster and that he(yes, he), had a hand in creating the universe"

it would not be taken seriously. Chances are your faculties would be privately questioned, and it could be seen as a sign of a mental disorder.

Now what you said was

"I believe in a God and that he(yes, he), had a hand in creating the universe"

Somehow, your statement is acceptable. The reality is, your statement is just as ridiculous.

So to answer your question, the reason the theories can't be merged is because people like you believe in a fairy tale, and attempt to portray it as fact.

Capitalism/Science: ID=damage, route around it

[fuzzy12345]

I may be wrong, but it's likely that the Vatican takes this position because they can't play if they deny the game exists. If they want a say in the morality of reproductive technology and genetic manipulation, they can't cover their ears, shout blah-blah-blah-blah-blah and deny the field exists, which seems to be the approach in some parts of the 'States.

I'm confident that science will continue to be done, because there's money in it. When business leaders read that 51% of Americans reject evolution, they'll equate that with abysmal science education, and locate their R&D facilities elsewhere. Americans will still be able to buy the end-products, of course -- ironically, they'll likely remain the largest market for them. But the science will be done elsewhere. Think of it as outsourcing.

P.S. Why can't Slashdot ever cite primary sources, or even articles that do. This article just pointed to a less-than-informative blurb.

Re:And given the Hindus, some agnostics, etc., etc

[geoffrobinson]

Their comments are about the intent behind Gen. 1. ID proponents aren't going for a model based on a certain reading of Gen. chapter 1. In other words, they are arguing against straw men.

How many times does this have to be repeated?

[karzan]

There is nothing wrong with believing that a higher power, an intelligent being, or whatever, guided the process of evolution, or designed life on Earth, etc etc. It is a perfectly legitimate religious belief.

Just as it is a perfectly legitimate religious belief that the son of God appeared on Earth and died on the cross, and a perfectly legitimate religious belief that Mohammed ascended to heaven from a rock, and a perfectly legitimate religious belief that the world is supported by a (invisible) turtle.

However none of these are scientific theories, and none of them ever can be. The reason is that they cannot be tested, they cannot be confirmed or falsified. You can always point at anything and say 'Wow, that's incredible--it must have been designed by God'. Science does not work that way. For something to be a scientific theory, it needs to be useable in scientific practice. Religious belief is not.

I do not challenge the legitimacy of your religious beliefs. But they are in a totally different domain from evolutionary theory, which is a scientific theory. Evolutionary theory must be evaluated on the basis of scientific standards (peer review, independent testing, attempts to falsify, etc), while religious ideas must be evaluated on the basis of religious standards (faith, direct spiritual experience, etc). Do not conflate the two and everyone will be happy.

Re:How many times does this have to be repeated?

[Anonymous Coward]

However none of these are scientific theories, and none of them ever can be. The reason is that they cannot be tested,

Yes, using your own argument, evolution is just a theory. A bad one at that. It keeps needing updating every year.

they cannot be confirmed or falsified. You can always point at anything and say 'Wow, that's incredible--it must have been designed by God'. Science does not work that way.

Yet, we have millions of mindless drones going on about how evolution is scientifically proven and a fact today. The truth remains that it's just a theory today as much as it was the first day someone muttered the idea. The only true nothing-to-something evolution is the theory of evolution itself. It came around from nothing - no scientific fact, and remains around and keeps updating itself to so desperately explain things.

For something to be a scientific theory, it needs to be useable in scientific practice. Religious belief is not.

Evolution is not useable in scientific practice today. It has not been scientifically documented! It has never been observed. The smaller adaptations observed in species today is not a proof of the theory of evolution that states life arose out of a chaotic pool of meaningless chemicals lying around.

Sorry to rock your boat, continue your mindless anti-religious mantras. Just because you don't believe in religious explanations of a certain event obviously means to you that no scientific data is required to verify that first non-religious sounding self-proclaiming scientifc mumbo-jumbo idea that is put forth.

Re:How many times does this have to be repeated?

[MightyMartian]

I read your post. It's a joke, right? There are thousands of researchers in various branches of biology studying evolution. Heck, a good many are concentrating on a rather ominous form of evolution, that of a strain of Avian flu into a virus capable of moving between humans.

As to theories being "updated", perhaps you can name a theory that isn't under constant scrutiny. Be specific here, because I really want to hear what your answer is.

Re:How many times does this have to be repeated?

[karzan]

Mate, the theory of evolution is one of the best confirmed scientific theories to date. Genetic mutation is observed continually (e.g. bacterial mutations, etc). There is a massive amount of fossil data, laboratory experimentation, etc, to confirm evolution.

That said, anyone who thinks that a scientific theory can ever be 'proved' obviously has a fundamental misunderstanding of the scientific enterprise. Scientific theories can be well confirmed (unless you're a Popperian), they can be falsified, but they can never, ever be proved. Only analytic truths (truths by definition, like maths) can ever be proved.

Some of the best confirmed scientific theories ever have eventually been superseded. Newtonian physics is a good example. So is the Ptolemaic theory, which was actually extremely empirically adequate, beyond even the empirical adequacy of the Galilean theory, which eventually prevailed out of considerations of simplicity (Ptolemy's theory required too many epicycles).

We can expect that our best confirmed theories today, including natural selection and evolution, may eventually be superseded. This is the basis on which anyone who actually understands science approaches it.

But what science does is commit to the best research programmes on offer at the moment, i.e. the ones that are best confirmed up to the moment. There is an absolute mountain of evidence supporting the theory of evolution and the subtheory of natural selection. One day these theories may be disconfirmed and superseded. But for the moment, they are the best we have. That's science. Live with it.

Re:How many times does this have to be repeated?

[Anonymous Coward]

I read your post. It's a joke, right? There are thousands of researchers in various branches of biology studying evolution. Heck, a good many are concentrating on a rather ominous form of evolution, that of a strain of Avian flu into a virus capable of moving between humans.

I think you don't understand the species variation and the theory of evolution correctly. The avian flu has nothing to do with the theory of evolution.

And there's no thousands of researchers studying evolution. They study it as one chapter in some college course. Most treat that as a fact and move on. There's no field of science (esp. medicine) that relies on evolution. Evolution is more of a confession of faith in science for most scientists today. It has absolutely no bearing on any "studies" of any kind today. Obviously this statement doesn't relate to the studies specifically being conducted to prove evolution theory. Again, evolution theory does not play any role in any studies related especially to medicine.

As to theories being "updated", perhaps you can name a theory that isn't under constant scrutiny. Be specific here, because I really want to hear what your answer is.

Interestingly phrased. There is a different between keeping an open mind about proven facts and about constantly updating a theory. Example, E=m(c^2) (that's mc squared for lack of a better keyboard). That's a fact that doesn't change. It hasn't changed for a long time. Recently there's been discoveries how outside of our planet and it's space certain newtonian laws maybe incorrect. That's keeping an open mind. And that's a theory that was presented and verified with enough results to be a fact. If it doesn't apply in some part of space, we'll keep testing to see why and to see how we can address it. Evolution theory? It changes more often than most scientists change their underwear.

Re:How many times does this have to be repeated?

[karzan]

Sorry, e=m(c^2) is not a fact, it's a theoretical claim made by Einstein's theory. The two are completely different things. Scientific theories are an attempt to systematise empirical observations in a way that produces reliable predictions. The laws and theoretical entities they postulate are not facts, they are not intended to be facts, they are theories. I refer you to Bas van Fraassen or Nancy Cartwright (or for that matter pretty much anyone else in the philosophy of science, including scientific realists).

Hmm. Fields of science concerned with evolution? Paleontology. Molecular biology. Genetics. Evolutionary psychology. A quick search of scientific journals on one database reveals 29 current journals with the word 'evolution' in the title. And obviously that is not anywhere near all of them (it is only English language and not all will have the word 'evolution' in the title).

What the hell does evolution have to do with medicine? Medicine is mostly applications of work done in sciences like biology, biochemistry, etc. I fail to see why evolution should be studied by medicine.

Re:How many times does this have to be repeated?

[MightyMartian]

I think you don't understand the species variation and the theory of evolution correctly. The avian flu has nothing to do with the theory of evolution.

It has everything to do with evolution. Evolution requires imperfect replicators that can respond to environmental conditions. The influenza reproduces quickly with a large number of errors in each generation. Thus with each generation, the likelihood of a mutation that will allow the virus to spread not just from birds to humans, but from human to human, becomes more likely. This is evolution in action. Remember, evolution can be simply stated as changes in the genetic makeup of populations over time.

And there's no thousands of researchers studying evolution. They study it as one chapter in some college course. Most treat that as a fact and move on. There's no field of science (esp. medicine) that relies on evolution. Evolution is more of a confession of faith in science for most scientists today. It has absolutely no bearing on any "studies" of any kind today. Obviously this statement doesn't relate to the studies specifically being conducted to prove evolution theory. Again, evolution theory does not play any role in any studies related especially to medicine.

About all I can gather from this rather ludicrous bit of nonsense is that someone here is suffering from a severe lack of education. In short, what you just wrote is bullshit, pure and simple.

nterestingly phrased. There is a different between keeping an open mind about proven facts and about constantly updating a theory. Example, E=m(c^2) (that's mc squared for lack of a better keyboard). That's a fact that doesn't change. It hasn't changed for a long time. Recently there's been discoveries how outside of our planet and it's space certain newtonian laws maybe incorrect. That's keeping an open mind. And that's a theory that was presented and verified with enough results to be a fact. If it doesn't apply in some part of space, we'll keep testing to see why and to see how we can address it. Evolution theory? It changes more often than most scientists change their underwear.

So I see that we can add physics to the list of things you don't know anything about. General Relativity has some severe problems that scientists have been working feverishly for decades to solve. Most important of all is that it doesn't jive with Quantum Mechanics.

As to evolutionary theory changing, your rhetoric I'm afraid betrays the fact that you don't even understand the theory. While there's always debate over, for instance, what is a bigger force; natural selection or genetic drift, the theory itself isn't changing as you say.

Put down your Creationist articles, my friend. They're lying to you and you're looking like an idiot./

Re:How many times does this have to be repeated?

[Anonymous Coward]

Mate, the theory of evolution is one of the best confirmed scientific theories to date. Genetic mutation is observed continually (e.g. bacterial mutations, etc). There is a massive amount of fossil data, laboratory experimentation, etc, to confirm evolution.

I think you misunderstand evolution theory. Genetic adaptation is not increase of genetic material which is what would be required for the evolution theory to be worth considering.

That said, anyone who thinks that a scientific theory can ever be 'proved' obviously has a fundamental misunderstanding of the scientific enterprise. .... they can never, ever be proved. Only analytic truths (truths by definition, like maths) can ever be proved.

Interesting number of statements you make here. It is well accepted within the scientific community that a theory is considered proven when an acceptable proof has been provided. That's subjective. But for the most part when enough experimentation has been conducted and enough consistent results have been observed and this is verified by other scientists around the world, a theory generally is accepted as a fact. That may be revised if there is observation contrary to the results.

Last rant of mathematics is just pure comedy here. Science is based on observation. Within the scientific community, today, facts are evidenced phenomenon that are consistent over time. Truth refers to Reality or an Actuality. This, by definition, cannot be explained by science and is outside the realm of science, since science can only talk about what we understand at our current level of knowledge. So for a scientist to talk about truth is akin to talking about faith that a fact is true.

In general there's is a big philosophical argument brewing here about the different between fact and truth and so on. That is why I mention facts as understood within the scientific community today.

Some of the best confirmed scientific theories ever have eventually been superseded. Newtonian physics is a good example. So is the Ptolemaic theory

Agreed. But those were tested enough and stayed consistent enough to be treated as scientific facts. Those were good enough to use in inventions and to build other ideas upon. Meanwhile all the scientists throwing chemicals in little experimental dishes today and passing it thru a variety of temperature hoping to have a new pet by Christmas are constantly disappointed. In light of that evolution theory is absolutely not somethign that can be taken seriously within the scientific community. When it is proven (similar to other theories in science) it can be used to build other arguments upon. It may later be disproved but it needs to have all the sub part proved. There's so much mathematics, biology, chemistry, and physics, involved that few scientists can actually understand the entire science involved. It is mostly accept by faith today by most scientists.

natural selection

which proves that evolution theory cannot be true and this process cannot have happened by natural selection, at least.

But what science does is commit to the best research programmes on offer at the moment, i.e. the ones that are best confirmed up to the moment.

So you understand what I'm saying about scientific facts being treated as facts after enough research with the possibility of being proven wrong later. But these fact or "best research programmes on offer at the moment" are at least proven or confirmed using current knowledge and then accepted as factual for the time being. But evolution theory has not been proven or confirmed at all. To top it off, even the sub theories under evolution theory are not confirmed using best research available today.

That's science. Live with it./blockquote
You said it.

Re:How many times does this have to be repeated?

[karzan]

I can't believe I'm even bothering to respond to this.

The commonly accepted definition of the word 'proof' since Kant's Critique of Pure Reason rests on analytic truths, rather than synthetic truths. If you reject this definition of 'proof', then I'm not sure what distinction you make between 'prove' and 'confirm'/'demonstrate'--which are commonly accepted in science and philosophy of science as completely different concepts.

I don't think you know anything about the definition of 'fact' as accepted by the scientific community today. Some scientists are scientific realists, i.e. they believe in the approximate truth of theoretical postulates. But this has nothing to do with 'proof'. It has to do with believing there is a legitimate epistemic grounding of the truth of theoretical entities in empirical observations.

Acceptance of a research programme in science does not mean acceptance of the truth of the theoretical entities it postulates. It only means belief that the research programme will be fruitful in the future. Again, see Popper, van Fraassen, Cartwright, Lakatos, Laudan, Feyerabend, et al.

What the hell does evolution have to do with 'an increase of genetic material'? I don't even know what you mean--do you mean a growth in the number of genes or what? That has nothing to do with the theory of evolution, which (roughly) states that over long periods of time, generations of organisms change their physical form, adapting to their changing environment. And it has nothing to do with the theory of natural selection, which is a mechanism that is supposed to explain evolution by suggesting that it takes place by random genetic mutation coupled with 'survival of the fittest'. Neither one of these requires 'an increase in genetic material'.

Genetics is being confirmed every day. A large proportion of food crops in the US (soya beans, tomatoes, etc) are today products of successful genetic modification. The mapping of the human genome has managed to isolate genes associated with certain disorders--hereditary disorders, I might add, that often arise through genetic mutation, i.e. evolution of sorts.

And I'm sorry if you're unfamiliar with the work of the scientific community, but there are literally thousands of biochemists, paleontologists, etc, who work on matters related to evolutionary theory every day.

Re:How many times does this have to be repeated?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, e=m(c^2) is not a fact, it's a theoretical claim made by Einstein's theory.

Most scientist treat that as fact enough. It is supported by years and years of experimentation and verification. Heck most scientist treat evolution theory as fact and it hasn't even been confirmed at all....

The two are completely different things. Scientific theories are an attempt to systematise empirical observations in a way that produces reliable predictions. The laws and theoretical entities they postulate are not facts, they are not intended to be facts, they are theories. I refer you to Bas van Fraassen or Nancy Cartwright (or for that matter pretty much anyone else in the philosophy of science, including scientific realists).

You keep abusing the word empirical. There's nothing empirical about evolution theory. Biological evolution as in genetic mutation is empirical evidence and is proven to occur. Evolution theory that life arose out of nothing is mere nonsensical wishful thinking. Most people today confuse genetic mutation with evolution theory and use a blanket term "evolution" which cause a lot of misinformation.

Hmm. Fields of science concerned with evolution? Paleontology. Molecular biology. Genetics. Evolutionary psychology. A quick search of scientific journals on one database reveals 29 current journals with the word 'evolution' in the title. And obviously that is not anywhere near all of them (it is only English language and not all will have the word 'evolution' in the title).

Containing the word evolution in title or description means nothing. None of these sciences depends on evolution being true. Some sciences are a combination of hypothetical and empirical observation. Such as paleontology. Fossils that are found and (more often the most needed kind are not found) are interpreted in the light of current knowledge. Which is evolution which is not confirmed at the moment. Heck, try to work with a paleontologist (sp?) and tell the dating process is very objective. Most fossils or rocks are dated based on how they should fit in the evolutionary process. Furthermore, dates are adjusted on existing Java men and such if a change is made, related to dates, in evolution theory. We currently simply do not have a scientifically trusted method of dating. But these dates are assigned based on a theory which are then used as proofs to prove other theories. It inbreeding of theories is what it is. It's not science!

Re:How many times does this have to be repeated?

[karzan]

All science is a combination of theory and empirical observation! That is the very nature of science! Theories are what systematise our observations in order to produce predictions--observations alone cannot produce predictions and are therefore not useful for searching for further knowledge.

And how do we go about testing a theory? By testing its empirical consequences. If the theory of evolution predicts that we will find such-and-such kinds of fossils, and we do, then it is confirmed, if we find something radically contradicting its predictions, then it is falsified. And of course, all of our dating methods are based on other theories as well.

But this goes for all of science. Astronomy could not exist without optical theory, because we only believe what we see on the other end of our telescope because we believe in optical theory. Microbiology also depends on optical theory--we have to trust our microscopes. Observations in physics are highly theory-laden. For example, how do we know it is really electrons we see in our cloud chamber?

I'm sorry my friend, but it appears you are completely ignorant as to science or methodology. I recommend you read up on your philosophy too.

Re:How many times does this have to be repeated?

[Anonymous Coward]

You keep interchaning genetic mutation and theory of evolution by calling each evolution and supporting each from arguments valid for the other.

Interesting how you end each post with a "you don't understand science" tone and throw in some new words.

What does genetic mutation has to do with evolution theory. Evolution theory only uses genetic mutation as proof of itself. The two are unrelated.

Genetics has nothing to do with evolution theory. Genetics is a respectable scientific field. Evolution theory is just gossip for scientists.

And I'm sorry if you're unfamiliar with the work of the scientific community,

You keeping saying it to give your argument more weight. We can all use these kind of comments but it doesn't make any of us any more equipped to talk on behalf of the scientific community at large.

'nuff said. It is anybody's right to blind themselves in the name of science and stop advancing in science and choose to go in the right or wrong direction.

Re:How many times does this have to be repeated?

[karzan]

I mention genetic mutation because you say things about scientists trying to create new kinds of organisms, which of course they have successfully done. If, however, your comment about 'putting chemicals in a petri dish' was intended to suggest that evolutionary theory has anything to do with the origins of life, then of course you are completely wrong, it has nothing to do with that. Evolutionary theory does not refer to how life came about, only how it evolves, hence the name.

The main evidence which confirms evolutionary theory is the fossil record. That is why the main people who continue to collect evidence to test the claims of evolutionary theory are paleontologists.

However, evolutionary theory is also confirmed by what happens with genetic mutations we see around us, because they are cases of what evolutionary theory predicts. For example, malaria has mutated to become resistant to chloroquine, and this is precisely what evolutionary theory predicts: that organisms evolve to become more suited to their environment. Because this is in line with the predictions of evolutionary theory, it is confirming evidence.

Re:How many times does this have to be repeated?

[Anonymous Coward]

About all I can gather from this rather ludicrous bit of nonsense is that someone here is suffering from a severe lack of education. In short, what you just wrote is bullshit, pure and simple.

Anyone can say that about anything. Inreresting to note that you can't actually provide data to support your argument.

Most important of all is that it doesn't jive with Quantum Mechanics.

According to an article linked to on /. yesterday, Quantum Mechanics doesn't jive with Quantum Mechanics.

Put down your Creationist articles, my friend. They're lying to you and you're looking like an idiot./

I didn't say anything creationist. You're runing under assumptions. You're also feverishly running the same reel you would when you argue with a creationist, I assume. Personal convictions aside, this is just pure science.

Re:How many times does this have to be repeated?

[MightyMartian]

The evidence is the vast number of peer reviewed papers, the large number of research programs, and the many many biologists who work with evolution. Are you honestly denying these papers, these programs and these people don't exist? I'd say at this point you're either a troll or locked in a room. Here's a tip. Check out PubMed or Nature before you go making a sorry fool of yourself.

Ugh... More misinformation

[DoubleWhopper]

Why do you people continually confuse two separate movements?

The fundamentalist belief (to which I hold) is not compatible with ID. These are two entirely separate paradigms.

For reference, ID embraces pretty much the same things as the so-called independent thinking scientists, except for having a cause. Fundamentalists (again, that's me) hold to a literal interpretation of Genesis.

If you want to lambaste one of the causes, please choose the appropriate one. Or at least make a distinction. Thanks.

Re:Ugh... More misinformation

[Anonymous Coward]

My literal you mean 6 days really is six days right. Or are you defining 6 days as 5 billion years? Also, I'm sure you've read the latin and hebrew version of the old and new testament. And I'm sure you've also read the king james bible. Having read them and understand the errors in translation, you still hold the story to be literal? Or do you mean the "literal intent" of genesis?

Some would say "literal intent" is not the same as "literal word of god." Of course, many think parts of the bible are literal, while others are meant to be analogies. The question then is this, "which parts of the bible are literal and which are analogies?" Which interpretation of the "interpreted parts" is the "correct" one?

The point of religion, be it baptist, catholic, islam, hindu, bhuddism are meant to teach people lessons about living in a society. To claim "literal" is really based on ego and political agendas. Havin a creationist day and go read the bible for once and analyze it.

Re:Ugh... More misinformation

[Anonymous Coward]

I certainly hope you aren't Catholic. The Vatican and the Pope have dismissed the literal reading of Genesis for decades. Since they speak directly for God, either God is a liar or you are an idiot. Take you pick.

Re:Ugh... More misinformation

[Surt]

I'm afraid there is a lot of mixing going on. Many fundamentalists are in fact involved in pushing the ID agenda in the schools, in an effort to help them encourage kids to discredit evolution and be more favorably disposed to a literal reading of Genesis. So while you may not favor ID, it is inaccurate to claim that fundamentalists in general do not support it.

Re:Ugh... More misinformation

[MightyMartian]

I certainly hope you aren't Catholic. The Vatican and the Pope have dismissed the literal reading of Genesis for decades. Since they speak directly for God, either God is a liar or you are an idiot. Take you pick.

Not decades, but rather for many centuries. No less than Augustine himself cautioned against Biblical interpretations that flew in the face of what even non-believers knew to be true. Biblical literalism as it is currently formulated is a rather new phenomona. Christianity and Judaism traditionally did not view the entire Bible as a literally true document, and thus had no problems, for instance, accepting Ptolemaic cosmology (despite the fact that the Bible is based upon the Mesopotomian crystal dome cosmology). Heck, modern Christianity and Judaism owe as much to Greek philosophy as they do to the older Hebrew scriptures.

Re:Ugh... More misinformation

[greg_barton]

The fundamentalist belief (to which I hold) is not compatible with ID.

Well, then, it's your responsibility to be your brother's keeper, isn't it? The folks pushing ID are, for the most part, fundamentalists like yourself. Why don't you go have a chat with them?

Re:Ugh... More misinformation

[FirstTimeCaller]

So Genesis is to be taken literally, eh?

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

...

And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so. And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also. And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.

So let me see if I got the order right:

1. God creates the watery earth.

2. God creates light and dark.

3. God creates land and sky.

4. God creates stars, the sun and the moon.

Somehow the order seems confused to me. Light and dark before the sun and stars? The earth before the sun and stars? Sounds like a creation myth created by people who did not fully understand how the universe and solar system operate.

Forgive me if I have a difficult time taking Genesis literally when it so obviously contradicts our understanding of the universe around us (and this is just the first page!).

Re:Ugh... More misinformation

[flyinwhitey]

Ok, then I choose to lambaste your beliefs. Remember, you asked for it.

Fundamentalists are, at their core, cowards who are afraid of the world. Instead of examining the working of their environment, and altering their world view based on the new information, they close themselves off to knowledge, in the futile hope that their ignorance will somehow lead them to salvation.

Fundamentalist is now synonymous with intrusive, ignorant, and intolerant.

You have only yourselves to blame.

Re:Ugh... More misinformation

[Anonymous Coward]

Fundamentalists (again, that's me) hold to a literal interpretation of Genesis.

Really? How do you reconcile the fact that Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 give two different accounts for the order of creation?

Re:Ugh... More misinformation

[DoubleWhopper]

Yes, I do mean 6 literal days, just as the text says. By the way, you may want to research a bit on the voluminous manuscript evidence before arguing translation errors.

Re:Ugh... More misinformation

[DoubleWhopper]

Actually, I don't think I claimed that fundamentalists don't support it. But I think I did claim that the views are incompatible. I agree with your comment on mixing and the reason cited for fundamentalist support of ID. Still, I would (and do) chastise fellow fundamentalists for the same co-mingling of terms and for their support of ID.

Re:Ugh... More misinformation

[DoubleWhopper]

Forgive me if I have a difficult time taking Genesis literally when it so obviously contradicts our understanding of the universe around us (and this is just the first page!).

And I'm sure you'll forgive me while I have a chuckle at arrogance due to current "understanding of the universe". On the one hand, you criticize a "myth" you say is based upon the understanding of a primitive people in the past (not your exact words, but your intention). On the other, you exalt an understanding of the universe by a primitive people in the present. You only need to consider how often theories are over-turned/improved/modified to see the weakness of a temporo-centric argument. (Don't know if that's a word, but you'll understand.)

Re:Ugh... More misinformation

[DoubleWhopper]

Fundamentalists are, at their core, cowards who are afraid of the world. Instead of examining the working of their environment, and altering their world view based on the new information, they close themselves off to knowledge, in the futile hope that their ignorance will somehow lead them to salvation.

Upon what do you base this claim? I would be interested in which portion of Scripture you pervert to come up with this.

Fundamentalist is now synonymous with intrusive, ignorant, and intolerant.

Let's examine this statement in light of the above, shall we? Intrusive? Consider, if you will, whether your statement above is intrusive. Ignorant? Who is wallowing in ignorance making vacuous claims? Intolerant? Need we point to the above comment yet again?

I'm sure you've suffered greatly due to some Amish or Mennonite, but let me comfort you by saying that I'm not that type of fundamentalist. Let me also enlighten you with a few counter-examples to the above ridiculous generalization. Consider Galileo and Kepler. Perhaps you've heard of Newton and Leibnitz. Maybe these will help: Joule, Pasteur, Kelvin, Maxwell, and Carver. Rather than making "intrusive, ignorant, and intolerant" claims, perhaps you should study exactly what it is that you're attacking.

Re:Ugh... More misinformation

[DoubleWhopper]

Pardon my interjection here, but I think you're misrepresenting Augustine...

Augustine: 'Let us, then, omit the conjectures of men who know not what they say, when they speak of the nature and origin of the human race. ... They are deceived, too, by those highly mendacious documents which profess to give the history of many thousand years, though, reckoning by the sacred writings, we find that not 6000 years have yet passed.' Augustine, Of the Falseness of the History Which Allots Many Thousand Years to the World's Past, De Civitate Dei (The City of God), 12(10).

Emphasis mine. By the way, Augustine (and others) did argue against a 6 day creation. They thought that was limiting the Almighty Creator, so they proposed that God created all in an instant!

Re:Ugh... More misinformation

[DoubleWhopper]

Really? How do you reconcile the fact that Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 give two different accounts for the order of creation?

That's an excellent question, and it's asked quite often. Pardon me while I humor myself and respond as if you're actually interested in learning something.

They don't. Simple enough answer? Chapter 1 gives the account of the entire creation week. Chapter 2 revisits a portion to focus on the reason for Creation: Man. Note in the "different account", as you call it, of Chapter 2, that the plants are specifically denoted as "of the field", possibly meaning those later cultivated, not the whole of the plant world. If your point of contention is rather with the trees mentioned slightly later, you'll note that those are introduced in the garden context, again not the whole of the created trees.

I must say, though, that I wasn't there to observe these things, no matter what my wife may think.

Re:Ugh... More misinformation

[FirstTimeCaller]

Sure, I forgive your chuckle. I don't doubt that in the future our views of how the universe works will seem primative. But just like Einstein's theory didn't totally invalidate Newtons, I'm confident that future understanding will refine our theories and fill in the gaps. I don't think that we will see a return to earth-centric or flat-earth theories (the sort believed when the Bible was written).

I'm not saying that we know all the answers now, just that we know more than we did thousands of years ago.

Re:Ugh... More misinformation

[DoubleWhopper]

I don't think that we will see a return to earth-centric or flat-earth theories (the sort believed when the Bible was written).

Ah! I thought this was an end-of-thread message until that line! ;) It's a common misconception (to use the generous term) that the ancients, as in the various authors of the Bible, believed the earth was flat. This view is typically forced upon them by taking stylized language and reading it out of context.

I'm not saying that we know all the answers now, just that we know more than we did thousands of years ago.

And all we fundamental Christians are trying to say is that we don't know all the answers now, but we know someone who does. :) (By the way, note that, for my purpose here, I conveniently ignore militant, hate-monger, pseudo-Christians... the type your typical slashdotter likes to incorrectly call fundamentalist.)

Re:Ugh... More misinformation

[Surt]

I'm sorry for the misunderstanding of your claim. I agree completely with your clarification.

Why Christians should abhor ID

[G4from128k]

If Intelligent Design is really a science, then the next step is to generate and test hypotheses about the designer(s). Surely the fossil record and current genetic and phenotypic characteristics of organisms could be used to hypothesize the nature of the designer(s). If scientists did this I suspect that Christians might be less supportive of the theory. Consider these likely hypotheses about the designer:

1. Multiple Designers: Why are there so many different designs for the eye and what does that say about the designer(s)? Why does the human eye lack important innovations such as the reflective layer in the cat's eye that improves night vision or the more logical retina-over-blood network of the octopus eye or the four-color vision of the jumping spider eye (or the 6-color vision of the mantis shrimp) or the polarization sensitivity used by bees and ants for navigation? One strong hypothesis is that multiple designers participated -- different designers, working independently, created these different designs. Perhaps the joke that a camel is a horse designed by a committee is really true.

2. Flawed Designer(s): The waves of extinctions and vast numbers of extinct species suggest that the designer(s) were flawed in their designs. It would seem that the designer(s) thought that velociraptors, plesiosaurs, trilobites, Homo erectus, etc. were good ideas, but then changed their mind(s) or found they created creatures that were too flawed to survive.

3. Lazy Designer(s): The fossil record suggests that little happened for the first 6/7ths of the Earth's existence -- everything happened on the seventh "day". Out of the last 4.5 billion years of the planet's existence complex life only in the last 600 million years or so have complex life forms appears. Humans didn't appear until about 30 seconds to midnight late on the metaphorical 7th day. (Note that this fact is used by some non-atheistic scientists to say that a deity set up the rules of evolution and then "rested" while the mechanism of evolution created everything. This explanation refutes IS because then the designer is not participating in the creation of all these complex organisms on the seventh day).

Overall, I'd wager that the scientific evidence would provide more "scientific" support for a polytheistic religion with humanistic/flawed dieties (such as the ancient Roman/Greek religions) than for an omnipotent monotheistic religion such as Christianity.

The bigger issues is that the allegedly religious ID people probably don't want to entertain hypotheses about designer(s) and would be especially uncomfortable letting school children even discuss these questions. Yet the entire purpose of science is to ask these questions and that is why it doesn't mix well with religion which is entirely based on faith. From a theological standpoint, I would suspect that Christians would prefer a separation between church and science.

Re:Why Christians should abhor ID

[Anonymous Coward]

You're ignoring the prevailing belief that the earth is 6 -thousand- years old, and that the dinosaur bones were burried (and "aged") during the great flood (there wasn't enough space for them on the big boat, so they all drowned).

Pretty much everything can be explained if you put this trickster god into the picture.

Yes. I have a friend who believes just -that- (orthodox jew), as rediculous as it sounds to me.

(and you should see what pride they have if they can somehow trade their liniage back to Adam & Eve...)

Ie: logical reasoning doesn't work with fundamentalists.

Re:Why Christians should abhor ID

[ivan256]

Multiple Designers: Why are there so many different designs for the eye and what does that say about the designer(s)? Why does the human eye lack important innovations such as the reflective layer in the cat's eye that improves night vision or the more logical retina-over-blood network of the octopus eye or the four-color vision of the jumping spider eye (or the 6-color vision of the mantis shrimp) or the polarization sensitivity used by bees and ants for navigation? One strong hypothesis is that multiple designers participated -- different designers, working independently, created these different designs. Perhaps the joke that a camel is a horse designed by a committee is really true.

Bible literalists should have no trouble believing this. The Bible, and the commandments do not say that there are no other gods. It says that God is the creator of man, and the you shouldn't worship any other gods. It is only through interpretation that this is taken to mean that God is the only god; but literalists don't interpret. Genesis doesn't say anywhere that no other creators ever came along and added to God's creation. There was no octopus, spider, bee, or ant on Noah's ark... Again, this is only implied. But the bible is meant to be taken purely at face value, right?

Of course it's silly to talk like that, because literalists are only literalists about the parts they like.

Re:Why Christians should abhor ID

[Frescard]

This is absolutely brilliant!

Every school teacher in Kansas etc. should get a copy of this.

They force you to teach ID in biology? No problem, then teach it as a science, and not a dogma. Which means analyzing it objectively, and approaching it from a multitude of perspectives, including the possibility of different 'designer configurations'.

ID would be out of the schools faster than you could spell "Intelligent Design Science"...

Re:Why Christians should abhor ID

[mbbac]

"From a theological standpoint, I would suspect that Christians would prefer a separation between church and science."

Radical theologians always want a theocracy until they learn that their variety of theology isn't the one in power.

Re:Why Christians should abhor ID

[TubeSteak]

Which is exactly why science tries to teach critical thinking.

Sometimes I really wish scientists had picked a word other than "theory" or if the scientists had it first, everyone else hadn't started using the word "theory"

My dad learned, while he was in the army, that the best way to keep relegious wackjobs off his case was to wait for them to finish asking if they can tell you about their relegion, then come back with "Why don't I tell you about mine."

He told me a lot of the Jesus Freaks (that's what people called 'em back then) looked like somebody goosed them whenever he reversed the situation.

long story short, many relegious types are uncomfortable hearing about the alternatives to whatever it is they think. Hence the aggressive anti-science position they take.

Re:Why Christians should abhor ID

[Reality Master 101]

Actually, the biggest problem with their argument is that they *disprove* God!

Their underpinning postulate is that "complex entities require a creator." OK, given that, if God has the power to create an entire universe and manage everything in it, and in fact is an intelligent being, therefore, God must have had a creator. So we have a "super god" that created God. But then, the super god must have had a creator, since the super god is another complex, creating organism. And on, and on...

So either we have an infinite number of God levels, which is absurd, or we had a primary creating God, which contradicts the postulate. Therefore, God doesn't exist.

Re:Why Christians should abhor ID

[greg_barton]

Any fundamentalist worth his salt could accept and refute these points merely by referring to the Old Testament:

(Disclaimer: I'm agonstic, so don't flame the shit out of me for being a fundie.)

Multiple Designers

In the Old Testament there were multiple gods. Ours came out on top. So, evolution produced multiple designs? So what? Our god won, so our god's design (i.e. Us) should get all of the spoils. Nicely justifies multiple designers and anti-environmentalism.

Flawed Designer

See above.

Lazy Designer

God rested on the seventh day, didn't he? And, besides, who are we to judge God's designs as flawed? Our purpose is to procliam God's glory and not to question the quality of his designs. Oh, and see above...

Re:Why Christians should abhor ID

[Scrameustache]

Flawed Designer(s): The waves of extinctions and vast numbers of extinct species suggest that the designer(s) were flawed in their designs. It would seem that the designer(s) thought that velociraptors, plesiosaurs, trilobites, Homo erectus, etc. were good ideas, but then changed their mind(s) or found they created creatures that were too flawed to survive.

That's just multiples designers with a change of focus brought on by the marketing department later on. They decided to go with less hair on the women, and smaller lizards. The entire first line had to be scraped, but it sold better in the end.

Re:Why Christians should abhor ID

[atsabig10fo]

it says there is only 1 God many times.

Re:Why Christians should abhor ID

[Bryansix]

ID does not ever profess to say who the designer was. Just to get it out of the way I am of the beleif that Evolution and ID should be taught in school. If you want ID in a philisophy class instead of a science class then fine.

Now about the parent post. If you want to look at the possibilities of a designer and pre-supose the Christian God then all of your arguments can be defeated with this simple fact. We live in a fallen world. The garden of Eden was perfect but when Adam and Eve broke the only rule given to them, they were cast out. Now of course the world outside this perfect garden is by its very nature imperfect.

Re:Why Christians should abhor ID

[Phreakiture]

There was no octopus, spider, bee, or ant on Noah's ark... Again, this is only implied. But the bible is meant to be taken purely at face value, right?

This presents and interesting concept.

Yahweh (to the other gods): Hey guys, I need to reformat the Earth. Any objections?

Other gods: No, just make sure you back up our stuff.

Yahweh: Okay, no problem. I'll just have this guy named Noah take care of it.

(Forty days later)

Yahweh (to the god who created unicorns): Um.... I have some bad news....

On another note, I have often expressed the idea that there is ample evidence of multiple gods.... Look at the universe and tell me, honestly, that this doesn't look like the work of a committee.

Re:Why Christians should abhor ID

[Anonymous Coward]

Humans didn't appear until about 30 seconds to midnight late on the metaphorical 7th day

I think you are paraphrasing Carl Sagan and mixing it up with the mistical 7 days.

What Sagan said in his book Cosmos is that if the Universe history is imagined as a full year, Homo Sapiens appeared the last day on the last three minutes, on December 31st 11:56:30 p.m., which makes humanity life span much more diminute!

check out
http://www.hcc.hawaii.edu/~pine/book1qts/chapter1q ts.htm

from it:

First amphibians -- December 22
First reptiles and trees -- December 23
First dinosaurs -- December 25
Dinosaur extinction, rise of mammals, first birds, flowers -- December 28
First primates (monkey-like creatures) -- December 30
Australopithicenes (Lucy, etc.) -- 10:00 p.m., December 31
Homo Habilis -- 11:00 p.m., December 31
Homo Erectus -- 11:15 p.m., December 31
Early Homo Sapiens---11:53 p.m., December 31
Neandertals -- 11:56 p.m., December 31
Homo Sapiens Sapiens -- 11:56:30 p.m., December 31
Ancient Greeks to present -- last five seconds
Average human life span -- a little over one-tenth of a second

Re:Why Christians should abhor ID

[aysa]

Humans didn't appear until about 30 seconds to midnight late on the metaphorical 7th day

I think you are paraphrasing Carl Sagan and mixing it up with the mistical 7 days.

What Sagan said in his book Cosmos is that if the Universe history is imagined as a full year, Homo Sapiens appeared on December 31st 11:56:30 p.m., which makes humanity life span much more diminute!

check out
http://www.hcc.hawaii.edu/~pine/book1qts/chapter1q ts.htm

from it:

First amphibians -- December 22
First reptiles and trees -- December 23
First dinosaurs -- December 25
Dinosaur extinction, rise of mammals, first birds, flowers -- December 28
First primates (monkey-like creatures) -- December 30
Australopithicenes (Lucy, etc.) -- 10:00 p.m., December 31
Homo Habilis -- 11:00 p.m., December 31
Homo Erectus -- 11:15 p.m., December 31
Early Homo Sapiens---11:53 p.m., December 31
Neandertals -- 11:56 p.m., December 31
Homo Sapiens Sapiens -- 11:56:30 p.m., December 31
Ancient Greeks to present -- last five seconds
Average human life span -- a little over one-tenth of a second


Human history? Last 10 seconds.

Re:Why Christians should abhor ID

[iMaple]

So either we have an infinite number of God levels, which is absurd, or we had a primary creating God, which contradicts the postulate. Therefore, God doesn't exist.

My dear uninformed friend you are so wrong. I feel sorry for you and am obliged to correct your misconceived beliefs.
It has been written that God does not exist because of the existence of the babel fish. [Doug Adam vol I, 23] :)

Re:Why Christians should abhor ID

[Androclese]

There were multiple Gods... ours came out on top

Ummm, Wow, ok... so, um... Zeus really did kill his Father?

Gaea *IS* the mother of the earth?

Should we call up Harry Hamlin and ask him if there are any Titans left?

(bad attempt at humor to lighten the mood)

Re:Why Christians should abhor ID

[flyinwhitey]

"Any fundamentalist worth his salt could accept and refute these points merely by referring to the Old Testament:"

At which point I would point right back at the old testament, where it is stated there is only one god.

So, while they could refute it, they would be displaying the inherent contradictions in the text.

Re:Why Christians should abhor ID

[oldmacdonald]

There was no octopus, spider, bee, or ant on Noah's ark..

Couldn't the Octopi have survived the flood without Noah's help?

Re:Why Christians should abhor ID

[TheFlyingGoat]

The Bible, and the commandments do not say that there are no other gods

"I am the first, and I am the last; and beside me there is no God" (Isaiah 44:6)

"Is there a God beside me? yea, there is no God; I know not any" (Isaiah 44:8)

"There is no God else beside me; a just God and a Saviour; there is none beside me. Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else" (Isaiah 45:21-22)

"Remember the former things of old: for I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like me" (Isaiah 46:9)

"There is none other God but one" (I Corinthians 8:4)

"One God and Father of all" (Ephesians 4:6)

"For there is one God" (I Timothy 2:5)

"Since there is only one God, who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through that same faith." (Romans 3:30)

And other people just like to make things up.

Re:Why Christians should abhor ID

[raoul666]

There was no octopus, spider, bee, or ant on Noah's ark...

You know, in a flood, I wouldn't worry too much about the fishies. (Not technically fish, whatever, you know what I mean.) :P

Re:Why Christians should abhor ID

[Petrushka]

(Disclaimer: I'm agonstic, so don't flame the shit out of me for being a fundie.)

I'm not sure if that's supposed to read "agnostic" or "agonistic" -- either would work very nicely ... :-)

However, I think the gp's point -- that if you're forced to bring ID into classrooms, it would certainly be a good idea to try and inculcate some basic skills in logical deduction so that it's not a complete waste of time -- is a great idea. If textbooks featuring ID all contained material like that, I might not be quite so hostile to it ...

Re:Why Christians should abhor ID

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

The Bible, and the commandments do not say that there are no other gods. It says that God is the creator of man, and the you shouldn't worship any other gods.

Moreover, it says that the magicians in Pharaoh's temple were able to turn their staves into snakes also, and that the Nephilim were born from "the suns of God and the daughters of men". It strongly implies that black magic does work, but is sinful - when Jesus cast out demons, the response wasn't "WTF is a demon?" but "You can't do that on the Sabbath! You're one of them!" When He cast Legion into the pigs, the response wasn't "Wow, look at those crazy pigs running into the water, what a coincidence," but "You sent those demons into the pigs!"

So did demons exist in that time and have simply taken a different form now? And is black magic possible? Or are these all legends and creation myths, as the aforementioned rabbis say? (I'm inclined to believe the former, but you can't derive an answer from the Bible.)

Re:Why Christians should abhor ID

[The OPTiCIAN]

I'm don't know much about ID, but are you sure about this?

"This explanation refutes IS because then the designer is not participating in the creation of all these complex organisms on the seventh day" (? :s/IS/ID :s/refutes/contradicts ?)

If I use YACC to generate code, I'm still the programmer, even though the code is derived. In fact all code is like this depending how you look at it. eg: I write java code, and a build file and then set it off. It becomes class code, goes into a war, deploys, it then goes to a JVM and is translated to native-architecture code, but it's still effectively 'my' creation.

Re:Why Christians should abhor ID

[Reziac]

Um... is the original meaning of "beside"

1) Next to (ie. no other gods)
or
2) On a part with (ie. all others are lesser gods)

Because in archaic English, the meaning could go either way. So I'm wondering what the literal Hebrew context is.

The way *I* was taught, the phrasing was "no other gods *before* me" ("before" here referring to relative quality, not timeline), whereby #2 above would be the literal meaning.

Re:Why Christians should abhor ID

[TheFlyingGoat]

So what about all the others? This one, for example:
"For there is one God" (I Timothy 2:5)

I don't think that's unclear in any way. Most of those are from the New King James Version, which is generally considered the most direct, yet readable translation.

In a broader sense, the Bible refers to anything you put before God as a god. That's different from those things being considered a deity, however.

Re:Why Christians should abhor ID

[Anonymous Coward]

it says there is only 1 God many times.

Thanks for demonstrating why modern monotheists don't have a clue about their own religion. It says "thou shalt have no other gods before me - ie, there are other gods, and you can worship them, but you have to give Yahweh (or whoever was "on top" of the pantheon at the time) top bill, ie, he comes first.

The actual Hebrew text that begins Genesis says Elohim - plural - gods, not singular, god. "In the beginning, the gods (elohim) created the heavens and the earth" is how the beginning of Genesis should be translated if translators were honest. Likewise when "God" refers to himself as "we" that's not the royal we, that's a surviving bit of the plural "gods" that the translator was unable to hide. The religious dogma determines the translation, not the other way around.

Also the "one god" that the Jews are supposed to be worshipping keeps changing. Sometimes it is El, sometimes Yahweh, sometimes Adonai. El just means "god" and there are many gods the Jews worshipped - El Shaddai, El Elyon, El Bereth, El Sabaoth, etc. Adonai simply means "lord"; Baal also means "lord"; many of the Adonais the Jews worshipped were also Baals. And these ruling gods had their accompanying goddesses, Astarte or Ashtoreth or Asherah usually. There are surviving inscriptions proving that Yahweh, El, Baal, etc. all had their female consort:

http://www.bibleorigins.net/KuntilletAjrudYahwehAs herah.html

Kuntillet`Ajrud, Sinai Caravansarai, ca. first half of 8th centry BCE. Drawing of Yahweh of Samaria and his Asherah on a pottery shard (Pithos A). Inscription in Hebrew reads "Thus says...Say to Yehalle[lel], Yo`asa and...I bless you (herewith- or: have blessed you) to/before Yahweh of Samaria and his asherah." Note the portion of bridled horse to the left of the figures (pp.225-6, "Baal, El, Yahweh, and 'His Asherah'," Othmar Keel and Christoph Uehlinger. Gods, Goddesses, and Images of God in Ancient Israel. Minneapolis. Fortress Press. 1998. ISBN 0-8006-2789-X ).

An potsherd inscribed egeliah, "bull-calf of Yah," was found in Iron Age Samaria. It suggests that the Bull-Calf was linked to the worship of Yahweh, not some Egyptian god as suggested by the Bible. I have argued elsewhere that YAHWEH IS THE GOLDEN BULL-CALF, cf. my article titled

The Non-Egyptian Origins of Israel's Golden Calf Worship (Yahweh is the Golden Calf ?)

I further understand that Yahweh is being portrayed on the Ajrud potsherd as a Bull-calf, his consort, Asherah,being a hornless Heifer, rather like Baal-Hadad's ability to assume the form of a bull to impregnate his lover, Anat, who takes on the form of a Heifer, conceives, and gives birth to a bull-calf.

The ancient Israelites, and the Jews up until Hellenstic times, were polytheists. This is a fact confirmed by archeology and honest translations of the Bible, in spite of the effort by later monotheistic Jews to edit out as much of the polytheism from the Bible as possible.

Hebrew monotheism was late in coming, and it was a centralizing power grab, forcing people to worship at a central location (Jerusalem for Jews, Mt. Gerizim for Samaritans) instead of on top of local hills and local altars. Only later did the Jewish priests begin to edit out the more obviously polytheistic elements of the OT Bible. The fact that this was written in a very hard to read ancient dialect without vowels that no one but the priests could read (widespread Jewish literacy and study of the Bible is a later rabbinic innovation), made it very easy to maintain the charade of monotheism.

Re:Why Christians should abhor ID

[CyborgWarrior]

Let's see... took billions of years to complete. Is very disorganized (although if you look at it from really far away it's kind of uniform....). It's got a lot of useless space hanging around. Nobody really knows how it ended up working at all, it just sort of went bang one day........ Man, given all of the patterns in nature it doesn't seem like nature made this one...... :-P

Re:Why Christians should abhor ID

[chaoticset]

The Bible contradicts itself!?!?

Say it ain't so!

inflamatory..

[wh173b0y]

people take the creation story as literal truth, rather then a story about YHWH's power.

That wasn't inflamatory at all...

Re:I don't see the big deal behind intelligent des

[John Nowak]

Because one is a *scientific* theory, and one is a fairy tale?

Re:I don't see the big deal behind intelligent des

[SatanicPuppy]

It's not a tautology. It's actually a fallacy. Guess which one? ;)

It's also open to an infinite regression, which, just as in coding, is a sure sign that there is something wrong with your logic.

which rabbis are still available?

[Surt]

I mean, those guys must be well over a thousand years old. I guess Judaism really is the one true religion if its adherents live that long!

Or if you just mean some guy in his 60s who really knows nothing meaningful more about what was happening when the book of genesis was first written, I don't see where you'd expect to get any improvement in the level of 'authority' about the subject.

Re:which rabbis are still available?

[Schlaegel]

I was thinking the same thing, "man, Hemo knows one old rabbi."

In the past I thought that Rabbinical Judaism didn't start until after 70 AD.

Re:which rabbis are still available?

[Surt]

Yeah, I deliberately hedged my post with the 'thousand years' bit to disguise my ignorance of when exactly rabinnical judaism got started.

My God...

[QuantaStarFire]

"If I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times; stop spouting your bullshit and RTFM!!!"
-- Cardinal Paul Poupard, denouncing Intelligent Design

Re:I don't see the big deal behind intelligent des

[Profane MuthaFucka]

They can't be merged because evolution is science, and intelligent design is mere philosophy, and BAD philosophy at that.

-Without having any need to hypothesize a designer, you shouldn't be doing that.
-David Hume had the last word a couple CENTURIES ago about the first cause, which is pretty much what intelligent design boils down to.
-Behe and a couple others are wrong about their thinking, and every example they give which requires a designer can be explained completely within evolutionary theory, without a designer.
-Everyone who is saying that science and religion are compatible are completely misunderstanding both religion and science. For example, Jesus said "Blessed is he who believes without seeing". That statement is the precise and exact opposite of what science is. I don't think that you could have said it more clearly. I find it remarkable that the Bible is very fuzzy on so many parts, but Jesus' statement on belief is one of the few places where the Bible is really very clear, and nobody seems to pay any attention to it! Religion and science are opposites to each other, and Jesus said so.

Why not take shots at Islam also?

[DAldredge]

Why is it that when religion is talked about on /. that it is only the Jewish and Christian religions that are insulted? Why isn't Islam included in the list?

Re:Why not take shots at Islam also?

[FinestLittleSpace]

Because the subject of discussion is Chrstianity related. I personally think all religion is retarded.

Re:Why not take shots at Islam also?

[mrselfdestrukt]

I agree. Man needs a god like a fish needs a bicycle.
My theory however is that we are all gods. The mind is very powerful and we can create our own reality.
If you believe in example: A big yellow duck in the sky and this duck will sometimes grant your wishes if your faith in it is strong enough then it will gain power in your mind. And so you will put more and more faith in your big yellow duck. If it lets you down (maybe due to your own doubt or unfocused ideals) then you will just consider it as a test.
Anyway. I find the whole thing about religion so blind. We know the universe is about 13.7 billion years old,right? We know that the universe is expanding.We also know that the universe is much bigger than just an earth and a heaven. So, why do so many people still just blindly accept what the churches tell them. And why do churches make so much money? It's a great industry. You sell hope. And people are willing to pay for that. And the poorer they are , the more faith they will have and the more they will pay for hope.

Re:Why not take shots at Islam also?

[pauljlucas]

Why isn't Islam included in the list?

Because muslims aren't trying to get Islam taught in public schools.

Re:Why not take shots at Islam also?

[Anonymous Coward]

Usually people only reflect on things close to their minds. I think there is a minority of Slashdotters whos religion is Islam and not many people know the fundamentals of Islam as good as Jewish and Christian.

Do you feel a need to insult Islam?

Re:Why not take shots at Islam also?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or Hinduism for that matter. *shrug*

Re:Why not take shots at Islam also?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet "scientists" are allowed to peddle their dogma then whine about it when people dismiss them out of either apathy or skepticism.

How "high-minded" of them.

Re:Why not take shots at Islam also?

[bentcd]

Islam is in enough trouble as it is - no reason to add insult to injury :-)

Re:Why not take shots at Islam also?

[DAldredge]

In areas of large amounts of Islamic people their have been efforts. Google for Islam Public Schools.

Re:Why not take shots at Islam also?

[Foobar of Borg]

In areas of large amounts of Islamic people their have been efforts. Google for Islam Public Schools.

Very true. The fundie Muslims in Indonesia are trying the same sort of nonsense the fundie Christians are here in the US.

Re:Why not take shots at Islam also?

[FinestLittleSpace]

*exactly*

It's a business to some people, and that's evil and wrong...

BUT I cannot fathom how anyone can believe in one religion and not the other. They are all based around some god like being, yet people snub out other religions. It doesn't figure for me at all. Then there's the christians who snub out the numerous gods of greece as 'people in the olden days who didnt know better'....

Religion is a fantasy that people like to hold so they can have hope and because you can't see back in time. Life is just a nothingness. We are only something if we acknowledge we are, and conciousness is defined by OURSELVES... some other being's idea of conciousness could be different, and I fail to understand why people can't see that we are complex enough to see that we exist. It doesn't make us super human.

Re:I don't see the big deal behind intelligent des

[vingilot]

I don't have anything against evolution nor intelligent design and I don't see why other people like that. I don't see why the two theories can't be merged.

Neither do I; however, I hardly think that the 2 should be merged though. The second to last thing I want is some religious nut trying to explain science-- the very last think I want is some scientist trying to explain God. Trying to do either is demeaning to the other.

And lets face it, ID is about God.

Jonathan

Your Rabbis Are A Bit Different Than Israel's

[judmarc]

Orthodox rabbis in Israel have objected to the display of dinosaurs on yogurt containers because they felt it contradicted the story of Creation as taught by Genesis.

Also, not surprising that not all Vatican representatives are hopping on the Intelligent Design bandwagon (though at least one friend of the current Pope did, from a New York Times report a few weeks ago). ID posits that there are structures that cannot have resulted from evolution (eyes are one frequently cited example). Now, if God created the universe, this is equivalent to saying that God can't have created it in such a way as to evolve these structures. Thus, according to ID, God is not omniscient and/or omnipotent. Sure sounds like heresy to me.

Re:Your Rabbis Are A Bit Different Than Israel's

[Sparohok]

ID posits that there are structures that cannot have resulted from evolution (eyes are one frequently cited example). Now, if God created the universe, this is equivalent to saying that God can't have created it in such a way as to evolve these structures. Thus, according to ID, God is not omniscient and/or omnipotent. Sure sounds like heresy to me.

No, it is not equivalent at all; your inference contains a logical fallacy. ID observes that there are structures God created which cannot have been created by evolution. If true, this simply means that the universe God chose to create is incompatible with evolution. That doesn't mean He couldn't have created a universe which would have appeared perfectly compatible with evolution, just that he didn't. So it is not heresy in any way shape or form.

Martin
(atheist)

Re:Your Rabbis Are A Bit Different Than Israel's

[judmarc]

Your formulation would be right if ID proponents did not use the "could not have been created through evolution" argument as proof that evolution cannot be correct and ID must be.

In order for ID to be proved correct, as opposed to a mere alternative among a number of possible choices, God cannot have had the choice of creating structures through evolutionary means.

Re:Your Rabbis Are A Bit Different Than Israel's

[Sparohok]

Nope, you're still wrong. God could have created a universe where plausible evolutionary mechanisms are sufficient to have created the observable complexity of life. The ID proponents claim that, in our own universe, He did not. They do not claim that God is incapable of creating a universe where evolution is a plausible theory, just that it is not a plausible theory in our own universe.

Martin

A little offtopic

[jawtheshark]

I was reminded of a joke, but I can't seem to find it online (googled a bit around). It was about the conversation between Abraham and God about how to explain Genesis. Abraham wanted to write down the whole history since the Big Bang, but God insisted that The Book would become too big and that they should limit themselves to 7 days.

Anybody got a link? I got a good laugh out of that story.

Re:A little offtopic

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you are remembering a short story by Isaac Asimov, titled 'How It Happpened'.

Link: http://www.skepticfiles.org/atheist/asimovdo.htm

Re:A little offtopic

[jawtheshark]

Yup, that's the one! Thanks :-)

Old news but worth repeating for the ignorant

[Pao|o]

Nothing new here. Sixty years ago Pope Pius XII said almost the same thing in the encyclical Humani generis: "The Teaching Authority of the Church does not forbid that, in conformity with the present state of human sciences and sacred theology, research and discussions, on the part of men experienced in both fields, take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution, insofar as it inquiries into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter."

Pope John Paul II reinforces this sentiment 9 years ago in an address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.

This is just me but a lot of this "intelligent design" bull was cooked up by a bunch of fundamentalist using their religion to cover for their ignorance.

News items like these makes me proud to be part of the Roman Catholic Church.

the rabbis who wrote the whole thing down

[Anonymous Coward]

They're still alive?

Re:Evolution isn't a theory about the start of lif

[nickname225]

I think if you follow the more recent neo-Darwinist literature - e.g. Richard Dawkins, et al. You will find that evolution is starting to extend its reach to try and explain the start of life itself. Obviously it's just conjecture - but it will always make more sense than the idea that some god created the universe. The problem with the idea that god created the universe is - who created god? - and if something as complex as god doesn't require a creator - then neither do we...

Silly observation

[Anonymous Coward]

re: "The Orthodox rabbis I've spoken find it amazingly amusing that people take the creation story as literal truth, rather then a story about YHWH's power."

What a silly observation by the poster.

There's the whole idea of the New Testament that the orthodox rabbis also probably have a snicker about. Judaism ^= Christianity. And to make it clear all the way around.. Catholicism ^= Protestantism, Gnosticism (a.k.a. The Da Vinci Code) ^= Catholicism, and on and on.

Might as well get on here and say the authors of Windows have a laugh when they talk about Linux... those silly open source guys.

Headline is backwards

[MindStalker]

Intelligent Design is the idea that God manipulated and brought upon evolution. Creation theory is the litteral interpretation of Genesis. The Vatican is supporting Intelligent Design with this announcement not rejecting it.

Re:Headline is backwards

[schiefaw]

Actually, if those were only those two options, you would be correct. But, he is not saying that Genesis is a parable and therefore I.D. is correct. He is only saying that the creation story in Genesis is not be taken as a literal truth.

One would have to think, however, that if you believe in a God, and you believe that God created life, you would have to believe that God has some influence on the shape of life.

I don't believe in God. But, if I did, I would not think that he/she/it set up life to develop on this planet and then lost interest. That being said, I don't believe that I.D. should be taught as a valid theory because it gains us nothing scientifically. If anything, it becomes a roadblock where once you reach a certain point everything becomes "God's will" and no further knowledge can be gained.

True knowledge can only come to those who can admit that they don't already know the answers.

Re:Headline is backwards

[aneuryzm]

"Intelligent Design is the idea that God manipulated and brought upon evolution."

Intelligent Design is the complete opposite of your description. ID is in effect Christians answer to evolution. Again, the 2 are on complete opposite sides of the spectrum... ask any Christian & they will proudly tell you we did not come from apes, and go on to proclaim that the reason for similarties between species in the fossil record is because they all have the same "Designer".

IMO ID is garbage science, but please dont mix these 2 theories because ID does not support any aspect of evolution, nor vice versa....

Re:Headline is backwards

[Ignorant Aardvark]

"Intelligent Design is the idea that God manipulated and brought upon evolution. Creation theory is the litteral interpretation of Genesis."

First of all, creationism is not a theory. And second of all, you don't know what intelligent design is. You may want to check out TalkDesign to see what ID actually is, and then you might want to read The Wedge Document.

Re:Headline is backwards

[Anonymous Coward]

If you would have read at least the artice headline, you would have noticed that the Vatican rejects ID. And I honestly do think most people there are "Christians". In fact, most Christians outside the USA don't believe in ID, for that matter.

Forget it! Zeus did it and is still doing it!

[erroneus]

The Greeks had it right all along. People can mate with horses and the guys in the chariots in the skies, flying with wax wings getting too close to the sun... all that happened. I BELIEVE!!!

This ridiculous reduction of gods down to one only goes to show how retarded people really are that they can't keep up with more than one or two gods. I think we need more gods, not fewer. This way we can each follow our own and with more diversity comes more tollerance right? No one should be denying that there are gods at all (or else they'll become angry and I'll have a car accident in the morning... I just KNOW it)... we should merely discuss the number of gods there are... and there's a bunch!

Re:I don't see the big deal behind intelligent des

[AKAImBatman]

I don't see why the two theories can't be merged. *shrug*

Excuse me, did you just suggest a reimplementation of the "Age of Enlightenment". (Which, despite its name and attempts to combine many religions, wasn't very enlightening.)

Science, Religion, etc. should all take a back seat to the truth. It's very easy to get caught up in "I believe it's this way, so therefore it is," but that doesn't get us any closer to reality.

The reality is this: Neither Science or Religion has all the answers to the universe we live in right now. Science should be perpetually trying to find them while Religion is more about answers beyond this world. Science started as an outcropping of Religion to handle the matters of this world we live in. Somehow to two became mortal enemies.

"Evolution" can be broken down into a long string of theories, 90% of which have been discarded along the way. The facts of nature's operation (e.g. the ability to adapt between generations, aka "micro" evolution) have been well established. But extending them to the matter of long term change still has many issues, the greatest of which is the lack of a provable theory for abiogenesis. Thus "Evolutionary Theory" is still "work in progress", and will probably remain so until we can reproduce some of the more difficult concepts of the theory.

This has led many to believe that the theory ought to be treated with far more care, especially since schools have been known to teach such misinformation as Dr. Jonathan Wells' theory of evolution in the womb.

On the other end of the spectrum, you have Religions trying to figure out how things started from a very simple description. Well, we can take our best shot at it, but any theories there also have to be treated as "Work in Progrss". At least to the degree that we're looking for a more precise answer that really isn't covered by works such as the Bible. (Creation spans a single chapter of Genesis. That isn't a lot to go on.)

Thus "combining" them is not the answer. The answer is to seek the answer, even at the expense of all prejudices. ID, Evolution, or whatever else is the fad of the moment can get in the friggin' back seat. Sadly, the ID argument won't be over until Evolution is handled better in schools, and Evolution won't be handled better in schools until certain people get off their duffs and stop insisting on pushing it to "save children from religion."

Now excuse me, I'm about to be modded down for taking a truthful and thoughtful position.

Assuming we did teach ID in schools ...

[alucinor]

Assuming that we did teach ID in schools ... what would be the material?

"And so God created all the organisms on earth."

Little Johnny asks, "How?"

Teacher replies, "Well, he just created them. Poof! And there they were."

That's all ID would contribute to science.

If someone wants to believe now that the HOW is evolution, and the WHAT/WHO that started it all is God, then great, but it's not science. Science (apart from cosmology) makes no attempts at explaining the origin of Origin, just all the processes. In the end, to explain the origin of everything, you have to get axiomatic about something: everyone agrees that axiom to be some form of infinity, whereas some attribute consciousness to that Infinity and others, non-consciousness. Did Void spawn the Universe, or did the er ... opposite of Void (God) do it?

As someone who believes God exists, I think evolution is fine. I accept spiritual evolution as a necessity for myself, so I don't see why physical evolution would be a problem either.

Re:Assuming we did teach ID in schools ...

[christoofar]

Cosmology, science?

If Dionne Warwick and her Psychic Friends were so in-tune with cosmology, didn't they see their financial collapse coming?

Re:Assuming we did teach ID in schools ...

[maxume]

Cosmology doesn't really attempt to explain the origin of the Origin. It just attempts to explain the universe as far back in time as possible. If a cosmologist said 'and it began blah', another cosmologist would ask him 'what came before blah' and he would say 'oh yeah, that, I'm not sure'.

Re:Assuming we did teach ID in schools ...

[drxenos]

Cosmology is a science. It is the study of the origins of the universe. It has nothing to do with psychics or any other garbage. I think you are confusing it with astrology.

Re:Assuming we did teach ID in schools ...

[Anonymous Coward]

WOW. You, my friend, just won the "Fuckwit of the Year" award. Congrats.

Re:Assuming we did teach ID in schools ...

[fanblade]

Assuming that we did teach ID in schools ... what would be the material?

Pretty much any allegorical text that can be taken literally. Yes, the Bible... and Animal Farm.

Little Johnny asks, "How?"

Shut up Johnny. Pigs can walk and talk and that's the end of it.

Re:Assuming we did teach ID in schools ...

[Xyrus]

Have you seen my new planet? It's made out of MAGIC!!!

~X~

Re:Assuming we did teach ID in schools ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Did Void spawn the Universe, or did the er ... opposite of Void (God) do it?

$ cat > creation.c << EOF
int main () {
      void *god;
      void *universe = (void *)god + 0;
      printf("Hello world!\n");
}
EOF
$ cc -o creation creation.c
$ ./creation
Hello world!

Re:Evolution isn't a theory about the start of lif

[ArsonSmith]

The problem isn't what the Theory of Evolution is, it's what Intelligent Design isn't. It isn't science. The one fundamental assumption of science is that the universe is consistent and guided by a set of rules. This has yet to be proven false. Even though some parts of quantum physics are pushing it.

ID allows for inconsistencies from the meddling of an all powerful supernatural omnipresent being in unpredictable ways. This is the fundamental challenge that religion has against science. With sciences assumption that everything is governed by a particular set of rules this leaves no room for god. Other than in the deist manner of which god set forth the creation of the universe then walked away. Basically saying god created the laws that will govern science physics etc... but then left them on their own to see what might happen.

not surprising

[Paradigma11]

ratzinger already has written a book about creation: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0802 841066/ref=cm_aya_asin.title/104-9529939-5735911?_ encoding=UTF8&v=glance granted this was before he gained infallibility. guess this guy, http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/A1PZPX 2D5PA6XJ/ref=cm_pdp_about_see_review/104-9529939-5 735911 , will still disagree tough :)

True, but perhaps not relevant

[jfengel]

Intelligent Design contradicts evolution on the variability between and among species. ID says that at least some of the variability between species arises from the intervention of a designer; evolution says there's no. So the argument isn't really about the origin of life, but the origin of species.

Re: True, but perhaps not relevant

[Black Parrot]

> Intelligent Design contradicts evolution on the variability between and among species. ID says that at least some of the variability between species arises from the intervention of a designer; evolution says there's no. So the argument isn't really about the origin of life, but the origin of species.

The leading ID "theorists" don't even claim that much. They merely claim that "somebody" must have designed the E. coli flagellum and some particular chain of biochemical reactions.

Creationists take that ball and run with it, usually interpreting those (unfounded) claims as if tthe supported biblical literalism.

Re:True, but perhaps not relevant

[tgibbs]

Intelligent Design contradicts evolution on the variability between and among species. ID says that at least some of the variability between species arises from the intervention of a designer; evolution says there's no. So the argument isn't really about the origin of life, but the origin of species.

Actually, one of the reasons why ID does not qualify as a theory is that it is vague about what did happen. Basically, ID boils down to "Evolution can't explain everything."

Behe--who's virtually the only real biologist in the ID camp--clearly believes that something like a microorganism was created and everything evolved from there, possibly with some supernatural tweaks along the line. But the ID guys keep this pretty quiet, because if they actually advocated this view as part of their "theory," they'd lose the bulk of their support, which comes from fundamentalist Christians who aren't concerned with how the flagella evolved; they want to be reassured that there isn't an ape in their family tree. Behe was very amusing in the recent trial; the opposition kept quoting him passages from the ID tract "Pandas and People," which he supposedly co-edited, and which makes claims such as "various forms of life began abruptly through an intelligent agency, with their distinctive features already intact," and Behe would have to admit that he didn't agree.

Re:True, but perhaps not relevant

[jfengel]

Basically, ID boils down to "Evolution can't explain everything."

And there's nothing wrong with that. Me, I'm all for talking about the flagellum and the clotting cascade and all that, in schools. It's just that you need to call them "research areas" rather than dumping them off on an "intelligent designer", which is just damn foolishness.

Heck, they can even go ahead and mention that if you can manage to prove that one of these absolutely could not have evolved then the entire theory of evolution collapses like a house of cards. That's logical. But to claim that such proof already exists is a complete misunderstanding of the logic and suggests that one has absolutely no business saying anything at all on the subject.

Re:True, but perhaps not relevant

[Fnkmaster]

The whole "evolution is perfect and complete" thing is a straw man created by creationists. Likewise with the "6 components of evolution" in which they lump big bang cosmology, speciation and a whole bunch of other crap they don't like from science together under the inflammatory heading "evolution" so they can reject it all at once with one spurious argument usually surrounding the whole "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" schtick or other 150 year old mumbo jumbo.

To do otherwise would be to face an overwhelming landslide of evidence that they are just plain wrong.

Re:True, but perhaps not relevant

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, one of the reasons why ID does not qualify as a theory is that it is vague about what did happen.

It doesn't claim to be a theory. It does claim to be scientific.

The Michelson-Morley experiment showed that the contemporary notion of a Galilean medium through which light propagates was probably wrong in some way. The experiment was a great contribution to science and to our understanding of the universe. But it did not provide an explanation for how things actually work.

The problem with ID is not really that it fails to explain where species come from. It is that the specific objections which are supposed to disprove or disfavor natural evolution are (at least so far) pretty easy to answer.

Re:True, but perhaps not relevant

[tgibbs]

It doesn't claim to be a theory. It does claim to be scientific.

That's really an oxymoron, because there are only two types of information in science: individual observations and theories (which include all scientific generalizations and explanations). If ID is not a theory, then it is not part of science.

The Michelson-Morley experiment showed that the contemporary notion of a Galilean medium through which light propagates was probably wrong in some way. The experiment was a great contribution to science and to our understanding of the universe. But it did not provide an explanation for how things actually work.

The Michelson-Morley experiment was an observation, suggested upon a theory of how light propagates. It led to a new theory--Lorenz-Fitzgerald contraction, which was ultimately incorporated into the theory of special relativity.

Self-made things - an useful resource on BBC Audio

[Forget4it]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/selfmadethings _20050727.shtml In this five-part series, Jonathan Miller returns to his roots in medicine and tells the story of how we came to understand reproduction & heredity. Disposing with the idea of an external, perhaps even supernatural, vitalising force, he describes how we have arrived at the picture of ourselves and all organisms as Self-Made Things.

Re:I don't see the big deal behind intelligent des

[sycomonkey]

It's not really that simple. It's easy to merge them, but that doesn't change anything because ID is philisophical, not scientific. You can't prove it or disprove it. It's like very fringe forms of physics that are completely impossible to test, it's nice to think about, but doesn't really do anyone any good. I, in a way, believe in ID, but I am very much against it being taught in school, except possibly in a College level Philosophy of Science class, as an example of what science isn't.

Re:I don't see the big deal behind intelligent des

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, quite honestly, you can't say that any more than the ID proponents say their side. Atheism is a belief system just like the religions you speak of. As a scientific mind I find myself incapable of coming to a decision, but many people do. Whether you believe in a god or not, you still believe.

"Orthodox" Rabbis

[Burgerman851]

Just out of curiosity, if the "Orthodox" rabbis consider the first 11 chapters of Genesis to be merely a story about YHWH's power, how do they deal with the rest of the Pentateuch? Is it all an allegory? In that case, can someone please explain how YHWH's power has any relevancy to real life? If it's not all allegory, then how do the learned rabbis distinguish between history and allegory, fact and fiction? If YHWH didn't get the first 11 chapters right, why do the rabbis take His Word for the remainder?

Re:"Orthodox" Rabbis

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Just out of curiosity, if the "Orthodox" rabbis consider the first 11 chapters of Genesis to be merely a story about YHWH's power, how do they deal with the rest of the Pentateuch?

I'm only somewhat well read on the subject of judaism and may be off base in what I'm about to say. Pretty much anyone who studies the history of the bible, torah, koran, etc. quickly realizes that they are dealing with something that is based upon collected works, written by different authors at different times, and translated imperfectly. Further, due to the contradictions contained in all these works it is obvious that interpreting them literally means that the work is wrong, in one or more instances. This leads most intelligent people to view the works less as a matter of "chapter 1 is wrong, so why should we believe chapter 4" and more as a matter of, "chapter one has beautiful imagery and is a great parable for understanding, while chapter 4 is very down to earth and provides useful guidelines for everyday life, as well as some outdated dietary advice." I know a lot of people don't view things that way, but I am suspicious of the motives and/or intelligence of anyone who looks at such a work and tries to interpret it literally. Most of the jewish sects I've read about are very into tradition, which helps define them as a culture, but few of them literally interpret those traditions as orders from on high.

This is what confuses me

[MBCook]

This is the thing that confuses me. The Vatican supports evolution because it makes perfect sense (evolution never says there is no God, God could be directing evolution). Now I know that the ID people aren't Roman Catholic, but you would think they were the media portrays it. Most stories I've heard have two sides: the scientists/"normal people" (who seem to be portrayed as atheists most of the time) and the ID proponents (who are described as religeous people). Thus all religeous people (specifically Christians) don't like evolution.

Yeah right.

This would have been over long ago if in every report about this "debate", the media would point this fact (that the Vadican supports evolution) do dispell this fact. I have to wonder how many Catholics even know this, and how many support evolution and think they disagree with their religion on that point.

This whole thing is rediculous. Atheists support evolution. The roman catholoic church supports evolution. Just about ever major religon supports it. A few nuts start a fuss though and all of a sudden there is a "religious war" between the "religous" (radial fundamentalists) and the "sane people" (everyone else).

This whole thing just confirms that old quote (paraphrased): "Evil triumphs when good men stand idly by."

Note that I don't think that the fundamentalists are evil. But you can't let that little group remove evolution from schools. The "good men" need to stop standing idly by. If even 10% of the "good men" were to stand up and say "No way," then this debate would end FAST. Pure supiriority of numbers.

-- A fed up Kansan Catholic.

Re:This is what confuses me

[Fished]

Now I know that the ID people aren't Roman Catholic, but you would think they were the media portrays it.

Actually, Michael Behe, one of the leading lights of the ID community, is a catholic.

This is just one of example out of many of how Intelligent Design and creationism are not the same thing.

Re:This is what confuses me

[bloosqr]

God could be directing evolution

This isn't actually really that far from where the debate is actually. The ID argument is infact over whether "God could be directing evolution". The idea that this is actually possible and examining whether there is evidence w/in biology and paleontology that God, indeed "directed" evolution is what the ID people would like to bring up in biology classrooms at the high school level. This sort of "gut instinct" appeal to what God may have done is why I think ID is becoming an such a populist issue that needs to be addressed and debated.

I'm not sure where the catholics stand on this but there is also the vaguely deist idea of god being more of a blind clock maker, that is evolution itself is the method by which god "directs," which is somewhat weaker than god "directing" evolution.

Speaking as an atheist, the problem is I dont think the ID proponents are "radical" fundies/evangelical groups and while it would be easy to dismiss the movement as that its a debate that needs to be properly and completely w/out mischaracterizations on both sides.

Re:This is what confuses me

[jdreyer]

The Vatican supports evolution because it makes perfect sense (evolution never says there is no God, God could be directing evolution).

You are actually spouting ID here, not Darwinian evolution. A key component (perhaps the key component) of Darwinian evolution is that it is purposeless. That's what makes it one of the great scientific theories ever, because it escapes the infinite regress (who designed the designer?)

The Catholic Church, as well as religious people all over the world, hope that people don't notice the purposelessness of evolution. Because once you accept this scientific theory (and you really must, or else lose the last century and a half of biology) you must accept that either there is no god or whatever god does exist is so inscrutable that it is impossible to know anything about it. Either of these is tantamount to atheism. Get used to it!

Despite the wishful thinking of Gould and many others, science has challenged religious assertions since Copernicus at least. Darwin's was a big one, but there have been many others. Religionists need to just get over the hoax of theology and be content with culture, ethics, and collecting money.

Re:This is what confuses me

[mhollis]

I am a former Kansan. Grew up in the Kansas City area and was taught in one of the best school districts in the country at the time, as measures in SAT and ACT scores. I live in the East and work in NYC. And I'm horrified about what I see the Kansas Department of Education doing, which is to attempt to redefine the word "science" as used within the State for educational purposes to allow "hunches" "conjecture" and the non-observable to be used in the expression of "scientific theory."

Twice, Kansans have elected these fools to control how education would be run in the state. I don't know what promises were made during the election but I'm sure the teaching of Creationism, "Creation Science" "Intelligent Design" and Designer-ism was a hidden agenda of those who ran.

Only problem is that the voters in Kansas didn't realize what these fools would do once they got into office, based on what they did last time they ran things.

The Vatican has a long record of being anti-science that Pope John-Paul II tried to "clean up" a bit. There were the excommunications of Copernicus and Galilleo, burnings at the stake of "witches," prohibitions of the use of cadavers to explore the mystery of the human body, delaying the course of the development of modern surgery and so on. I still have problems with the prohibition of condom use to prevent the spread of AIDS and bishops who order priests to deny communion to any person who is a politician in the United States who does not think Roe v. Wade ought to be overturned (singling out Democrats and ignoring Republicans, like Giuliani who are Pro-Choice).

This is simply more of the same. The Vatican is trying to support science in a new way so that they can appropriately repent for past sins.

Now, come the Fundamentalists in the US who feel that any compromise is sinful. I should mention here that I recently saw an interview with one of their number who stated that Evangelicals don't have a Pope and so are less potentially "harmful" than the Catholics. What he didn't say (and what the reporter failed to ask about) is that in 2000, the Southern Baptist Convention changed their philosophy on the interpretation of Scripture from one where the scriptures were to be interpreted on the basis of the acts and words of Jesus Christ to one where the scriptures are to be interpreted on the basis of the dictates of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Exactly how does this differ from the Pope putting on a certain hat and declaring himself "infallible."

Nowadays, in order to be a good Christian, you have no "wiggle room." You either believe the way you are told, or you have sinned in the eyes of a small group, in the case of the SBC, or in the eyes of the Pope, both of whom subscribe to a "top-down" dictation of proper belief.

Where does this leave the average Kansan -- or American?

"Science" doesn't suffer from having the wrong definition. Science began to be developed some 6,000 years before Christ in Ionia by philosophers who saw that there could be logical explanations for everyday things that did not include the gods of the Persians or the gods of the Romans. Plato and his pupil Aristotle initiated a reaction to that by retreating into the perfection of the mind. Christianity picked up on that, transferring that to the Divine. But all the while, there was science. Science survived because it was heuristic. You could perform an experiment and state a hypothesis and repeat the experiment to assure yourself that the hypothesis held true. When a hypothesis was widely accepted, it graduated to the status of a Theory -- but nothing could be said to be cast in stone, in case observable events proved these understandings wrong.

Sir Isaac Newton's theories of gravitation were completely shattered by Einstein. Nonetheless, we still regularly use Newton to explain things because Einstein's theories are harder to describe.

These fundamentalists have initiated another definition of the word "Theory" which casts doubt on the

Re:This is what confuses me

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the thing that confuses me. The Vatican supports evolution because it makes perfect sense. Now I know that the ID people aren't Roman Catholic, but you would think they were the media portrays it.

It's a historical artifact. Up 'till about 50 years ago or so, most of the people in the United States were protestant, and probably some relaxed, humanist variant of it besides. So to them, the "wacko religous nut jobs" were the Catholics. Getting orders from the Pope? No meat on Fridays? Required to go to communion every week? And confessions? Those crazy Catholics!

But Vatican II rolls around, and in the mean time various protestant sects get "the olde-time religion", and now the Catholic church isn't the most fanatical sect on the block anymore. But the image of Catholic == Religous nutjob sticks around. To make things worse, there isn't just one fundamentalist church, with just one leader. Hence there wasn't a good term/concept for the ultra-religious protestants, so Catholisism was never displaced from the wacko religous freeks pedastal.

Thank Vishnu we have the emergance of the term "evangelical."

Re:This is what confuses me

[KingPrad]

I haven't noticed shading toward Catholicism in media coverage. Most of the media coverage I've seen is that the ID people are normal, right-thinking, protestant, patriotic Americans and they are fighting the bumbling absent-minded professors.

Re:This is what confuses me

[FreshFunk510]

First of all, I would humbly like to correct some spelling errors: it is "ridiculous". Sorry, it's a pet peeve of mine.

Anyway, I agree with what you said in general. The only point I would make is that this is not the fault of the media, but of misinformed people (imho). I'm willing to bet that if you looked at the actual news releases, that they specifically not that these representatives are from the episcopal (sp?) church. However, non-religious people, in general, probably can't distinguish the differences between a Roman Catholic, Protestant, Methodist, or Baptist. Heck, they probalby don't even know what the church of LDS is unless you say "mormon."

People are misinformed. They take opinion as fact (no thx to Fox), and word of mouth as news. Personally, I'm a bit uninformed myself considering how I did not know this was the Vatican's position and I am Catholic.

Re:This is what confuses me

[FreshFunk510]

Because once you accept this scientific theory (and you really must, or else lose the last century and a half of biology) you must accept that either there is no god or whatever god does exist is so inscrutable that it is impossible to know anything about it. Either of these is tantamount to atheism.

Sounds nice, but makes no sense (to me). How exactly does it: 1) mean that you must accept that there is no god or 2) god is inscrutable == atheism??

Re:This is what confuses me

[at_slashdot]

I agree with you to some point -- but remember that in US many people believe that animals and people were made by God as they are now, I don't remember the percent but I think it was somewhere around 33% (if not more).

I'm too lazy to look for that statistic piece but if it's true it's a really large number of people, science is not a democratic process, if people would vote for different theories we'd not get very far.

Re:This is what confuses me

[Anonymous Coward]

WRT the Southern Baptist Convention, the only thing that comes to mind from 2000 that somehow resembles what you're referencing is the 2000 Revision of the Baptist Faith and Message. Looking at the text, I don't see what you're referring to ...

Re:This is what confuses me

[Anonymous Coward]

if you accept evolution, and you agree that the parent is right about evolution being purposeless(as you have to, because that is what the theory states), that removes the "god created us". your saying "god created evolution, to create us", but thats contaradictory to what evolution says. if god was a guide to evolution, then evolution is not "natural selection", as God is not natural. so, if god didnt create us, then that sorta makes the Bible God a lie.

at least, thats the reasoning i see behind his post. however, if your God is not Bible God, or you redefine the theory of evolution, then i dont see how what he said applies.

Re:This is what confuses me

[FreshFunk510]

your saying "god created evolution, to create us", but thats contaradictory to what evolution says. if god was a guide to evolution, then evolution is not "natural selection", as God is not natural.

From everything that I've learned, evolutioned is a theory of how single-celled organisms became multi-celled organisms. And from there, they back bacteria, then insects, then cold blooded creatures, onto warm-blooded creatures... you get the idea. But nowhere have I ever read it as a religious statement as the proof that there is no good. Evolution is about science, not about theology. So where you get that, I have no idea.

The same goes for natural selection.

Sure, the church, at the time, identified it as a threat. But evolution, as people know it now, talks about the survivial of the fittest, natural selection, and how organism evolve. None of these have anything to do with deities.

Re:This is what confuses me

[elgatozorbas]

The problem is that some people mistake their 'insights' for the 'official' religious statement. I had a Christian education in Europe (but I am an agnost now). For me it is incredible to watch American TV priests attributing what THEY think to God. I find this rather pretentious, these men just want to be in the spotlight, they use God (wether He exists or not) for their own agenda.

Re:This is what confuses me

[Anonymous Coward]

You're implicitly (and stupidly) equating human purpose and divine purpose.

Re:This is what confuses me

[jdreyer]

I guess there are lots of concepts of "god". I'll talk about a god who is an intentional being who created us and who cares what we do.

If you accept evolution, you must accept that we were not created in any meaningful sense. What about a Deist God who set the Universe in motion, tweaking the laws and constants to favor some kind of evolution? But it's hard to imagine such a laissez-faire creator having strong opinions about what we should do; if he cared he'd have taken an active role in our design! Surely, for example, if this god wanted us to follow the golden rule, that god (who could create a whole universe, after all) could and would have intervened on this one little planet to make us better at it! But evolution says this didn't happen.

If you think there might be some god that is consistent with evolution, what kind of god would that be? How would you reconcile the scientific fact of this god's laissez-faire attitude towards the emergence of life with any godlike caring about the results?

Re:This is what confuses me

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you've been spoilt by talking only to intelligent religious people (and intelligent people are the minority); every religious person I've ever talked that hasn't studied at university told me they don't believe in evolution, half of them didn't even believe in dinosaurs! I wish only religious fundamentalists refuted it, but unfortunately this just isn't the case.

Re:This is what confuses me

[Anonymous Coward]

this would be a lot fucking easier to explain if you knew the difference between a catholic and a christian.

before i get modded up, pretend i just wrote "the difference between a northern irish and a southern irish" or some some other group...

Re:This is what confuses me

[mhollis]

Former President James Earl Carter mentions this in his most recent book. He was quite public in 2000 with his departure from the SBC's dictate on what constitutes a believer.

The man behind the curtain

[sterno]

Intelligent Design seems to operate on the oz theory that since we can't see behind the curtain we should take what we see in front of the curtain on face value. Of course, throughout history, we've seen this story repeat time and time again. We find something we don't understand, somebody attributes it to the divine intervention, then we figure it out. Once it's made clear that there is an explanation these people run to find the next unsolvable mystery only to see it get solved too.

Of course given the infinite mystery of the Universe, this is going to continue. If somebody feels that an intelligent designer is the only plausible explanation for the order of the universe, then they'll continue to see it there whether it exists or not. Personally what I've never understood about the logic is this:

If the apparent order of the universe necessitates a creator, then what created the creator since presumably the creator would be of an even higher level of order? If the creator doesn't need a creator, then why does the universe need a creator?

Re:The man behind the curtain

[Coryoth]

Intelligent Design seems to operate on the oz theory that since we can't see behind the curtain we should take what we see in front of the curtain on face value...We find something we don't understand, somebody attributes it to the divine intervention, then we figure it out.

It goes further than that. Intelligent design relies on linguistic "sleight of hand" and distraction in the very construction of their arguments. It is akin, in many ways, to the various "logical proofs of the existence of God" - it's all about slipping some subtle hidden assumptions into your definitions while railing on about a set of largely indisputable axioms to distract from this slieght of hand.

For Intelligent Design so much hangs on definitions or, more importantly, the lack thereof. Proponents spend a lot of time pounding the table and making arguments, but here are a few terms they use that are really never properly defined: "Intelligent", "Irreducible", "Design", "Complexity". You'll note that almost all their arguments hinge on vague, implicit, and imprecise definitions of these terms. There is much effort spent of verbal distraction to make sure you never really notice that, for instance, complexity is not really defined or measurable, or that intelligence is impossible to clearly delineate from unintilligent in any meaningful way. What does designed even mean in the manner it is used by ID proponents? How do we measure the degree of design?

Jedidiah.

Re:The man behind the curtain

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, throughout history, we've seen this story repeat time and time again. We find something we don't understand, somebody attributes it to the divine intervention, then we figure it out.

Can you give any examples of this "story"? I've made this argument before but have not been able to think of any examples...

Re:The man behind the curtain

[docl]

A simplistic answer to your quesiton about "If the creator doesn't need a creator, then why does the universe need a creator" is that everything in the universe has a time dependency. To create implies that it didn't exist before, but does after. In order to explain something that isn't created you need something outside of time. In my terms that is "the creator" or "God". I can't tell you much more about it because I can't really imagine a reality that is independent of time. Can you honestly say that you can?

But I think your confusing "how" with "why". Science can ask and answer "how" but fails at "why". Religion can ask and answer "why" but often fails at "how".

I can't tell you why I love my wife -- I just do. You could do a thousand experiments and still not answer why. Yet, I'm pretty sure that she understands that I do love her, just as I'm pretty sure that her love for me exists even though I cant prove it in a randomized blinded trial. I sense it in all sorts of ways, but even if it's all just chemicals floating accross neurons in my head, it still doesn't really answer why, nor does it really explain what I feel. The same goes for "the creator".

Re:The man behind the curtain

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, anything ranging from solar eclipses to, well, rain and lightning.

I'd suggest spending some quality time with the Cosmos DVD box set, as an introduction.

Religion used to be a simple matter of which wise old man you believed when it came to why the crops were failing, or why a cow with two heads was born over on Hezekiah's farm. Now, the fairy-tale believers have nuclear weapons. It is time for us to get smart, or we'll find out firsthand that evolution doesn't provide any guarantees of survival.

Re:The man behind the curtain

[deander2]

there is a name for this: "god of the gaps"

and yes, it is very much a pattern in human history.

Re:The man behind the curtain

[igaborf]

If the apparent order of the universe necessitates a creator, then what created the creator since presumably the creator would be of an even higher level of order? If the creator doesn't need a creator, then why does the universe need a creator?

What you fail to understand is that it's turtles all the way down!

Re:The man behind the curtain

[Anonymous Coward]

...complexity is not really defined or measurable, or that intelligence is impossible to clearly delineate from unintilligent in any meaningful way. What does designed even mean in the manner it is used by ID proponents? How do we measure the degree of design?

I'm most conflicted about this portion of the whole ID issue. I don't consider ID strictly scientific, becuase the types who are the most ardent followers of ID use it as a blanket reason to stop looking for other plausible causes for what surrounds us.

I consider mankind an "intelligent" species, and think man is on the cusp of an era of genetic engineering. Who, looking back from the future (or from the outside), would be able to explain Monsanto's contribution to modern crops, or GlobalDrugCo's creation of new "life" long after our civilization has expired or left the planet?

Would strict evolutionists be able to explain disease-resistant GM crops? Would they be correct? Would we necessarily need to look for non-living, "intelligently-designed" artifacts before we allow ourselves the luxury of assuming that an intelligence (either natural or supernatural) is allowed to be considered a creator of living things?

Some living things (flowers, crops, animals) are abundant simply because they happen to please the dominant intelligent species on the planet right now. Wihtout their relationship to this intelligence, they would not have evolved that way.

Like I said, this troubles me greatly, since you need to make the assumption that intelligence can influence evolution, and to a greater extent, intelligence can create life on its own, given the right building blocks.

That said, I recall this hypothetical exchange:

God: I created you by breathing life into dirt.
Man: I've learned how to do the same thing in my laboratory.
God: Cool trick. Now learn how to make your own dirt.

Re:The man behind the curtain

[imess]

"To create implies that it didn't exist before"

That is to say, the Universe didn't exist before?

Re:The man behind the curtain

[The_Dougster]

I'm a scientist, and student of philosophy, but I do actually believe in God. And yes I do believe that God is some kind of cosmic genetic engineer and physicist, among other things, but I fail to understand why this ID argument rages like it does on /. and why its such a big deal.

You can never "prove" that God exists by any kind of logical argument. The best you can do is conjecture that all this had to get here somehow; i.e. you can't make something out of nothing. Even the Big Bang theory doesn't explain that.

There's no reason why God couldn't have lit the big bang firecracker and known at that point that humans would eventually evolve, especially if God exists outside of space-time. Or you can say that He maybe tinkered around a bit here and there, inducing an occasional mutuation into some DNA, then waiting for the ecosystem to readjust after the changes.

Isn't this ID or are they claiming something different? I just don't see what the big deal is with all this. Science class should teach evolution theory because its provable. Intelligent design theory should be a matter of faith or philosophical argument because it attempts to go a step further than evolutionary theory and it can't be either proven or disproven.

Just because some clowns in some rural church of ignorance want crazy antiquated theories included in the science books doesn't mean that a public school should even consider it.

Those folks have every right to home-school their kids and teach them whatever nonsense they want, and thats the bottom line.

Re:The man behind the curtain

[dancpsu]

Of course, throughout history, we've seen this story repeat time and time again. We find something we don't understand, somebody attributes it to the divine intervention, then we figure it out.

Like how many scientists attributed their discoveries to the belief that God would not make something so convoluted. Intelligent Design in a way proposes a new line of discovery. Evolution always looks for commonality and possible effects of mutation and such. ID would look for boudaries in DNA making one species *not* turn into another. Maybe there would be a set of species that fall within the boundaries and others outside. Maybe ID could be a better foundation of thought for complex biology, where instead of looking for common links, looking for the reason behind a complex structure. If you assume that something was designed, you look at different things than if you assume something evolved.

The real test of ID vs. Evolution is whether future biological discoveries fall more in line with life being an incredible engineering feat that stretches chemistry and physics to the max, or a clumsy thrown-together mishmash that barely works and has many non-working or leftover parts.

A couple points on the ID side are: "vestigal" organs are now being discovered to actually be important, and "junk" DNA seems to actually do something. This is not to say that evolution isn't important, and probably will have a place in biology even if something else supplants it, but ID does offer a valid alternative principle to the evolutionary framework.

Re:The man behind the curtain

[KingEomer]

The reason it's such a large issue on /. is because the IDers are masquerading the belief as a theory. It is not science, as you said, and should not be taught as such. However, if you read some of the posts, some slashdotters obviously believe it to be valid science...

Re:The man behind the curtain

[gillbates]

If you had actually read Darwin's Black Box, you would find that Micheal Behe, et al, are actually very specific in defining what they mean by terms such as "intelligence", "choice", and "irreducible complexity". Within the context of these definitions, their arguments make very good sense.

But the most notable ID proponents are philosophers, not scientists, and it is disingenious to insist on treating their work as science. It is not, and those who insist on denigrating ID as if it were science only show their pedantry.

After all, who argues against teaching the works of Aristotle because it isn't science? Just because something isn't strictly scientific does not mean it is lacking in intellectual value.

Re:The man behind the curtain

[sterno]

In my terms that is "the creator" or "God". I can't tell you much more about it because I can't really imagine a reality that is independent of time. Can you honestly say that you can?

The assumption this suggests is that the Universe had a definitive beginning and did not exist prior to that. At this point it's impossible to conclude that because we can only figure out what the Universe was in the past up to a point. Before that point what existed? Maybe the Universe has always been, maybe God screwed it into some complext light fixture. None of us knows, which is kinda my point when you get down to it. If you want to believe in God, fine, but you can't proove God.

Personally I've always tended to favor the concept that everything that exists is God. That God isn't a detached observer, or somebody enacting some grandiose experiment. That everything that exists has always been, in some form, and always will be, in some form. That nothing need exist independently of it. I cannot proove any of that though and that's fine with me.

I'm not confusing "why" with "how" but rather I'm saying that our lack of understanding of "how " doesn't suggest a "why". Science and religion are wholly incompatible with eachother. Trying to explain God based on the how of the universe is ludicrous. Trying to explain evolution based on the why of God is similarly ludicrous. There is nothing in science that prooves God and there is nothing in science that disprooves God.

Even if God presented himself tomorrow with a big "hi, I'm God" name tag it wouldn't proove his all mightyness in a scientific context. He could snap his fingers and destroy whole galaxies and all it would proove is he could whoop our collective ass, not that he was all mighty or that he was the guy who originally created the whole thing. Because hey, there might be somebody with an even bigger can of deific whoop ass waiting in the wings.

Re:The man behind the curtain

[sterno]

Would strict evolutionists be able to explain disease-resistant GM crops? Would they be correct? Would we necessarily need to look for non-living, "intelligently-designed" artifacts before we allow ourselves the luxury of assuming that an intelligence (either natural or supernatural) is allowed to be considered a creator of living things?

This is a valid point, and yes, it's possible that some aspects of what we see of earth biology could have been created by some being. The problem in ID is this leap where it goes from finding something seemingly irreducibly complex, then making the leap to, "God did it". We have yet to find anything irreducibly complex that we didn't create ourselves. Presumably if there is intelligent life somewhere in the universe other than us (likely), it's possible we'll come across it at some point.

Having said that, even if we do find it, it doesn't proove or disprove God. It might proove some intervention by some intelligence, but even then it's hard to tell if it's intelligence or just a misunderstanding of the processes at work.

Re:The man behind the curtain

[Alsee]

Who, looking back from the future (or from the outside)... Would strict evolutionists be able to explain disease-resistant GM crops?

It would in part depend on exactly what modifications were made and how many such cases they had to look at... and there would certainly be some quite heated debate on the issue... but I think so.

That sort of modification extracts one gene from one source and inserts it into the target plant. The scientists would spot that it breaks the rules of the lines of common decent. That that gene was not properly inherited from any common ancestor. Once detected it would share the foundations of evolution. Exactly the sort of evidence to disprove evolution. With the first or second such discovery it would spark an exhaustive search of the DNA of those plants and all related plants. Assuming there were a signifigant number of such examples I think the pattern would become quite clear.... that there were a series of such anomolies and that they were exclusively in a handful of domesticated crop plants, and that they were exclusively additions of explicit crop-enhancing genes. It would be clear cut evidence of intelligent manipulation. It would certainly raise lots of discussion of God, but at least in my oppinion I think that such a limited pattern, such a distinct pattern, such a human-practical pattern, that it would point to a limited and practical human-type deliberate tampering. Of course the strength of weakness of that idea would be strongly tied to any evidence (or lack thereof) that there was a prior technological civilization on the planet. The complete absense of any such evidence would seriously undermine the strength of that (correct) theory. Both from my current perspective and from the hypothetical furture perspective, I find it difficult to see how a technological influence could or would leave behind that genetic trace and absolutely no other trace of any sort.

-

Re:The man behind the curtain

[Alsee]

The reason that this is a Big Deal is because the ID'ers are infact hijacking a handful of backwater school boards and deleting or trashing the Evolution curriculum and inserting ID as science class curriculum.

The reason it is a Big Deal is becuase they are trying to dress it up in a science costume and sell it to the general public and to get it into science classes across the nation.

The reason this is a Big Deal is because the fricking PRESIDENT has called for it to be taught in science classes across the country.

The reason this is such a Big Deal is because they have some 70-odd percent of the general US population sold on the idea that it is appropriate for "both sides" to be allowed equal presentation in our science classrooms.

The reason this is a Big Deal is because they actually got an ammendment attached to the No Child Left Behind Act to explictly undermine evolution and to pave the way for ID in the schools, and they got it passed in the House of Representatives. It did not however make it through the senate, and rather than appearing in the final bill they got it into the offical "legislating history" to help guide courts on interpreting what the No Child Left Behind Act is supposted to do and mean and to guide how the courts interpret and apply the law.

Those folks have every right to home-school their kids and teach them whatever nonsense they want, and thats the bottom line.

Sure, they have every right to do that. However they are not satisfied with that. They are on a crusade to get THE GOVERNMENT to push their religious ideology.

There's no reason why God couldn't have lit the big bang firecracker and known at that point that humans would eventually evolve

Right. The only ones who have any problem with that are the ID activists. As far as they are concerned evolution conflicts with their interpretation of a "literal" reading of the Bible. That anything that conflicts with their interpretation of God's Literal Truth is a rejection of God himself and of all religion. Whether it is conciously or unconsiously, these activists in complete denial reguarding your suggestion about God setting things in motion and evolution running its course. The God&Evolution combo simply does not exist and does not register to them. Complete denial.

But here is where it gets seriously freaky. They view evolution as an atheist materialist attack to destroy the fabric of scociety itself. *I shit you not*. That they are in a war with a "materialist worldview" that threatens the very "bedrock principles on which Western civilization was built". Read and judge them for youself.
That is a private fundraising document leaked out of the central ID activist groups (they receive millions in donations to fund their efforts). They have admitted the document is authentic. This leaked document is known as the Wedge Document and it lays out what they call their Wedge Strategy. They actually lay out a TWENTY YEAR PLAN to attack "scientific materialism" and insinuate the schools and congress and to transform society in their religo-moral image of a proper God Fearing nation.

And the scary part is that these "clowns in some rural church of ignorance" as you call them are in fact receiveing millions of dollars in contributions and they are infact taking over school boards and they do have in fact been influencing magor national education law and they the general media have in fact been putting them on TV and in newspapers and treating them as if they were legitimate and credible scientists and they have in fact been influencing public oppinion to think that there is a genuine scientific controversey and that they are beeing suppressed by closeminded scientists and that they deserve equal time in the science classroom.

Christ! Why don't the GOOD GUYS ever have this sort of political and propaganda savy?

-

Re:I don't see the big deal behind intelligent des

[AKAImBatman]

Sorry, I misremembered. It's not Wells' theory, it's Ernst Haeckels. His theory was referred to as Recapitualation.

Why must EITHER Darwinism OR ID be True??

[hcob$]

I've always found it odd that "thinking people" and "people of faith" see their "theories" as the, pardon the pun, God's Honest Truth? I mean for goodness sakes, its a FSKING THEORY (both of them). Now, the good thing about Darwinism is that there is alot of evidence to suppor that theory. ID, most of it is circumstantial at best.

Being that I do believe in a Single creator (sorry multi-diety people), I've found that the Creator has a PROFOUND sense of humor. I mean, look at the freaking duck-billed platapus! But if the ID people take a step back and think about their religious teachings, they'll find something about being humble. And last I checked, claiming to know and understand God's plan is ANYTHING but humble.

Here's my humble little theory. The universe was created by "God". He set in motion all that is and has become life. Now in that creation, He also set in motion the ability for his creation to grow, adapt and become better that it's original creation.

I think I'll coin a term and call this theory "Intelligent Darwinism." The universe was created persuant to God's Plan, and then he allowed that creation free will to grow, evolve, change, and adapt in the way that Darwin has described.

To paraphrase from Babylon 5:

The truth is a triple edged sword. There is your side. There is my side. And, there is what really occurs.

Re:Why must EITHER Darwinism OR ID be True??

[MightyMartian]

At the root of your post is the confusion of a very specific definition of the word "theory" used by scientists with the common nonclemature invoked by the average person. A theory in science is a rigorously tested claim based upon evidence and making specific predictions. A theory in common usage is simply "any ol' idea". Thus, evolution is a scientific theory, while ID is only a theory in the loosest use of the term.

Re:Why must EITHER Darwinism OR ID be True??

[pauljlucas]

I mean for goodness sakes, its a FSKING THEORY (both of them). Now, the good thing about Darwinism is that there is alot of evidence to suppor that theory.

First, "Darwinism" is an imprecise label. Darwin discovered evolution (a fact). As a possible explanation of how evolution (the fact) works, Darwin also proposed natural selection (a theory). Natural selection isn't the only theory that attempts to explain evolution: punctuated equilibrium is another.

This is precisely analogous to gravity (the fact) and Newton's mechanics (the theory). Newton's theory has since been replaced by Einstein's general relativity (another theory), but at no time did gravity (a fact) stop being true.

Intelligent design isn't a theory since it (a) makes no predictions, (b) can never be tested, and therefore (c) can never be falsified. By not being a legitimate theory, it has no place in a classroom, especially a science classroom, and most especially in a country where the government supposedly has a seperation of church and state.

If you want your kids to be exposed to religious ideas, send them to Sunday school.

Re:Why must EITHER Darwinism OR ID be True??

[Anonymous Coward]

There are no sides in science. If a single piece of evidence falsifies a theory then it's thrown out. ID is not a scientific theory since it's not falsifiable. So it's not a question of opinion or sides but of facts.

Re:Why must EITHER Darwinism OR ID be True??

[drxenos]

Damn, for the last time: LOOK UP THE MEANING OF THEORY! I don't mean what you think it does! ID is NOT a theory! Nor are any of your so-called "theories."

Re:Why must EITHER Darwinism OR ID be True??

[hcob$]

Allrighty then, I'll conceede(have fun spell Nazi's) y'alls statements about theory, fact, etc. But I believe in my loose use of a technical term, I muddied the thrust of my comment. (Enough metaphores mixed? good.) I don't understand the zealousness of EITHER side. ID, well that comes from the same nutso's who need to go back and understand the Bible they claim to speak for. Darwinisim (survival of the fittest) is defended in an equally zealous manner that is sometimes forms what could be construed as religions fanatsism. My idea is not to decide what gets taught in science class, but for people to step back and start using their heads. Mandating scientific teachings based on politics leads to disastorous results; see euginics (spelling nazi's, pun intended) have fun with that one too). Everyone needs to be presented facts and true theories(strict use of the term following the scientific method). Leave the rest to theological, metaphorical, and non-political conversations.

think about the logic of this

[tehwebguy]

if someone claims to believe to be a christian, but rejects certain parts of the bible, have they not just written their own bible?

the same applies to every religion that is based on a holy book. how can a book be holy if you write your own?

Re:think about the logic of this

[loconet]

But who says they are writing their own version? Do you write your own book when you understand and accept the message of Animal Farm?

Ofcourse not, you take the allegory and extract the author's message and may learn from it. Unless you actually believe the pigs and all other animals did what they did in the story?. Just because you are not taking a story literally and are understanding and learning the real message behind it , it doesn't mean you are writing your own version. So by that logic, the story (the bible in this case) still has the original message and may keep its symbological name of "holy".

Re:think about the logic of this

[Androclese]

That is what happened after the Protestant revolution. The Catholic and Protestant Bibles are different. I'm too lazy to look it up, but is a difference in the number of Books between the two. IIRC, the Protestant's removed a few books they had problems with.

Both sects are still considered Christian, they just have a different Bible.

Teaching ID in the classroom

[MrTester]

I dont understand what all the fuss is all about. All the ID people want is to have education not be focused on a single theory. Before any school teaches Darwinisim they want someone to read a statement about ID. I am all for it.... On one condition. Anytime a Sunday school class, Sermon, or other religeous gathering is about to talk about Creationisim or ID, I want a Biology teacher to read a statement about Darwinisim. After all, its only fair :) Of course note, the only reason I am willing to suggest this is because I know the ID believers would have a cow at such a suggestion. They are all about blurring the line between Public Institutions and religeon as long as its only one way.

Exactly!

[Spy der Mann]

The fundies do NOT know who those rabbis where, but knowing that they can't talk to them, they don't even try to talk to those rabbis who have ACTUALLY studied the Genesis, or read the writings of the first christian bishops and martyrs on the subject.

In other words, the fundies are taking a text they did NOT write, and they claim to be the only ones who know the correct interpretation (i.e. claiming to be something equivalent to a Pope). Under what basis? With what authority?

As a catholic, I think the Vatican's statement has exposed the fundamentalists' fanatism regarding the Holy Scriptures: The ID proponents are not only going against science, they're also going against the Church that represented christianity for more than 15 centuries - that ought to say something.

Re:Exactly!

[varith]

Actually, according to a whole slew o' fundies, the King James version of the bible was a later divine revelation. Yup, directly from God to the English court. So they feel free to ignore anything written before then.

Re:Exactly!

[carlos_benj]

It's a fairly small "slew", but yeah.... They're out there.....

Re:Exactly!

[AndersOSU]

In my opinion the reason that evangelicals often label themselves as non-denominational is so that they can speak with all the authority of their non-existing church.

While I'm glad that the Vatican is reaffirming its position that evolution is not heretical, this isn't new. JPII wrote a cautious endorsement of evolution years ago.

Addditionally the fundies aren't going to care what Rome says anyway, and they couldn't care less if they're going against the longest tradition of Christianity - they might even see it as a badge of honor.

The best thing that could happen from announcements like these is that people stop assuming that being a Christian automatically means you are a young earth creationist. And maybe if were lucky some uninformed Kansasians (what the hell do you call someone from Kansas anyway?) realize that you can see the Bible as True, without it being a historic fact. I mean you would think that if they can wrap their brain around fully man and fully divine they could handle True but not fact...

Re:Exactly!

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, the Fundamentalists don't recognize the authority of the Pope. The Catholic church hasn't represented all of Christianity for hundreds of years. I'm sure they'll take it as just another example of how the Catholics have it all wrong.

Re:Exactly!

[Anonymous Coward]

I would not put too much stock in what comes out of the Vatican - weren't they in the "world is flat" camp for quite some time?
What I find ironic is how closed minded "objective people of science" can be. Just because an event described in the Bible cannot be explained by our current understanding of the universe does not mean it should be excluded from being a possibility.
If you believe God created the universe, how much harder would it have been for Him to create everything in a way that made it appear much older than it is? Is He not allowed to specify initial conditions in His own universe?

Re:Exactly!

[flyinwhitey]

"The fundies do NOT know who those rabbis where, but knowing that they can't talk to them, they don't even try to talk to those rabbis who have ACTUALLY studied the Genesis, or read the writings of the first christian bishops and martyrs on the subject."

YES! I agree, well said.

"In other words, the fundies are taking a text they did NOT write, and they claim to be the only ones who know the correct interpretation (i.e. claiming to be something equivalent to a Pope). Under what basis? With what authority?"

YES! I agree, well said.

"As a catholic..."

Um, look at the time...

Re:Exactly!

[Gilmoure]

what the hell do you call someone from Kansas anyway?

Jayhawk

Re:Exactly!

[Anonymous Coward]

From about 800 to 1900 the Roman Catholic church did such a crappy job at Christianity I'd claim that it wasn't actually "representing" it.

I'd say pre-800 (when there was a single church) and post-Vatican II the Roman Catholic church has actually done a decent job "representing" Christianity. Good job on those 35 years the church finally got right, though!

Re:Exactly!

[Total_Wimp]

If the Jewish people weren't smart enough to see Jesus as the messiah, how on earth could they be counted on to produce a proper interpretation of Genesis? And Catholics clearly don't know how to interpret Genesis because they're not snappy dressers. They wear dresses for God's sake! And those Jehovah's Witness are way too literal, unlike ourselves who are "just literal enough (tm)." Don't even get me started on those cultists in Utah. Do you know they actually try to save the souls of non-Americans?

I'm sick of this callus disregard for "the truth(tm)." The sooner you all accept that American Christian fundamentalists are the only Judaism-derived faith with a full understanding of "God's plan (tm)," the better off everyone will be.

TW

Re:Exactly!

[Spy der Mann]

I would not put too much stock in what comes out of the Vatican - weren't they in the "world is flat" camp for quite some time?

You mean in the middle ages, when people in general still believed in dragons? And you forget the fact that it was Queen Elizabeth "the Catholic", who authorized Columbus to do his trip to "the indias".

Still, you got it wrong. The Catholic Church never said the Earth was flat - they said the sun circled around the earth. But, AFAIK, that was the only clerical fumble regarding science. And it wasn't catholic dogma, anyway - just a high clergy wrong decision.

Re:Exactly!

[autophile]

As a catholic, I think the Vatican's statement has exposed the fundamentalists' fanatism regarding the Holy Scriptures: The ID proponents are not only going against science, they're also going against the Church that represented christianity for more than 15 centuries - that ought to say something.

Yeah, but I thought the whole point behind all these "other" Christian faiths was that they didn't believe in the authority of the Pope or the Vatican. So what difference does it make to them?

--Rob

Re:Exactly!

[letxa2000]

As a catholic, I think the Vatican's statement has exposed the fundamentalists' fanatism regarding the Holy Scriptures: The ID proponents are not only going against science, they're also going against the Church that represented christianity for more than 15 centuries - that ought to say something.

As a life-long protestant who has been attending Catholic mass for the last 10 years after marrying a Catholic...

Understand that while the Catholic Church almost signularly represented Christianity for over 1000 years, it didn't always do so in a very Christian manner. Quite the opposite in many cases. The Protestant branch of the Christian faith originated precisely because of the Catholic Chruch's poor stewardship of the faith.

Things are improved today as compared to 500 years ago, but you still need only walk into a Catholic church and a Protestant church to see the difference in priorities. As a general rule, the Catholic churches still spend way too much money on ornaments and decorations and material objects in the church. This money could be much better used for helping the poor and taking the faith to the unbelievers.

Anyway, I digress...

That the Vatican would have an opinion that disagrees with Fundamentalists is a complete non-story. These two groups of Christians believe in two different things--otherwise, two separate groups wouldn't exist in the first place!

I personally don't follow the big bang/evolution/Intelligent design debate closely, but the Vatican's statement is not a blow to intelligent design and it does not help evolution. It simply doesn't matter.

Re:Exactly!

[operagost]

Put your straw man away. There are about a hojillion websites that point out fundamentalist's fondness of the KJV as being based on the its use of the majority texts (textus receptus). Compare the consensus achieved by the TR-based KJV as opposed to the NIV, which is essentially based on two texts: one was left to gather dust in the Vatican for centuries; which the other is full of corrections, leaves out huge parts of Genesis in its original form, includes apocryphal texts not even accepted by the modern RC Church, and was found in a rubbish heap where nuns had wisely placed it for disposal.

Re:Exactly!

[MightyMartian]

I would not put too much stock in what comes out of the Vatican - weren't they in the "world is flat" camp for quite some time?

No, they were never in that camp. They were, for a goodly long time, along with everyone else, in the geocentric camp, and that's where the embarassment that makes them far less willing to make grand pronouncements on science than certain religious groups in the US.

What I find ironic is how closed minded "objective people of science" can be. Just because an event described in the Bible cannot be explained by our current understanding of the universe does not mean it should be excluded from being a possibility.

The problem lies in the fact that the Bible, when read by someone who has taken the theological blinders off, doesn't exactly read like any accurate historical document, and makes a number of rather extraordinary claims that should require something other than "It says so in the Bible" to be taken as evidence. Do you also think that Greek or Hindu mythology ought to be given similar weight?

If you believe God created the universe, how much harder would it have been for Him to create everything in a way that made it appear much older than it is? Is He not allowed to specify initial conditions in His own universe?

Omphalism creates some pretty severe problems for the faithful, because it essentially makes God into a liar. On the emperical end of things, it's a meaningless statement. If the Universe was created last Thursday with the appearance of great age, then science could still function simply by accepting that age and leaving the theological Last Thursdayism claim out of the picture entirely.

Where you stumble, I'm afraid, is on the idea that somehow science is a quest for TRUTH(tm). It is a search for the best explanation for the evidence. If some uber-powerful being has made the Universe appear as it is by the proverbial snap of a finger, then yes, science cannot find that truth, because that truth could never be arrived at by any rational, emperical means.

Re:Exactly!

[Rostin]

15 centuries? Maybe I'm confused about which 15 you mean. Ever hear of the Great Schism?

Re:Exactly!

[stanmann]

The anabaptists of the 500s and 600s would disagree with you.

Re:Exactly!

[thenerdgod]

Listen, Catholics aren't Christians ...or Americans. Enjoy the pit, Benedict! MUAHAHAHAHAHA.

Re:Exactly!

[Anonymous Coward]

And you forget the fact that it was Queen Elizabeth "the Catholic", who authorized Columbus to do his trip to "the indias".

You're confused. Queen Elizabeth was an English Protestant. It was Her Most Catholic Majesty Queen Isabella of Castile who paid for Columbus's expedition.

Re:Exactly!

[bcdlr]

Oh, yeah. The "CHURCH" - this is the church that brought us indulgences, the Crusades and a multitude of other wonderful things. In my book Intelligent Design is no more incredulous as evolution (macro). It's amazing how much dust this stirs up. Everyone who thinks of himself as an intellectual jumps on this like it's a book burning or something. Like I'm so much better than you because I belive in intellectualism. Hey, I'll put my faith where I want and you can put yours wherever you like. I love the labels, too. Fundies!?! Better than some of the things I've been called or will be called. On with the flame suit! Oh, BTW, I'll still pray for y'all!

Re:Exactly!

[jfelix1010]

you forget the fact that it was Queen Elizabeth "the Catholic", who authorized Columbus to do his trip to "the indias".

I'm not much of a history scholar, but I believe that Queen Isabella of Spain was the monarch that comissioned Columbus' "trip to the indias". Queen Elizabeth I (I assume that this is who you were referring to) was a protestant (Anglican), and I don't believe that she was even alive in 1492. Queen Isabella was, however, a Catholic, and I agree that The Catholic Church was never officially in the flat-earth camp as a matter of dogma.

Re:Exactly!

[Anonymous Coward]

" (...) the Church that represented christianity for more than 15 centuries (...)"

Huh, and what about the Orthodox church?

I'm catholic too, but I also recognize that Christianity was quasi-split in two virtually from the start: one half based in Rome, the other half based in Constantinople (IIRC). I think in english they called them the "Western Church" and "Eastern Church". Anyone with better mastery of the english language feel free to correct my speeling/wording/nomemclature. /ac

Re:Exactly!

[Anonymous Coward]

Other than the minor error you had (which is already corrected by another poster), this is pretty close. The 'attack' of some of the Catholic advisors on Columbus' trip planning wasn't that he would fall off the ends of the earth, but rather he would die from lack of food long before he reached the Indias, because Columbus had apparently attempted his own calculations of the size of the Earth, to find a result much smaller than the advisors had accepted. IIRC, Columbus was /lucky/ that the Americas were in the way, or he might not have lived to actually claim credit for anything... other than being the idiot who proved that the world was pretty large by dying trying to cross it on bad math.

Re:Exactly!

[ebyrob]

True but not fact...

Your True must be a lot different than my True because from where I sit it looks like you're removing "what really happened" from "what actually matters". This is something you might get away with for your own personal use, but isn't something you're likely to have much luck fosting off onto others.

Re:Exactly!

[gordo3000]

I"M not sure of this is a joke, but that might be the funniest site I have ever read. its like FUD for the religious masses.

Re:Exactly!

[Anonymous Coward]

In other words, the fundies are taking a text they did NOT write, and they claim to be the only ones who know the correct interpretation (i.e. claiming to be something equivalent to a Pope). Under what basis? With what authority?

"Divine inspiration" seems to be the usual angle. The rabbis don't have a better claim to knowing what the text means. They were not alive at the time, either. Many people in the US believe god speaks to them, the president apparently being one of them.

The ID proponents are not only going against science, they're also going against the Church that represented christianity for more than 15 centuries

Sure, but they are not catholic for a reason. One of the main issues leading to the breakaway from the catholic church was the opinion that the catholic church had actually diverged from scripture too much, having replaced the actual teachings of the bible with traditions of their own. So the very basis of their church is the feeling that the catholic church did not interpret the bible correctly...

I'm an atheist and think ID is a bunch of complete nonsense. Nevertheless - the claim of christian extremists to interpret the bible is just as good as anyone else's. If the basis for the interpretation is a belief which can not be verified, then all such interpretations are equally valid.

Re:Exactly!

[avi33]

(what the hell do you call someone from Kansas anyway?)

Pretty soon, we'll call them "Uneducated."

Re:Exactly!

[boxlight]

The ID proponents are not only going against science, they're also going against the Church that represented christianity for more than 15 centuries - that ought to say something.

Yeah, the same 1500 year old church that burned people at the stake for claiming the earth revolved around the sun, and sentenced people to death for being in posession of a bible in a language they could actually read!

The same church that has spent the last century boinking defenseless little boys in orphinages across north america, and still has not done anything to punish the offenders.

Yeah -- that's right -- don't argue with that infallable bunch!

boxlight

PS. Try: www.bibleinfo.com

Re:Exactly!

[MBGMorden]

Actually, I've met large groups of people who prefer the KJV because they truly think that it's the "original" Bible. They honestly believe that the Bible was originally written in English. Granted these are very backwoods people with extremely little education, but they are out there. I've seen congregations boot out guest preachers they claimed were "untrue" because they read from a different translation. Any attempt at telling them that it was not originally in English or that there were English translations predating the KJV is usually met with awkward stares or sometimes an outright argument. Don't even bring up the Apocrypha which many of them will try to dismiss as "lies of the Devil" (though they've never read anything about it, becaue "that would be a sin").

(and I am a Christian myself, I just don't subscribe to the fanatical beliefs that many do and try to keep educated about our beliefs and their history. And yes, I believe in evolution and the Big Bang)

Re:Exactly!

[Anonymous Coward]

"No, they were never in that camp. They were, for a goodly long time, along with everyone else, in the geocentric camp, and that's where the embarassment that makes them far less willing to make grand pronouncements on science than certain religious groups in the US."

And, like someone pointed out, you can certainly use a geocentric model to the universe, all it means is that you're using a different point of reference. It also makes your astronomy calculations a lot more complex.

Re:Exactly!

[Anonymous Coward]

You're full of shit. Of course the TR leaves out huge parts of Genesis. In fact, if you knew anything about Biblical scholarship, you'd know that TR (and all NT textual traditions) leave out all of Genesis, and indeed the whole OT.

Oh, and the rest of your post is almost purely nonsense, too.

Re:Exactly!

[AndersOSU]

True as in the moral of the story is True, not as in it is true that snakes talk.

Re:Exactly!

[CRCulver]

As a general rule, the Catholic churches still spend way too much money on ornaments and decorations and material objects in the church. This money could be much better used for helping the poor and taking the faith to the unbelievers.

Maybe you missed the part of the Gospel where the woman with an alabaster box broke it and annointed Jesus. When the disciples complained that the money from the oil, when sold, could be spent on the poor, Jesus said "The poor will always be with you." Moral of the story? Glorify God first, pay attention to your fellow man second, although this second follows very, very close behind the first.

All churches from the beginnings of Christianity have had ornaments and decorations and material objects, and incense and gold were a large part of worship. The idea that churches should be stripped and threadbare is a Protestant innovation.

Re:Exactly!

[Paladin128]

As a general rule, the Catholic churches still spend way too much money on ornaments and decorations and material objects in the church. This money could be much better used for helping the poor and taking the faith to the unbelievers.

Umm... Jesus disagrees with you a tad... John 12:4-8 states:

Judas the Iscariot, one of his disciples, and the one who would betray him, said, "Why was this oil not sold for three hundred days' wages 3 and given to the poor?" He said this not because he cared about the poor but because he was a thief and held the money bag and used to steal the contributions. So Jesus said, "Leave her alone. Let her keep this for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me."

We believe that Christ's true physical presence exists in the Eucharist. Why should we treat him any differently than Mary of Bethany? Giving money, service, and faith to the poor is very good, but so is treating Christ with the majesty He deserves. A priest friend of mine often says that the holy sacrifice of the mass has an audience of one: God. Though we can never be truly perfect, or worship God to the degree he deserves, we should make a best effort.

Though you're welcome to a different interpretation in application of your own faith, I hold that the Catholic church behaves rather biblically in this respect.

Re:Exactly!

[Anonymous Coward]

King James version is one of the poorest examples of literature. Even though it went through nearly 100000 changes, it still contains contradictions. In fact, if you look for websites that talk about contradictions in the Bible, if you check the quotes, they all are from KJV if you check other translations that ARE NOT BASED ON KJV suddenly things don't seem contradictory. The process of writing KJV was iffy in the first place, find a few notes in greek, fill in the missing details from latin and make things up. Also this is word-for-word translation not phrase-for-phrase (that's why people like NIV).

read the rest
http://www.bible.org/page.asp?page_id=665

And to that Catholic dude: Catholic Church does not represent Christianity. Instead of teaching the bible they teach book of Catholicism which just so full of lies and contradictions.
No, the Bible doesn't mention concept of pregutory anywhere. The Bible is very clear that either you want to be with God or you do not want to be with God. You do not have any other choice.

Bible teaches you to love (first applied to God then to people), and ONE OF THE reasons you've been given the time on earth is to learn how to love.

Bible doesn't teach that salvation is in material things, WEARING A CROSS DOES NOT PROTECT YOU FROM ANYTHING. What protects you is your faith and obidience as taught in the Bible.

Doing good deeds also doesn't protect you from anything. Catholics think that doing good deads leads you to salvation. NO, wrong! Bible teaches you that you do good works WHILE (rather when ...) you are in salvation.

worshiping paintings/statues: Bible is clear not to worship graven image. Bible teaches that primary reason you are on earth is to worship God. You are not here to worship statues, but God. He wants all your attention, he's all for you. Thinking along the lines that oh, but God has lots of other things to take care of, why would he care about my problems. First of all, lets go back to the basics. God is infinite and he is at every point in time at the same time (or simpler way of saying he is not limited by our time). You are his child and he does care he wants your attention regardless how silly it may be in your mind.

Bible teaches that that Jesus is the ONLY mediator between people and God. So praying to a statue so that it will pray to God type of thinking is just rediculous!

Pope is not a representative of God on earth. Every Christian is. Pope may speak 100 times better than you, (he can construct 5 fallacies make comparison upon them to prove you wrong before you notice there was a change in topic), but that doesn't make him any more of a representative than you. It can be argued that they are not representatives of God at all since they are not Christian.

And another example John Paul I was a KGB agent, he was assasinated on behalf of Jahn Paul II who, you guessed it, was a CIA agent. (from unclassified KGB files) at the time John Paul II was a helper.

many other comments that you might consider but I have other people to help.
Please consider reading "Purpose Driven Life" by Rick Warren. He explains concepts very clearly.

Best regards,
omi

Re:Exactly!

[Uzuri]

As someone who goes to the Catholic Church on the "wrong side of the tracks", I'm insulted.

No, actually, I'm kidding. I agree. Many many Catholic Churches are all about show and power. The one I attend at the moment is not, but that's because it can't afford to be.

Re:Exactly!

[Bill Hayden]

While his style is way over-the-top and probably offensive to many, I didn't find anything in that tract that goes against what I've read in the Bible. There is nothing wrong with examining ourselves and seeing where we stand with God, in fact the Bible commands it.

Re:Exactly!

[Anonymous Coward]

As a catholic, I think the Vatican's statement has exposed the fundamentalists' fanatism regarding the Holy Scriptures:

It also exposes the fundamental flaw in your religion. If the part in Genesis about the creation/fall of Adam is not literal truth, then there is no need for Christ to die for the atonement of that fall; and thus Christianity/Catholicism is nothing more than the celebration of the unjust, cruel death of a slightly deranged but otherwise decent human being.

Re:Exactly!

[Digz]

That'd be interesting to see, considering they didn't exist. They didn't come on the scene until 1521.

http://www.turrisfortis.com/trail.html

Re:Exactly!

[thephotoman]

Okay, small pedantic history problem:

Queen Elizabeth was either the English monarch from 1558 to 1603, and was an Anglican, or the monarch of the United Kingdom since 1953, and is also an Anglican.

You're thinking of Queen Isabella of Castille and Leon, who ruled 1474 to 1504. She was "Isabel the Catholic".

Of course, if you want to get really pedantic, Elizabeth is the English equivalent of Isobella, but she's known throughout the Anglophone world by her Spanish name, as to prevent confusion with the queens of England and the United Kingdom.

Re:Exactly!

[letxa2000]

Maybe you missed the part of the Gospel where the woman with an alabaster box broke it and annointed Jesus. When the disciples complained that the money from the oil, when sold, could be spent on the poor, Jesus said "The poor will always be with you." Moral of the story? Glorify God first, pay attention to your fellow man second, although this second follows very, very close behind the first.

That was specifically about spending money on expensive oil on Jesus--that's why He said "The poor will always be with you." I.e., HE will not. That's why it was ok to use expensive oil on Jesus himself. If He were referring to the physical posessions of church, He wouldn't have said something to imply that His presence was temporary.

That you liken the physical material buildings of the Catholic Church with the original body of Christ is worrisome. Maybe things haven't changed so much in the last 500 years. :)

Re:Exactly!

[FellowConspirator]

While I don't consider myself evangelical, I do consider myself non-denominational -- though I currently am a member of a Presbyterian Church.

I would consider myself non-denominational in the sense that the term "denomination" refers to the administration of a church and to its policies. Short of any constructive administrative role, a denomination does little more than distract from message about which the church was formed. Presbyterians seem to be a pretty good lot without a terribly obtrusive denominational dogma; but I'm not picky.

The problem comes with "value-added" religion, where you start with a traditional religious message and then BAM! you kick it up a notch with a feedback loop chock full of co-dependent self-righteousness, reactive politics, maybe even some paranoia, and you've got yourself a born-again rabble.

In the 4th century, the book of Revelation was nearly rejected as part of the Christian canon. The reason? Too many felt that the book might be taken literally, not as an allegory as was the understanding of the leaders of the early church. Yet, today, their fears are realized in fire-and-brimstone sermons spewed forth like half-digested chutneyby quasi-gnostic evangelicals.

Mind you, evangelical is typically used as a pejorative, but I think it's safe to say that there are evangelical Christians that most wouldn't lump together with so-called fundamentalists.

Re:Exactly!

[Anonymous Coward]

My bad on the "earth is flat" example. But I think everyone got where I was headed with that.
I was not suggesting that the scientific process should come to a halt because we can much more easily invoke the phrase "the Bible says so". I would just prefer people to use the label of "not scientifically proven" instead of "crazy people believe that". (but I guess Copernicus had to put up with that label too)
Speaking of soundly proven, almost-universally accepted theories, why is evolutionary theory let off the hook with the "billions of years" excuse? If that theory had been first posted on Slashdot, I think it would have received the following treatment:

1. Primordial puddle of goo
2. Random mutations
3. Billions of years
4. ???
5. People!

I personally like Michael Crighton's illustration paralleling evolution with billions of years of wind blowing over a junkyard producing a working 747. Mutations of species are better explained as a DESIGNED feature, not as the origin of species.

Lastly, I think God only would have been lying had He told us that the true measure the age of the earth is by radioactive decay or divergence of galaxies, etc.

Re:Exactly!

[Anonymous Coward]

OMFG. That was hilarious! I am still laughing. Dude, you have GOT to put me in touch with your dealer. That is some prime shit you have hooked up with.

Re:Exactly!

[stanmann]

While I agree that the Trail of blood is as much a work of fiction as it is history, The writings of the mennonites and others from the 1500s and earlier, tracing their histories back to the 700s and beyond are a much better read. Further, it is very difficult to track the history of a disorganized(compared to ROME) scattering of individuals(and small churches) who were butchered, maligned, tortured and lied about by ROME.

Re:Exactly!

[letxa2000]

Umm... Jesus disagrees with you a tad... John 12:4-8 states:

I think you disagree with me a tad, not Jesus. That verse was about someone spending money on Jesus in person while He was here with us and it sure sounds to me like He was saying it was ok to spend money on Him now because he wouldn't always be here. That hardly makes any sense if you want to try to use that same verse to justify ignoring the poor forever in favor of spending money on making your church pretty.

We believe that Christ's true physical presence exists in the Eucharist.

And as such I have no problem with the vessels used for Eucharist being appropriately elaborate. But that doesn't mean that excessive adornment throughout the entire building and with statutes (idols?) and decorations that have nothing to do with Jesus is appropriate.

Why should we treat him any differently than Mary of Bethany? Giving money, service, and faith to the poor is very good, but so is treating Christ with the majesty He deserves.

And you think that is accomplished with money? Hmmm.

Though we can never be truly perfect, or worship God to the degree he deserves, we should make a best effort.

I believe that's a personal, spiritual effort that has no bearing on money. Where two or more congregate in His name, there He is present. There is no indication that some amount of gold makes a difference.

Re:Exactly!

['nother poster]

Shhh. You're giving him a headache. He's not used to thinking this much.

Re:Exactly!

[WhyCause]

Additionally, the Roman Catholic church puts great emphasis on the 'quality' of the materials used. In a Catholic church, if it looks like gold, it is gold, if it looks like wood, it is wood; especially when anything that touches the eucharist is involved. The general idea is that if you use 'fake' materials then you are slighting God.

That being said, church buildings and the ornaments contained therein are paid for locally (missionary churches are an exception), by the people that will be attending that particular church. In the US (especially in large cities), that lends itself to very pretty structures. In less well-off areas, the churches tend to be sparer, but the quality of the materials used are still very high.

Re:Exactly!

[Digz]

So then, you have posited that the Catholic Church butchered, maligned, tortured and lied about supposed anabaptists in the age of the Fathers and beyond. Care to back your assertations up with proof? If you care to examine the lines of succession usually used in this reasoning (which I assume you also use) and compare them with supposed descendant churches (or even Christianity in general in many cases), you would be hard pressed to find much commonality.

Re:Exactly!

[Creep73]

This posting is not meant to be controversial or mean spirited. As a "fundy" I thought I would try to explain my point of view.

1. Non-denominational churches choose to be that way for many different reasons but not the one you stated, at least any of the churches that I am aware of. A denomination is just a conglomeration of people who have similar beliefs. These denominations have a hierarchy similar to that of the Catholic Church. Each church within the denominations has to teach specific things that are agreed to by the leaders of the denomination. Non-denominational churches are simply those churches that choose not to associate themselves with a specific group.

2. I believe one of the worst idea's to come out of the Catholic Church is that the Pope determines what is heretical and not God and His scriptures. History has shown that men can be corrupted so I have difficulty putting so much trust in a man. Do I believe that you can be a Christian and believe in evolution? Yes, but that doesn't make the belief correct. I think that your walk could be crippled by such belief however; belief in creation isn't a prerequisite for being a Christian.

My beliefs do not come from elected men in man made hierarchies of power. My beliefs come from and are supported by the scriptures. That is not to say that I don't find these men and structures helpful. My pastor and church elders have helped me out tremendously but they are constantly pointing to scripture. There is only one infallible man and He is the only one I can put full faith in. You are free to put your eternal fate in the hands of the Pope. Many people do it but I personally find my eternal condition a little too valuable to trust in the hands of anyone but Christ himself.

If you can subjectively dismiss any part of the Bible because it doesn't agree with your beliefs or agenda then why would any of it be true? If one passage states that God created the heavens and the earth in seven days and another states that Christ died on the cross for your sins why would you dismiss one and embrace the other? Why not embrace creation and dismiss the saving work of Christ? What is the algorithm used to determine which passages are fact and what is fiction? Is it mere opinion? How can something be true yet not accurate? If it is inspired by God it is perfectly conceived unless God isn't perfect. If it isn't perfectly conceived how can any of it be trustworthy? We could attempt to explain it away as a conundrum similar to God being fully man and fully God but I don't think that would do it justice. In one case we are talking about a state of God and the other the words he has divinely given to us so that we may know Him. If scripture itself is a conundrum then it wouldn't serve the purpose it itself states it should be used for. Teaching and learning about God and His ways.

I don't wear my differences as a badge of honor. The differences I have with the Catholic Church are sometimes trivial and other times unfortunate. Never are the differences a reason to honor myself. I am no better than anyone else.

At some point we are all going to stand before God and I can only hope, because I don't know you, that you and those that read this will be found blameless through Christ's work. That will not be determined by your belief in evolution or the proclamations of the Pope but your faith and trust in Christ. Do you know Christ? I truly hope the answer is yes but only you and Christ know for sure.

God Bless and let the flaming begin.

Re:Exactly!

[Paladin128]

Then why was it OK for Mary of Bethany to do what she did? We believe that the whole of the mass -- not just the tabernacle and the ciborium and the chalice (the said vessels you claimed) -- should be elaborate and beautiful as we can reasonably expect to manage. So the vessels, the altar, the vestments, the thurible, the pews, the windows, etc. should be a testament to God's greater glory. In addition, they help as worship aids for the congregation; to overwhelm and lift the self into a sense of other-worldliness. The mass should be more lavish and beautiful than the stuff we experience elsewhere, so we might know that God's heavenly kingdom in all its majesty is far greater still.

Also, in terms of tradition, this was the trend as soon as our Christian ancestors could worship in the open. Certainly, adornments were less lavish while we were relegated to worship in the catecombs. God doesn't expect us to give him perfection in this respect; that would be impossible. We believe he does want us to give what we reasonably can in our station of life.

Pax vobiscum,
    Aaron

Re:Exactly!

[CRCulver]

That you liken the physical material buildings of the Catholic Church with the original body of Christ is worrisome. Maybe things haven't changed so much in the last 500 years.

The original Body and Blood of Christ comes to us in the Eucharist. That necessitates having the finest materials, such as gold, to hold the Holy Gifts in while they are worshipped or brought to the faithful who are home sick or imprisoned. You don't have to know much about Roman Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy to understand that we believe that Christ comes to us in the flesh in church.

Re:Exactly!

[MightyMartian]

First of all, get rid of the strawman of abiogenesis and evolution. It looks like something filched from a Kent Hovind radio broadcast. Secondly, there are plenty of features to organisms that look anything but designed. Vast swaths of junk DNA in most organisms, features that work... barely (check out the human knee and spine for a good example of a feature of good ol' H. sapiens that works for bipedalism, but with a good many problems). If there is a Designer out there, then he's either incompetent or malicious. And if you do invoke design, then the onus is on you to state, at the very least, how it is that the designer produced the mutations. What forces were brought to bear? What were the intentions? For any science that investigates the actions of Intelligent Designers (forensics and archaeology come to mind) these are key questions.

Oh, and lastly, take your Michael Crichton collection and dump it in the garbage. He was, at one time, an interesting writer, but one only has to consider garbage like Sphere and Congo to realize just how flippin' bad and addicted to his own pseudo-skepticism this guy is.

Re:Exactly!

[Digz]

Name one singular person that was burned at the stake for holding heliocentrism. Oh yeah, that's right, the Church didn't burn any.

And for your information, the Venerable Bede translated parts of the Bible to proto-English around 700 AD. The Douay-Rheims English translation was done before the translation of the King James. What were condemned were heretical translations that were inaccurate. But the Church didn't do burning - the civil authorities did that.

As far as the sexual scandal goes - all the abusers need to be weeded out. But note that the prevalence of abuse amongst Catholic clergy is no greater than among Protestant clergy, and less than the general population. Ergo, it is a human problem.

Re:Exactly!

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't recall my login so I'm forced to post anonymously....
That said, in regards to #2.

"I believe one of the worst idea's to come out of the Catholic Church is that the Pope determines what is heretical and not God and His scriptures. History has shown that men can be corrupted so I have difficulty putting so much trust in a man. Do I believe that you can be a Christian and believe in evolution? Yes, but that doesn't make the belief correct. I think that your walk could be crippled by such belief however; belief in creation isn't a prerequisite for being a Christian."

That's actually not what the Church teaches. It's a bit more complex than that. The Pope is infalliable ONLY in matters of faith and morals, and ONLY when he speaks "Ex Cathedra", meaning, from an official position as the representative of the Church as a whole.

There's several great articles at http://www.catholic.com/library.asp that explains some of the most commonly misunderstood ideas about the pope. It seems you might have an incorrect view of what his role is and what he can and cannot do. The articles are well written and pretty informative. :)

Hope this helps!

-Devin S.
http://www.datarefuge.com/

Re:Exactly!

[stanmann]

Based on the Roman description of them, obviously NOT! But it certainly makes it easier to persecute someone who you label heretic, than someone who simply declines to participate in your form of worship. And with the known history of the inquisition and other persecutions from the Roman church, with documentation from surviviors both Reformers and late anabaptists(mennonites) we can document the falsehoods told by ROME about these groups.

Based on the small amount of extant artifacts, not so obvious either way.

Re:Exactly!

[letxa2000]

The original Body and Blood of Christ comes to us in the Eucharist. That necessitates having the finest materials, such as gold, to hold the Holy Gifts in while they are worshipped or brought to the faithful who are home sick or imprisoned. You don't have to know much about Roman Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy to understand that we believe that Christ comes to us in the flesh in church.

I understand that perfectly well. I had to understand that (and even agree to it, which I do!) before I could receive Communion at Catholic Mass, let alone at my own Catholic wedding.

As I said elsewhere, I'm ok with the vessels that carry the Eucharist being of excellent material and gold. That's fine. It does not explain excessive spending on priestly garb, jewelry, and other objects not directly related to Jesus in the church--statues to saints, Mary, elaborate crosses, and other objects that decorate the walls and sometimes during Mass I just have to look at them and think to myself, "Was that REALLY something useful that the Church should've spent money on?" In some cases it seems those objects are downright tacky and actually detract from any beauty that might somehow glorify God and Jesus.

Re:Exactly!

[Martin Blank]

It's not a joke. Chick Comics has been around at least since I was a kid (round about when the TRS-80 was relatively new). I used to pick them up from the school playground. I thought they were crackpots then, and I think they're crackpots now.

Re:Exactly!

[ebyrob]

Yes, so for you True is an unrelated set that may or may not overlap true. That I understand. The thing that perplexes me is why you don't care about the intersection between (your definition of)True and true.

(Note: I would have called these two things subjective vs objective truth and considered Truth to be the intersection of the two, but why bother defining terms before debating, that might weaken someone's argument...)

Re:Exactly!

[CRCulver]

Another matter is that since the mass of the faithful also mystically represents the Body of Christ, then it makes sense that they should be surrounded with as much beauty as possible. The churches that have such elaborate finery are also those which do more than any others to alleviate poverty, since their sheer numbers allow more money to be donated. Rich vestments etc. aren't holding the poor down, get over it.

Re:Exactly!

[letxa2000]

Then why was it OK for Mary of Bethany to do what she did?

Because she did it to Jesus himself in person during the short time He was with us on this earth. I definitely do not see this verse as being a blank check for the church to spend money for all eternity on arguably useless decoration instead of the poor and needy.

We believe that the whole of the mass -- not just the tabernacle and the ciborium and the chalice (the said vessels you claimed) -- should be elaborate and beautiful as we can reasonably expect to manage. So the vessels, the altar, the vestments, the thurible, the pews, the windows, etc. should be a testament to God's greater glory.

What in the New Testament gives you any indication that God is particularly interested in material goods or that anything that we are capable of producing with our hands could actually increase God's glory!?

In addition, they help as worship aids for the congregation; to overwhelm and lift the self into a sense of other-worldliness. The mass should be more lavish and beautiful than the stuff we experience elsewhere, so we might know that God's heavenly kingdom in all its majesty is far greater still.

That seems kind of "out there" to me. If you need material goods to help you know that God's heavenly kingdom is even more majestic, I think you have some serious issues that go far beyond buying gold and silver for the alter.

Also, in terms of tradition, this was the trend as soon as our Christian ancestors could worship in the open.

A "trend" 1800 years ago doesn't make it Biblical or correct. As already mentioned, the Catholic Church has done a LOT of things that were not Biblical or correct.

Certainly, adornments were less lavish while we were relegated to worship in the catecombs. God doesn't expect us to give him perfection in this respect; that would be impossible. We believe he does want us to give what we reasonably can in our station of life.

"To give" to the material church or "to give" our material possessions to the poor and give our spirital wealth to God? I'd say the latter. As Jesus said, if we would be perfect, go, sell our things, and give to the poor, and follow Him. He didn't say "Give me your possessions and follow me."

Re:Exactly!

[letxa2000]

Another matter is that since the mass of the faithful also mystically represents the Body of Christ, then it makes sense that they should be surrounded with as much beauty as possible.

That seems more like an excuse than anything. I might as well use the same argument for surrounding my family with as much beauty as possible since we're all Chrisitan and we pray together so we should spend our money to make our surrounding house as lavish as possible instead of helping the poor.

The churches that have such elaborate finery are also those which do more than any others to alleviate poverty, since their sheer numbers allow more money to be donated.

That may be the case elsewhere, definitely not in Mexico. Here, the most lavish churches seem to be the ones that are most interested in acquiring more and more decorations, remodeling the church, etc. Then you hear about youth groups going on retreat or maybe visiting some sick people in hospitals (good things that we SHOULD spend money on!), but inevitably they announce that at the end of the service so that we all will help them out economically in those endeavors by dropping some coin in their baskets on the way out... because the church itself doesn't spend any of its money on that!

Rich vestments etc. aren't holding the poor down, get over it.

No, I won't get over it. It's not about whether or not it's holding down the poor. It's a question of the Catholic Church having unholy spending priorities. As you know, a poor person that has only one coin and gives that one coin to God has earned more reward in heaven than a rich person that gives 100 such coins. It's not a matter of whether or not the Catholic Church does or doesn't help the poor, it's whether it's using all of its money wisely and in Godly endeavors.

You seem to equate the Catholic Church (i.e. a physical organization consisting of a political hierarchy and material buildings) as the Body of Christ when the Body of Christ is really US--the PEOPLE. I disagree that it is acceptable to treat the physical Catholic Church and its material possessions with the same reverance as I do God and Jesus which are present in the true Body of Christ, which is all of us. If the former would give more to the latter rather than to itself, I'd agree with its spending 100%. But that would essentially mean giving to the poor, not buying a new statue for the church.

Re:Exactly!

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay, I've rearranged my post to meet your requirements.

1. Big Bang (pay no attention to the matter behind the curtain)
2. ???
3. Cro-Magnon Man
4. Mutation!
5. People!!!

Re:Exactly!

[Anonymous Coward]

If you believe God created the universe, how much harder would it have been for Him to create everything in a way that made it appear much older than it is?

It's a fairly fundamental assumption in most theologies that God acts in a rational way. If He isn't then the entire universe might just as well be 10 minutes old.

Re:Exactly!

[heson]

Fake christians, they amuse me, how they can miss the Love, Peace & Understanding message, substituting it for Control, Hate & Fear is unbelevable. Jesus was a hippie!

Re:Exactly!

[Paladin128]

Because she did it to Jesus himself in person during the short time He was with us on this earth. I definitely do not see this verse as being a blank check for the church to spend money for all eternity on arguably useless decoration instead of the poor and needy.

Well, we believe that the Eucharist IS Christ's physical presence here on earth. No different. His *appearance* is that of bread and wine, but we believe the Eucharist is the actual body and blood of Christ.

What in the New Testament gives you any indication that God is particularly interested in material goods or that anything that we are capable of producing with our hands could actually increase God's glory!?

Um... we aren't increasing God's glory, we're giving witness to it. Our beautiful churches, art, and artefacts -- anything that contains beauty -- can be an icon to the greater glory of God. Sorry... I guess I wasn't particularly clear before.

A "trend" 1800 years ago doesn't make it Biblical or correct. As already mentioned, the Catholic Church has done a LOT of things that were not Biblical or correct.

I don't remember in which epistle, but Paul does make reference to respecting sacred Tradition as well as sacred scripture. (I can't quote chapter or verse as most protestants, but I do know the New Testament fairly well. Old Testament is a bit harder to remember everything...)

"To give" to the material church or "to give" our material possessions to the poor and give our spirital wealth to God? I'd say the latter. As Jesus said, if we would be perfect, go, sell our things, and give to the poor, and follow Him. He didn't say "Give me your possessions and follow me."

Yet God gave some pretty specific instructions to build a lavish temple to Him to the Hebrews. Christ never deprecated this! Why can we not do both -- give to the poor and build beautiful altars for His most holy sacrifice? What about what is said in Revelations about the adornments of the altar? The Tridentine mass (the traditional latin mass that was mostly unchanged from the 5th century until 1970) has its theology largely based its account of the lamb's sacrifice.

Also, what about what he told the apostles just before he ascended into heaven (I think the account was in Acts)? He said that though he told them originally to go from place to place without money, arms, etc. that the time was changing, and they'd have to do otherwise. He clearly made different pastoral decisions pre and post resurrection.

Finally, what about the writings of the patriarchs who immediately succeeded the apostles? The epistles of Clement, Linus, Ignatius of Antioch, and other early church fathers detail the roles of bishops and deacons, the celebration of the mass, etc. We have the Didache, which historians believed functioned as a proto-catechism and book of rites and prayers used by the early church -- dated somewhere around 80-100AD. In fact, the Didache contains the first known transcription of the modern form of the Lord's Prayer (which is a combination of the Matthean and Lucan account). This supports our Traditions as well.

Re:Exactly!

[MightyMartian]

What exactly is your problem with the Big Bang? Do you have some alternate solution that explains the evidence? Oh, and Cro-Magnon were modern humans. It's just a title for the first fully modern humans to enter Europe. Unlike Neandertals, if you gave a Cro Magnon a shave and a haircut, he could ride on a city bus unrecognized.

Re:Exactly!

[fupeg]

Taking the bait...
First you say

I believe one of the worst idea's to come out of the Catholic Church is that the Pope determines what is heretical and not God and His scriptures. History has shown that men can be corrupted so I have difficulty putting so much trust in a man.

but then you say:

My beliefs do not come from elected men in man made hierarchies of power. My beliefs come from and are supported by the scriptures.

I find this incredibly amusing. You say that men can be corrupted, so don't trust them. Sounds good. Then you say that everything you believe in comes from scripture. Well who do you think wrote the scriptures? Men. Oh I know, they claimed to be just writing down the word of God, but a Pope or a priest or, for that matter, a serial killer, could say that they or simply telling you the word of God. So how is it wiser to trust a book written by men, especially when you don't even know exactly what men wrote it? And of course you're not even reading what was originally written. Obviously it's been translated as well as copied, re-copied, etc. Even if you really believed that the men who wrote the original text were definitely writing the word of God directly, there have been countless other intermediaries since then. Enumerable opportunities for one person or another to change what was written, either for bad reasons or by honest mistake.

Here's an idea: Trust your brain and nothing else. You're right that you shouldn't just believe something because the Pope says you should. You've got to make up your own mind. Logic and reason -- these things are your best bet. Here's another quote I liked:

If you can subjectively dismiss any part of the Bible because it doesn't agree with your beliefs or agenda then why would any of it be true?

That is a good point. So don't subjectively dismiss things. Try being objective instead.

What is the algorithm used to determine which passages are fact and what is fiction? Is it mere opinion? How can something be true yet not accurate? If it is inspired by God it is perfectly conceived unless God isn't perfect. If it isn't perfectly conceived how can any of it be trustworthy?

So if you read something, it cannot be trusted unless you believe it came directly from God? Clearly you have to be able to deal with information that did not come from God. If you know something didn't come from God, then surely you use your reason to determine if it makes sense or not. This is a good test. You should apply it to everything, including things that you have been told are directly from God. That includes speeches by pontiffs and books like The King James Bible.

Contrary to some popular beliefs, there's nothing wrong with examining evidence yourself. There's nothing wrong with testing a hypothesis. There's nothing wrong with listening to the ideas of others, but being critical of those ideas. If somebody's ideas don't make sense, there's nothing with rejecting them as being wrong. Let free will and reason empower you.

Re:Exactly!

[letxa2000]

Yet God gave some pretty specific instructions to build a lavish temple to Him to the Hebrews. Christ never deprecated this!

There's a lot of Old Testament things He never technically "deprecated" yet we don't observe anymore. It seems that this line of thinking is taking the things you like from the Old Testament and ignoring those you don't. Why can we not do both -- give to the poor and build beautiful altars for His most holy sacrifice?

My problem is that the Catholic churches I see do way too much of the the former and far too little of the latter. This supports our Traditions as well

I don't have a problem with all of the Catholic traditions. In fact, a protestant can thrive very well in a Catholic mass if he simply lets slide excessive veneration of Mary and the saints (neither of which are technically required of a Catholic). But the lavishness of the churches is something I take issue with, especially here in Mexico. Given the conditions so many people live in almost next door to the churches, it can be downright offensive. And all the statues of saints and Mary and even Jesus himself seems dangerously close to idoltry. Yes, I know the reasons given for them and that Catholics aren't actually praying to these objects. But I don't see where most of these objects increase the beauty of the church or the glory of God.

Re:Exactly!

[Anonymous Coward]

Jack? Is that you?

Re:Exactly!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, apparently Catholics are really worshipping Isis, Horus and Seb and are in the service of the Satan, so their acceptance of science and reason is yet another confirmation that they aren't really Americans and should be burned at the stake so they can't persecute anyone like they did during the Inquistition to people that didn't think that bread could be turned into meat, because judging people is up to God alone and you shouldn't judge people unless they are themselves judging people. And what are those foolish Catholics going to do next, pledge allegiance to the flag of science like they pledge allegiance to the Vatican (aka Satan) every morning before eating their Bagels which were invented by Jesus killing Jews?

Of course real Christians are all just worshipping Zeus by another name, since like Hercules, Jesus was the bastard son of a god who had an illicit affair with a woman out of wedlock. But Zeus could kick Isis' ass in an alligator wrestle, so that would probably be okay with the Baptists who know that the Mormon's are the ones that really have it right and that Jesus did come to America so he could tell the godless Indians that he would be coming back to Arkansas after he went to outer space. Jesus being a Buddhist himself, well minus the self part, would have probably thought this was all horse shit and then contemplated what is was like to be the horse shit, the fly and the horse it came from and that the essential meaning of the whole was the nothingness of its parts.

Then again Jesus probably would have gotten his ass kicked by hercules, so the Baptists wouldn't like that part, unless of course he multiplied the fish until hercules became smothered, but that would have required a lot of fish.

Re:Exactly!

[itchy92]

... Marry me*.

This offer only good in Massachussetts if you are male*.

This offer not really good, but you made a good post nevertheless.

Re:Exactly!

[nathanh]

I would not put too much stock in what comes out of the Vatican - weren't they in the "world is flat" camp for quite some time?

No. During the time of Columbus the Church knew that the Earth was spherical and they even had a fairly accurate value for the circumference. In fact, knowledge of the spherical Earth dates back to the Greeks who had famously worked out the circumference by measuring reflections in the bottoms of wells. However during the time of Columbus they only way to travel from Europe to India by sea was around the cape of Africa, which was a very dangerous journey. Columbus had reckoned that the circumference was much smaller than the Church was claiming and that he could reach India by sailing West instead of around the cape.

The Church was right and Columbus was wrong. If it wasn't for the previously unknown continent called The Americas then Columbus and his fleet would have starved to death before reaching India.

Re:Exactly!

[CRCulver]

I'm just assuming that the Roman Catholic Church has the same philosophy as the Orthodox Church (in which I worship), namely that rich decorations have such a long history in the Church and have been approved of for so long that they are now part of Holy Tradition and cannot be questioned. To say otherwise is to say that God has led His people astray. You seem to be applying a Protestant ethos--that is, using your own feelings to judge the correctness of Church actions and interpreting the rules on your own. You just have to understand that the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church play by different rules. Oh, and with regards to buying statues: The Orthodox and Catholics believe, as was set at the 7th Ecumenical Council, that icons are not mere decorations, but actual windows to the glory in Heaven. All churches must have icons, as do personal homes, and the more the better; one Father said that a house without icons is fit only for pigs. The Roman Catholic Church, when they introduced the innovation of statuary, presumably just extended this same belief. So, it's not a matter of making things pretty, but honouring the Son of God's incarnation, and to reject iconography (I'm forced to reject statuary, which the Fathers didn't approve of) because you want to help the poor just isn't the right way to do things.

Re:Exactly!

[Paladin128]

Fair enough -- reasonable people can disagree on how much is too much.

Re:Exactly!

[Gizzmonic]

Jack Chick? Is that you?

Re:Exactly!

[n54]

I absolutely agree with every part of your post.

Now what I'd like to see next is that people also realize that one doesn't have to be a creationist or even adhere to everything ID proposes to acknowledge that ID actually raises some questions on purely scientific merits.

I mean how many here or elsewhere have actually bothered to read examples of the scientific criticisms ID themselves actually put on the table rather than all the second, third, and fourth-hand attacks on ID? If more people did so (even if they deny the overall claims of ID like I do) then those embarrasing scientific faults (tempted to say frauds) can actually be accounted for and corrected in the science. Some of the stuff ID is critisizing has been known about for close to a century as scientific frauds, disproven several times by peer-reviewed articles and is generally accepted as untrue even by vocal anti-ID scientists - so why isn't the erroneous information culled from science? Reading what the scientists who are the foundation of ID actually says it should become obvious that ID is not a purely philosopical/religious argument.

Go read people, please, do yourself and everyone else a favour in the discussion, perhaps that will open up the possibility for getting much needed corrections and improvements into parts of science that are in dire need of getting their heads out of their asses.

Btw I am not a christian but I do believe in pretty much the same God but I don't care for people who try to prove religion through science because it derives faith of any value. That being said I do not believe rational religion and science can ever be at odds, if one did think so it would be like claiming that love can only be a chemical reaction and nothing more (we have other words to describe that) something only absurdist reductionists do.

A possible starting point is (PDF warning) http://www.discovery.org/articleFiles/PDFs/surviva lOfTheFakest.pdf

*sigh* I bet this post is probably useless in batteling /. groupthink but to look at the sunny side of things at least we got FSM and Pastafarians out of it all :)

Re:Exactly!

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice post. I was wondering if anyone else caught the fact that he trusts the 'scriptures' completely, but doesn't trust mere 'men' to interpret them, even thought mere men.. WROTE THE SCRIPTURES IN THE FIRST PLACE!

Brain slammed shut, key swallowed.

Re:Exactly!

[WaterBreath]

I find this incredibly amusing...

In response to this whole paragraph, I have a question. If we assume that at some point in time God did actually give His Word to man, then why in the world would he not ensure that the stuff that matters would remain uncorrupted? To my mind, not doing so would be a bit like dropping off your 4-year-old son/daughter, to young to know their own address, alone somewhere in Maine with handwritten step-by-step instructions on how to get back home to San Diego, California (without using a plane, train, or other potentially one-shot transportation), and saying "now don't lose this, rip it, stain it, etc., because without it, you'll never see me again... oh, and don't ask anyone for directions either, because you can't trust strangers".

In other words, you'd basically be condemning the child right then and there. It seems to me that the questions you've asked only arise when you presuppose an apathetic or nonexistent god, which is arguably not the picture the Bible paints.

So if you read something, it cannot be trusted unless you believe it came directly from God

Not "something", as in just anything. But something that claims to be the Word of God, then well, yeah, that's kind of part of the package deal. If you don't think God wrote it, then it's not the Word of God, and what does it have to do with Him? I guess whether you care if it's written by God or not really depends on what you believe God cares about. I don't think he cares about economics, or quantum physics, or computer science, or pet psychology. So I'm not going to put books on those topics through the same examinations as I would something that claims to be holy scripture. I would however, use some of the same principles. In other words, if it isn't consistent with its context (i.e. other holy scripture, or other pet psychology research, etc.), then there's something funny going on, and either it's not to be trusted, or I'm understanding something wrong. And again, anyone who believes in God, I would think wouldn't have trouble believing that God would ensure that the faithful can identify what's His and what's not.

... Just my two cents...

Re:Exactly!

[Anonymous Coward]

i disagree on one single premise...

macro-evolution (simply put, animal a morphs into different animal b) is the solution with very little evidence - and NO EVIDENCE that can establish it beyond a reasonable doubt.

i'm not saying it didn't happen, i'm saying the physical evidence doesn't come close to establishing it and excludeing other options.

it is a tough bind to be in, but, truth be told, we don't really know what happened precisely b/c the evidence uncovered by science is entirely unclear.

Re:Exactly!

[Anonymous Coward]

"realize that you can see the Bible as True, without it being a historic fact."

Pardon me? A true myth, a true lie? Sorry but a omnipotent god in principle cannot fail to have people understand him or his message, or whether his message is mythological or historical.
The quality of Omnipotence is contrary to the very idea of failure, in any respect.

An Omnipotent being that would take 4 billion years to evolve human beings on earth, then another 1000 years or so 5000-6000 years ago to put together a loose collection of a book of myths of barbaric jewish tribes that 99% of people in history (in relation to their exposure to the bible) definitely thought were true historical fact up until the advent of darwin, has either 1) Purposefully and grossly miscommunicated or 2) Is not the revelation of a divine being.

#2 is not just more likely, it is in fact absolutely certain.

Religion today functions as communities where people can't find the things they need in the cruel capitalist world outside.

Re:Exactly!

[glens]

"Don't even bring up the Apocrypha"

which was included in the early editions of the King James...

Re:Exactly!

[gemAthena]

The problem with your statement is a good percentage of those evangelical christian types do not believe Catholics are Christian. Yes, I know it sounds absurd, but I remember having that hammered down on my head during catechism.

For reference, here's one of the many articles about what wels believes about catholics:
http://www.wels.net/cgi-bin/site.pl?1518&cuTopic_t opicID=19&cuItem_itemID=8843

yes, that is the pope they're talking about being the antichrist. there are better articles, that's just the first one i picked out.

Re:Exactly!

[Anonymous Coward]

Listen, Catholics aren't Christians ...or Americans. Enjoy the pit, Benedict! MUAHAHAHAHAHA.

Then can certainly be Americans, but they are most certainly not Christian. Like the Christians, Mormons, Muslims, and other freaks, though, they do share the attribute of being gullible.

Re:Exactly!

[letxa2000]

I'm just assuming that the Roman Catholic Church has the same philosophy as the Orthodox Church (in which I worship), namely that rich decorations have such a long history in the Church and have been approved of for so long that they are now part of Holy Tradition and cannot be questioned. To say otherwise is to say that God has led His people astray.

I'm not sure if that's the Roman Catholic belief, but it's sure sounding like it from what I'm reading here. If so, that also seems like an excuse more than a rational justification. God's word is contained in the Bible, not in tradition. What the Catholic church approves and disapproves of has changed over time. God's Word in the Bible has not.

You seem to be applying a Protestant ethos--that is, using your own feelings to judge the correctness of Church actions and interpreting the rules on your own. You just have to understand that the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church play by different rules.

All of our rules are contained in the Bible. That's the ultimate authority. Where tradition and the Bible contradict each other, the Bible must take precedence. That's a CHRISTIAN etho, not a Catholic or Protestant one.

Oh, and with regards to buying statues: The Orthodox and Catholics believe, as was set at the 7th Ecumenical Council, that icons are not mere decorations, but actual windows to the glory in Heaven.

Where is that contained in the Bible? The only thing vaguely similar to statues in the Bible strikes me as being the prohibition against idols and engraven images. Thus if there is something else in the Bible that makes a loophole for "lots of icons", I'd sure like to read that.

Re:Exactly!

[notfancy]

Just to offer a more accurate picture on the issue, the name Isabella is the Italian rendition of the Spanish name Isabel. Furthermore, she was Queen of Castille and Aragon, and not Leon; however, the present-day region of Castilla does include the province of León, while Aragón is, iirc, another region.

Re:Exactly!

[Hast]

Your problem is that your 1.2.3 steps should be more like

1. Promorial soup

2. for billions of years do:
      a. random mutate
      b. destroy bad mutations

3. People!!!!

Then read http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/faqs-evolution. html and come back when you have some coherent complaints.

Re:Exactly!

[Anonymous Coward]

>> Why can we not do both -- give to the poor and build beautiful altars for His most holy sacrifice?

> My problem is that the Catholic churches I see do way too much of the the former and far too little of the latter.

I'm not, I suppose, technically Catholic, although I did volunteer to serve the poor each week with a group of them. I also have a Catholic Social Services building nearby. But I confess ignorance to how much they spend on each of these things relative to the other. Still, I would expect that a great many of their churches are quite old, and so most of the money would be on upkeep and not new things?

Re:Exactly!

[thephotoman]

Well, the was actually born the queen of Castille and Leon. It was her marriage to Ferdinand of Aragon that united Spain and gave her that title.

Re:Exactly!

[Creep73]

One of the fundamentals of the Christian faith is that the Bible is an inspired document. God used men to create the document but in the end it is God's book. I do not need to trust the men that wrote the book to trust the God that inspired it.

Even if you really believed that the men who wrote the original text were definitely writing the word of God directly, there have been countless other intermediaries since then. Enumerable opportunities for one person or another to change what was written, either for bad reasons or by honest mistake.

The New Testament alone was preserved in a vast number of copies. You are correct that people can make mistakes or change words or phrases to fit their needs but the vast amount of copies of the scriptures testifies to the documents accuracy. If you had only one copy of the text transferred down through history that might have been a real problem, but there are 5,686 Greek New Testament manuscripts alone. Additionally, there are around 10,000 copies of the Latin Vulgate and more than 9,300 other translations. The enormous number of early documents makes it extremely easy to identify any possible errors. To put this in perspective the next highest number of manuscripts for an ancient text is Homer's Iliad at 643 copies and no one questions its accuracy or historical integrity. In fact we only have 7 copies of Plato's works and they date more than 700 years from the original. No one questions its integrity. What standard would you use to prove the accuracy of an historical document?

If you know something didn't come from God, then surely you use your reason to determine if it makes sense or not. This is a good test.

For quite some time people used their reasoning skills and determined that the earth was flat. This of course was a good test for them. Then along came the radical idea that the earth was round. Both groups of individuals were using their reasoning skills to determine truth. Who was right?

Here's an idea: Trust your brain and nothing else.

Those that thought the earth was flat had no problems trusting their brain but did they hold the truth because of it? If you use reason and find truth you are reasoning correctly but just because you use your reasoning doesn't mean what you find is truth. Look at the mind of a child. Children will use reasoning, though parents are constantly amazed at what that child comes up with. Knowledge, skill, and experience all play a role in how effectively we reason. I contend that if we reason without God in the picture we can not gain a full understanding of the world or how it works. He is the author of all truth so how can we understand truth without Him?

That is a good point. So don't subjectively dismiss things. Try being objective instead.

So if we are being objective, by what objective standard are we going to test? What is the source of this objective standard?

God's truth is real. There is a real objective standard, a standard set by God. All other standards are made by man and changed by man. I have no problem examining evidence myself. The evidence isn't the problem.

I appreciate your post.

Re:Exactly!

[Creep73]

Thanks for the site. I will read through it.

Re:Exactly!

[ScrewMaster]

What I find ironic is how closed minded "objective people of science" can be.

It's all relative. If you were actually honest with yourself you'd recognize that "close minded" applies more to religious fundamentalism than it does to "objective people of science." The reason that such people appear "close minded" to fundamentalists is that fundamentalists (the more vocal of them, at least) often lack understanding of science (or basic reasoning ability for that matter.) From a scientific point of view, they are spewing unadulterated pure drivel, and there really is no sensible response other than to be "close minded." For example, suppose I came to you and said, "Four billion years ago an alien spacecraft landed on Earth and ejected its garbage, and the microbes in it grew and flourished and evolved into people and stuff, and I have this book right here that proves it!" You'd write me off immediately as a complete whacko, regardless of how sincere I might appear or how deeply I believed what I was telling you. But ... when you get right down to it, simple belief just isn't enough. A scientist who takes things on faith isn't. A scientist, that is.

Just because an event described in the Bible cannot be explained by our current understanding of the universe does not mean it should be excluded from being a possibility.

Yes, it does ... to the extent that such events cannot be experimentally verified. Refresh your knowledge of how science functions: all things are considered possible, but not all things can be scientifically evaluated. Those that cannot are of no value to orthodox science. Until our understanding of the Universe-at-large advances to the point where those Biblical events can be properly evaluated it will remain so. And that, my friend, is the way it should be, since there is no known scientific technique for evaluating spiritual matters. Conversely, of course, spirituality makes a poor yardstick for understanding science, the scientific method, and the true nature of reality. That is the difference between Truth, as espoused by the Bible, and knowledge as accumulated by scientific research.

Frankly, I am disturbed by these ongoing attempts to corrupt and devalue science in order to proselytize. After thousands of years of stumbling around in the dark, Mankind finally figured out how to reliably distinguish what is, from what we might wish it to be. We never managed to unlock true power on any meaningful scale until science happened. You should be grateful for that, really, you should. Better yet, recognize that diluting science with religion is a fundamentally stupid mistake that will cost us dearly.

Anyone that feels threatened by greater understanding of Nature (God's creation, if you wish) should truly re-evaluate his or her own motives. They aren't pure, and are themselves deserving of greater scrutiny.

What fools these mortals be.

Re:Exactly!

[ScrewMaster]

Well, the development of religion can be considered an early attempt to make some kind of sense out of a largely unpredictable, hostile world. In that context, mostly-rational behavior on the part of God (or Gods) is a prequisite for acceptability, since it's the reason for His (or Their) existence.

Re:Exactly!

[CRCulver]

All of our rules are contained in the Bible. That's the ultimate authority. Where tradition and the Bible contradict each other, the Bible must take precedence. That's a CHRISTIAN etho, not a Catholic or Protestant one.

No, that's not a Christian ethos, that's a notion called sola scriptura that Roman Catholics and Orthodox regard as a heresy. Depending on the Bible as ultimate authority didn't happen in Christianity until Luther, and if you think about it really doesn't make any sense. The Bible needs interpretation, it doesn't interpret itself for you, but Christ founded the Church to protect the true interpretation. You can't use your own private judgement to say, "Things should be this way because I read the Bible as follows..." because that is the very essence of Protestantism, suggesting that the Holy Spirit was absent in the life of the Church until someone came along in the 16th century and made some sort of restoration.

Where is that contained in the Bible? The only thing vaguely similar to statues in the Bible strikes me as being the prohibition against idols and engraven images. Thus if there is something else in the Bible that makes a loophole for "lots of icons", I'd sure like to read that.

Read St John of Damascus' On the Divine Images, in which the saint catalogues numerous places in the Bible where God told the Israelites to make images (the snake on the pole to cure illness, the Cherubim on the Ark), and argues that since Christ became matter for our salvation, we must honour that matter (since He can now be depicted). The earliest Christians used plenty of images; ancient icons not very different from those used today still survive in many catacomb churches. That it was otherwise is again a Protestant notion that doesn't show up anywhere until the 16th century, although the iconoclasts of the late first millennium (inspired by the then rising Islam which detestd depictions of people) thought it would be good to stop using them.

Re:Exactly!

[CurlyG]

First of all I appreciate your post - it's interesting to hear an honest explanation of fundamentalist faith. A few quick questions though:

Why would God be any less careful when choosing His human represenative on Earth (the Pope if you're Catholic) than he was when he wrote/dictated/ispired the Bible?

Re:Exactly!

[Anonymous Coward]

The fundies do NOT know who those rabbis where, but knowing that they can't talk to them, they don't even try to talk to those rabbis who have ACTUALLY studied the Genesis, or read the writings of the first christian bishops and martyrs on the subject.

In other words, the fundies are taking a text they did NOT write, and they claim to be the only ones who know the correct interpretation (i.e. claiming to be something equivalent to a Pope). Under what basis? With what authority?

The rabbis had nothing to do with the writing of the Bible.

Anyone can interpret the Bible any way they like. The rabbis current interpretation has no special insight lacking in others. They didn't write it, they weren't there, their "traditions" are just as fictional as anyone else's.

Re:Exactly!

[clean_stoner]

Kansans.

Re:Exactly!

[jiaxiang]

"It is a search for the best explanation for the evidence."

Except when the evidence is missing and needs to be manufactured, as with the theory of evolution.

By the way, you cannot prove anything about the past scientifically.

Can evolution be reproduced in a lab?

Has it ever been observed to occur? (Examples?)

Does it fit with what can been observed (information only comes from intelligence; order decreases over time...)?

No.
No.
No.

Re:Exactly!

[Anonymous Coward]

Bacterial resistance to antibiotics is evolution. Your "order decreases over time" example conveniently forgets about the fact that the earth is NOT a closed system. Ever see that large yellowish thing outside during the daytime? Yeah, that keeps pumping energy into our system so the laws of thermodynamics aren't violated.

If you're going to make arguments, you should at least make a small effort to verify that they're even close to correct.

Re:Exactly!

[MP2030]

This money could be much better used for helping the poor and taking the faith to the unbelievers. In the US/Europe, maybe you would see highly ornate churches with big bankrolls. Frankly though I have yet to see what I would consider 'too much' spent on deco and that it was somehow hurting the missions... The local shrine here was made out cinder blocks, all painted yellow. They had some flowers for the altar (that must have cost.... $17 to grow outside...) and that's the extent of it. Metal folding chairs too. The only protestant church I went to recently had... everything you'd see in a large, old, big dollar catholic church. Point? Are most churches too ornate? Perhaps. How much real impact does this have on the poor? Essentially zero. Money is usually collected separately for buildings vs charities, and a large chunk of the ornamention and other physical work is donated (or at least discounted). Parent post is total FUD

Re:Exactly!

[hoofie]

Please tell me this person didnt actually think it was Queen Elizabeth the First that gave her blessing to the voyage of Columbus. Wrong person, wrong century, wrong country, wrong religion...

Re:Exactly!

[AndersOSU]

IDist may be good for pointing out errors, mistakes, and misrepresentations that happen, like it or not, in every branch of education (Remember the Alamo!) but they do not contribute anything to science.

I'm not excusing the misrepresentations of the authors, but pointing out something that has been disproven several times in peer review journals is more an exercise in literature searching capabilities than doing science.

Basically when arguing evolution vs. ID in the media (the only place it is really debated) evolutioists are as bad as IDist, in that they both regurgitate the same tired old rhetoric, regardless of how true it is. (Haeckle's embreos v. Behe's mousetrap) However, in the laboratory, where science is actually advanced, it doens't matter if someone faked illustrations to develop a concept, so long as the concept is sound. Since IDist spend all their time in the media, and scientists are only reluctantly drawn there, I'll go ahead and continue to believe that the people actually doing the work, are more reputable than media whoring IDists.

Re:Exactly!

[cthulhubob]

> In response to this whole paragraph, I have a question. If we assume that at some point in time God did actually give His Word to man, then why in the world would he not ensure that the stuff that matters would remain uncorrupted?

Well, if that were the case, he's done a very poor job of it. Did you know that the books which make up the Bible do not have any mention of hell at all in the originals?

Hell is entirely a Christian concept, it has no place in Judaism, and it was invented some time around 400 AD if I recall correctly (although any actual Biblical scholars, as opposed to me who just has interesting conversations with them once in a while, feel free to correct this).

There are two words in Hebrew, one is sheol, and the other is something else. These two words are translated in the King James version almost randomly into THREE different words, which are grave, death, and hell. Try reading any passage that mentions hell and replace it with "the grave" or "death" and you will find that the line scans perfectly well. That's because that was the way it was actually written.

Re:Exactly!

[Creep73]

Why would God be any less careful when choosing His human representative on Earth (the Pope if you're Catholic) than he was when he wrote/dictated/inspired the Bible?

Christ's representation here on earth is His people. The Pope is appointed by men. He represents the leader of the Catholic Church but if he doesn't have a heart for Christ he doesn't represent Christ. I don't intend to bash the Pope. I don't know the Pope or his heart. I just know that neither a position nor a title makes you any more of a follower of Christ. There have been some horrible Popes throughout history and I guarantee you that they didn't represent Christ. They used to position to empower and enrich themselves. I wish that everyone within church leadership had a desire to follow Christ but unfortunately that just isn't the case.

Hope that answers your question adequately.

Thanks

Re:Exactly!

[Anonymous Coward]

While his style is way over-the-top and probably offensive to many, I didn't find anything in that tract that goes against what I've read in the Bible.

I think quite a lot of it is clearly wrong, even to the point of being dishonest.

Chick tract, attempting to link the Eucharist to paganism: "On the altars of Egypt were sun-shaped wafers made of unleavened bread. These wafers were consecrated by the Egyptian priests and supposedly they magically became the flesh of the sun god, Osiris."

Osiris was not a sun god. The ancient Egyptian sun god was Ra. And the people known for eating unleavened bread are not the Egyptians, but the Jews. In fact, the Last Supper was a meal at the time of Passover, and may even have been a seder.

It was in a Passover context that Jesus said, according to the Gospel of John:

Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me hath everlasting life.
I am that bread of life.
Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, and are dead.
This is the bread which cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die.
I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.
The Jews therefore strove among themselves, saying, How can this man give us his flesh to eat?
Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you.
Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day.
For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed.
He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him.
As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father: so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me.
This is that bread which came down from heaven: not as your fathers did eat manna, and are dead: he that eateth of this bread shall live for ever.

John 6:47-58 (KJV)

Is that somehow not clear enough? More likely it is just too difficult for some people to believe.

Re:Exactly!

[n54]

Once again I do for the most part agree, it's just that those errors seem not to die and science is after all meant to be a selfcorrecting process. But pointing out known errors that haven't been fixed does actually contribute to science, and fixing an error does not imply that one has to accept or give creedence to other separate claims.

However if those errors actually were corrected when found (as far back as a century ago) ID couldn't actually take them to their advantage, but they weren't even though many tried. The big question is why (and here there be dragons: parts of the theory of evolution seems to be heading for dire waters like it or not). This is more serious than it might look like, after all if science itself doesn't actually live up to its own rules in this regard then who are they to discredit ID? Until the known errors (and there seems to be a lot of them as well as a lot of conjectures and hypothesises that are treated as something more than they really are proven to be in regards to evolution) and the reasons why they were allowed to propagate are fixed these issues will continue to come back again and again in some form or other, weakening science and anyones general trust in it being done correctly.

This issue is closely linked with a general lack of understanding about theory and philosophy of science within the scientific community itself as well as the increasing practice of doctored data and papers. All this is way too important than to be continually brushed away by the majority of the science community, actually the whole manner in which ID has been replied to in general is disgraceful and can easily give ordinary rational people the impression that science is becoming nothing more than just another belief system (because that is what it will turn into if the problems mentioned above aren't fixed).

Sorry for ranting since I'm pretty sure we both pretty much agree, it's just that I'm much more worried about "scientists" not understanding or living up to the principles of science (of which there seems to be far to many) than "outsiders" not understaning it :)

Re:Exactly!

[Alsee]

Except when the evidence is missing and needs to be manufactured

The fact that your highschool failed to properly teach the subject and left you ignorant of the evidence is not an argument. If you have any interest in learning more about the subject and making an informed conculsion then I suggest you pick up a good modern highschool biology textbook. Or if you want I could dig up a few good internet links. Just to cite one of the most facinating and powerful examples demonstrating evolution in action I suggest you read up on Ring Species.

By the way, you cannot prove anything about the past scientifically.

Oh, that's right.I com,pletely forgot that geology and other fields are not really science either. Chuckle.

Now if you want to argue that God is a liar and that he created the universe last tuesday and created false evidence (including false memories) to deceive us, well yeah... that is possible and in that sense no one can proove anything. You might have appeared one millionth of a second ago and all of your memories are fabricated. If we accept the premise of a lying decieving God then it is impossible to meaningfully talk about ANYTHING. Nothing you see, nothing you hear, nothing you remember, nothing you know can be trusted as real or meaningful. You might be nothing but a brain in a jar being fed virtual senses of a simulated worled and simulated people.

An axiom of any meaningfull discussion of anything is that we are not being deliberately decived. That we our senses are not being fed deliberately misleading informtion.

To the extent that we assume we are not being maliciously decieved, and that science *is* useful and accurate in creating the computer you are using right now and landing probes on other planets and curing diseases and on and on and on, then yes, we can "know" things based on the evidence we can see. While capitial-T Truth may be be impossible in anything, evolution is just as valid and usefull and supported as any other field fo science, just as "true" as the theories of chemisty and quantum mechanics used to build the CPU you are using right now.

We can see trees growing and that they accumulate rings inside every year. We can see that trees living in the same area at the same time all have matching patterns of rings for each year, thicker or thiner due to rich rainfall or droughts. And we can cut down a giant redwood and see and count over two thousand years of rings. And we can find peices of a dozen preserved peices of wood that died 1500 years ago and match up their rings with the rings of the first redwood and map their ring patterns back to 3500 years ago. And we can match that map up with other petrified peices of wood and date them back 5000 years. Yada yada yada.

And we can observe the rate at wich different kinds of minerals weather. And we can observer the rate at wich different radioactive elements decay. And we can observe the rate at which sediment accumulates. And on and on and on with countless other methods. And all of these methods produce *the same date maps*.

So either someone is deliberately decieving us with false evidence, or all of these methods match up and paint the same picture because it is a true picture.

And if God really is planting all of thise evidence to trick us into believng this particular picture, well then maybe we *should* beleive this false picture anyway, this picture He is working so hard to get us to believe. It's a pretty silly argument... it is much more reasonable to assume God is *not* planting false evidence... but I figured I'd mention it for logical completeness. Chuckle.

Can evolution be reproduced in a lab?

Evolution has been witnessed in the lab.

I have personally witness the power of the evolutionary mechanism to create complex information in computers. In fact I view evolution primarily as an incredibly powerful incormation processing system. If you a

Re:Exactly!

[WaterBreath]

I personally don't believe in Hell in the same way that the vast majority of Christians do. Precisely because if you take the Bible as a whole, that picture is not consistent among all the scriptures that appear to reference it. I know the places where "hell" refers to "grave", or "death", and I know the places where scripture refers to the "second death", the separation from God that happens to unsaved people when they die. I don't think there's really anyplace in there where it actually refers to a fire-and-brimstone picture like what most Christians have.

And I didn't need to read the Greek or Latin or Hebrew versions to figure that out either. All you have to do is study the scripture and see what makes sense in the context of the whole.

I think that, if you and I were to discuss other such "traditional Christian concepts", you'd be surprised to find out what other understandings of scripture I don't share with either "pop" or "traditional" Christianity, for exactly this reason.

"Demons" and "devils" are mental or physical infirmities, not evil supernatural creatures. An "angel" is any person or thing by which God's Word is communicated or His will is carried out, and that never does it refer to some supernatural, humanoid creature. And "the devil" does not refer to an individual, supernatural, evil entity, but rather it is a generalized noun used to refer to all sorts of people, actions, ideas, etc., which are "contrary to God". And I came to all of these conclusions by looking at the verses in question, and seeing what meaning would be consistent not only in the context of the immediately surrounding scripture, but also in the broader context of the Bible as a whole.

You probably think I've just helped you make your case, because so few people agree with me. But the point I was trying to get across is that just because most people might be wrong, doesn't mean someone can't find the truth if they are really willing to look for it, instead of just accept by rote what comes from the pulpit. Because I don't believe that's going to save anyone even if what's coming from the pulpit is right. I believe people have to want to find the truth for themselves for it to mean anything. Belief is about taking action, not about making claims. The source still contains the truth. But you're not going to find it if you're too lazy to look for it, or too hung up on what you want to be true.

There are not a lot of people that agree with me on these interpretations. But if I'm right about them, and they are wrong, that's no fault of God's. It's the people who decided they'd prefer to just take the easy way out and not dig deeper to find the truth. "Straight is the gate and narrow is the way, and few there be that find it."

Re:Exactly!

[operagost]

That's why it was labelled as "apocrypha", so no one would take these texts seriously. In the "aleph" and "b" MS, there is no such distinction.

Re:Exactly!

[AndersOSU]

I said earlier that I think that the reason many people claim to be non-denominational is so that they can add weight to their arguments (by not being contradicted by years of dogma or challenged by superiors.)

I think you are repeating my case, just in gentler language. You said

Each church within the denominations has to teach specific things that are agreed to by the leaders of the denomination. Non-denominational churches are simply those churches that choose not to associate themselves with a specific group.

In doing so they can ignore anything from any other group, because they are not subject to any rules. The Catholic church is certainly not perfect, but faiths with long traditions tend to go to great pains to make sure their arguments are internally logically consistent. I don't think the same can be said of ND congregations.

I'm not a blind papist, I don't agree with everything the church teaches, but I believe that having an institution is useful for preserving and developing the faith. One of the teachings of the Catholic church that I fully endorse is that scripture and tradition are equally important. Certainly it can be argued that tradition isn't on par with scripture, and I don't want to get into that debate. I do however want to point out that it is my belief, and because of that I think scripture can be supplemented.

For example, without tradition telling us that St. Paul argued that it is not necessary to be Jewish to be Christian, how do you explain the lapse of Jewish dietary laws. As far as I know that debate isn't captured in the new testament, it only resides in histories of the church. If you reject tradition as a source of revelation how do you justify eating pork? Drinking milk and eating steak? Wearing clothing of two cloths? I'm not asking rhetorical questions, I've always wanted to know how these things are justified in faiths that don't value tradition. It seems to me that they are certainly subjectively dismissing part of the Bible.

Re:Exactly!

[sickofthisshit]

The lapse of dietary laws has Biblical support: particularly Mark 7, and Acts 10 & 11. As for Paul, look at Galatians. Generally, the Church relies on the letters attributed to Paul and not tradition to describe what Paul said.

Re:Exactly!

[ccp]

To put this in perspective the next highest number of manuscripts for an ancient text is Homer's Iliad at 643 copies and no one questions its accuracy or historical integrity.

Duh?

Until now you had me doubting, but now I must congratulate you for a truly great troll. You kept it going for a whole thread!

Hat off to you!

Cheers,

Re:Exactly!

[Creep73]

If you are going to make an accusation please also follow it up with some sort of factual information as to how my post was intentionally incorrect. I get my facts from books. If a mistake was made within my post, please feel free to correct me with some facts of your own. If you can back up your claim that I intentionally misstated the facts I would love to hear it. If you could show some text that showed that my facts were wrong to begin with that would be a great start. If you can't I am sorry but you would be the troll in this case. A troll for attempting to cast doubt on my post which is based on information gathered in published books without any facts to back up your opinion. I have no problem with people disagreeing with my position or showing me where I am wrong but to post your opinion that I am a troll without any corroborating evidence to substantiate the claim show whose position is correct. I state that my position is correct and you state that my position is false. Additionally you state that my position is intentionally false. Prove it. Show me the money. Otherwise you are just flame bait.

Bruce, F.F The Books and the Parchments: how We Got Our English Bible. Old Tappan, N.J.
Geisler, Norman L. and William E. Nix. A General Introduction to the Bible. Chicago
Zacharias, Ravi. Can Man Live Without God? Dallas
McDowell, Josh The New Evidence that Demands a Verdict. Dallas

No need for name calling. Let's discuss the facts. Where did you get your information from? The information you used to conclude that I was a Troll.

Re:Exactly!

[ccp]

Please reread definition of Troll.

I don't think it means what you apparently think it means.

Or have I been trolled again?

Am I looking at the work of a master? Oh, doubt... ;>)

Cheers,

CC

Re:Exactly!

[Creep73]

You quoted a factual statement from my post and called me a Troll. I merely asked for you to back up your statement with facts explaining your opinion. You quoted me yet never clearly explain why. Perhaps you could have provided an argument about what you disagreed with and why with. You could have provided factual information obtained from research but what you chose to do was respond with more baseless attacks. Your statements lack any value within this discussion. They don't benefit the conversation nor do they benefit those that participate in the conversation. If you look at the definition of a troll you will find that you are the only one within this thread that meets those criteria. If you have any meaningful questions or statements regarding this topic I would love to hear it otherwise I hope you the best of luck in your future endeavors.

God Bless

Re:Apple ][ was *way* better than the C-64...

[multipartmixed]

Um, not to put too fine a point on it dude, but the colours on the Apple II -- and vi suck way more than either the C64 or EMACS.

Evolution is the inferior theory

[Anonymous Coward]

It offers no comfort, solace, or chance at living in heaven. Humans want and are in love with those, and therefore will believe and fight ferociously to retain their belief in what offers it.

Re:Evolution is the inferior theory

[Anonymous Coward]

Islam says you go to paradise and hang out with virgins. Some people think they should kill themselves so aliens can pick them up on a comet. The flying spaghetti monster curls you up into his many soft arms and you blast off through space and hang out with hot women who wear silver space jumpsuits. Why do you not believe in one of these alternate/better options. All of these are options that provide the followers hope and a future, but we would all laugh at the spaghetti monster story. Some of us don't believe your stories. Yay! Lets believe something is good only because we can't face something bad.

Catholicism on evolution

[digitalderbs]

"Evolution is more than a hypothesis" (translated), Pope John Paul II.

The intelligent design movement is mostly protestant, not catholic. Ironically, one of the books used to spear-head the movement is "Darwin's Black Box" by Michael Behe -- who is a catholic.

Re:I don't see the big deal behind intelligent des

[TinBromide]

but the lord of the rings is REAL!!!!

i believe in elves!

Jewish tradition implies literal creation

[pumpknhd]

I find it interesting that one can choose to not interpret the Bible literally with creation occuring in seven days. While it may be possible to think that the Genesis story is simply a display of God's power, what is left unexplained is the idea of the Sabbath. The Genesis creation states that God finished creation by the sixth day, and that on the seventh day He rested. This day is to be kept holy and is referred to as the Sabbath. If creation had indeed occurred over long spans of time, Jewish tradition would have the Sabbath last for thousands of years followed by no Sabbaths for thousands of years. Instead, Jewish tradition of keeping the Sabbath as detailed in the Old and New Testament would support that the Sabbath is a single particular day in the week. I believe that this evidence gives strong reason to believe in a literal Genesis story.

Re:Jewish tradition implies literal creation

[Anonymous Coward]

interesting point. i don't understand why a literal reading of the bible is bashed so much. sure it's at odds with the evolution theory, but why can't we respect both ideas for what they are?

Re:Jewish tradition implies literal creation

[Anonymous Coward]

If creation had indeed occurred over long spans of time, Jewish tradition would have the Sabbath last for thousands of years followed by no Sabbaths for thousands of years.

It's called symbolism. Perhaps you've heard of it.

Re:I don't see the big deal behind intelligent des

[Black Parrot]

> I don't see why the two theories can't be merged.

No reason astrology can't be merged with astronomy either.

In Object-oriented terms:

[alucinor]

public final class God {

private God() {}

public static Universe createUniverse() {
Universe uni = new EvolvingUniverseImpl();
return uni;
}
}

public static void main() {

Universe theUniverse = God.createUniverse();

}

Re:In Object-oriented terms:

[planetoid]

Of course, a previous attempt lead to a typo of "Dog.createUniverse()", to which then all the atomic particles were made of Kibbles 'n Bits (tm), and galaxies were populated by millions of millions of chaseable squirrels orbiting around in giant, stellar circles.

Re:In Object-oriented terms:

[isometrick]

And what are black holes, the garbage collector?

Re:In Object-oriented terms:

[RyanLauck]

isn't this a good case for a singleton?

Re:In Object-oriented terms:

[Anonymous Coward]

And what are black holes, the garbage collector?

Maybe, or maybe when God divides by 0.

Re:In Object-oriented terms:

[alucinor]

It is ... notice the constructor is private. I suppose I could go all the way and add a .getInstance(), but I feel making the act of creation a public static method on the God class to be adequate according to popular monotheistic views.

Re:Evolution isn't a theory about the start of lif

[wherrera]

Exactly. And if we restrict definitions to those of molecular biology, evolution is a change in gene frequency over time. Which is to say, the change of a local ecosystem from lake to swamp to meadow is a kind of evolution. That is a definition of evolution that even a fundamentlist creationist can believe in, and allows plenty of nice, testable research to be done--unlike arguing about the distant past (grin and duck) :).

Holy crap!

[ShadyG]

You actually spoke with the rabbis who wrote the Torah? Did they speak back?

My favorite response

[belgar]

....if ID/Creationism is a literal story of how the earth and humankind came into being....
 
...why are there two creation stories in the bible?

It's Easy

[satanami69]

Men have nipples.

Re:It's Easy

[carlos_benj]

Yeesh. That's so we don't look funny. Kinda like giant GI Joes (the original, not the little bitty new ones)......

Re:It's Easy

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is this always brought up as an example that the theory of evolution is broken? Nipples develope during the 3rd week, sex distiniction happens during the 7th.

Re:It's Easy

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe God just really likes nipples.

Re:Evolution isn't a theory about the start of lif

[Roger_Wilco]

Evolution isn't a theory about the start of life.

I suppose it depends what you mean by "start" and "life" :)

If you read Dawkins' The Selfish Gene, he argues that chemical compounds which replicate begin evolution, even if they aren't something that one would consider to be "alive". If the chemical can make a copy of itself, that chemical will quickly become quite common. A few of the copies won't be perfect, and a few of these imperfect copies will be better (faster, more stable, etc.), and will thus make more copies than the original.

The "start of life" need be only the random coincidence of an amino acid, perhaps one which attracts matching atoms until it is full, at which point it splits into two copies of the original. If you allow that, (and I seem to recall it's been done in a lab, but I can't find a reference right now), evolution will proceed from there.

Re:I don't see the big deal behind intelligent des

[MightyMartian]

Because ID isn't a scientific theory. At best it's simply a "somehow something somewhere is wrong with evolution." In science an argument from incredulity or invoking the supernatural does not a theory make. Now individuals are free to consider God a part of the puzzle, and there are many theistic evolutionists out there who think that God was a guiding force, but when they go into the lab, they understand perfectly well that you can't falsify that claim, and thus it is not science.

I see no conflict...

[isotope23]

Either with evolution or with ID. Evolution is the belief that life adapts following a set of rules. ID should merely state nothing in evolution precludes "someone" from creating the rules to begin with.

As an Agnostic, I tend to believe creation was started by somone/something. If it was a super intelligent being, I think it would be smart enough to create a set of rules, that would allow a "hands off" approach once the process started.

I do not think science will ever answer the question of what or how the universe came into being. We will never be able to examine the evidence (pre-big bang). Thus it is silly to deny the possibility of god's existence.

An analogy: Imagine you are a self-aware computer. Without access to the physical world that programmers live in you could make an argument that your electronic world always existed, that your programs arise through an evolutionary process, thus denying the need for a "user".

We are in the same boat IMO. "Science" and "Religion" are both belief systems. As open minded as science is supposed to be you can see it IS NOT, and tends to react just like any other religion when its core beliefs are questioned. Any theory which calls into question the orthodox beliefs of the day will be viciously attacked.

Examples: Plate tectonics, Fast moving, warm blooded dinosaurs vs cold blooded sluggish ones.

I would expect that the creator writes artful code instead of spaghetti code which must be tweaked from time to time.

Re:I see no conflict...

[Anonymous Coward]

Then you're more of a deist than an agnostic...

Re:I see no conflict...

[isotope23]

Granted. I straddle the fence as it were. I tend to think something started
the universe, but I think it is impossible to either prove or disprove it.
I also think that even if we could prove it, we would be unable to understand
its purpose.

Re:I see no conflict...

[Anthony Liguori]

Evolution is the belief that life adapts following a set of rules.

NO.

Evolution is not a belief. It is a scientific theory that began as a hypothesis over a century ago and since then has been refined and supported by vast amounts of empirical data which has led to it being accepted as a theory. It is not a law (like Netwon's law's of gravity) because it cannot be proven given the mathematical systems that we have today.

A belief is something that is not based on facts or evidence but rather on some whimsical concept of what someone would like to see.

Intelligent design is not a new idea. This debate occurred during Darwin's time. Evolutionists were divided into two camps: those that believed in "intelligent design" and those that felt that natural selection was a better model.

The belief in an intelligent design led to the belief that we were evolving into some better system, which led to the study of Eugenics, since it was then possible to say that some people were closer to the design then other.

Interestingly enough, the "science" of Eugenics was used by the Nazi party to justify the superiority of the German people.

You cannot pick and choose which pieces of science you wish to support. It's like saying that 2 + 2 = 4, but 4 - 2 = 3, because those damn secularists want you to believe that things are reversable and that's an affront to God.

Re:I see no conflict...

[isotope23]

NO. Evolution is not a belief.

Yes it is. SCIENCE is the BELIEF that the universe is set up with a series of laws which can be discovered, and which produce identical results when tested multiple times. Evolution is a subset of Science, and therefore is part of that BELIEF.

You may detest it, but the core of science just like any other system created by man is FAITH that said system works. Granted it explains many details of our physical existence better than "GOG the destroyer of worlds" yet it is still based on the BELIEF that the universe is rational, and explainable.

If you deny that science is based on faith, then IMO you are just as intolerant and closed minded as the fundamentalists who deny the validity of science whatsoever.

Re:I see no conflict...

[bhima]

The "conflict" is with the religious zealots who push their creation myth on the rest of us:

-The proponents of ID resort to unethical means to further their agenda, if the theory could stand on its own they would not be required to do so. However being that the theory was constructed specifically to combat the teaching of evolution it is having trouble doing so.

-None of the Abrahamic religions have ever come up with anything that is verifiably true, where as science routinely does and even after idea is verifiable it tends to be in such regular use it's hard to deny. i.e without a firm understanding of Newtonian physics it's hard to launch a rocket from Earth and actually hit a comet (and these days there are not a lot of sane people refuting Newtonian physics). This is a fundamental difference between Science & Religion. Until one of the Abrahamic religions not only comes up with something that is verifiably true but also owns up to the previous mistakes of their teachings I will continue not believe a word any of them say.

-ID *DOES NOT* "allow" for the existence of a creator it *requires* a creator. Conversely evolution does not deny the existence of a creator it simply refutes the mythological mechanisms of various creation myths.

-Just because one man, or even a group of men, can not imagine the solution to scientific problems such as was there really a big bang, what was before the big bang, will there be a "big crunch" or will the universe just keep expanding, does not require or even suggest the existence of an omniscient architect.

        Why should I believe the Abrahamic version of the creation over, say the ancient Greek or Egyptian version? Why should I pay to have schools teach this particular myth, when I need not pay to have the specially Judaic mythos taught, as those parents who find that important send their kids to a separate after hours classes. If parents feel that teaching their children the myths of their religion is important, *as I do*, they should either teach their children themselves *as I do*, take them to a local church or temple, or pay a specialist tutor for after hours study.

My child should not have the mythos of another religion taught to her at school as fact, it's really that simple.

Re:I see no conflict...

[Anonymous Coward]

Your opinion is wrong.

Re:I see no conflict...

[isotope23]

-ID *DOES NOT* "allow" for the existence of a creator it *requires* a creator. Conversely evolution does not deny the existence of a creator it simply refutes the mythological mechanisms of various creation myths.

Really? A number of scientists I've talked to look with disdain on the whole idea of a creator, let alone those who profess belief in one. I think alot of scientists do seek to make science THE religion.

there are not a lot of sane people refuting Newtonian physics

Except for quantum physics. While the newtonian clockwork view of the universe works on a macro scale, it fails miserably upon a micro scale.

-Just because one man, or even a group of men, can not imagine the solution to scientific problems such as was there really a big bang, what was before the big bang, will there be a "big crunch" or will the universe just keep expanding, does not require or even suggest the existence of an omniscient architect. nor does it preclude the existence of one either. Many scientists
dismiss the possibility outright. Thus they are just as arrogant and extreme as any fundamentalist.

Why should I believe the Abrahamic version of the creation over, say the ancient Greek or Egyptian version? IMO you should find the ethos that makes the most sense to you. On a personal level, I like the greek and/or norse gods the best, but tend towards agnostic.

Why should I pay to have schools teach this particular myth, when I need not pay to have the specially Judaic mythos taught, as those parents who find that important send their kids to a separate after hours classes.

You shouldn't. Neither should a fundamentalist parent have to pay for his/her child to be taught that god does not exist. (Which I think is a danger in many science classes.) The problem I have with science is its insistence that it has a monopoly on the truth. It is a BELIEF system. Granted one that can be tested and produce verifiable results, yet it is still based upon belief.

My child should not have the mythos of another religion taught to her at school as fact, it's really that simple. And other parents feel (wrongly or rightly) that science is a mythos(at least in part) which is attempting to replace their own. Just as you would object to islam or judiasm or christianity being taught so they object to an athiest/secular mythos being taught.

Even with all of the above, I believe in evolution, and science in general, as it makes more sense than most other ideas. Science taken as religion however has just as many pitfalls as any other religion. It removes any sort of moral framework to base life upon. If you dismiss religion/philosophy you come down to a world based upon violence where any act is justifiable as "survival of the fittest" the same is true of extremist religion acting in the "name of god".

Re:I see no conflict...

[isotope23]

Your opinion is wrong.

LOL! very effective counter argument. Isn't that exactly the same argument the fundamentalists use against evolution?

Re:I see no conflict...

[Anthony Liguori]

Yes it is. SCIENCE is the BELIEF that the universe is set up with a series of laws which can be discovered, and which produce identical results when tested multiple times.

You're making an existential argument here. I strongly dislike existentialism as I feel it is simply a play on the imperfections of our communication systems.

Anyway, you cannot make an existential argument and expect to win because according to existentialism there is no right or wrong. If there's no right, you cannot win. You cannot say science is a belief because that presumes that there are things such as science and beliefs.

It's quite a silly argument to make.

Re:I see no conflict...

[isotope23]

You cannot say science is a belief because that presumes that there are things such as science and beliefs.

Really?

Is or is not science based upon the ASSUMPTION of a rational and explainable universe?

My issue is not with science per se, but the dogmatic teaching of science as the one and only valid truth. I do not claim that science is invalid, but too often I think those teaching "science" portray it as holy dogma.

Re:I see no conflict...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it isn't.

Douglas Adams on Intelligent Design

[fl_litig8r]

"This is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in--an interesting hole I find myself in--fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!'"

Hear hear

[samjam]

Well said.

I find the attemps of the so-called pro-science lobby to ridicule the ID argument in the form of the flying spaghetti monster very unscientific and cowardly. I realise that it helps them laugh, and helps them pursuade themselves that they personally have a sound basis for their own beliefs even though they have taken as little effort to validate them as they think the "religious fundamentalists" have for theirs.

[Idiots please note: I didn't call the FSM theory unscientific I'm just referring to the attempts to ridicule-away-from-discussion using this example; so don't tell me "thats the point" because its a very weak point and badly done]

Concepts of "irreducable complexity" and "observed organisation" (i.e. Paley's Pocketwatch) deserve serious consideration, and to say "OK then I'm going to believe in something ridiculous like the FSM then, to save me having to answer difficult questions" is to miss the point and to resort to throwing insults and saying ID are all idiots. You may believe that, but it's hardly science, and only Bush-level on the debating scale. It's as bad as the Vatican resorting to yelling "Heretic". How soon the tables turn. now the ivory towers think themselves the purveyors and verifiers of truth.

So what if we can't tell if the ID designer was a FSM or something else, thats not the point either. But when you meet the designer you can check for yourself if flying and spaghetti are major characteristics.

I prefer to refer more reverently to the creator.

Sam

Re:Hear hear

[flyinwhitey]

Tell me what is the difference between the argument "The flying spaghetti monster created life" and "God created life".

You dismiss the point as "very weak" while failing to refute it.

Why is one so patently ridiculous, while the other has been accepted by seemingly reasonable, intelligent individuals.

What is the difference?

Re:Hear hear

[D3m3rz3l]

He does not have an answer. After all, he does not want to refer to the so-called "creator" in such irreverent terms.

Re:Hear hear

[dual_boot_brain]

If the watch is made of protein, then the watch becomes the watch-maker.

Re:Hear hear

[|/|/|||]

I'm afraid that you have a profound misunderstanding of what science is. Seriously, listen up. Science is not a belief system. Science does not claim to know the truth, nor even to be able to know the truth. Do you realize that? Let me repeat one more time -- science does not claim to know the truth, or even to be capable of knowing the truth. In fact, according to our current knowledge, it's impossible to know any absolute truth about the universe.

So, when you say things like, "now the ivory towers think themselves the purveyors and verifiers of truth" you are fundamentally wrong. The universe itself is the only purveyor and verifier of truth. That's the whole point of science -- to query the universe about its own truths. We come up with theories that try to describe truths about the universe, but the physical universe itself is what decides which theories we keep and which theories we throw away. If a theory can't be decided on by examining the physical universe, then we don't even consider it.

I realise that it [FSM] helps them laugh, and helps them pursuade themselves that they personally have a sound basis for their own beliefs even though they have taken as little effort to validate them as they think the "religious fundamentalists" have for theirs.

Wrong. FSM is satire, and has nothing to do with validating anyone's beliefs. In fact, the point is the exact opposite -- it's to discredit the beliefs of ID proponents. Let's put FSM aside, though, because I don't find satire very useful for a real discussion. Agree? It's much more useful to look at the real issues, like "irreducible complexity." Irreducible complexity is completely worthless. I'm not flaming here, I'm being serious -- and I'll back that statement up.

Think about what "irreducible complexity" means. According to IDers, it means that something is so complex that it could not have arisen from natural processes. Remember that in science, the physical universe is the ultimate truth. Also note that that "natural processes" are all of the processes that exist in the physical universe. Put this all together and you get a conjecture that says that this "irreducibly complex" entity cannot exist according to the physical laws of the universe. Not the laws as we know them, but any physical laws of the universe. IDers don't say, "Gee, this looks like it's too complex to exist, therefore we musn't have a complete understanding of the universe." No, they say, "this must be the product of supernatural intervention." In science, that's going out of bounds. IDers can go there if they want, but it is NOT science and should NOT be confused with science. In science, there is no supernatural. There is only the reality that we observe. No faith required.

You don't have to be a scientist, and you don't even have to understand why a woldview that's entirely based on physical observations is useful. But please, try to understand the fundamental difference between science and religion, and why science cannot allow the two to mix and still be science.

Re:Hear hear

[JWW]

Its very weak because you are arguing that science should not include faith, and to try to prove it all the FSM people do is mock faith.

If you want to prove the non-existance of God, you need to figure out things like, the origin of matter and the setup for the big bang and you need to do it in a scientific way.

Formulating the FSM doesn't not prove this, it is just an ad-homeniem attack on faith, and proves (or disproves) nothing but that people can have many different beliefs.

Re:Hear hear

[Coryoth]

I find the attemps of the so-called pro-science lobby to ridicule the ID argument in the form of the flying spaghetti monster very unscientific and cowardly. I realise that it helps them laugh, and helps them pursuade themselves that they personally have a sound basis for their own beliefs even though they have taken as little effort to validate them as they think the "religious fundamentalists" have for theirs.

In the end FSM is about using the same method of argument to arrive at odd conclusions. I personally don't find it terribly good at that - it isn't really a good mapping of ID style arguments. You can try this essay about gravity which maps very closely to ID arguments, and using the same methods manages to show that gravity is a flawed theory, and that we need to teach the controversy on that one too. If you can explain why that argument isn't valid, then you can explain why ID's arguments aren't valid.

Such a method of argument - deconstructing the oppositions argument and using it to demonstrate something absurd - is entirely valid. It's one of the better demonsatrations of why Plantinga's ontological argument for the existence of God is flawed - you can prove the existence of invisible tartan elephants by exactly the same method. Just because the FSM does a poor job of it doesn't mean it isn't a valid approach.

Jedidiah.

Re:Hear hear

[Anonymous Coward]

Its very weak because you are arguing that science should not include faith

Wrong.

Pastafarians (FSMists) are arguing that "your" faith is no better then "their" faith, and if you want to teach "your" faith in schools, you must also teach "their" faith, because it's equally valid.

it is just an ad-homeniem attack on faith, and proves (or disproves) nothing but that people can have many different beliefs.

You seem to be confused between ad-hominem attacks and satire. People can have many different beliefs, this is the entire point of the FSM. That those beliefs should stay in people's homes and churches, and that science should stay in the classrooms, is the secondary point.

Re:Hear hear

[flyinwhitey]

"Its very weak because you are arguing that science should not include faith,"

Where did I say that? How does substituting one dity for another in any way call faith into question?

"Formulating the FSM doesn't not prove this, it is just an ad-homeniem attack on faith"

I think you need to look up what an ad hominem attack is.

And finally, you need to answer my question. All you did was create a straw man, the idea that science should not include faith.

So, again, why is "God" acceptable as the creator of the univers, while FSM isn't? Why does drawing comparisons between two deities become mocking faith?

Re:Hear hear

[JWW]

People can have many different beliefs, this is the entire point of the FSM. That those beliefs should stay in people's homes and churches, and that science should stay in the classrooms, is the secondary point.

While I actually do agree with you that science shouldn't include ID (I can't even see how you could spend more than a day studying ID in science class), I am disturbed by your comment of faith belonging in homes and churches. Can not faith also be expressed in public?

That is the biggest thing that bothers me about ID. That is: Why are they even bothering to push this? There are so many other more important issues about religious freedom (for any religion) in this country than the mistaken belief that we should teach a faith based theory in science class.

I would much rather have public schools that had philosophy (elective and not required) AND science classes, than schools that only had science, but worked in things like intellegent design.

Re:Hear hear

[Anonymous Coward]

The root disagreement then is whether supernatural causes can exist.
Which is, of course, not a scientifically answerable question.

Re:Hear hear

[pintomp3]

you are missing the point of the FSM. it's because IDers want to say "it was designed, but no necessarily by god". it's the "i don't know who" with a wink. the FSM is calling it out.

Re:Hear hear

[samjam]

You miss the point for ID which is NOT that: "It was god that created it and he is not a spaghetti monster"

AFAIK ID doesn't try and infer an awful lot about the intelligent agent behind the intelligent design which is why the FSM although good mockery is a total red herring.

FSM mocks some of the personal beliefs behind some of the adherants of ID but it has nothing to do with ID per se. This I can explain the "difference" but it is totally irrelevant to ID unless some branch of ID tries to infer something about the agens from the designs.

In that respect I have to say that Flying and Spaghetti are specific and I have seen nothing to indicate spagehtti in the designer; if you HAVE seen any spaghetti-ness please tell us.

Sam

Re:Hear hear

[samjam]

Indeed, but just because proponents of ID have a belief in God doesn't mean that ID infers the existance of God or of tartan elephants.

ID infers little about the nature of the intelligent agent behind the design.

Sam

Re:Hear hear

[flyinwhitey]

You missed the point completely.

Quote a part of my post that in anyway discusses ID, and I'll eat my shoes.

I didn;t reference ID, and made no mention of it in my post. Furthermore, I made no reference of the parent's mentions of ID (if there were any).

So explain why I should consider your opinion, when you are unable to find the main idea of a post?

Please don't reply with "we were talking about ID so I assumed..." because my post was clear and to the point. You just missed it.

Re:Hear hear

[MrPeng]

Paley's Pocketwatch analogy deserves nothing. It is a false analogy. You begin with the assumption of a mechanical device which we know requires a maker, or in the case of modern watches a team of engineers, fabricators, other machines, and parts that are manufactured and then assembled using tools that are also manufactured. Pre-biotic chemistry requires that the requisite molecular matter be in 'soup' and supplied with energy. The pocketwatch analogy is like saying if you throw all the bits in a bucket they should assemble themselves into a watch. Baloney. Any mechanistic analogies are also useless and misleading, which is why creationists like them. They sound good at first, so they get people who are only partly listening to say "That's a good point." when in reality under any inspection they are vapid and vacuous. Once again it is simply the religious starting with a premise and them twisting what they observe to fit the premise.

Re:Hear hear

[efatapo]

I couldn't agree more fully with your opening paragraphs stating what science is. Congratulations, you are one of the very few people who actually know what science is and what it is not. However, you don't seem to know what irreducible complexity means.

Irreducible complexity is applied to natural selection, not any physical process. For instance, without gears a watch is completely useless. Without hands, a watch is completely useless. Without the face, a watch is pretty much useless. Now, think about a watch as an eye or some other ridiculously complex organ (or molecular machine, such as ATP pumps - slightly more difficult to imagine). The individual parts of the whole are useless, in and of themselves. However, it is only when put together in a very specific and total way that any of the parts have value. There's no reason to have one without the other.

Irreducible complexity is simply the claim that evolution does not allow for the development of organs or molecular machines that are all or nothing. In evolution / natural selection, everything must be reducible in nature. It is intuitive for arms and fins and wings to behave under evolution / natural selection, but less so for parts of organs / molecular machines that are co-dependent and have no individual function.

It's a difficult topic to explain, hopefully that made a bit of sense.

Re:Hear hear

[samjam]

Indeed and I deny that "supernatureal causes" can exist because I think God is natural.

Sam

Re:Hear hear

[Mister Skippy]

People can have many different beliefs, this is the entire point of the FSM. That those beliefs should stay in people's homes and churches, and that science should stay in the classrooms, is the secondary point.

While I actually do agree with you that science shouldn't include ID (I can't even see how you could spend more than a day studying ID in science class), I am disturbed by your comment of faith belonging in homes and churches. Can not faith also be expressed in public?

The important bit that the granparent was saying in the quote you selected is that faith should not be in the classroom. Otherwise you end up with even more arguments such as which religion and which branch of a given religion should be taught. There are too many religions and variations on them to try to teach them all and there places better suited for those types of teachings like at churche and at home.

Re:Hear hear

[Anonymous Coward]

An eye is probably the worst example you could pick of "all or nothing" design. It's easy to find examples of various levels of vision across the animal and protist kingdoms. Start your exploration with the eye spot on a Euglena and end with certain animals such as hawks and eagles that have even better vision than humans, and you'll find a perfect, unbroken continuum of functionality as you move up the scale.

In the end, what you call "complexity", irreducable or not, is just an arbitrary and heavily-biased value judgement. God, if he/she/it exists, is way too interesting and magnificent to fit in the pages of your puny Bible.

Re:Hear hear

[Anonymous Coward]

Based on what physical evidence?

Re:Hear hear

[samjam]

"Science" is a word that has many connotations and conveys many ideas. What it "is" depends on the context.
You are not wrong when you say "Science is not a belief system" and I am not wrong when didn't say that. I am also not wrong when I say that "Scientific frameworks are a belief system." You may argue over whether the use of "scentific" or "scentific framework" are ideal and co-incide fully with your use of the terms but you understand me well enough to discuss the subject. Do you understand what ideas I may have that I try to convey with the phrase "Scientific frameworks are a belief system"? (read on)

You may be correct when you say "science does not claim to know the truth, or even to be capable of knowing the truth" and I am inclined to agree with you, however many scientists and popular scientists present themselves as arbiters of truth as do many religionists and that is what this debate is about. Many use science to "find the truth" whatever you or others may say that science is capable of. Many religionists do the same with religion. Some in both groups are dishonest for both good and bad motives. Some are in both groups but some in some groups would dispute that.

Now when I said "now the ivory towers think themselves the purveyors and verifiers of truth" I didn't say that they actually were purveyors of truth, my point (as you agree) is that they are not, but many that inhabit those positions are making the same famed age-of-Galileo style Vatican pronouncements that they (thats the vague they, meaning science-anti-religion-fans) often condemn of the Vatican.

You say "The universe itself is the only purveyor and verifier of truth."; quite so; but we each see this only through our own senses.

"If a theory can't be decided on by examining the physical universe, then we don't even consider it." Indeed; but I think you will find that that statement contains some gross presumptions if you examine it carefully. It presumes that the "physical unverse" is already well defined so that it becomes a simple task to know whether or not an item is part of the physical universe. In fact your statement probably could be better rendered as: "If a theory can't be decided on by examining the input of [agreed] select sensory input interpreted in an [agreed] manner, then we don't even consider it."; (The set of sensory inputs is augmented by physical devices but we either consider those as an appendage to our senses or as part of the system being examined.) And how is are the permitted sensory inputs and interpretations to be agreed upon? [Yes, the interpreations are based on a somewhat agreed previous interpretation] Are they even universally agreed? Are dissenters merely classes as heretics? When the full statement is considered it is little more than very good intentions. Of course science can do no more, but its only claiom to legitimacy is that it's champions have an agreed set of sensory inputs and interpetations and that the dissenters disagree with.

ID says "Lets consider it and see how well we can find X".
There was an Agatha Christie story where a haemophilliac was murdered. The culprit was identified by the detective early on through having an unusually strong alibi but not at the "time of death" (which was wrong because the certifying doctor did not know the victim was a haemophilliac). This was no proof of guilt, but as an evidential construct it is interesting.

ID claim another interpretation on the same evidence that evolutionists want for their own.

I realise that it [FSM] helps them laugh, and helps them pursuade themselves that they personally have a sound basis for their own beliefs even though they have taken as little effort to validate them as they think the "religious fundamentalists" have for theirs.

Wrong. FSM is satire, and has nothing to do with validating anyone's beliefs. In fact, the point is the exact opposite -- it's to discredit the beliefs of ID proponents

Re:Hear hear

[Berserk CEO]

If you want to prove the non-existance of God, you need to figure out things like, the origin of matter and the setup for the big bang and you need to do it in a scientific way.

By the same logic: if you want to prove the existence of god, you need to figure out things like the origin of god and the setup for the creation of god.

Whatever existed - if anything even existed - before the Big Bang, it's most probably something our brains can never comprehend. Time and spatial dimensions were completely different, if such things even existed.

If you really want to think something before the Big Bang, you should also also ask was there something before the thing that was before the Big Bang and again something before that, and so on. Saying just that the god was the only thing that ever existed before the Big Bang is just as feasible as saying that the Big Bang was the first thing that ever existed, thus Big Bang could be called the god.

So was there a god before god and a god before those gods? If there was a god, why would there be only one, why not a dozen or a billion gods? I could prefer zero or -7 simultaneous gods, just for fun.

If some life form ever manages to live past the death of our universe, that life form could perhaps have some empirical evidence on what existed before our Big Bang. Before that, anything else is just a theory and most of the time a very bad theory.

Re:Hear hear

[samjam]

I'm not missing the point, FSM are calling it out and therefore feigning the point.

The ID-ers may think it was "God" who did it, but they say that as if the IDers can agree on who God is or what his attributes are.
Let them each think it is their own idea of God, and folk thinking it is an FSM makes no difference.

To shout it down because of the REASON some of the proponents like it is hardly scientific, which is _my_ point.

Sam

Re:Hear hear

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not the function, it's the parts. And it's not that its complex, it's that the parts are codependent. I know there is some conflict over whether or not the eye functions this way, but that's why I also mentioned molecular machines. Take a look at an ATP pump one of these days...the level of complexity is insane, but on top of that the parts, individually, don't do anything. Only together do they make this amazing microscopic machine.

Re:Hear hear

[|/|/|||]

you don't seem to know what irreducible complexity means.

Hold on, let's get to the root of my misunderstanding, so we can sort this out. I said that irreducible complexity is the claim that certain things are too complicated to have arisen as a result of natural processes. You then said that, "Irreducible complexity is applied to natural selection, not any physical process." This is kind of confusing, because the theory of evolution does describe (or attempt to describe, you could say) a physical process.

Then you say that, "Irreducible complexity is simply the claim that evolution does not allow for the development of organs or molecular machines that are all or nothing." OK, so you're saying that irreducible complexity implies that the theory of evolution is not sufficient for explaining the existence of certain physical entities.

Pretty weak, as I see it. Not only is that claim debatable (many of the examples touted by ID proponents have been explained by showing that the constituent parts of the complex organ were useful on their own) but it does not offer an explanation of its own. Saying that evolution is insufficient without offering an alternative is just saying that we need to study evolution more. Irreducible complexity on its own does not point to something else that we can look into.

This, of course, is where "intelligent design" comes in. ID purports to offer an alternative explanation for the development of biological life, and to explain irreducible complexity at the same time. ID is not, however, a scientific explanation. It is an explanation, but it is not a scientific explanation. It passes the buck to an entity outside of the observable physical universe, which just is not allowed in science.

Re:Hear hear

[aqfire]

Put this all together and you get a conjecture that says that this "irreducibly complex" entity cannot exist according to the physical laws of the universe. Not the laws as we know them, but any physical laws of the universe. IDers don't say, "Gee, this looks like it's too complex to exist, therefore we musn't have a complete understanding of the universe." No, they say, "this must be the product of supernatural intervention."

This is a logical flaw in your understanding of ID. Proponents of Evolution state that as part of their theory, everything that currently exists is a product of natural processes. Irreducible complexity is the idea that something is too complex to have arisen by purely natural processes (evolution), not that it is too complex to exist.

I love how this forum is full of people ready and willing to unite against ID and call ID proponents everything from fascists to fundamentalists to horrible people who should be silenced at all costs. I personally don't put myself into any of these categories, but you're free to think and do what you'd like. God knows I can't stop an army of angry mutant evolutionists. :)

Ultimately, the hate I see here comes from a deep misunderstanding of our perspective and, unfortunately, a lot of crap throwing from both sides. So maybe when people like me are silenced, you can go back to attacking each other.

One thing I should mention is that ID proponents are VERY concerned with keeping science separate from religion. We also admit, as some evolutionists might not, that a theory about our origins, scientific in nature and well meaning though it might be, does have profound religious and philosophical implications.

Re:Hear hear

[samjam]

OK, I'm going slowly so lets see who can follow the main idea of a post.

You claim I dismissed the point as "very weak" without refuting it.
What point could this be that you were referring to? It must be something I dismiss in my post using the words "very weak", lets see what it was:

So I'm dismissing as "very weak" the use of the FSM theory to ridicule ID away-from-discussion. (Oops there we go, I mentioned ID and you specifically asked me not to - BUT thats the USE of the FSM argument I was dismissing as very weak) ..so you want me to actually refute the use of the FSM argument in ridiculing ID away from discussion without mentioning ID !!! It's gonna be hard!

Your post was clear and to the point; but the question you asked:

Tell me what is the difference between the argument "The flying spaghetti monster created life" and "God created life".

misses the point because it fails to recognize that the answer is irrelevant and that is the irrelevance that refutes its use to discredit ID.

The question you ask is the point of the FSM argument, I grant you, but the argument only has power if it is considered relevant to the argument.

Why/how is the answer irrelevant?

The FSM argument is designed (!! ooh ID, again!!) to use strawman, shame/fear of mockey and the ID proponents supposed motives to discredit ID by making an equivalence between FSM and god.

My point is that the NATURE of the intelligent agent is not proposed by ID and so whether various kinds of gods/spacement/monsters are anticipated by various supporters is irrelevant to the validity theory.

Therefore any attempt to discredit the theory on those grounds is spurious at best and dishonest at worst.

If you really think I have missed the point, then: "Yes, in your framework some people attribute the FSM to the role others attribute to god and the ID theory really doesn't care" which is why it's irrelevant (again).

Sam

Re:Hear hear

[|/|/|||]

I love how this forum is full of people ready and willing to unite against ID and call ID proponents everything from fascists to fundamentalists to horrible people who should be silenced at all costs.

Well, some people may come off that way because they're angry, but I think you can agree that my post did none of the above. I'm merely pointing out that ID proponents are not very good at separating science from religion, if (as you claim) that's what they're trying to do.

Irreducible complexity is the idea that something is too complex to have arisen by purely natural processes (evolution), not that it is too complex to exist.

OK, I'll accept that definition. I don't think it has any bearing on my conclusions, though. By your definition of IC (I'm tired of typing that out!) some things are too complex to be explained by evolution (note: I've never seen an example that wasn't explained by evolution under scrutiny). However, IC does not give an alternative explanation. Without one, it just implies that we need to refine evolutionary theory -- it doesn't offer an alternative.

Now ID comes along and gives that alternative explanation -- a supernatural creator (please don't go on a tangent about "natural" creators like aliens or something - that just moves the debate to how the aliens developed in the first place). Supernatural creator == not science. It's an explanation, but it's not a scientific explanation, and that's my point.

Ultimately, the hate I see here comes from a deep misunderstanding of our perspective

I think I can see your perspective just fine. Can you see mine?

Re:Hear hear

[rilister]

bah! the old watch analogy.
remind me, how does this argument work? A watch is an example of something designed by an intelligent being. It clearly shows that by having a logically derived sequence of parts, specifically designed for the purpose that the maker chose. yup. good so far.

life is also complex. eyes are complex. like a watch. so life, like a watch, must be designed.

but life is *nothing like* a watch. a watch has gears, which are, genuinely, useless without, say, a spring driving them. A proto-watch is totally useless. A proto-eye *isn't* useless at all. In fact, you can see them all through nature. An eye has systems that are elaborations and derivations of pre-existing systems. It didn't just appear, it has clear predecessors that also work, with different degrees of success. sure, the bits are 'useless' on their own, but it was the *system* that evolved, not the individual parts.

if you wanted to prove a watch is created by "Intelligent Design", congratulations. but otherwise, it adds nothing to the debate, except parroting something you heard once somewhere.

Re:Hear hear

[MikeDataLink]

Ok.... I do have to say one thing that's funny about your comment. You are trying to prove the universe with the universe. When Christians try to prove the Bible with the Bible they say that's out of bounds. Heheh Everything is the same and no one really knows. Until you die. Then you either go to Heaven or hell - or poof everything goes black. We'll all know one day. Mike

Re:Hear hear

[Anonymous Coward]

"Irreducible complexity is the idea that something is too complex to have arisen by purely natural processes (evolution), not that it is too complex to exist."

And how, exactly, are scientists supposed to distinguish this idea from the expected situation when there isn't enough evidence yet, or there is a failure of imagination when constructing hypotheses?

There has been progress on several of the "irreducibly complex" examples held up by people like Behe, even in the few years since he published his book. I was reading a paper just the other day in Nature on the Type III secretory system, which bears great resemblance to parts of the supposedly irreducible bacterial flagellum (Yukihiro Akeda and Jorge E. Galan, 2005 (6th Oct). Chaperone release and unfolding of substrates in type III secretion. Nature, v.437, p.911-915). Does it explain everything? No way. There are plenty of puzzles. But it sure looks like a subset of the supposedly irreducible bacterial flagellum works fine for other functions. While this may negate the idea that this system is somehow "irreducibly complex", it still says nothing about whether or not a powerful designer was involved, because the question isn't even scientifically addressible.

The deduction that "irreducible complexity" (even if it exists) implies a designer idea boils down to: I can't think of a hypothesis, therefore the intelligent designer did it. It is bogus.

It is no different from the situation when people could not account for the precession of Mercury. While it was certainly possible that this was an indication of the hand of a powerful designer actively guiding Mercury in its orbit, that would not be a scientific hypothesis, because it is completely untestable. It makes no predictions. Hence, when Einstein and others started working on the problems with Newton's theory as it applied to Mercury, they did not give up in frustration and conclude that a designer was involved, because that idea is not in scope in science. Even now, maybe the unseen hand of a powerful designer really is guiding Mercury in its orbit, but science does not deal with that question at all. Einstein just formulated a hypothesis that relates what was known about space, time, and mass, and scientists have rigorously tested the predictions of that model over the years. They could test forever, and still not test anything about a designer one way or the other, and even if Einstein's idea were falsified, it still wouldn't say anything one way or the other, just like the failure of Newton's previous model in this situation did not either. If Newtonian gravitation was wrong, or at least incomplete, as shown by Mercury, was "The designer did it" a reasonable conclusion, pending any other scientific hypothesis? I think not, in a scientific setting.

We have here a problem: a small number of scientists who do not appear to understand the scientific method well, and who do not understand that when Einstein said "God does not play dice with the universe", he was merely stating his personal belief, not an idea that was scientifically testable. Sure, maybe the scientific hypotheses in quantum mechanics that bothered Einstein are testable, but the connection that Einstein made to this view of God was entirely personal. Likewise, people can believe in an intelligent designer in what ever form they like, and they can base it on whatever science they like, including Behe's idea of "irreducible complexity", but that does not make the interpretation a scientific one.

Re:Hear hear

[armchair99]

Let me repeat one more time -- science does not claim to know the truth, or even to be capable of knowing the truth.

So, let me get this straight...the truth is that there is no truth? Seems like a circular self defeating argument. If there is no truth then we can't even know if that statement is true!

The universe itself is the only purveyor and verifier of truth.

Hmmmm...wait a minute! There is no truth except that there is no truth, right?

That's the whole point of science -- to query the universe about its own truths. We come up with theories that try to describe truths about the universe, but the physical universe itself is what decides which theories we keep and which theories we throw away.

Ok, now I'm really confused about this thing called truth. How can the universe tell us a truth when there is no truth? This is also beginning to sound like a pantheistic argument which, by the way, is not science but a worldview. Are you saying that the entity known as the universe tells us what the truth really is but we can never know the truth because the truth is that there is no truth ? Is that really the truth?

I don't think you have really considered what you wrote because if you had you would see the gaping holes in the typical Darwinist mumbo jumbo style logic you have chosen. You claim to know what science really is yet you resort to confusing the issue with poor logic and pseudo-science. Wouldn't you agree that it is far more logical to believe that truth is real and it can be known and let your logic flow from that point to wherever the real evidence takes you? Everything you have written is based on a false premise of what truth is and thus the entire argument collapses under its own weight.

To anyone who argues for macro evolution based only on what you see in the media or you read on slashdot--- you should educate yourselves by reading some books on ID to get both sides of the story. Here are a couple of good ones:

I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist by Norman Geisler and Frank Turk

In Six Days : Why 50 Scientists Choose to Believe in Creation by John F Ashton, PhD

The latter is a collection of 50 essays from 50 different scientists with at least one PhD from many different fields of science and should be required reading and a topic of discussion in every middle school science class. The former addresses not only ID but why Christianity is true based on logic and impartial consideration of the evidence. Go ahead read them, what have you got to lose?

Re:Hear hear

[Anonymous Coward]

I hearby revoke your science privliges. Retard.

Now, get off the internet and let people with complete minds do the thinking.

Re:Hear hear

[aqfire]

Well, some people may come off that way because they're angry, but I think you can agree that my post did none of the above. I'm merely pointing out that ID proponents are not very good at separating science from religion, if (as you claim) that's what they're trying to do.

I don't agree. I've read a lot of ID websites that (I think) are very good at presenting their theory without resorting to religious ideas to support it.

By your definition of IC (I'm tired of typing that out!) some things are too complex to be explained by evolution (note: I've never seen an example that wasn't explained by evolution under scrutiny). However, IC does not give an alternative explanation. Without one, it just implies that we need to refine evolutionary theory -- it doesn't offer an alternative.

Sure, evolution provides an explanation that many feel is adequate, but to me it's not enough to explain why things are the way they are. I won't go into all the reasons here, since many people more knowledgeable than i have done so on other sites, but ID has an uphill battle to first show that evolution is inadequate (and most people don't think it is, but there are good reasons why it is) and second to show that another theory explains the data better. ID takes the perspective that there's no need to invent some natural evolutionary means by which the universe was created, if the data more plainly supports the theory that some Intelligent Designer created the universe. This does not mean that we throw up our hands and give up on science. Quite the opposite, it means we are free to study our origins and the laws of the universe without having to either conform to a naturalistic explanation or throw out the data.

Now ID comes along and gives that alternative explanation -- a supernatural creator (please don't go on a tangent about "natural" creators like aliens or something - that just moves the debate to how the aliens developed in the first place). Supernatural creator == not science. It's an explanation, but it's not a scientific explanation, and that's my point.

Agreed, you can't test a supernatural creator to see if it exists. However, you can test the creation, to see if it was created or not. That's the basic idea behind Intelligent Design. Without trying to go into the realm of religion, test scientifically whether or not there is a Designer.

I think I can see your perspective just fine. Can you see mine?

I'll let you be the judge of that. Did I understand you correctly?

Re:Hear hear

[|/|/|||]

Your ideas are consistent within your own world, but the problem is that you've redefined science. Let me quote:

Quite the opposite, it means we are free to study our origins and the laws of the universe without having to either conform to a naturalistic explanation or throw out the data.

Right there is the fundamental misunderstanding. Science only studies that which is naturalistic. If you want to explain the origins of the universe scientifically, you can't consider the supernatural. If you do, you're not doing science. ID proponents can redefine science if they want to, but that doesn't mean that the "science" that they're doing is the same as what real scientists are doing.

If we can't explain something, saying that it was "created" is not a useful explanation. It would be far more useful to say "we don't know." Not only does this keep the subject flagged for further study, but it prevents us from basing later theories on an untestable assumption. Maybe it was created, and maybe not. The truth is, if we can't explain it based on the observable universe, then it's just an unknown. Making stuff up is not the solution.

Re:Hear hear

[everythingeverything]

I could be wrong, but I thought the concept of 'Irreducible Complexity' in the context of Intelligent Design came out of a thought experiment: Consider an organism with several parts that work in unison. If the organism requires all those parts in order to function, how could evolutional process gradually build the organism from molecules?

Is this the same as your definition?

Re:Hear hear

[flyinwhitey]

"OK, I'm going slowly so lets see who can follow the main idea of a post."

Funny, because not only were you condescending, but you missed the point again.

I WAS NOT TALKING IN ANY WAY ABOUT ID.

Referencing it in your answer is unnecessary, because I was in NO WAY discussing ID.

SO, reread MY post again, then REREAD IT AGAIN, then have someone smarter than you read it, THEN reply.

And don't bring up ID, because it relates to MY post in no way whatsoever.

Re:Hear hear

[samjam]

Flyinwhitey, you were complaining because I dismissed the FSM argument without refuting it.

In my post you first responded to, I was actually dismissing FSM as a means of ridiculing ID.

I know you weren't talking about ID which is why I think you missed the point.

FSM is only irrelevant as a way to dismiss ID because it is not relevant to ID and that is why I dismissed it.

You see I was talking about ID, I was talking about the use of FSM to ridicule ID which it can't do which is why I dismissed it.

(Get it now? Nope? I'll try again).

And so you wanted me to properly refute FSM without referring to ID, yet I was only refuting FSM as a means to ridicule ID, so you want me to refute FSM in a general sense without referring to the subject or context in which I refuted it.

Now: can you explain why you think I should be refuting FSM in any other sense than the sense in which I dismissed it?

Can you understand that acting like a puzzled school teacher saying "err.... go and do it again" just makes you look daft?

I'll say it again. *I* was talking about ID, and it was the use of FSM to ridicule ID that I was dismisssing, and the demonstration of FSM irrelevance to the ID argument is the refutation that you asked for. I can only refute it in the context I was dismissing it in, which is in relation to it's use to ridicule ID.

Do you understand now why it did not make sense for you to ask me to refute it without referring to ID "on the grounds" that _you_ weren't talking about ID when you were asking me to clarify a claim I made on the use of FSM in relation to ID?

Sam

Re:Hear hear

[Anonymous Coward]

Eh, I hesitated using the eye example because I'm much more familiar with molecular biology. So here goes:

http://www.tufts.edu/sackler/physiology/faculty/fo rgac/V-ATPase1.jpg

Go look at that. It's a vacuolar ATPase. Basically it pumps ATP through a membrane and uses that equilibrium difference to turn the middle shaft. However, when you look at the parts, they are useless. I don't remember exactly, but there are like 27 different proteins that make up that enzyme. You cannot reduce the system to fewer parts, it is useless without the shaft or without the membrane coil or without the ATP binding and passage area.

Re:Hear hear

[|/|/|||]

Yeah but you miss my point. Science doesn't prove anything at all. It builds a model that approximates reality, and we constantly refine that model as we perform experiments and gather information. The "truth" that science obtains is temporary -- it is always evolving, which is what makes it so accurate. The "truths" in the Bible are thousands of years old, written when humans really didn't know much about how the universe works. Biblical truths have changed very little in all of this time, which is why they're so out of sorts with reality at this point. Scientific theories from that era seem laughable now, which is why they were abandoned long ago.

Re:Hear hear

[|/|/|||]

That's the definition that I think the ID proponents are using. It has 2 weaknesses:

1. It doesn't explain anything. It says, "Look, evolution can't explain this." There are a lot of things that are unexplained, which is why science is still worth pursuing. Since IC doesn't give an explanation of its own, the task is to figure it out. In order to figure it out scientifically, we must come up with an explanation based on observations of the physical universe. ID gives an explanation, but it invokes a supernatural creator. Therefore, ID is not a scientific explanation.

2. Many of the examples of IC have already been explained by evolution. It's common for those parts that are used in unison to have been used independently in the past. Here's an example: an explanation of how the bacterial flagellum might have evolved. I say "might have" because there are many different ways in which the flagellum could have evolved. We are reasonably confident that evolution was the mechanism, though, because A) evolution can explain it and B) we don't have better explanation.

In conclusion, irreducible complexity doesn't mean much. Pointing out unknowns does not weaken science, it strenthens it by highlighting new avenues to pursue. I suppose IC had some value in that respect, but it's lost in a sea of other unexplored facets of the universe. The political maneuverings of the IDers forced scientists to focus on that particular unknown, and so far it hasn't proven a very difficult challenge. ID itself contributed nothing to science, as its sole proposition is based on an assumption that has no evidence and is completely untestable. Some supernatural being could have created the eyeball, but it's just as likely that the entire Earth and everything on it suddenly formed from randomly moving particles out of pure chance in 1987. They both explain how we got here, but they're both untestable and therefore useless.

P.S., before anybody says that the evolutionary explanation is untestable, the flagellum example above is a test. Evolutionary theory says that the flagellum must have developed from more primitive components. Scientists looked at more primitive bacteria and found those components. That's evidence. How do you find evidence that the parts were designed by God? If you do, you will not only be famous, you will have a pretty big ego knowing that you proved God to be nothing more than a testable part of the physical universe just like the rest of us.

I'll bet he'd be pissed. ;)

Re:Hear hear

[aqfire]

Right there is the fundamental misunderstanding. Science only studies that which is naturalistic. If you want to explain the origins of the universe scientifically, you can't consider the supernatural. If you do, you're not doing science. ID proponents can redefine science if they want to, but that doesn't mean that the "science" that they're doing is the same as what real scientists are doing.

I understand what you're trying to say, but I think you are misunderstanding the position of ID again. Let me try to explain what I mean. If someone refuses to believe in a supernatural beginning, evolution is the only possibility. However, evolution looks very absurd when you look at it from an unbiased perspective. For instance, the probabilities involved, the lack of concrete fossil evidence, mutation evidence, the question of "first cause" and many other irreconcilable facts (that probably don't need to be listed in this response) give people more questions than answers. Many of these problems are glossed over by assuming that "with enough time anything is possible".

What I'm trying to say is, that while evolution is a theory that can account for the present state of things, it is not the only scientific possibility unless you constrain yourself to a strictly naturalistic world view. And if you do so, your assumptions skew the conclusions you will have at the end of any scientific study, further causing bias in the community. This is what has happened over a period of time to the point that evolution is accepted by most people without second thought as fact.

ID scientists do not attempt to explain natural phenomena with supernatural theories (such as "it was created to be that way"). They use the scientific method to observe, formulate theories, test them, refine them, and ultimately arrive at conclusions, just as materialistic scientists do. They may arrive at data that seems to contradict their theories, just as a materialistic scientist does, but the evidence seems to indicate that ID rather than evolution is where we come from. No, they don't change evidence, they look at it with a critical eye. But facts give rise to interpretations, and many interpretations are less concrete than most people want to admit. For example, see the ongoing debate about whether Neanderthals could interbreed with humans or not, and the debates over whether Lucy was a missing link or just another fossil monkey. It's good for science to have people in the field who don't conform to a materialistic bias, because then our perspective isn't constricted by one camp. Sometimes, we catch things that you miss, because you weren't looking in that direction at all (and vice-versa).

Re:Hear hear

[|/|/|||]

What I'm trying to say is, that while evolution is a theory that can account for the present state of things, it is not the only scientific possibility unless you constrain yourself to a strictly naturalistic world view.

OK, but what I'm saying is that science is by necessity constrained to a strictly naturalistic wold view. Science is the study of what we observe. It is the study of things that can be measured and tested. You can redefine science to include that which is not a part of the material world, but I would argue that it would then become useless.

However, evolution looks very absurd when you look at it from an unbiased perspective.

I don't want to be insulting, but wouldn't an unbiased perspective require the same evidence for the existence of God that it requires for the existence of the Earth? Be careful about who you are calling biased -- the whole point of science is to try to be unbiased.

For instance, the probabilities involved, the lack of concrete fossil evidence, mutation evidence, the question of "first cause" and many other irreconcilable facts (that probably don't need to be listed in this response) give people more questions than answers.

Everything in the universe gives us more questions than answers. In fact, I'm pretty sure we'll always have more questions than answers, regardless of our achievements. That said, evolution is a very strong scientific theory. I'm not going to address these issues here, though, because I think that's an unnecessary tangent. Here are some answers to frequent misconceptions about evolution, which I would recommend if you're really interested in trying to understand the world. For the moment, however, suffice to say that the theory of evolution is overwhelmingly supported by the majority of scientists. If ID is to upset the status quo, then the onus is on it to provide a better explanation, not to merely poke at the weaknesses in our current explanation.

I'm a bit confused by your last paragraph. You say that 'ID scientists do not attempt to explain natural phenomena with supernatural theories (such as "it was created to be that way")' but you don't say what their explanation is. I'm pretty sure that the intelligent design explanation either A) invokes the supernatural or B) gives no explanation at all. Can you tell me what the "real" ID explanation is? If you could give an explicit explanation of how something that is supposedly "irreducibly complex" exists without using evolution, then I'm sure I could point out the problems with the explanation. I'll also point out that my argument would probably hinge on showing why a non-materialistic explanation really doesn't provide us with any useful information (i.e. an untestable theory can't be used for anything) and is therefore not considered to be science.

Who knows, though, maybe you'll enlighten me. I aint afraid. :) The universe is what it is -- my goal is to explore that reality, not to try and prove it to be what I want it to be.

Re:Hear hear

[aqfire]

OK, but what I'm saying is that science is by necessity constrained to a strictly naturalistic wold view. Science is the study of what we observe. It is the study of things that can be measured and tested. You can redefine science to include that which is not a part of the material world, but I would argue that it would then become useless.

Science is by necessity constrained to the observable. That does not mean that a naturalistic world view is necessary. Science as a way of observing and forming hypotheses to understand the world was first practiced by the early church, so it's hard to argue that science by necessity takes a naturalistic world view. I don't think I redefined science to include the realm of the supernatural either. I never said God was testable, nor do proponents of ID. What we are saying instead is that a scientist can study natural phenomena and reach a conclusion that it has been designed, just as he/she can reach the same conclusion by studying artifacts of human civilization.

I don't want to be insulting, but wouldn't an unbiased perspective require the same evidence for the existence of God that it requires for the existence of the Earth? Be careful about who you are calling biased -- the whole point of science is to try to be unbiased.

No offense taken. An unbiased perspective, as I see it, takes into account all ideas and possibilities, and does not outright eliminate any possibility until proven false. Nor does it seek to promote one idea above another, regardless of the pressure of society, media, and community that promote that idea. If you think this is not a fair definition of unbiased, let me know. Now, we obviously promote the ideas that we think fit best, but first we try to form an unbiased, objective opinion about it, and then we use that information to interpret future results. A materialistic world view colors the interpretation of data just like a christian world view, or any other, would. That does mean we are all prone to bias, but it doesn't mean that we can't attempt to be as unbiased as possible when experimenting.

Unfortunately, it's also true that people on both sides will use science to push their agendas, and this is not limited to the realm of ID vs Evolution. I appreciate any scientist who puts their quest for knowledge above their own agenda, but they're hard to find in the realm of origins, since the implications of Evolution and of ID are very controversial. I've been at a point of having to critically study both sides myself to understand where each was coming from, before I took a side on it. I spent months reading articles from talk.origins and true.origin and many related sites, and there is still so much to learn.

I'm a bit confused by your last paragraph. You say that 'ID scientists do not attempt to explain natural phenomena with supernatural theories (such as "it was created to be that way")' but you don't say what their explanation is. I'm pretty sure that the intelligent design explanation either A) invokes the supernatural or B) gives no explanation at all. Can you tell me what the "real" ID explanation is? If you could give an explicit explanation of how something that is supposedly "irreducibly complex" exists without using evolution, then I'm sure I could point out the problems with the explanation. I'll also point out that my argument would probably hinge on showing why a non-materialistic explanation really doesn't provide us with any useful information (i.e. an untestable theory can't be used for anything) and is therefore not considered to be science.

Evolution has been called the "unifying theory" because people have taken it out of its original context to explain everything from variation and adaptation to society's structure to language. While I have no problem with using the idea of evolution to help people to understand these things, I do see a problem with the way the term is used that confuses the issue.

Evolution is used to mean 'change', but

Re:Hear hear

[tez_h]

A materialistic world view colors the interpretation of data...

Not that all scientists would label themselves explicitly materialist, but note that it is essentially the view that we can actually make observations and that the explanations of observable phenomena are humanly achievable that lies at the heart of it.

[...] but they're hard to find in the realm of origins, since the implications of Evolution [...] are very controversial.

Really? The implications of evolution are controversial? Pharmaceutical research and testing, botany, genetic research? These are hardly groundless, unscientific endevours. Or did you mean controversial in some politcal sense?

[...] but I will at least explain my understanding of the theory. It seems that by nature we were designed. We have specialized body parts, all which serve a purpose, even though we don't always understand what that purpose is at first [...]. We have homologous structures, and can infer that they are to be used for similar purposes [...], the fossil record indicates a disaster or multiple disasters in the past reminiscent of the flood [...], and our DNA seems to be an intricate program. Furthermore, the way our cells interact with each other has been found to be extraordinarily complex. All this is evidence that at the beginning of the universe, we were designed this way [...]. I'm not trying to prove this, just giving some points for clarification of ID's perspective.

Unfortunately, this is merely argumentation from incredulity. Until irreducible complexity, or some other analysis tool can posit (and when I say posit, I don't mean "take into account the probabilities of something occuring by a mechanism within our understanding, and call the leftover Design") 'intelligence' or design, this won't change. Note, also, that many organs are suboptimal. The fact that homologous structures are neither totally different or exactly the same is in fact evidence for natural selection. I'm surprised you cite DNA, since the fact that every living organism on earth (and even near-living, like viruses) use DNA and RNA to carry and propogate biological information, and that DNA sequences and changes therein can be traced back through populations and species is one of the triumphs of the modern synthesis. In fact, this is one area where the predictions of evolutionary theory can be seen: drift of genotypes throughout populations and species have been estimated and then confirmed.

I am not sure where you came across the idea that the fossil record disproves the modern synthesis. Variations of fossils in rock strata do not falsify evolution, and are further confirmed by geological theories. There is the cambrian explosion, but this is not a problem for biologists. Note, also, we do not find modern species in ancient fossil records.

The Theory of Evolution is unprovable, precisely because it requires so much time to accomplish that it is completely unobservable.

This is a strange take on science, evolution and the word 'unobservable'. For instance, is chemistry in trouble because we can't observe the electron?

Note that *no* valid scientific theory is provable. Good theories are falsifiable. The longest-standing theories are ones that could have been falsified over and over again, yet have held up experimentally every time. Evolution is one of those theories. At any rate, your assertion that evolution in unobservable is wrong. See this and this.

-Tez

Re:Hear hear

[aqfire]

Not that all scientists would label themselves explicitly materialist, but note that it is essentially the view that we can actually make observations and that the explanations of observable phenomena are humanly achievable that lies at the heart of it.

Without trying to repeat myself too much, a materialistic world view isn't necessary for the scientific method to work. In other words, if you have a christian world view for example, the scientific method works because you believe in a sensible order to the universe and to the way things work (which by the way was the original reason why people thought they could understand the universe at all).

Really? The implications of evolution are controversial? Pharmaceutical research and testing, botany, genetic research? These are hardly groundless, unscientific endevours. Or did you mean controversial in some politcal sense?

None of these require the Theory of Evolution as an explanation for how we came to be. They do require an understanding of genetics, chemistry, and other sciences that are completely compatible with the theory of ID. One of the reasons most people don't understand this is because before evolution, scientists thought that fixity of species was law, and other such unproven nonsense. Darwin also thought that the cell was nothing more than a blob of protoplasm, so we move past all that and look at the current theories to judge them, not the past blunders. What I mean by saying that Evolution's implications are controversial is that the Theory of Evolution lends itself to an atheistic world view, because if you can explain how we got here through natural processes, you don't need to invoke a creator except to explain the 'first cause'. ID doesn't attempt to explain the universe supernaturally after that 'first cause' either, it uses the scientific method.

The fact that homologous structures are neither totally different or exactly the same is in fact evidence for natural selection.

Are you sure? Going back to my previous example with cars, most cars have different sized wheels, yet they all have the same purpose. You wouldn't put a human hand on a small lizard, nor would you put a monster truck tire on a bicycle, but you would match the parts with the whole. I don't pretend that this is a perfect analogy, but it should be enough for you to see where I'm coming from.

I have read the article "29 evidences for Macroevolution" already. See This link for a critique of the paper you mentioned above. It clarifies the ID position, because at the heart of the argument, I believe, is a misunderstanding of the difference between evolution as an observable change (the word evolution means change and i have nothing against the word itself) and the Theory of Evolution which accounts for all life being the result of either tiny changes or punctuated equilibrium.

As for speciation, that doesn't pose a problem for ID because of this difference: In ID, there isn't a problem if a bird with existing genetic information and another identical bird go to different regions, their genes become isolated, and their populations become different species as we define species today. However, if we postulate that based on this fact, a bird can add genetic information to the point that it can become, say, a squirrel (through multiple tiny changes over long periods of time), there is just no evidence for this. We have seen mutations occur, where genetic material is added or changed, but not to the point that it is beneficial, and the rate of mutation is always wrong in some way (in bacteria it is too fast, in humans it is too small in studies i've read, yes, i'm generalizing here.)

Here is a good article that explains it better than I did. You can do a search for "speciation".

Note that *no* valid scientific theory is provable

Yeah, I know, I was in a rush

Re:Hear hear

[|/|/|||]

What we are saying instead is that a scientist can study natural phenomena and reach a conclusion that it has been designed, just as he/she can reach the same conclusion by studying artifacts of human civilization.

If the "natural phenomena" that you're referring to is life on Earth, then I would disagree with that statement. I think that it's possible to conclude, scientifically, that life *could have been* designed (in fact the argument would be trivial), but to say that it *was* designed is something else entirely. You would have to find a test that would show that it was designed rather than, say, just suddely appearing because of the highly unlikely arrangement of a buch of atoms. Both of those things are possible, but to argue that one of them is worthy of being a theory requires evidence and testability.

In the case of artifacts of human civilization, you have a ton of evidence that intelligent creatures were around to create those artifacts. I'll leave it to ID to come up with some evidence that life *was* designed rather than *could have been* designed, but I won't hold my breath. Until then ID is speculation, not theory.

Re:Hear hear

[aqfire]

If the "natural phenomena" that you're referring to is life on Earth, then I would disagree with that statement. I think that it's possible to conclude, scientifically, that life *could have been* designed (in fact the argument would be trivial), but to say that it *was* designed is something else entirely. You would have to find a test that would show that it was designed rather than, say, just suddely appearing because of the highly unlikely arrangement of a buch of atoms. Both of those things are possible, but to argue that one of them is worthy of being a theory requires evidence and testability.

Will you agree that by saying this, you are implying that the Theory of Evolution shows that animals *did* come from other animals, rather than that they *could have*? Earlier, you stated that a theory is unprovable. Therefore, Evolution as a theory is no more provable than ID is. When one gathers evidence it either makes a theory stronger or it weakens it, prompting us to change it to fit the data. Order in a chaotic world is some of the evidence for Intelligent Design. Furthermore, there is evidence that it is very unlikely (statistically impossible) for a bunch of atoms to arrange themselves in a manner that would create life from nonlife. There are two possibilities, they either were arranged by the natural forces that we understand and can measure currently, or they were arranged by a natural or unnatural force or forces that we don't yet understand. Our present knowledge of the laws of the universe is insufficient to explain life from nonlife, and the fossil and biological evidence does not support the transition from one type of animal to another (I avoid using the term species because its definition does not give clarity to the debate, see my previous posts).

Evolutionists puzzled by this apparent order and refusing to invoke a Creator have suggested some far out explanations to this: Some have suggested that aliens dropped us off or something to that effect, while others simply let it go as a currently unknown and unexplainable trait of life (which is quite acceptable in the realm of science). ID provides an explanation for this phenomenon, as well as some predictions moving forward about the complexity of life as we discover more about the way the world works, while the Theory of Evolution predicted more simplicity of design.

Speculation: I doubt Darwin would have promoted his Theory of Evolution as it stands if he really knew how complex human cells are, or if he knew that the fossil record would provide us with not one solid piece of evidence for a transitional form (the evidences in our textbooks are quite suspect, although this will sound like paranoia until you really research it for yourself and talk to a forensic anthropologist). I don't doubt that this theory has given us a lot of good and progressive ideas in science (although it has also been ill-used to justify some horrible things in our past like racism), but it's time to move on and consider something that makes more sense.

Re:Hear hear

[tez_h]

Oh, and how do you start a post with quotes? I'm relatively new to slashdot and have been typing with html by hand, it's rather annoying. ;)

Yes, unfortunately that's the way I'm doing it here too. But, this is slashdot. Criticisms about its own comment moderation system/UI/editorial staff/users/Cowboy Neal abound.

Without trying to repeat myself too much, a materialistic world view isn't necessary for the scientific method to work.

Yes, I'm not sure sure if we're agreeing or not here, but on the face of it we are. I'm not saying that scientists look at some hypothesis or theory, say 'Hmm. Not based on naturalism or materialism. Must be invalid.' What I am saying is that experiments and entities in any scientific theory must be operationally defined; ie. they must be measurable and observable to us in some consistent, repeatable way. This implies naturalism, whether one takes it on as their worldview or not.

None of these require the Theory of Evolution as an explanation for how we came to be. They do require an understanding of genetics, chemistry, and other sciences that are completely compatible with the theory of ID.

Hmm. I will concede this much: We have an detailed understanding of the chemical processes at, say, the cellular and subcellular level of cell-based life. Let E be the theory of modern synthesis. Let B be the collection of biology that concerns, say, genetics, microbiology, pharmacology, biochemistry. Then I claim that B -> E (where '->' is material implication). The equivalent (contrapositive) statement is that ~E -> ~B (where '~' is the negation operator).

On the otherhand, since ID is unfalsifiable, B is vacuously compatible with ID.

What I mean by saying that Evolution's implications are controversial is that the Theory of Evolution lends itself to an atheistic world view, because if you can explain how we got here through natural processes, you don't need to invoke a creator except to explain the 'first cause'.

This is only the case only if you need to believe that god must play a part in every process. It seems to me that under this criterion, any explanatory system that doesn't involve god denies god. In fact, you've rather explicity spelt out the god-of-the-gaps argument.

ID doesn't attempt to explain the universe supernaturally after that 'first cause' either, it uses the scientific method.

If it uses the scientific method, presumably you can cite some ID hypotheses that can be experimentally tested. Note that claiming 'evolution cannot explain this, or cannot offer a sufficient explanation of this, therefore ID' is not a hypothesis that can be falsified. It's hardly a hypothesis of any kind at all. I would say that if ID doesn't attempt to explain anything after the first cause, it doesn't explain anything.

As to a 'first cause', if you're referring to either the Big Bang or abiogenesis, evolution doesn't purport to explain either of these.

You wouldn't put a human hand on a small lizard, nor would you put a monster truck tire on a bicycle, but you would match the parts with the whole.

I still don't understand how this is an argument for a designer. Sure, there are always considerations of scale (since an elephant could not possibly stand on a linearly-scaled stiletto heal, say), but if we take your analogy at face value, we might ask why the lizard doesn't have 5 digit 'mini-hands', or why humans don't have adhesive fingertips. Or why we don't have tails. Or why flies have compound eyes. or why we don't. This 'matching the parts with the whole' seems to beg the question of design, and even then still looks contradictory. Note, also, that most biological features are sub-optimal (did I menti

Re:Hear hear

[|/|/|||]

There is a ton of evidence that animals evolved from other animals. All mammals have the same bones, human embryos have tails, we share 98% of our DNA with chimps, we've found fossilized ancestors of whales that lived on land, we've found the remains of a whole chain of human ancestors that display gradually changing physical traits going back to stooping hairy small-brained big-browed apelike creatures. Where did all of this evidence come from? There are an infinite number of explanations, but I can only think of one that makes any sense.

Now, I take this as evidence that animals *did* come from other animals. It is in no way *proof* that animals came from other animals, but it is *evidence* that they did. There is *no* evidence, as far as I know, that anything anywhere was created by a supreme being. I challenge you to come up with any evidence at all. The fact that I exist is *NOT* evidence that I was created -- there are an infinite number of possible explanations. The fact that 98% of my DNA is the same as a chimp's, however, is physical evidence that must be of some importance. The fact that I can construct a tree showing how closely related I am to each other living organism based on DNA similarity is also pretty interesting.

OK, so maybe you think this evidence is weak. Whatever. You don't have to believe it, but if you're going to argue another possiblity (like creation) you have to have some evidence that supports your position. Let me repeat again that the very existence of life is *not* evidence! The existence of life is what we're trying to explain, so using it as support for your explanation means nothing.

Remember that we're not *proving* anything. We're supporting our arguments with physical evidence. So far I have a few points (I could come up with a lot more and back them up with references) and you have none. Can you justify your position, or will you admit that it is not a scientific explanation (and no I don't mean the Kansas definition of science)?

Re:Hear hear

[aqfire]

...we share 98% of our DNA with chimps...

Without going further, where did you get the statistic from? Or is it "common knowledge"? I do a great deal of source checking before I make a statement such as this one, because it's a very incredible statement to make. We share 98% of our DNA with chimps?

Please see this article before trying to explain to me why you think we share 98% of our DNA with chimps. And did you even read my argument for homologous structures? This by itself is not enough to prove anything about evolution. If I wanted to make a house, would I not use four walls and a roof? If I wanted to create bones that were light and strong, would I not use the same organic materials in all of my mammal projects?

Don't even get started about Haeckel's experiments on embryos, the data of which were falsified a long time ago. See this biography of him from UC Berkeley if you're in doubt about the validity of his theory of recapitulation (which by the way is sometimes STILL taught in schools as fact despite its rejection by evolutionists).

If you're interested in knowing more about the lies you've been taught, I can furnish you with many more examples. There isn't "a ton" of evidence for evolution.

Re:Hear hear

[|/|/|||]

Have you heard the common complaint that ID is not a theory, it is merely an attack on existing theory? You're just proving my point by arguing about my evidence rather than presenting any evidence of your own! We can battle back and forth all day with arguments about evidence in support of evolution, but that does nothing to change the fact that evolution is a scientific theory (or would you seriously argue that there is absolutely *no* evidence for evolution?) and ID is *not* a theory.

The primary reason why nobody listens to ID proponents is because they don't present anything that supports their proposition. You're attacking my evidence, but you have no evidence to attack!

I've pressed you on this issue several times, but unless I missed it you've never responded. Either present at least 1 clear piece of evidence that supports the conjecture that life was "created" or admit that ID is not a scientific theory.

Re:Hear hear

[aqfire]

Do you really want evidence, or are you just looking for an excuse to attack me because I falsified the "evidence" that you provided? I did mention a few things in previous posts, but I think you ignored them so that you could say that I didn't present any evidence.

Read some of the many resources at this site if you doubt that ID has scientific merit. And also, I still want to hear your defense of the chimp argument, or you can concede that it wasn't really a good argument and we can move on. If you don't defend it or toss it out, I'll just assume you'd rather attack me than stand behind your words, and our conversation will be over.

Re:Hear hear

[|/|/|||]

Do you really want evidence

Yes! How many times do I have to ask?

I'm starting to doubt your sincerity a bit, so I'm going to force you to get to the real point of this discussion.

I'll throw out the chimp argument and while I'm at it I'll toss the whole theory of evolution. Let's assume that the theory of evolution does not exist, or has been discredited or something. Now, we witness the existence of life on earth. You claim that ID is a scientific theory that explains the existence of life. I say that your theory is not scientific. What evidence do you have that you can convince me with? I looked briefly at the site you referenced, but all I could find were attacks on evolution. Either give some evidence in your own words, or link to a page with a specific piece of evidence.

I've asked this question about 5 times now, so if you don't have an answer, I'll assume that you don't have one.

Re:Hear hear

[aqfire]

I'll throw out the chimp argument and while I'm at it I'll toss the whole theory of evolution. Let's assume that the theory of evolution does not exist, or has been discredited or something. Now, we witness the existence of life on earth. You claim that ID is a scientific theory that explains the existence of life. I say that your theory is not scientific. What evidence do you have that you can convince me with? I looked briefly at the site you referenced, but all I could find were attacks on evolution. Either give some evidence in your own words, or link to a page with a specific piece of evidence.

Good, now that that's out of the way...

The problem with the question that you propose is that it's designed to fail: "Apart from a creator, how do you explain how this got here?" If there was indeed a creator, then that possibility must be taken into account in the realm of scientific inquiry. We know science deals with the known, not the unknown, but science first makes assumptions about things that we can not know empirically: We assume that we are capable of solving problems through logic, we assume that if we observe something repeatedly, we can predict that it will happen consistently. We assume that the universe has law and predictability (as opposed to unpredictability). The basic assumptions of science are predicted by ID.

It is known, for example, through scientific inquiry, that cell interactions are complex and interdependent, and that complex structures such as the eye are finely tuned for a specific purpose. Both of these are evidence for Intelligent Design. Sorry, I only used these two because I don't have time to find others for now, but I can find more later.

Intelligent Design is scientific precisely because it operates within the framework of reason. It can be used as the basis for scientific predictions, it can be used as the basis for further tests and discoveries, and it can be falsified by naturalistic evidence. I'll see if I can dig up some sites that attempt to falsify it later.

It may or may not fit your definition of 'theory' because the current definition of theory is based on a naturalistic world view, one where naturalistic explanations are the only ones accepted, but ID is needed precisely because of this bias in the scientific community.

Re:Hear hear

[|/|/|||]

The problem with the question that you propose is that it's designed to fail: "Apart from a creator, how do you explain how this got here?"

That is NOT the question that I asked. Please try to follow my argument carefully, or we'll get nowhere. Look at my perspective -- I see you as blinded by your preconceived ideas, and I'm trying to get you to confront them. Of course you'll disagree with my perception, but if you're really sure of yourself then you'll open your views up to critical analysis. From my perspective, you seem to want to be open minded, but you (either purposefully or not) keep driving us off onto tangents. If you don't really want to think about this then please let me know, and we'll both save a lot of energy.

So, back to the point, the question wasn't "find an explanation apart from a creator," it was "show some evidence that it was a creator". Don't assume that there has to be an answer, either. We're starting from a position of ignorance. It's better to admit that we don't know the answer than to mislead ourselves into believing something that is unlikely to be true. Nothing is more deadly in trying to understand the world than to build upon shaky foundations.

Now, listen carefully -- you think that you presented some evidence of a creator, but you did not. Seriously. Look at what you said:

It is known, for example, through scientific inquiry, that cell interactions are complex and interdependent, and that complex structures such as the eye are finely tuned for a specific purpose. Both of these are evidence for Intelligent Design.

No, they are not. Repeat, they are not. You can say that they're arguments against evolution if you want, but that does NOTHING to support Intelligent Design. You're looking at features of the physical world and coming up with an explanation, but you can't distinguish that explanation from the infinite number of other explanations that exist. Just for thought, let's come up with another explanation. Say, for example, that our universe is nested inside of a meta-universe, and that meta-universe invisibly influences our universe. Is it not possible that purely deterministic laws in that universe somehow cause certain structures to form in our universe? You can make up any kind of magical laws you want for the meta universe in order to make it work. Voila, you have a competing explanation. Which is right, the deterministic meta-universe or the intelligent creator? How about the highly improbable (but still possible) possibilty that the entire universe takes on a new, completely random form periodically, and ours just formed 10 minutes ago? Isn't this completely possible? Unlikely, yes, but possible. Maybe every possible configuration of the universe (including ours) exists simultaneously. Therefore our universe would *have* to exist, and would not need to have been "designed."

Do you see the problem yet? These are a whole class of explanations that share a common feature -- you can't distinguish between them. There is no test to see which is more likely to be true, because they are not materialistic explanations. They do not attempt to explain the universe in terms of itself. The logical conclusion, therefore, is that we can't entertain any of these explanations. Sure, any one of them *may* be true, but since there are an infinite number of them any particular one is infinitely unlikely to be the true one.

So, when I ask for evidence of a creator, I mean material evidence. You're telling me that a creator is possible, but you're not telling me that a creator is likely. This is why the Kansas school board had to redefine science in order to get intelligent design into their science classes. In real science, only materialistic arguments have any weight. You can create a new branch of science that does not require materialistic evidence, but I guarantee that you'll quickly meander away from an accurate description of the physi

ID and our Alien Overlords

[Eric Freyhart]

I for one welcome their return, and would like to ask them about why they chose nipples for men. Seems like a mistake, but only our Aien Overlords know for sure.

This is a surprise?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

I really don't see why this is so surprising. I had 12 years of catholic education (1st grade through 12th) and was NEVER once told that I should take Genisis literally. On the contrary, learning evolution in biology was MANDATORY in high school. I always regarded the creationists as just a bunch of protestant wackoos.

Re:the problem with an allegorical interpretation.

[Anonymous Coward]

To add some information to where you were going..

(as an aside, in over 7 years of reading /., I have never posted anything; preferring to lurk and learn. I have finally been compelled to jump into this discussion because it comes up often, and yet there is a fundamental point that people are glazing over.)

If you are a Christian, evolution cannot be. Jesus came to earth to allow for redemption of sin that only occurred in the world because of Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve disobeyed God, forever cursing themselves [i]and their descendants[/i] to toil and have pain on earth, rather than living a life of peace. Their sin became our sin, this is why we are sinful people, we are born with it, it is our nature, now...but that was not what God intended.

Jesus offers a simple, final solution to that imperfection. Man's good deeds are not good enough for God, so Jesus is needed as the intercessor for forgiveness. To get to heaven, you believe in God and what he promised. He promised to send a redeemer. If you believe in Jesus and believe and accept what he says, you go to heaven.

If evolution exists, then Adam and Eve make no sense at all, Jesus makes no sense at all, and Christianity is an empty religion. To a Christian, life began with them; it did not evolve up to their existence.

But when will the scientists realise...

[91degrees]

The theory of gravity is just a theory...

No. Sorry. Wrong one. Besides, the onion already dealt with Intelligent falling

Set theory is just a theory. Rigourous mathematical principles be damned!

On Literal Bible reading

[SomPost]

Am I the only one to think that Bible literalists are quite selective on what they believe to be literally true. Take this example (Matthew 19:23-25)

23 Then Jesus said to his disciples, "I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. 24 Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." (Emphasis mine)

To me this is a pretty clear statement that allows little lying about: Rich bastards go to hell! But, of course, in the otherwise totally literal Bible that was meant only metaphorically. --SomPost

No, it's YHWH because Hebrew doesn't write vowels

[Anonymous Coward]

That's why the name of God is written "YHWH."

Semitic languages make extenstive use of ablaut, alterations of vowel sounds within a word. The overall lexical value of the word is provided by the consonants, which do not change based on the grammatical context of the word, unlike vowels. The same principle is in place in various scripts used to represent Semitic and related languages, such as Arabic, Egyptian Heiroglyphics, Ugaritic, etc.

Now, there is a tradition of adding vowel diacriticals to biblical Hebrew, and for honorific reasons, these are not applied to the name of God. But at least get your history/linguistics right. Further, the significance of the term YHWH is more complicated than a mere name. It probably refers to a causative form of a verb to come to be.

Where's the Love?

[Anonymous Coward]

The best sign that the whole ID/Creationism debate is not worth having is that there is no real discussion about the real meaning of God is these threads. It's just a distraction from the real message. It brings no more people to a real reverence to God than does Santa Claus or the Easter bunny. The people trying to bring ID into the classroom are just alienating people. People are not going to be brought into the faith by studying Noah's ark, the talking donkey, or Adam's rib. They will be brough to faith by seeing an example of how people can lives their lives by following the examples of Jesus.

Religion

[everphilski]

it is utter fantasy

Bullshit. There are nonreligious accounts of many religious events. For example, the flood is recorded in the Bible, and in the story of Gilgamesh. The story of Christ is recounted not only in the Bible but in other historical documents of the day. Other historical events and battles of old (I'm most familiar with the christian ones - its my upbringing) such as the enslavement of the Jews by the pharoes (how do you think those pyramids were built? and yes, there is written documentation as well) epic battles, construction and reconstruction of the temple, the existance of Solomon, conquor of the Israelites by the Medes and the Persians, all have been documented not only in the holy books but in the history books as well.

What you meant to say is you choose not to believe that the Almighty had some say in the course of history.( And heres one for you. Why did God send Jesus when he did? Its really easy: Romans had just conquored the known world and established paved roads, it made it real easy for the religion to spread like wildfire.) To which I have to say, may God had mercy on your soul.

-everphilski-

Re:Religion

[schiefaw]

Bullshit. There are nonreligious accounts of many religious events. For example, the flood is recorded in the Bible, and in the story of Gilgamesh.

Just like Forest Gump must be a true story because we all know that the major events in that story (the Vietnam war, integration, etc.) all happened and can be confirmed by other sources! Even better, we have footage of Forest at those events!

We all know that a story written after a historical event can't possibly reference the event without being true, right?

And heres one for you. Why did God send Jesus when he did? Its really easy: Romans had just conquored the known world and established paved roads, it made it real easy for the religion to spread like wildfire.

Or, there were 100 guys just like Jesus who came along at a time when it was not so easy for religion to spread like a wildfire.

Finding a surprising correlation among past events is easy. When religion allows us to make accurate predictions of future events, I'll be more impressed.

Re:Religion

[hevo]

Something to blow your mind. Using your logic... Why god sent Mohammed or Budda ? You dont beleive in them.. still they have been here contradicting your beleives. What make you righter than they ? Its all about beleive.. nothing about facts.

Re:Religion

[mydn]

I also believe there are several different documented accounts of Santa Claus (St. Nicholas, Father Christmas, Kris Kringle), going back well over a thousand years. These accounts of Santa Claus have included historicaly accurate information, such as the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and the Dutch control of New York. Santa's existence has been confirmed by the New York Sun on Sept. 21, 1897 and I believe I noticed a news report last Christmas Eve that NORAD was tracking his flight path. Canada has assigned a specific postal code for Santa Claus. I personnally saw Santa in a shopping mall last year, though admittedly my account is anecdotal.

In light of all this evidence must we respect the "theory" of Santa Claus as valid?

Re:I don't see the big deal behind intelligent des

[flyinwhitey]

So, mods, if someone of a religious persuasion posts their beliefs, as GP did, and I post my beliefs, as I did, I'm a troll, but GP isn't?

Explain please, why my post is a troll, apart from the fact that it offends the far too delicate sensibilities of religious folks?

Was I rude? No. Was I unpleasant, difficult, mean, or otherwise confrontational? No.

Most importantly, was I trolling for responses (which, mods, is why you should mod a post "troll")? No.

I wonder why you didn't bother to post your rebuttal, but instead used your mod points. It must be because you know your position (religion) is indefensible, so you use your power to try to silence me.

Shoudln't you be running the country George, instead of modding me down?

Who designed the designer?

[Microsift]

The problem with ID, is that eventually raises the question: If the world cannot be the result of millions of centuries of randomness, how can God, an omnipotent, omniscent, omnipresent entity, possibly exist?

Re:Who designed the designer?

[Dangero]

If there is an intelligent creator, then he could have designed us with a mind that cannot understand his infinite nature, or how His presence could be possible. Meanwhile the same is not true if the universe was formed by "random chance". Then you have to ask by the second law of thermo, if no energy can be created or destroyed, where did the energy in the universe come from? There's no valid explanation for that.

Re:Who designed the designer?

[Microsift]

The difference is that in ID, no one tries to figure out how the intelligent creator was itself created. Whereas, scientists who consider the contradiction you identify are looking for explanations. In other words, ID is based on faith, and evolution is based on science. I think it's obvious which one has a place in the science classroom, and which one does not.

Children in ancient Greece were taught this story about the creation of dolphins:

Once, on one of his travels, when he was resting on a beach, pirates held him as their hostage because they thought that he was a prince. When he told them that they had made a mistake, they just laughed and continued to sail.

Suddenly, out of the sea sprang vines laden with grapes. They twined all over the ship. The air filled with the sound of tigers roaring.

Horrified, the sailors threw themselves into the water, but instead of letting them drown, Dionysus turned them into dolphins. That is why dolphins are one of the most human-like animals in the ocean.

If we were to teach ID in the science classroom, why wouldn't we have to teach this equally valid explanation of the creation of dolphins?

Re:Who designed the designer?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Meanwhile the same is not true if the universe was formed by "random chance"."

Neat thing about infinity, if you wait long enough then statistically a great many events are possible, including the gradual evolution of a species some of whos members hold beliefs contrary to all evidence.

Best evidence against Intelligent Design:

[hullabalucination]

1. The platypus
2. The Chicago Cubs

Re:Apple ][ was *way* better than the C-64...

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, yeah. Commodore = Fun, Educational, Inexpensive, Great Performance. Apple II = Green Screen.

Nuf Said.

ID People Don't Do This

[Ieshan]

ID People don't want to talk about the intelligent designer. They say things like, "You can't look at a watch and tell things about the watchmaker!", and other absurdities.

If they talk about "God" as the Intelligent Designer, they give up the game and lose. So they talk about the Intelligent Designer as some sort of force we don't need to understand anything about to understand Intelligent Design. It's an absurd argument.

This whole thing was taken care of by Socrates quite some time ago (well, Plato, in Apologia). Socrates asks, "Who believes in Equestrian Phenomena, and does not acknowledge horses?" The answer of course, is no one. "Who believes in human phenomena, and does not acknowledge humans?" Again. "And who believes in divine phenomena, but does not acknowledge gods?" Answer: Intelligent Design proponents.

Re:ID People Don't Do This

[jack_csk]

I agree to your critics of the intelligent designer advocates. The same reasoning that they use can be used to deny every aspects of science studies.
For example, if you ask "Why does it rain" - the intelligent designers can just answer "because God makes it happen".
Imagine if you ask Microsoft tech support "why is my Windows XP crashed?", and they answer "due to the act of God"...

Re:ID People Don't Do This

[Old Wolf]

Does ID include ancient astronaut theories ? IE. Earth has been visited by aliens in the past, who have done a little bit of genetic engineering on humans.

Re:ID People Don't Do This

[ccp]

ID People don't want to talk about the intelligent designer. They say things like, "You can't look at a watch and tell things about the watchmaker!", and other absurdities.

Living in South America, I'm not really acquainted with the ID people, so I'm constantly surprised. I find this gem particularly moronic: looking at a watch will tell you a huge lot about the watchmaker, no Sherlock needed.
Looks like a good deduction exercise.

Cheers,

no-one expects the spanish inquisition

[dark_day]

burn the heretic!!!

oh sorry :-)

You can't talk to the "rabbis" who wrote it down

[Dangero]

Last I checked, you can't talk to dead people. The old testament was written down several thousand years ago. Don't even tell me that you know how to talk to the people that wrote it down.

Tired old stance

[jav1231]

Evolution is as much a stance as anything. The Vatican is simply trying to have it both ways, like many who try to shoehorn evolution into the Genesis account. (Peer pressure can be so powerful, no?) The Bible is offering a source to the origins of life. Evolution is as well. However, science is forever changing. Evolution is a theory, and while it can hardly be debated that closely related species most likely have a common origin it has never sufficiently explained man's origin. Evolution theory will shift and change. One day, I'm convinced, we'll find that all of the "tragic event" mini-theories within it will beg the honest to abandon it as the "gospel truth" many think that it is. Many reputable scientist look at the complexity of life and see some form of ID involved. Others believe that evolution explains it all. I'm not surprised that religious people hold to their belief because that is the nature of religion. I am surprised how vehemently evolution has remained the "religion" of science with all of the wholes and gaps in this theory as a "map" of all of life. Darwin saw clearly that finches of different locales must have had similar origins. He speculated that perhaps we all share a common origin. In the last hundred years we've had everything from "global radiation theory" to out and out falsification of evidence (Javaman, anyone?). I'm amazed at how "fundemental" evolutionists behave as they point the finger at the religious.

Re:Tired old stance

[OrangeTide]

I don't think there is any educated person out there that believes evolution "explains it all". Evolution does not explain the origin of life; ambiogenesis does, as does intelligent design. Evolution explains how creatures change and adapt to their environment over time. It explains why we find fossils of mammals we've never seen before that look sort of but not entirely like mammals we have seen before. Evolution proposes that life and it's encoding in genetics is dynamic. And that it can change enough to actually gradually result creatures that have adapted so much that they are completely different species.

But the question remains, did life spontaneously happen. And there are many theories, but no scientific proof as to the source of life (that I am aware of).

Re:Tired old stance

[jav1231]

Agreed. Go back and read some posts on this subject. You'll not only find people that indeed DO believe evolution explains the origin of life and man but that their belief is every bit as vehement and "religious" as anyone else. My point.

Re:Tired old stance

[OrangeTide]

These are not educated people that we're talking about. People who apparently don't know what the theorey of evolution is, using it to explain away the source of all life is just embarassing.

I don't know where all the life came from, but I would be very interested in any results people had in applying the scientific method to uncover some promising ideas.

On the other side of the coin, people take Intelligent Design way too far to the point of wanting to turn it into a science (which is blasphemy to a true Christian). About as far as you can take ID rationally is to the point of teaching a person what Deism is. It's somewhat amusing to me that fundy christians that are for the teaching of ID in schools are actually proposing teaching of Deism. A belief system that denies the supernatural because if god is perfect he would only have to create the universe once and would not have to continously modify and inspect it. Basically god exists, but you are alone and must rely on your body and your wit to accomplish tasks.

ID is creationism

[phpsocialclub]

ID is creationism that has been repackaged to try and be constitutional.

Anti-evolution folk believe that evolutionary theory makes us nothing but animals and that we are not different then the apes and that this theory must be stopped.

If that is true than there is no need for rigid religeous laws or a belief in god and this march toward societal destruction must be stopped. If humans are nothing buy animals, society will crumble with legalized murder and child eating etc.

ID and creation supporters want to stop the slow movement towards godlessness of society.

This, of course, is crazy. We ARE related to apes and ARE capable of not murdering each other.

If survival of the fittest is not true, why do we bother doing scientific research.

Would it not make more more sense to pray for a vacinne for Avian Flu.

All of this money we are wasting on scientific research could be used for a cure for Gayness or swearing or something else that is destroying society.

If these backward folks have their way we would strip all rational thought from the public school biology in favor of myth.

ID and all of it future versions need to be stopped before they get their foot in the door, they are dangerous theories that should not be taught to schools.

Here is some reading that proves my point:

http://www.antievolution.org/features/wedge.html
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/evolution .html
http://www.nytimes.com/pages/science/sciencespecia l2/

Re:Evolution isn't a theory about the start of lif

[Kelson]

Yeah, arguing that evolution can't explain the start of life is kind of like arguing that molecular chemistry can't explain nuclear physics. They're related issues, but the focus is different, and the fact that we're still trying to figure out exactly how life started doesn't invalidate our theories on how and why it changes.

Ignorant of intelligent design

[Edge00]

The theory of evolution lacks integrity. You can't prove whether or not something occured via evolution. If you are unsure how evolution of something occured, that doesn't mean it didn't occur (according to the theory) but that we just haven't figured it out. That seems like a fallacy to me.

Secondly the original story (by hemos) shows ignorance towards the theory of ID. ID just says that information has to orginate from information. So the Vatican is in line with ID, they acknowledge that information (various organismal genomes) didn't originate randomly but that it orginated with a designer, hence intelligent design. Furthermore ID allows room for evolution. If the world was designed at one point and left to its own devices, then it displays intelligent design. That is regardless of to what extent have evolution may or may not occured.

ID "theory"

[MS-06FZ]

There are a multitude of problems in merging the two "theories".

For starters, one has nothing to do with the other. ID is the philosophical belief that everything was somehow orchestrated. Evolution is a scientific theory (backed by overwhelming observational data) to describe our best understanding of the world we live in.

ID as a philosophy serves as a point for philosophical discussion. It's a worthy thing to discuss, but it isn't science. ID as a "theory" relies on numerous assumptions - including that the designer, for whatever reason, has chosen not to make their existence known through obvious means. So we can't prove or disprove the idea that someone created the universe, nor derive from the mechanical workings of the universe as it's observed any evidence in favor of or against ID.

Science doesn't present a complete understanding of the world (and universe) around us, but it represents the best practical knowledge of it we've been able to infer through rigorous observation and testing processes and logical calculation. It is the process of centuries of work, generations' work built upon the recorded work of previous generations, as we gradually come to understand, bit by bit, the world around us in ways we can examine, test, and apply to real endeavours. So far, of course, it doesn't provide "reasons" for why the universe is, why we exist, if there's a purpose to it all, etc. That is the domain of philosophy.

Personally I think "intelligent design" is flawed as a theory because it's a product of our own egotism. Here's why:

First: there's the assumption that, in the thousands of years humans have been accumulating knowledge, that anything we haven't explained fully must come from something beyond the "mundane workings of the universe". But the reality is that the universe is vast - of course there are still mysteries, we've barely even left our own planet. Yet, we claim that these mysteries are so remarkable that they must have been planned - simply because we cannot explain them. We even claim that we ourselves are so unique, so inexplicable and so complex, that we cannot be a normal product of a vast and complex universe.

Second: There's the other assumption that, since we've assumed that creation must have been the product of some great force beyond the normal workings of the universe, that it must be a process somewhat like ourselves - an intelligence. We claim to be significant enough that some great force must have created us, and then we determine that that force must have been something like ourselves - because we believe ourselves to be the very definition of intelligence, of capability and the capacity to do great things. But the universe is so vast in time and space, and our world so tiny and our history so short in relation to it, that many things greater than ourselves could come and go with little significance. And yet, we plant a larger image of ourselves at the center of it all? I don't buy it.

(And what meaning does "he" have when you refer to a god, when there are no goddesses or other gods? Does god have a penis? If so, what does he do with it? He certainly didn't put it in virgin Mary... It seems a very stupid thing to be insistent about. I always thought that as a "creator" an analogy with the female made more sense - though sex and gender are still meaningless concepts in beings that don't breed sexually...)

Am I the only one...

[Anonymous Coward]

...who read rabbits instead rabbis? :)

./ advocating spiritualism?

[CiaranMc]

"Of course, it'd probably be best if fundmentalists actually talked to, say, the rabbis who wrote the whole thing down."

They're probably pretty hard to contact, having been dead for millennia.

Orthodox Rabbis and Literal Creation Account

[bheilig]

The Orthodox rabbis I've spoken find it amazingly amusing that people take the creation story as literal truth, rather then a story about YHWH's power.

Just want to give a counter point. Of the orthodox rabbis I've spoken with, all of them believe the earth was created in six literal 24 hour periods. This is in Brooklyn.

Brian

Before the Bang

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if you believe the big bang theory and subsequent evolution, there is still some theological issues to solve. Such as who put the matter there to begin with, why did it go bang, why are we ascensioned beings.....

I don't think science really has solved the why to anything. Only the how.

Re:No, it's YHWH because Hebrew doesn't write vowe

[Reality Master 201]

Well, actually, vowel marks are applied to the writing of YHWH in at least some texts. Originally, however, you are correct: the name is written like that because Hebrew didn't write vowels, or at least, not consistently. And indeed, this is a property it likely derived from Egyptian writing either directly or at least inspirationally. In reading, the name is usually substitued for with something like Adanoi.

Some Semitic languages are written in forms that represent vowels, most notably Ethiopic, which developed a very systematic alphasyllabic representation of consonant + vowel combinations.

Re:the problem with an allegorical interpretation.

[Anonymous Coward]

The Old Testament provides seemingly literal genealogies for various figures (including Jesus)

Actually, the Old Testament provides two different and contradicting genealogies for Jesus.

Like the 72 virgins

[Anonymous Coward]

It offers no comfort, solace, or chance at living in heaven. Humans want and are in love with those, and therefore will believe and fight ferociously to retain their belief in what offers it.

You're free to believe in bullshit, that doesn't make it true. Religion is the drug of the
poor, a pack of bullshit so the weak mind do what they're told and enjoy being screwed
with the hope of being rewarded in the after life.

Re:I don't see the big deal behind intelligent des

[Anonymous Coward]

"I don't see why the two theories can't be merged"

That's because you're functionally retarded and don't understand either "theory".

Re:And given the Hindus, some agnostics, etc., etc

[rasactive]

what, are there like 5 scientifically competent non-christians who believe in ID that suddenly make it not complete bullshit?

The little man in the soda machine

[PIPBoy3000]

When I was getting a master's degree in biology education, one of my professors brought up a great thought experiment for his students. The question was how soda machines worked - was there a little man inside who took your money and dispensed the correct soda in the slot?

The idea is that a hypothesis that is testable is a good hypothesis, even if it may eventually be proven incorrect. With a soda machine, you can take it apart and look for clues of a little man inside. If you don't find telltale clues of tiny beds and toiletries, there's likely another explanation.

I'd argue that good mathematical theorems, like scientific ones, can be tested. If you can plug in hundreds of numbers and get the numbers you expect, that's pretty good evidence that you might be on to something. If you get one case where the result doesn't follow your theorem, it may be time to throw it out.

Re:The little man in the soda machine

[Tyler Durden]

I'd argue that good mathematical theorems, like scientific ones, can be tested. If you can plug in hundreds of numbers and get the numbers you expect, that's pretty good evidence that you might be on to something. If you get one case where the result doesn't follow your theorem, it may be time to throw it out.

False. Mathematical theorems are statements that are proven . Mathematical statements that are thought to be true, partially because in all tested examples there are no contradictions, are called "conjectures." Hundreds of numbers supporting a conjecture is nothing when compared to all infinite possibilities.

Mathematics is an a priori discipline (independent of experience) while science, for the most part, is not.

The editor's post is wrong.

[Suspended_Reality]

This article has nothing to do with intelligent design. It's about a completely different theory - the literal genesis creation. The article actually argued in favor of intelligent design - which is to say that evolution happened, and because evolution is so awesome and finely-tuned, it was obviously a reflection that there is a higher power.

To those of you who used this as a chance to blast intelligent design for being ignorant, you are actually the ignorant one because you obviously don't even know what intelligent design is actually about. Again, this article was about the literal genesis creation.

Educate yourselves, people.

Re:The editor's post is wrong.

[Suspended_Reality]

Now I'm mad. How the hell is the parent modified as flamebait, when I'm pointing out that the original submission is titled incorrectly, while those who just start bashing intelligent design (off a flawed premise, I might add) get modified +5 interesting? WTF?

Critical thinking, anyone?

[zettabyte]

If a statement isn't falsifiable, it is impossible for it to be true.

Some magical, unknowable force is at work designing all the creatures on the planet.

There is no conceivable statement (true or false) I can make that can disprove the above statement. Therefore it is not falsifiable. It is not a statement of fact, but rather of subjective opinion.

This is a great article on the subject of Critical Thinking. Here is another.

Re:Critical thinking, anyone?

[BobaFett]

While it's certainly true that there is no way to disprove Intelligent Design, I don't see how you can disprove the alternative either. And I don't mean the evolution of species, that you could disprove. I mean the creation of the first life. The theory, basically, says, that in some organics-rich goo the first DNA formed essentially by accident, at random. What experiment or observation would convince you that this theory is wrong? Another theory is that it was brought from the outer space, but that's really no better, it just moves the location of the first goo elsewhere, besides, this theory is also impossible to disprove.

Even if we reproduced the exact conditions on Earth a billion years ago or so, create a goo of plausible composition, and found that DNA formed in the lab (and then proteins and cell membranes), all that would do is make the theory plausible, even likely. But it does not make it falsifiable! So, what would you need to see, with your own eyes, that would force you to logically conclude that the theory of spontaneous life creation is wrong?

Re:Critical thinking, anyone?

[zettabyte]

Alternative hypothesis: Life was created by organic rich goo.

Statement for falsifiability: No combination of organic rich goo yields life.

I can then go on to give evidence (logical, comprehensive, honest, repeatable evidence) supporting my claim (hypothesis or falsifiable).

On the other hand, if you say: Life was created by an unknowable supreme being which controls all things in the universe.

There is no conceivable statement I can make to claim falsifiabitlity, other than, "No, it wasn't", which doesn't the statement falsifiable. They're both subjective opinion.

Read the articles I linked to. Really. They make a lot of sense. Critical thinking is why we are where we are today. Faith based reasoning told us the world was flat, critical thinking told us it was round.

Not quite

[Lifewish]

That's called abiogenesis and is a completely different area of study. It's true that many people who accept the scientific community's best guesses as to evolution also suspect that abiogenesis occurred naturally, but they are almost completely unrelated fields of study.

So philosophically (neo-Darwinism) they're somewhat similar approaches but scientifically (evolutionary biology) they're very different.

Re:Not quite

[nickname225]

I don't know that I agree. From what I've seen the process looks very much like the process of evolution - starting with a non-living self replicating molecule, or group of molecules - and then through good old fashion variation and natural selection - viola life! If that's not evolution - what is?

Re:Not quite

[Lifewish]

Abiogenesis deals with which of several possible processes gave rise to that "seed" self-replicating molecule. Evolution deals with what happened afterwards.

Examples of theories of abiogenesis include:

• clay surfaces, because clay forms in nice layers and would provide a good scaffold for complex molecules
• inside iron globules, because that creates a stable environment, mimicking the behaviour of modern-day cells
• around deep-sea vents, because of the proliferation of naturally-forming complex chemicals you get there
• just in rockpools or whatever - the early atmosphere of the planet was apparently very conducive to the formation of amino acids and the like

Slightly more detail here.

Re:Not quite

[drxenos]

Than you completely misunderstand Evolution. Nowhere does The Theory of Evolution say, "viola life!" It has nothing to say about the transition from non-life to life. It talks about life changing and adapting to its environment.

Re:Not quite

[beeplet]

I think the other poster was saying the processes of abiogenesis are like those of evolution, not that it is evolution.

I think it's a very reasonable observation. For abiogenesis, we have: molecules exist in many naturally occuring variations; some last longer than others; some are better able to create copies of themselves than others; the best "adapted" become dominant and the process continues. It's a selection process through which the molecules "evolve".

I would even go farther and say that there is not a hard and fast line dividing "life" and "non-life". Is a virus alive? A prion? A self-replicating molecule? I think they exist on a continuum, and the broadest principles of evolution apply to all of it.

Re:Not quite

[drxenos]

I don't know how any of what reflects on my comment. You can liken it to whatever you want, but--unlike what the OP wrote--Evolution is not, nor even close to, poof! now there is life. My comment had nothing to do with him comparing Evolution to abiogenesis. Nor does it address "what is life?" Nor do I care too . So, I do not get your point.

Re:Not quite

[beeplet]

I don't know how any of what reflects on my comment.

Ok, I will try to explain more clearly. The original poster said (and I agree):

From what I've seen the process looks very much like the process of evolution - starting with a non-living self replicating molecule, or group of molecules - and then through good old fashion variation and natural selection - viola life! If that's not evolution - what is?

You say:
You can liken it to whatever you want, but--unlike what the OP wrote--Evolution is not, nor even close to, poof! now there is life.

I read what you're saying as "You can draw the comparison, but they are not the same." In fact I disagree. It is a meaningful comparison to make.

My comment had nothing to do with him comparing Evolution to abiogenesis.

The post you were replying to compared Evolution and abiogenesis. You replied that he was wrong:

Than you completely misunderstand Evolution. Nowhere does The Theory of Evolution say, "viola life!" It has nothing to say about the transition from non-life to life. It talks about life changing and adapting to its environment.

I read that to mean you think that it is ignorant to compare evolution and abiogenesis. I disagree.

So, I do not get your point.

My point is this: your claim that the parent poster "completely misunderstood Evolution" is unfounded.

It already happened

[samjam]

There is no reason to conclude that "if religion had any basis in fact we would only have one religion"; mainly because religion, like science, is subject to acceptance of multiple distinct individual humans. All you show by that statement is a very constricted understanding of religion such that your statement must be true.

"All we have is religions trying to kill other religions off" - WAR
ALL? ALL? Thats all the religions we have? No peacable religins then? No war mongering science either?

Man, you are so far out that you haven't realized that scientific frameworks are a religion and that you seem to be involving yourself in the beginnings of some kind of WAR.

You don't even "validate" your own science (At a guess here, it's not a personal attack, I'm using you as a proto-typical anti-ID person), you just "believe" what your friends "believe" anxious that nothing else should be considered lest it shake your "faith" that there is no eternal God you might be accountable to; and yet science even tries to make man into the eternal universe ruling god! Or do you not hope that one day immortality and space flight will be acheivable?

By which anthropic principle do you claim that we will be the first to achieve this?

If "science" has it's way we will have offspring all over the universe on terraformed planets who claim that "it happened like that, and our space-ancestors are a myth." Deny it if you can, but a rabidly "pro-science" world will lead to the very scenario that you claim you are not part of.

Science is no more fact than religion on an individual level because we don't have the time to verify it all personally, and you can't deny that. There have been and are as many scientific frauds freaks and pitfalls as religious, and you can't deny that.

And you can't deny that the case of ID is what human science is attempting to make true by inter-galactic colonisation. You just insist on no evidence that these humans on this planet are the first, which is a fantastic claim, and you won't consider evidence to the contrary on grounds of faith.

Which is fine, if that is your religion; enjoy!

Sam

Re:It already happened

[abigor]

You're a kook.

Re:It already happened

[ScentCone]

you just "believe" what your friends "believe"

But this is how you show how poorly you understand the difference between science and religion. You don't need to "believe" anything in science. Science is a method. It's means by which to understand the mechanisms that govern the matter and processes that we see around us. Science is not a fact, it's a means by which to determine fact. Religion, on the other hand, offers no such pursuit or framework: it fabricates an untestable mystical explanation for the matter and processes we see, and then says that you have to take it as fact, and that the act of trying to test the validity of those facts is actually sin (and is pointless because only god knows the truth, blah blah).

So, people running a religios operation tell you a set of "facts" they want you to take as true, even as they tell you that the truth isn't really knowable and that faith is required. Science, on the other hand, asks nothing of you, other than honesty. Science says, "here are the tools - try it yourself so that you don't have to believe anything without evidence." Of course, if you're too busy to try everything yourself, you can rely on trusted peer reviews and the knowledge that the underlying scientific method demands continual re-evaluation and a change of understanding whenever improved tools shine a brighter light on the fabric of the universe. Religion acts at every turn to dim that light, or when it's too bright to ignore, to pretend that they've backed that particular piece of science all along, not counting the people they've burned at the stake, etc.

Science is no more fact than religion on an individual level because we don't have the time to verify it all personally, and you can't deny that.

Sure we can deny that. Science is just one big invitation to test each other's findings and prove them wrong. Religion is exactly the opposite. Pointing out where religion has it wrong just gets you kicked out of that religion. But pointing out where a previous scientist was wrong just makes the person who got it right... a scientist with better tools and insight working in a time when more information is available. Science demands to be proven wrong if it's wrong, and religion demands that you believe no matter how wrong it is.

And you can't deny that the case of ID is what human science is attempting to make true by inter-galactic colonisation.

No, I'd say that we'll have to deny that. "Inter-galactic colonisation" is of course nonsense - we've only barely managed to put probes down on nearby planets, let alone attempt any such effort outside of our solar system to a star lightyears away. Never mind other galaxies, billions of lightyears farther away. You want an example of intelligent design? How about purebred horses, fancy roses, or poodles? We use our intelligence all the time to introduce accelerated or otherwise unlikely evolutionary pressure into the lifecycle of animals and plants. Otherwise we wouldn't have large scale crops or domestic animals. That's intelligent design at work. But unlike the religious idiots who think everything came from magic, I can tell you exactly (without any magic required!) how we get miniature horses, Siamese cats, and insect-resistent corn plants. The ID people - showing their limited personal understanding of basic biology, even as they eat food that results from evolution - say that things are just too complicated to be anything but magic. So much like children that it's really quite embarassing.

You just insist on no evidence that these humans on this planet are the first, which is a fantastic claim, and you won't consider evidence to the contrary on grounds of faith.

It's not at all clear what you're actually talking about here. But since you seem to suggest that there's evidence to the contrary of something, it might be helpful if you were to actually say what that evidence is, and how you are able to evaluate that evidence without using... reason, logic, and repeatable tests. You know, science.

Re:It already happened

[samjam]

It's a good job you noticed I'm a kook or you might have to think about what I said.

You're a smart guy, nothing will mislead you I see. Keep on marching, well done!

Sam

Re:It already happened

[samjam]

Gah! Never mistake preview for submit; a worthy answer long gone! And even in work-offline mode mozilla can't recall the preview text. Bah!

I mostly agree with you for your definitions of "science" and "religion"; however you might then classify my religion as science. You seem to recognize the way in which I classify science as religion and understandably you can't apply your label "religion" to it although I think my label religion fits because you described it quite well.

What you call religion I call "priestcraft" and it's abuses are barely religious, just attempts of power mongers to weild power as much as they can, which the communists managed to do just as well without the aid of religion; so if we can agree to refer to what you call religion as "blind unthinkingness" or something worse we are in agreement.

I'm not inclined to repeat all my answer here as it's well past bed time, but to answer the missing point you questioned at the end:

I was suggesting that if we ever are going to succeed in populating the universe there is going to be a lot of planets out there with people on arguing about intelligent design and evolution. I was suggesting that if the idea is real enough for people to hope for, and given the universe is big enough, why suppose on no-evidence that we are going to be first out there? Why not (SETI-style, ID-style) look for evidence that it has happened? Certainly lets not refuse to consider such interpretation of evidence.

My religion is verifiable, science style, and it invokes a loving all powerful God, who doesn't require people to believe blindly till death and hope they get lucky, but still requires and rewards the development of faith, among other traits.

Its interesting how much misunderstanding there can be with common language and common terms but uncommon experiences.

Sam

Re:It already happened

[Darby]

There is no reason to conclude that "if religion had any basis in fact we would only have one religion"; mainly because religion, like science, is subject to acceptance of multiple distinct individual humans. All you show by that statement is a very constricted understanding of religion such that your statement must be true.

Not at all. That's the point he made.
If it were true, don't you think a perfect being could have come up with a way to explain it to everybody that wouldn't constantly degenerate into holy wars?
Since it generally does, that's a very valid argument against its truth.

No peacable religins then?

Plenty that claim to be. Not many that live up to it.

Man, you are so far out that you haven't realized that scientific frameworks are a religion

Science has led to basically everything around you that isn't a tree, a rock, air or an animal (people included). It isn't a religion. It is a process and a method that has continually been validated.
Or did God drop that computer on your desk? Which brand is it? I'm really curious about that.

You just insist on no evidence that these humans on this planet are the first, which is a fantastic claim, and you won't consider evidence to the contrary on grounds of faith.

Faith isn't evidence. If it were, then we'd only have one religion. Back to the original point you fumbled so humiliatingly.

Re:It already happened

[Darby]

Gah! Never mistake preview for submit; a worthy answer long gone! And even in work-offline mode mozilla can't recall the preview text. Bah!

Oh, come on. Don't blame Mozilla or, God forbid, yourself.

It's clearly the designer.
He's embarassed by how idiotic your arguments are that he felt he had to step in on this one and prevent you from making him look even more ridiculous.
Seriously, there's a bit of a noodle stain on your cheek where he smote you. You might want to check that out.

Re:It already happened

[samjam]

It did occur to me!

Sam

Re:It already happened

[samjam]

I'm not sure who fumbled, the poster (me) or the reader (you), so lets give it another go.

Religion, like science is subject to interpretation. The is no scientific concensus on the interpretation of facts, why should we expect a religious concensus (except for certain constrained definitions of religion)?

"don't you think a perfect being could have come up with a way to explain it to everybody that wouldn't constantly degenerate into holy wars?"
I think he "could" have but that contradicts the purpose of this brief life, this brief spot in eternity.

I do think it futile to say "I don't believe in a god, but if I did he would be like THIS and as he obviously isn't, then there can't be one"; or as you said "If there was a god he would explain things such that there would not be any 'holy wars' and there are holy wars" - now the failure is to say "so there obviously isn't a god" when it should be said "so he obviously isn't like THAT" or "so I misunderstood his reason here, if there is a god"

I agree that not many religions live up to various definitions of peacable, but that is a reflection on the people on those religions who often fail to understand their own published doctrine. It's a reflection on people, not doctrine; just as communist purges are no reflection on "not religion". True/good religion is subject to the scientific method just as much as good science is.

Faith is the evidence of things not seen which does lead to the seeing of that evidence, scientists excercise faith in their pursuit of knowledge, and faith in religion can be fulfilled in this life; it certainly is not a "guess and wait till you are dead to see if you are right" game.

The reason we don't have one religion and God doesn't force us to realise one truth is because this life is the opportunity for us to choose and learn by our own experience so that we can receive according to the desires of our heart. There is "eternity" and this brief life isn't it.

I understand that by "religion" you mean "a composite religion of a certain subset of religions that contain certain unpleasent characteristics"

However my point on what non-religionists accept as faith is this:

"Scientists" "hope" to colonize planets but on some grounds insist that this planet is not colonized and refuse to look for evidence as ID may show; for fear that some will say it is evidence of "god" and not extra terrestrial ancestor scientists.

Sam

Not prayer.

[Grendel Drago]

They don't worship saints, they venerate them. There's a difference, which apparently was important enough to behead people over. Just sayin'.

Re:Not prayer.

[Golias]

There's a difference, which apparently was important enough to behead people over. Just sayin'.

That kind of reminds me of the episode of "Bless Me, Father" when they had a joint eccumenical service with the local Anglicans. Pardon me for forgetting character names:

Minister: It's so wonderful to see Catholics and Protestants praying together.

Priest: Oh, no no no. We were not praying together at all! For us, worshipping with Protestants is forbidden. We were not praying with you - you were praying with us.

Minister: That's a very subtle distinction.

Priest (with a mischievous grin): I'm glad you can appreciate it.

Re:Not prayer.

[Gilmoure]

So, what's the difference? What about defenestrate? That's a neat sounding word.

Re:Not prayer.

['nother poster]

They threw saints out windows?!?!?

Re:Not prayer.

[stanmann]

Yes, there is a difference between worship and veneration, just like there is a difference between being decapitated by an axe vs a Guillotine. I believe it has to do with the shape of the basket used to catch the head.

Re:Not prayer.

[KDR_11k]

Calvin would.

Re:I don't see the big deal behind intelligent des

[Skiron]

Heh... good one...

Thank God! (no pun intended)

[tloh]

After all these years of mindless sophistry, an authoritative voice of reason from the religious community has finally stepped up to the plate. Why did it take this long for the stewards of Christianity to recognize the need to police their own? I realize there are countless sects and denominations out there, but surely any one of them would have realized that any one act of stupidity reflects badly on all of them? I am not a religious man myself, but if it *were* up to me, I'd take the first step as a church leader to publicly and emphatically declare that this is *not* the "true" nature of Christianity.

If this is a serious statement from the Vatican, a policy they have the conviction to uphold, then they deserve a lot of kudos for having the wisdom to know and respect the difference between science and religion. I am optimistic that continued development in this direction will be influential and truly productive for everyone as effort is redirected from the religious community from fighting a hopeless defensive war against modernity to helping all those people on earth who are desperately in need of relief from suffering.

Now, is there any hope that the same thing can happen on the political front? What brave soul is willing to attempt a separation of politics from religion in the Islamic community? Is it too much to hope that the leaders of Islam will make a descent effort to repudiate the rampant militarism that has corrupted this religion? We all have to remember that it doesn't have to be like this. In the hayday of Islamic expansion, Islam was extremely tolerant of local customs and cultures among those who were converted. They were the preservers of knowledge in science, math, and philosophy when Europe was plunged into the dark ages. I don't think it is too much to ask for the Muslim community to rediscover this admirable part of their own heritage.

call me crazy...

[Anonymous Coward]

but dont we still call it the THEORY of evolution for a reason?

Anyone can write anything down...

[Chewbacon]

In the beginning there was a cosmic toaster and a boy. The toaster malfunctioned and wouldn't eject the toast it was making, so the boy attempted to remove it with a fork. There was a massive explosion and then there was Slashdot. See? Now what makes that less credible than the bible? I actually found it written on a scroll 5 trillion years old in a garbage can with etched symbols which indicate it came from the center of the universe. No, really! Ok, obviously what I wrote above is a load of bull. And I'm sure there were people thousands of years ago who lived next door to/knew anyone who contributed to any religious text was thinking the same thing.

MOD PARENT UP

[Vorondil28]

As a Christian (and thus, creationist) I totally agree with you. I can believe what I want and parents can teach their kids to believe what they want. It's as simple as that.

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[Anonymous Coward]

Since when does Christian => Creationist?, unless of course you mean Evangelical (i.e. fundamentalist) christian, in which case you are right, Christian == Creationist b/c everyone not an Evangelical is not considered Christian.

Re:Forget it! Zeus did it and is still doing it!

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're right about this I better get to the doctor, because I must be having some sort of infertility problem.

Which literal translation?

[spookymonster]

Greek? Hebrew? Latin?
AFAIK, politics, poor translation skills, lack of a common spelling guide (a.k.a. dictionaries) and fluctuating social values throughout the years have made just about any English translation unreliable, if not downright comical.

Aren't most ID advocates Protestant Evangelicals?

[Logic Bomb]

This is a story about a representative of the Roman Catholic Church. My impression is that most of the really rabid ID-ers in the US are Protestant Evangelicals. They couldn't care less what some Vatican official thinks. So while it's nice to see some rational thinking from the Catholic Church, it doesn't seem to bear much relevance to the current political issue.

It's about the removal of God.

[khasim]

When you look at it from a power structure model, it becomes crystal clear.

With evolution, there is no need to include god. How/Why life started millions/billions of years ago really doesn't matter to modern science. God is no longer necessary to explain why some people get sick and others do not.

Since god is not needed, certain people who derive their "authority" from god have a problem. The established churches can accept evolution ... now. They already have their power base.

The people who are pushing ID are the ones who are trying to justify their "authority" by questioning the established authority of Science via the Theory of Evolution.

That's all. They want the authority, but they don't want to spend the time to advance in the Catholic church nor do they have the mental capacity to become a leading scientist. Which is why you see people like Behe publishing books. It's an easy way to become an "authority" in a field when you don't matter much in any other field.

Re:Evolution isn't a theory about the start of lif

[misleb]

Certainly "evolution" can be applied to many things from organisms to human language. But despite what Dawkins may insinuate, biological evolution specifically refers to life AFTER it started. Before life, it would be geochemical evolution or something along those lines. One needs to be specific about exactly what kind of evolution one is talking about (and no, I don't mean macro- vs. micro- evolution. That is just an ignorant, arbitrary distinction with no real scientific meaning.)

-matthew

For cryin' out loud!

[Fished]

For the umpteenth time, Intelligent Design and creationism are not the same thing.

There are certainly many creationists who hold to intelligent design. However, there are creationists who regard the whole ID movement as missing the point.

Intelligent design argues (or attempts to argue) from scientific evidence, that evolution is not a sufficient explanation for different species without some sort of guiding force. Creationism argues that evolution is not compatible with Genesis.

These are very different things. There are people in the Intelligent Design community (e.g. Michael Behe) who are not fundamentalists and who would feel no need to defend Genesis as a literal account of the origins of the earth. It would be possible (although I have to admit I can't name a case) for someone of any religious persuasion to hold to Intelligent Design. The Intelligent Designer doesn't have to be the Christian God, nor does it even need to be a God at all. It could be little green men.

The assumption that intelligent design and creationism are the same thing is little more than a smeer campaign that allows people to completely bypass the arguments (which, whether they are faulty or not are not religious arguments) that ID proponents make in support of their position. The way the scientific community has attacked ID is sickening: it is almost always founded in ad hominem (circumstnatial and otherwise) attacks rather than actual criticism of their arguments.

For what it's worth, I am an ordained minister, but I am not a creationist. If anything, I regard the whole debate as irrelevant--no matter what your account of human origins, God's status as creator is secure in my book. But let's do try to understand the terms we throw around.

Re:For cryin' out loud!

[AvitarX]

The designer cannot be little green men.

they came from somewhere.

Re:For cryin' out loud!

[Fished]

Sure the designer can be little green men.

For the umpteenth time, ID is not an account of creation. Intelligent design is an account of how the species we observe on earth came about. It could well be that somewhere else little green men came about (either by direct divine creation or by evolution or what have you) and then came to earth and manipulated the design here by science and/or technology unknown.

You're drinking the establishment kool-aid by assuming that intelligent design is equivalent to creationism. It's not. It has different methods, different assumptions, and different explanations.

Re:For cryin' out loud!

[blamanj]

While ID "as described in the literature" is not the same thing as creationism, the fact remains that ID was "designed" because creationism was failing.

Some of the articles published by the ID crowd have been shown to be earlier creationist texts with the references to God/creation/etc. removed and standard ID buzz-words inserted in their place.

Their strategy, outlined in the Discovery Institute's Wedge Document is stated quite baldly: "To replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and hurnan beings are created by God".

Sorry, but you've been fooled.

Re:For cryin' out loud!

[Ranger]

For the umpteenth time, Intelligent Design and creationism are not the same thing.

In the sense that humans are not chimpanzees that is true, but humans and chimpanzees had common ancestors. Humans are not direct descendents of chimpanzees; however, intelligent design is a direct descendent of creationism. Intelligent design is an elaborate begging the question fallacy. Everything about ID smacks of deception. As Hamlet once said "The devil hath power To assume a pleasing shape." The proponents of ID fail to see that the only ones they are deceiving is themselves. And they get annoyed when everyone else doesn't fall for it.

The power of faith in a god or the God of the Bible (pick your flavor: King James, Catholic, etc.) is about how you live your life. It is concerned with the Rock of Ages not the age of rocks. It is not about imposing your views on others. Some believe they must preach the word. It doesn't meany anyone has to listen or be converted. But a person who lives as a Christian says more than one who says you must live as a Christian. It is beyond the comprehension of most Christians that God is a metaphor. In fact God forgot he was a metaphor.

Let's make this clear once and for all that ID is nothing but another flavor or creationism. How many atheists are proponents of intelligent design?

Re:For cryin' out loud!

[Fished]

Let's make this clear once and for all that ID is nothing but another flavor or creationism. How many atheists are proponents of intelligent design?

And this is a lovely example of a circumstantial ad hominem. You are rejecting the argument, unexamined, because of the people who make it. And it stinks.

Re:For cryin' out loud!

[Petrushka]

Essentially what you're saying is it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, came out of a duck egg that was laid by a female duck, has the same genes as a duck, but under no circumstances must it ever be confused with a duck.

Re:For cryin' out loud!

[cpeterso]

Can ID and Evolution coexist? Would an ID supporter believe that an Intelligant Design created the Universe, but then the Universe started evolving as it ran its own course (ala deism)??

Re: For cryin' out loud!

[Black Parrot]

> For the umpteenth time, Intelligent Design and creationism are not the same thing.

ID "theory" exists for no reason other than to make creationism appear to be scientifically respectable.

> There are certainly many creationists who hold to intelligent design. However, there are creationists who regard the whole ID movement as missing the point.

Yes, various flavors of creationist disagree on a lot of things. But we still call them creationists, and for that reason we call ID apologists creationists as well.

> Intelligent design argues (or attempts to argue) from scientific evidence

They don't actually attempt to; they merely wish to give the appearence of doing so.

> There are people in the Intelligent Design community (e.g. Michael Behe) who are not fundamentalists

For those who haven't been following the story, when Behe testified in the Dover trial he claimed to be working under an alternative definition of science, and under cross examination he admitted that astrology would have to be accepted as a science under his definition.

The man is a crank.

> The assumption that intelligent design and creationism are the same thing is little more than a smeer campaign

No, it's a fact. If you ask where the first intelligent designer came from, the only answer that doesn't violate the precepts of ID is that some god(s) created it. That's creationism, whether it conforms to Genesis or not.

> that allows people to completely bypass the arguments (which, whether they are faulty or not are not religious arguments) that ID proponents make in support of their position. The way the scientific community has attacked ID is sickening: it is almost always founded in ad hominem (circumstnatial and otherwise) attacks rather than actual criticism of their arguments.

I've seen lots of criticism of ID's claims. I even post some now and then.

Re:For cryin' out loud!

[n54]

Thank you for making that post, it is good to see that there are actually other people out there in the world who know what they're talking about rather than rehashing what their surroundings think is "right".

With posts like yours I hope the /. groupthink can actually be somehow improved, after all it would be nice and probably enlightening for all to see discussions on the science concerned rather than the present soup mostly consisting of strawman fallacies.

Re:For cryin' out loud!

[AvitarX]

tough break on the troll mod, not appropriate.

But how does ID help explain or predict anything? It is very vague, and can even include evolution (from my understanding).

Re:For cryin' out loud!

[drac]

You're right, and you're wrong. Intellectual Design exists as an idea, and as a political movement.
Intellectual Design the idea is distinct from Creationism; Intellectual Design the American political movement, however, is firmly rooted in Creationism, is funded by fundamentalist creationists, and shows no signs of being distinct from the American Creationist movement in any real sense.

Behe is not to my knowledge a member of the American Fundamentalist/ Creationist movement, though most ID'ers are. However, his own ideas are apparently a result of his conversion to Christianity.

I'd suggest that before you dismiss criticisms as a smear campaign, that you make sure that no aspects of the smear are true. Many antiCreationists are only too happy to have ammunition, 'tis true, but that does not mean that they are wrong.

Re:For cryin' out loud!

[Fished]

tough break on the troll mod, not appropriate.

I tend to agree, but that's Slashdot. I've had "excellent" Karma for so long that it hardly matters (before they stopped showing raw numbers, my positive Karma was 300+)

But how does ID help explain or predict anything? It is very vague, and can even include evolution (from my understanding).

Well... you've got to ask, "ID according to whom?" There are substantial differences between ID as presented by (for example) Behe and Dembski. Behe is, to my ear, the most scientifically sophisticated, but I'm no scientist. (I am a theologian, both Academically and in the religious sense. Theologically, I would agree with the OP that to interpret Genesis literally is silly. However, ID doesn't need to intepret Genesis literally, and that is one of the main points at which it is not the same thing as "creationism." Christian tradition has interpreted Genesis 1-12 figuratively since at least Origen, Augustine (4th century, one of the great theologians of all time even though I often disagree with him) specifically condemned a literalist reading of Gen 1-12, and you could make a strong argument that Paul's interpretations are figuratively motivated. )

In any case, ID in most forms is perfectly compatible with Evolution, differing from the mainstream in holding that Natural Selection is not a sufficient explanation for evolution. Frankly, I can't see what difference it makes, nor can I see why the scientific community is so stirred up about it. Stipulating that Evolution is the foundation of modern biology (although I can't see how) I can't see it makes a bit of difference whether that evolution is somehow guided by some sort of designer.

Re:For cryin' out loud!

[AvitarX]

I live in a fairly Liberal area (nothern delaware) and we were told at the start of biology that evolution is a scientific therory and therefore what was tought in science class. Personaly beliefs were OK and that many people believe that evolution is guided by a higher power, but that is irrelevent so will not be a basis of any teching. There was no mention of ID (as it was a new buzzword at the time). That seamed perfectly acceptable to me, and to my fundelmentalist friends.

Honestly, the class that really posed the bigest problem for the fundementalists was earth scince.

I think the big fear, based on fact, is that people are pushing ID as a religious idea, and a way to bring religion into the Goddless science room.

The reason people are up in arms about ID is because school boards are trying to skirt the constitution by introducing a predominantly theological idea into public schools (there is a district in PA (I think) that has notes from board members basically being like, well we have to tech this Godless evolution, now lets use ID to bring him back in).

I am personally an athiest, and think that even though things are extraordinary, there was a lot of time for it to happen. I do think if there is any higher power that has any (even minor) interest in us obviously ID is a reality through at least minor guiding of mutations. To me the idea of a belief in God requires the belief that, at the very least, evolution is guided by ID. But that doesn't mean it should be in a science class. From what I am seeing ID could be its own class.

Re:For cryin' out loud!

[Fished]

I am personally an athiest, and think that even though things are extraordinary, there was a lot of time for it to happen. I do think if there is any higher power that has any (even minor) interest in us obviously ID is a reality through at least minor guiding of mutations. To me the idea of a belief in God requires the belief that, at the very least, evolution is guided by ID. But that doesn't mean it should be in a science class. From what I am seeing ID could be its own class.

Here's the thing. The only point at which ID necessarily differs from the traditional scientific account is in its supposition of something more than random mutation involved in evolution. (Granted, neo-Darwinism makes it a bit less than random mutation, but I have yet to see the high school science text that gets into that.)

Now, let's stipulate for the moment that the earth is 4-5 billion years old (as ID and the mainstream scientific hypothesis both do), that some sort of evolution happened (as most forms of ID and MSH do): at that point, the only question under debate is the underlying telos of evolution. Is evolution random, or is it going towards some sort of end? And, even if it is random, can we say that "God is in the dice?" (which is more or less what I believe.)

You might well say that, even if there is a teleology to evolution, that is not a scientific question, and I would tend to agree. Science is the study of means, not ends. Yet surely if the supposition of a purposive element in evolution is a religious (or perhaps philosophical) question, then the insistence that there is no purpose is no more scientific?

Put another way, isn't the scientific establishment, by insisting on teaching to every high school student in America that evolution occurs without any underlying pattern imposing a religious viewpoint of its own? Namely, isn't it imposing deism at best, and perhaps a functional atheism? And isn't this overstepping the evidence by a good bit? (Elementary logic: absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.)

Once you stop trying to interpret ID through the lense of creationism, it seems like what's going on here is a very significant and determined effort by an agenda-driven scientific establishment to surpress any interpretation that leaves room for divine involvement. From what I've seen, none of the bills on the table demand "equal time for God." Instead, they require that science teachers do much what you describe in your post: acknowledge that evolution is a theory, and that some have argued that there is a designer. It takes five minutes, and I really can't see how it does any harm unless someone is trying to use tax dollars to teach atheism. In fact, to me this seems nothing more than common courtesy to a minority in the population for whom it is very important.

Slashdot as a Religious Think Tank

[stef0x77]

I was amazed to see this on the front page. But I'm shocked to see a slashdot editor using slashdot.org as a soap box for his personal beliefs.

I don't care what what Hemos thinks about ID, anymore than I care what he thinks about abortion or the afterlife.

If this is where slashdot is going I'll go somewhere else for my technical news from now on.

How about Slashdot?

[flibuste]

So, reading this, I am thinking to myself....Slashdot did not evolve from amoeba (more like 'to'), and apparently has no intelligent design. How'd you guys did it?

Bird Flu.

[darkmeridian]

The bird flu will only become a international problem if the virus mutates from a bird-to-human ailment to a human-to-human problem. In other words, if it evolves. Why should we be worried at all, then? If it does change, then there is intelligent design at work. And if God wants to wipe us out, who are we to say no?

People will say, "Oh, but God created evolution." Nice try. Where in Genesis does it say, "God created ape. Ape became man." Nowhere.

Actually I agree with gp

[Lifewish]

If you read what he actually said, you'll see he was advocating teaching the assorted scientific theories (which currently are all variations on evolution) in science class and the assorted religious theories (which are mostly variations on creationism) in theology class (what schools where I come from call Religious Education). This seems to me to be an excellent approach to the situation.

As long as they teach Flying Spaghetti Monsterism of course. I want to see that belief system in a textbook, dammit.

Re:Actually I agree with gp

[jc42]

As long as they teach Flying Spaghetti Monsterism of course. I want to see that belief system in a textbook, dammit.

As long as they give equal space to Invisible Pink Unicornism. Or else you'll have a big political fight on your hand (unlike the current situation ;-).

Really; wouldn't it be fun to see both in a textbook? I wonder if it would be possible for a publisher to sneak them in without it being discovered beforehand? The kids would probably love it.

Re:Actually I agree with gp

[Darby]

As long as they teach Flying Spaghetti Monsterism of course. I want to see that belief system in a textbook, dammit.

As long as they give equal space to Invisible Pink Unicornism. Or else you'll have a big political fight on your hand (unlike the current situation ;-).

The downside is that in a religious context, those ideas would be classified as extremist whackjob cults or somesuch.
In a scientific context, they are identical to the "standard" religious views.
That's what makes them so great.

Granted, I'd love to see them get the great place in history that they have earned.

Re:Actually I agree with gp

[jc42]

That sounds about right. And there are also groups like the Navajo and Hopi who have made serious comments about demanding equal time for their creation myths. That would be more difficult for the Christian fundamentalists to dismiss, since these aren't spoofs.

Actually, when I was in high school, I would have thought it fun to have chapters on such myths. They may not be technically correct, but they tell us some interesting things about how our ancestors sometimes did things. And just in case anyone gets too uppity about how far we've advance, it helps to have a reminder that there are still people who believe some of those stories despite all the evidence.

There are courses on such topics in a lot of colleges, of course. It's quite a proper topic for a joint history/anthropology course. Some history-of-science courses also teach about relevant early attempts to explain our world.

I wonder if the Flat Earth Society has tried to crash the ID party? It might be fun if they could start pushing for inclusion in science texts.

PS

[karzan]

PS:

1) Evolution is not a theory about how life arose (as you say 'out of a chaotic pool of meaningless chemicals'. It is a theory about how life has changed and adapted over time. It is totally agnostic as to how life arose.

2) How is anything that I said anti-religious? I said that all of those religious beliefs are perfectly legitimate as religious beliefs, just not to conflate them with science. I find it ironic that you consider this anti-religious when Christian philosophers spent a large part of the middle ages arguing that trying to prove the existence of God was futile, because the whole point of belief in God was faith, and to try to subvert this would defeat the purpose. If anything, it's more pro-religion to keep it isolated from science and declare it has independent legitimacy.

That might be difficult.

[derubergeek]

Of course, it'd probably be best if fundmentalists actually talked to, say, the rabbis who wrote the whole thing down.

Last I heard, the rabbi who wrote the whole thing down (Moses) was dead. But hey, it's probably worth a try.

Why does this come as a shock?

[spect3r]

A cardinal stating that "if the bible was read correctly one might see the similarities between Genesis and let's say darwinism" does not translate to "Intelligent design is false"... to me at least.. I do not see where anyone (besides the pot-stirrers) would get that idea from. MAN do you ever have to be careful with what you say these days. It sick.

Why?

[Aslan72]

Is this relevant for slashdot? Mod me down if you wish, but I thought that if there's one thing topics like this bring out is a whole bunch of people on both sides that hate each other...

--pete

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

We don't hate the people that believe in ID and its evil step-father Creationism, we just think they are dumb as rocks. Actually, the rocks have proved that evolution is real and creationism is bunk, so they are actually dumber than rocks.

finally a voice of common sense

[Anonymous Coward]

This has to be the most common sense argument that I have heard on the subject of evolution.

What the anti-evolutionists do not realize is that religious truths such as those found in Genesis are not the same as the scientific truths described in the literature on evolution.

Furthermore, evolution is a scientific FACT, while the mechanisms behind it (punctuated equilibria, et al) are the theories that underly that fact. You only have to say "she has her mother's eyes" as testimony to evolution being a fact.

Nope, try again.

[Otto]

Intelligent Design is the idea that God manipulated and brought upon evolution.

See, this is one of the major problems with Intelligent Design. Nobody seems to know just what the fuck it actually is.

For the record, the idea of intelligent design is that the design of biology is too complex to have evolved into that state. That some higher power designed it instead of evolution.

But ID doesn't say that this higher power guided evolution! No, Intelligent Design rejects evolution entirely, albeit not in so many words. Because if you have evolution but then take away natural selection (in favor of "intelligent") and random mutation (in favor of "design"), then you no longer really have evolution, do you?

Re:Nope, try again.

[wherrera]

yes, you do. There is a difference between evolution and natural selection. Rejection of pure (random/non-intelligent) natural selection as the only factor in the origin of life and its many genera does not exclude acceptance of evolution any more than acceptance of horse breeding as the origin of the Shetland pony excludes evolution :).

Re:Nope, try again.

[judmarc]

Since the full title of Darwin's book is "On The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life," the parent is correct: "Evolution," in the sense it is commonly understood as the scientific theory that Darwin originated, does indeed require natural selection. Or to put it another way, if selection is not random, then it is not "intelligently guided" natural selection, it is not "natural" selection at all.

Re:Nope, try again.

[wherrera]

If you've read the last paragraphs of Darwin's _Origin of Species_ you will have seen that he was not then willing to fully exclude non-random causes in life's origins.

Re:Nope, try again.

[Kazoo the Clown]

But ID doesn't say that this higher power guided evolution! No, Intelligent Design rejects evolution entirely, albeit not in so many words. Because if you have evolution but then take away natural selection (in favor of "intelligent") and random mutation (in favor of "design"), then you no longer really have evolution, do you?

Yes, ID apparently claims that the "Intelligent Designer" was not powerful enough to create a system that evolves, and therefore must have micro-managed everything.

Re:Nope, try again.

[The_Dougster]

Yes, ID apparently claims that the "Intelligent Designer" was not powerful enough to create a system that evolves, and therefore must have micro-managed everything.

O_o

Umm, yeahhh... Gotcha. Yep, them numbers just don't add up. I mistakenly assumed that "Intelligent Design" was actually an intelligent hypothesis made by intelligent people.

God, to me, seems to be more of a "sower and reaper" type. Maybe Angels were created using Intelligent Design, but I think He used other means to manufacture us hoomans. We're a bit of an unknown to God, otherwise why would He have to keep slapping us back in the right direction every time our civilizations get all wicked and decadent? Its obvious we're being farmed.

Re:Nope, try again.

[msuarezalvarez]

Yet people may be willing to exclude his unwillingness. Just as we mostly ignore Newton's astrological writings.

I doubt anyone seriously wants to start reading Darwin's writings as the ultimate truth...

Re:Nope, try again.

[judmarc]

If you've read the last paragraphs of Darwin's _Origin of Species_ you will have seen that he was not then willing to fully exclude non-random causes in life's origins.

Not in life's origins, but in evolution from those origins.

The Catholic Church...

[bazmonkey]

...has had the curse/fortune of having spent the last 1600 or so years being the largest single Christian denomination. Acting as the source of true interpretation of their religion (inspiried by God and such), they've often talked themselves into horrible situations, like rationale for taking money to pardon sins (which is over now), purgatory, limbo, and various scenarios involving unbaptized babies, people who sinned since their last confession, Africans unexposed to Christianity, etc. It also, however, has tempered them in matters such as this.

Since I've been alive (ok, it's only 22 years, but still), Catholicism's view has been that the better part of Genesis, Revelations, a few other events, and various numerical figures (read: 700-year old men) that simply don't make sense, are poetic in nature, fable-like, or simply misread (saying a man lived 300 years may have simply meant that it was another 300 years before another noteworthy person came around important enough that a person considered this group of people as the family of such-and-such as opposed to the original guy, for example). At least since Vatican II, the Church has been somewhat cooperative regarding matters of science, and really does try to make sense in the context of matters of fact.

Especially in America, we don't often realize that Fundamentalism is for the most part a very recent, very American phenomenon. People who believed what the Bible said 400 years ago simply didn't know better, they weren't fundamentalist. It's a modern occurence that, given convincing, sensible, objective scientific knowledge, a person consciously chooses to believe otherwise.

It's something to watch out for, especially with a dominant conservative faction in place, whose members take their cues from the oft-Fundamentalist right. At least for 2 1/2 more years, these people comprise the loudest voice of our country.

In anticipation of any replies, no, I'm not Catholic anymore. As much as the Church has tried to mesh their thoughts and ideas with that of logical reality, evolution blessed me with a brain, and I'd rather mesh those thoughts myself.

Re:The Catholic Church...

[Anonymous Coward]

when a person was 'great' they added years to his life to show that greatness; the great things he did would take a normal person lifetimes to do so they reflected the achievment by implying he had lived for multiple lifetimes.

ie, a normal person might live for 80 years but bill gates lived for 8000 years.

Re:The Catholic Church...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey? Is Christianity like the only religion in the world? Where are all the other Fundamentalists you so conveniently omitted? Sure, America is the Great Big Satan but there's plenty others who live by strict adherence to the principles of their religion a la Fundamentalism(even before that was an "American phenomenon"), but it's funny how it's always Christianity that takes the potshots. That's all this Slashdot "News for Nerds" is today, troll on about religion.

Re:The Catholic Church...

[drgonzo59]

You are right that traditionally the early church and the present day direct descendants of that Church (Catholics and Orthodox) have never interpreted the Bible literally. Fundamentalism is a relatively recent (compared to 2000 years church history) development.

By the way, I asked an Orthodox priest once what the Orthodox think about Evolution and Genesis and he said "If the science found that it took place, then it took place and we believe that is how God worked". I was expecting he would say that "The world was created in 7 days" and then I would start an argument with him about it, but his answer left me speechless.

Re:The Catholic Church...

[Shelled]

My understanding is that literal interpretation was a reaction to the Catholic church, direct communication with a creator instead of separated by middlemen in robes. The RC church birthed fundamentalism.

Re:The Catholic Church...

[Rolgar]

Pretty much true. The Catholic Church places final authority in the bishops, who use scripture to inform their faith, and pass their faith and authority on to new bishops.

When the Protestants decided to break with the Church, they knew that they couldn't claim authority decended through 1500 years of bishops, so Luther said that the Bible alone (sola scriptura) was the final authority of all belief and truth. Since he could not force someone to give him authority, he made the bible the final authority, he made himself its interpreter.

However sola scriptura rapidly spun into two different interpretations. Luther claimed traditional teaching was true as long as it didn't directly contradict the bible. Most other sola scriptura folks said that something had to be literally be written in the scriptures for it to be true. So Luther could profess a belief that Mary's body was taken into heaven after death, but Zwingli and Calvin said that since it wasn't in the scripture, it didn't happen. Modern fundamentalists are a further extension of the Calvinist movement, that something must be written in the bible for it to be true.

The actual Fundamentalist and Evangelical movements were spawned as a reaction against liberal (lax?) practice and theology in America in the late 1800s, with the publishing of The Fundamentals in 1909.

But this is intelligent design!

[LWATCDR]

" he said at a Vatican press conference. He said the real message in Genesis was that "the universe didn't make itself and had a creator"."

How is this a rejection of intelligent design. The universe had a creator. It was designed.
This statement only moves the argument about intelligent design to the cosmic vs the biological level.
I believe in a creator of the universe but I have to say that it is very strange logic to call this a rejection of intelligent design. It is at best a defining of it.

Re:But this is intelligent design!

[Anonymous Coward]

Simply put, God set off the big bang and let the universe evolve on it's own. No need to micro-manage/design every organism.

Re:But this is intelligent design!

[Anonymous Coward]

Intelligent design is precisely the idea that argument about the identity of a creator, if any, is a scientific question. The Vatican here points out it is in fact a theological question, entirely rejecting ID.

Or more simply:

FUNDAMENTALIST: The world is complicated and there for God exists for a fact.

BONIFACE: Please direct all queries about God to myself, not to biologists.

Re:But this is intelligent design!

[istaz]

i've read somehere about this religious book that explicitly explained how human is made from a sperm to cells, then after a period of time in the mom's womb - a soul is whisphered.. then walla birth. couldn't recall which book was it.

Re:But this is intelligent design!

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe in a creator of the universe but I have to say that it is very strange logic to call this a rejection of intelligent design.

Hmm.

Get some alum. Make a saturated solution with water. Use as much water as you like.

Pour off some of your saturated solution into a separate, smaller container. Tightly seal the main solution. Allow the solution in the smaller container to evaporate for a while, until seed crystals form.

Grab a seed crystal and tie it with a piece of monofilament or wire.

Suspend this in the original batch of saturated water. Allow this to evaporate.

For as long as you like, and as long as you have large enough containers, you can keep making alum saturated water and suspending this crystal in it and allowing to evaporate.

Congratulations. The crystals did not make themselves, and had a creator. You have created a crystal without "designing" a damn thing. Creation does not imply design. You started the process and sat back to see how it would develop.

(Two things. One, I may have some of those steps wrong; it's been a long time since I made crystals. Two, I believe in a Creator, too. I just happen to believe that, kind of like the crystals, this creator started a process with the Big Bang and then sat back to see just what the Bang would do.)

Now I'm certain

[zappepcs]

that I made the right choice to create my own religion, and follow it where it leads me... I no longer have to justify anything I believe against anything anyone else believes...

I feel good about myself today now

Is it me?

[penguinbrat]

Disclaimer: I do believe in God...

Is it me, or did the core of the christian religion just shoot them selves in the foot?

If they are saying that the book of Gensis is nothing more that a fictional tale about how the universe was created (for what ever reason), and that book is the basis for the rest of the old testimant (I mean it is the first book from Moses - are they saying he stretched/made up the truth? Was the great flood fictional?), which the new testimant is derived from (AFAIK) - wouldnt that mean that the entire bible (both old and new) are fictional tales??? In other words - isn't this a little like saying the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy is a true story but the "Hobbit" was fictional?

This doesnt sound to good for one of the (if not the) biggest religions in the world =(

Re:Is it me?

[pudge]

If they are saying that the book of Gensis is nothing more that a fictional tale about how the universe was created

They aren't.

Synthesis of the theories needed

[ashtophoenix]

Anybody who claims to explain the whole process of creation of the universe and its evolution, by either 'Just Evolution' or 'Just ID' has simply not thought very sincerely about the whole question. Of course, the universe started from somewhere and for a certain purpose. The tools used to achieve that purpose (the purpose being evolution) were those as 'natural selection'. Of course there is an intelligent will governing all the processes. Of course there is science and theories and evolutionn BUT that is NOT all. There is that which is higher than science and reason and again anyone denying this has a lot to discover (which is good since that is a vista for progress!)

Re:Synthesis of the theories needed

[MightyMartian]

Of course, the universe started from somewhere and for a certain purpose. The tools used to achieve that purpose (the purpose being evolution) were those as 'natural selection'.

I'd like to ask you why I ought to accept either one of your claims. Why did the Universe have to start at all, and why should it have a purpose? I don't find either claim self-evident.

Re:Synthesis of the theories needed

[ashtophoenix]

If you are looking for an answer purely based on reason/science (an objective answer), then I don't think I have one for you. Since at this point I have no doubts whatsoever that reason is an important step in evolution, but not by far the final step. So there's something higher than reason, and consequently the highest being obviously cannot be represented in terms of something lower than itself (that is reason). As for why did the universe start at all? I don't have a very good answer to that but a somewhat vague one, which I won't write here since at this point I'm not very clear about it. But consider this: We have some consciousness of the universe, its existence. So something does exist in some kind of consciousness. Which means it had to have come from some source...and tracing back to the origin, one would have to conclude that the origin itself is ever-existing...a higher being that wasn't created, but that created. Now, if that higher being is so High, higher than reason, and has created this universe, then there has to a purpose for which this process has been started. And hints of the fulfilment of this purpose can be seen in evolution...the start of the universe from pure matter, to life, to mind ... and beyond. (Not all of these ideas are mine so I don't take credit for them, but I do believe in them)

Wake up

[Anonymous Coward]

Wake up and smell the coffee: there is no God. There is no Santa Claus either.

The simple fact that I have to post this anonymously to avoid being flamed to extinction (both on /. and in the real world) should tell you how much religious blindness and supersition still have a role in today's world.

I find that scary. Very scary.

Re:Wake up

[Anonymous Coward]

Care to offer some proof for your assertion?

Re:Wake up

[FooAtWFU]

Curiously, I don't find you flamed to extinction. I do, however, see rather more incendiary responses (though few explicit flames) to various people higher in the threads for several people who say that they are Christians and they believe in some type or another of intelligent design. So, thank you, but please stop pretending that athiests are a repressed minority, at least on Slashdot.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.

Re:Evolution isn't a theory about the start of lif

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.gotquestions.org/who-created-God.html/

who created god?

Simple answer is that no one created god. God has always existed.

and if something as complex as god doesn't require a creator - then neither do we

That would assume that god is made up of the same material that humans are made of.

Actually...

[hullabalucination]

The story of Christ is recounted not only in the Bible but in other historical documents of the day.

Present-day religious scholars find it remarkable that there's very little independent confirmation for the existence and ministry of Jesus apart from Christian sources.

The following excerpt is from a Christian ministry Website, http://www.leaderu.com/truth/1truth21.html

1.1.1 In the first century or so after the death of Jesus there are very few references to Jesus in non-Christian literature.

(a) The brief notice in Tacitus Annals xv.44 mentions only his title, Christus, and his execution in Judea by order of Pontius Pilatus. Nor is there any reason to believe that Tacitus bases this on independent information-it is what Christians would be saying in Rome in the early second century. Suetonius and Pliny, together with Tacitus, testify to the significant presence of Christians in Rome and other parts of the empire from the mid-sixties onwards, but add nothing to our knowledge of their founder. No other clear pagan references to Jesus can be dated before AD 150/1/, by which time the source of any information is more likely to be Christian propaganda than an independent record.

(b) The only clear non-Christian Jewish reference in this period is that of Josephus Antiquities XVIII.63-64, the so-called Testimonium Flavianum. Virtually all scholars are agreed that the received text is a Christian rewriting, but most are prepared to accept that in the original text a brief account of Jesus, perhaps in a less complimentary vein, stood at this point /2/. Josephus' passing mention of 'Jesus, the so-called Messiah' in Antiquities XX.200 is hard to explain without some previous notice of this Jesus, especially since Josephus elsewhere makes no reference to Christianity, nor even uses the term Christos of any other figure. The different and less 'committed' version of the Testimonium preserved in a tenth-century Arabic quotation from Josephus/3/, while it is unlikely to represent the original text, does testify to the existence of an account of Jesus in Josephus' work underlying the Christianized text. But reconstruction of what Josephus wrote is necessarily speculative.

(c) Rabbinic traditions about Jesus /4/ recall him as a sorcerer who gained a following and 'led Israel astray', and so 'was hanged on the eve of the Passover'. Some of the relevant passages may date from the second century AD, but they are very obscure, and bear little relation to the Jesus his own followers remembered. Their polemical nature and their lack of interest in factual data does not create confidence in their potential as historical evidence for Jesus.

This DOESN'T contradict Intelligent Design.

[ZombieRoboNinja]

Correct me if I'm mistaken, but I thought the basic premise of Intelligent Design was one of guided evolution. It doesn't reject evolution itself, but rather the theory of natural selection, saying that God "stepped in" at key moments to guide us as we evolved into humans.

If this is the case, then what the Catholic church is saying here doesn't conflict at all, as far as I can tell. It conflicts with Creationism, yes, but not with the moderate theory of Intelligent Design.

Of course, I still personally don't think IDT holds any water. It's basically a reformulation of old philosophical arguments that David Hume was shooting down centuries ago. And I can't for the life of me imagine why any fundamentalist Christian would want to confirm their faith through the scientific method - even if they CAN establish that there is some sort of intelligent design in the world, surely the idea of a humaniform God whose son was incarnated 2000 years ago is less probable than other available explanations.

Re:This DOESN'T contradict Intelligent Design.

[MightyMartian]

Correct me if I'm mistaken, but I thought the basic premise of Intelligent Design was one of guided evolution. It doesn't reject evolution itself, but rather the theory of natural selection, saying that God "stepped in" at key moments to guide us as we evolved into humans.

That really depends upon which ID advocate you ask, and where you ask them. There's a lot of wink-wink-nudge-nudge in ID circles. Some will readily admit to evolution, while others are in fact much more in the Special Creation camp. That's why ID is so vague, has so little to ultimately say. It has to remain as nebulous and neutral to any specific claim as possible, so as to keep the Big Tent up. If ID was to become an actual claim as to evolution it would either simply become plain, unmasked Creationism or just a form of theistic evolution. Since Special Creationist and Theistic Evolutionist types aren't exactly the best of friends in many cases, ID has been boiled down until it says absolutely nothing at all.

Re:This DOESN'T contradict Intelligent Design.

[schuttsm]

This is my humble understanding of ID (I'm a "fundy" but please hear me out): The leaders of the movement have nothing to do with "fundamentalism". Darwin's Black Box by Michael Behe is probably the Flagship laymen's book on the whole matter. The whole idea boils down to what Behe calls "irreducible complexity": every part must be present and functioning for the unit to work at all (he cites the bacterial flagellum and the human immune system as two examples). No selective advantage can be provided to an organism unless a number of key parts are available and each part by itself would be a selective disadvantage if not accompanied by every other part. He compares it to a mousetrap-leave out an single piece and the rest of it doesn't function. Its all or nothing. With that said, a lot of fundamentalists have latched onto the ID movement because it does not rule out the possibility of a creator from the start, like materialistic evolution does, (an unscientific assumption I might add). I've read Hume, but its been a while. Can anyone summarize his points? Thanks in advance.

Re:This DOESN'T contradict Intelligent Design.

[schuttsm]

I posted below MightyMartian, but here's why I appreciate ID (as a fundamentalist)...Please don't shoot me until you hear my points. 1) Evolution is a model with a similar monopoly on academia that the Catholic Church had about 500 years ago (remember the opposition Galileo and Copernicus encountered). There are a few who determine what to believe (Dawkins, Gould, etc.) and everyone else must fall in line with a particular set of foundational doctrines or else risk excommunication. 2) Intelligent Design challenges the structure in place. It must be heard and considered like other Scientific conclusions. If it is not an accurate description of the world, then it will be thrown out, if not then it must be given credence. 3) Creationism has attempted to bring open discussion about the theory of evolution to the table, but has been prevented from doing so because it is wrongly regarded as just a "religion". 4) Christian Creationism is a worldview, just like materialistic atheism and must be dealt with as a way to view the entire world. It must be dealt with on a philosophic and foundational level before the various other issues can be confronted (Evolution being one of those). On the philosophic level, Christianity dwarfs all other alternatives (yet this is outside the scope of this post). I hope this explains my perspective better. I welcome feedback.

Re:I don't see the big deal behind intelligent des

[rjshields]

And lets face it, ID is about God.

And which God would that be? The one I worship, the one you worship, the one the guy with a turban worships, or the can of tuna my cat worships?

Meanwhile, back in Hell.

[Chas]

Hey Chuck! You just got a reprieve!

Mod parent up!

[petaflop]

Although the satire is so subtle, I had to read it twice to realise it was satire. But then, I'm not the sharpest knife in the block.

Time to teach good ole' American creationism.

[Anonymous Coward]

Children need to know that a tarantula created the earth out of a web ball, or that the earth is actually the back of a large turtle. The Native Americans have lots of good theories to be taught in schools. It is the American way. http://www.crystalinks.com/nativeamcreation.html

Blowing smoke

[Bombula]

Intelligent Design, eh?

Earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, tidal waves, drought, famine, small pox, polio, malaria, anthrax, ebola, bird flu, tuberculosis, plague, AIDS, nipples on men, pelvis in whales and snakes, wings on ostriches, alergies, arthritis, diabetes, asthma, leukemia, cancer, MS, Alzheimers, Down Syndrome, Turner Sydnrome, autism ... oh, and don't forget terrorism and myopia.

You call any of that crap 'Intelligent Design'? God can't figure out how to create a world without disaster or disease? That is the kind of 'intelligent' design you get from American car companies, not an omnipotent and omniscient being.

Ridiculous.

The real problem highlighted by the ID controversy is that the scientific community are cowards who are unwilling to asert and defend their true convictions about religion. The truth is that the vast majority of scientists think that, as all evidence points to, organized religion is a bunch of nonsense, God is unnecessary and unknowable and therefore irrelevent, Heaven and Hell are a child's fantasy, and believing in any of it is at best a waste of time and resources and (more often) the engine behind the most destructive force on our planet. But scientists are so fearful that most mutter some politically correct lip service whenever questioned or pressed on the issue.

Allowing religion to pursist in the face of humanity's accumulated scientific knowledge is profoundly irresponsible. The whole 'not in my back yard' attitude is astonishingly shortsighted. Religion and our lack of action to irradicate it is extremely dangerous and has deleterious consequences for everyone every single day - don't just think terrorists bombing things, think about actual adults trying to get evolution out of the classrooms - those classrooms are full of 15-year-olds having kids that end up on the street because they don't have knowledge of or access to contraceptives and abortion (ref. Ohio's Timken High School, for example, here _15_percent_ of the female student population is pregnant.) That problem, among many others, is not in your backyard - it is right in your face.

So I volunteer to be the dissenting voice in the crowd - here's my rhetorical rant on behalf of those scientists unable or unwilling to speak their minds, in case anyone is interested:

Religion serves only one purpose: to massage the fragile human ego.

The VAST majority of people who are religious simply believe in what they are born into, whether it is Christianity, Shintoism or Scientology. They believe in order to conform, in order to gain social acceptance, and in order to ease their fears of powerlessness and mortality so they can sleep comfortably at night thinking there is a special plan just for them and eternal life in paradise waiting for them when they die.

The truth about reality and the universe we live in is much more awesome, much more terrifying: we are no more significant than any other living thing on earth. Do you think bacteria go to heaven? You are simply a massive colony of symbiotic bacteria. So is your dog, the rat under the floorboards, and the cockroach out in the garbage.

Cheap parlor tricks like walking on water and burning bushes may seem like miracles to ignorant fools and to the people who lived centuries ago, but the real miracle is that we are alive at all, that in all the cosmos we are fortunate enough to exist in this tiny particular place at this particular time. The real miracle is the awesome power of evolution to explain virtually everything about life: how we descended not just from apes but from reptiles, fish, worms, and bacteria; why we have the physical form we have; why we think and feel and behave the way we do. The real miracle is that our universe is so old and so large that the ignorant peasants who wrote the Bible didn't have words for numbers big enough to describe the truth. The real miracle is that the universe IS knowable, and that miracle is called science. Science gave us dentistry a

Re:Blowing smoke

[slappyjack]

...or the USA will continue down the path towards being just another Saudi Arabia: a rich, fundamentalist country full of nutjobs, a wealthy elite, and a desperately impoverished and ignorant populace.

I don't know where the fuck you live, but the boat is in the dock already.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but.... OOH! Oprah Is on!

Re:Blowing smoke

[FooAtWFU]

You call any of that crap 'Intelligent Design'? God can't figure out how to create a world without disaster or disease?

This is the sort of stuff that you cover in your elementary Intro to Philosophy class. I'd like you to take a moment and consider: Suppose God made a perfect world, where everyone was perfectly happy all the time and frolicked and played in the sunshine and nobody ever died and they all lived forever. Happy happy joy joy. Now, suppose that God created this world in which people suffer their way through various hardships, overcome obstacles, deal with death and loss and such. Which would be more attractive to God? Well, we can't say that we fully comprehend God's mind on such a matter, I'll give a few thoughts on the matter here. First consider playing SimCity with some sort of gazillion-dollar trainer program and building a perfectly-picture-perfect city where you have all the pretty buildings and nobody pays taxes and there is no crime. Next consider playing, oh, Civilization or one of those games with the computer difficulty set to ultra-hard, where everyone gangs up against you... and hey, maybe you don't even win the game, but you still tried, and if you DID win, you know it was really great. Which is more fun for you? Now consider God: would he create a world where everything was perfectly perfect because it could be no other way, or would he create a world in which there were so many reasons NOT to be good, but some people did it anyway, for the sake of doing what is good, or for the love of God, or for some other noble purpose?

I won't begin to criticise the rest of your post where you effectively suggest a holy war against the existance of religion. Have fun drumming up your thought police gestapo.

Re:Blowing smoke

[Bombula]

Anthropomorphizing God with human traits like 'which game would be more fun for Him' is asinine. To make that the centerpoint of your argument is positively ridiculous. When pressed, religious idiots can't even give God a meaningful definition, demonstrating that they don't have any idea what they're talking about to begin with (that was the second day of Intro to Philosophy as I recall).

Well done, by the way, for seeing through my hopelessly transparent plan to create an Orwellian world of thought control ... While I'm sure your intention was not to be funny, your reference to Thought Police made me laugh out loud. Who, I wonder, is the original Thought Policeman? It wouldn't happen to be God, would it? Perhaps you've never heard of the Spanish Inquisition, mmm? Or maybe the irony that a born-again president is the one who pushed the PATRIOT act through is lost on you? (You know, the one that tramples all of our privacy rights, rights to trial by jury, let's the government search our houses and record our conversations without ever even telling us, and so on...)

What morons like yourself fail to grasp is that religious dogma IS thought control, and God is the ultimate Big Brother. Only science has the self-critical, self-correcting mechanism required to allow truly free thought and inquiry. And "the truth will set you free," right? Or haven't you read John 8:32?

A central function of religion is indoctrination. The fact is, you and virtually all other religious people simply believe what you believe because you were brainwashed into it as a child. If you had never heard of religion prior to this morning, would you find Christianity compelling? More compelling than Bhuddism or Shintoism? More compelling than Scientology? Only one of them can be right, after all. So which one is it? Oh I see, it just magically happens to be the one you believe in. Why is that, I wonder?

And you presume to lecture me about Thought Police.

Ridiculous.

Not news

[michaelmalak]

Pope Pius XII declared in the 1950 encyclical Humani Generis that evolution was not incompatible with the Catholic faith:

For these reasons the Teaching Authority of the Church does not forbid that, in conformity with the present state of human sciences and sacred theology, research and discussions, on the part of men experienced in both fields, take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution, in as far as it inquires into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter - for the Catholic faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediately created by God.

I.e., Catholics may investigate whether the human body evolved from apes, but the origin of the immortal human soul cannot be questioned without repudiating the Catholic faith.

At the same time, Catholics are free, if they so choose, to believe the Bible literally -- i.e., Creationism.

As for Intelligent Design, that already got a thorough debunking from the November, 2002 session of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences (TOC) in the paper Science and Culture (pages 79-81). The paper labels Intelligent Design as bad science. From my own personal view of theology, I doubt that anything like Intelligent Design could ever be shown, because in that case such evidence would compel people to believe in God, which would take away their free will.

In short, Creationism alone, evolution alone, and Intelligent Design at all are all incompatible with the Catholic faith. Thus there is little prospect for Catholic parents to find a public school that teaches the origin of life in a manner compatible with the Catholic faith. That is why I am a signatory to the Proclamation for the Separation of School and State.

ARGH... too many theories!

[mblase]

But doesn't recent research demonstrate that the Earth is only thousands, not millions, of years old? How can the Vatican ignore something as dependable as the Institute for Creation Research?

I'm so confused....

A Kansan By Any Other Name...

[cmholm]

Yah must not be from around here! Most Americans would refer to residents of Kansas as "KAN-zans" or "KAN-zens". The always popular "HAY-seeds" covers just about anyone that seems less urbane than one's more sophisticated self.

Re:And given the Hindus, some agnostics, etc., etc

[geoffrobinson]

You missed my point. ID is a broad movement which tries to find evidence of design. That is not the same thing as trying to understand science in terms of Genesis chapter 1. The Vatican seems to be reacting to a certain type of Creationism.

But since most people can't seem to accurately represent the ID movement, I can understand the Vatican's reacting to strawmen.

And the merits or faults with ID theory aren't established by anyone any more than in Galileo's day.

Re:I don't see the big deal behind intelligent des

[bentcd]

"I believe in The Flying Spaghetti Monster and that he(yes, he), had a hand in creating the universe"
Such a statement would be so preposterous as to have you rightly ostracized from any intelligent company. The Flying Spaghetti Monster could not possibly have a hand in creating the universe. Quite obviously, it was in fact a noodly appendage that was involved.

1 liberal Cardinal != VATICAN

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, but one liberal cardinal providing his *opinion* at a press conference does NOT the Catholic faith make. I suppose only to non believers do they interpret one Cardinal's opinion as law for the remaining 1 billion Catholics worldwide. It's analogous to one US Representative speaking on behalf of the entire United States and all Western democracies. That's just being plain uninformed, about many a things.

There are several liberal influences within the Catholic Church. The late Pope John Paul II: 1) did not believe in evolution as some recently tried to interpret from a French symposium, and 2) even appointed a lot of traditional (conservative) Cardinals before his death to assure the future leadership was not infected by a few dissidents (bishops, cardinals, priests, or otherwise) like this one Cardinal. Men are men in all their failings, despite the title they carry.

As a proud Catholic who rebukes the theory of evolution, I find this article misleading and hardly representative of the Catholic Church. Some /.'rs may relish in such a claim by one lone wolf screaming in the dark, but true enlightenment starts where generalizations end. All /.'rs should keep that in mind before they entertain any ideas that the Catholic Church now somehow disagrees with fundamentalist Christians or even those who purport Intelligent Design in the classroom.

I could explain to /.'rs the structure of the Catholic Church, who heads it, where it takes it's direction from, and how that uniquely separates itself from the other Christian denominations over the past 2000 years that have come and gone as they evolved their doctrine to reflect current social sentiment, but somehow, all the comments I've read so far seem more interested in just throwing stones. I hope that's not the case and real englightenment (through understanding) is what /.'rs truly seek...

Sincerely,

one humble Catholic observing the world's youth from his keyboard, and posting as AC in the hopes that /.'rs seeking the truth will take the time to dig through all the rubble for it...

Re:1 liberal Cardinal != VATICAN

[Anonymous Coward]

The late Pope John Paul II: 1) did not believe in evolution

The last pope did agree with evolution, please stop peddling lies.

Today, almost half a century after the publication of the Encyclical, new knowledge has led to the recognition in the theory of evolution of more than a hypothesis. It is indeed remarkable that this theory has been progressively accepted by researchers, following a series of discoveries in various fields of knowledge. The convergence, neither sought nor fabricated, of the results of work that was conducted independently is in itself a significant argument in favor of this theory.

from

http://www.cin.org/users/james/files/message.htm/

Re:1 liberal Cardinal != VATICAN

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry. He did *NOT*!

I'm Catholic and I know what the Catholic Church teaches. Furthermore, I know what the late Pope John Paul said about it. You can mis-interpret his French words all you wish (as others have tried to do and regurgitate on the net), however, most Catholics who observe such things from afar (like your attempt here at calling a Catholic faithful a liar), is just seen as one more atheist looking to divide where there is no division.

I can safely make these claims since I'm a PRACTICING Catholic who attends Church every Sunday (and other days of HOly Obligation), regularly receives Communion, had 12 years of Private Catholic School Theology, and (and and and and) is currrently staring at an 900+ page Book titled, "Cathechism of the CAtholic Church" as I type this to you. If you don't know what a Cathechism is, then I suggest you do a little more research about our faith and what we believe.

point of fact..(or not)

[Anonymous Coward]

These are the same folks who tend to think that the star of the book they follow is a white man. And do even get me started on the "King James version"

Sorrry, not buying it

[snowwrestler]

The fundamentalist belief (to which I hold) is not compatible with ID. These are two entirely separate paradigms.

Boy the ID folks would really, really, really like the nation to believe that, but sorry, we can see a pig, smell a pig, and know a pig even if the farmer calls it a chicken.

For reference, ID embraces pretty much the same things as the so-called independent thinking scientists, except for having a cause.

No, what ID says is that species we see today were designed into their current shape by an intelligent force. This is functionally the same message as Genesis, and about as far from modern theories of genetics and natural selection as you can get. The only thing ID has in common with real biological science is one slice of the data set--current life. ID proponents don't even recognize the validity of the fossil record.

Fundamentalists (again, that's me) hold to a literal interpretation of Genesis.

That is truly amazing, I had no idea so many Americans had developed the skill to read and understand ancient Hebrew. Or didn't you know that when you read an English Bible you're holding to a literal interpretation of some other human's translation and interpretation of the Bible? Didn't you know that the Bible was culled, edited, and assembled from source texts by humans?

If you want to lambaste one of the causes, please choose the appropriate one. Or at least make a distinction. Thanks.

Nope, not going to take that bait. It doesn't take a whole lot of critical thinking to see that that is exactly what the fondest dreams of the ID and fundamentalist communities are.

ID is being pushed now simply because the fundamentalist belief in the literal Bible has so thoroughly been rejected by American society. It's never taken hold and it never will--science is too important to America's success and power.

Even those who claim to hew the closest to the belief undercut themselves on a daily basis...how many fundamentalists in this country have ever taken an antibiotic? Received a flu shot? Received treatment for cancer? Answered a doctor's questions about their family medical history?

True fundamentalism demands avoidance of modern medicine and treatments; for did not the Lord create us in his image, and will he not provide for us when we are in need?

ID is nothing more that the fundamentalist belief in a literal act of designed creation by God, prettied up in the wrapper of scientific lingo.

Re:Sorrry, not buying it

[mcsestretch]

That is truly amazing, I had no idea so many Americans had developed the skill to read and understand ancient Hebrew. Or didn't you know that when you read an English Bible you're holding to a literal interpretation of some other human's translation and interpretation of the Bible? Didn't you know that the Bible was culled, edited, and assembled from source texts by humans?

Yes, but we have these WONDERFUL things called concordances. They show the original word and all possible meanings that can be interpreted from that word. Using these, yes, Americans can read ancient Hebrew.

Re:Sorrry, not buying it

[Anonymous Coward]

>>ID proponents don't even recognize the validity of the fossil record.

what fossil record - do be specific.

since you are objective, when you list a few series of fossils that indicate to you macro-evolution occurred... please post some dissenting information that might lead one to conclude the alledged tranitional animals may not be transitional at all...

funny, i answer this question and i rarely get an answer... and when i do... it is usually pretty easy to shoot 'em down - sometimes with the logic of an entrenched evolutionist, no less!

don't believe macro-evolution based on trust... get the EVIDENCE and then SHARE IT!

Re:Sorrry, not buying it

[gv250]

Fundamentalists (again, that's me) hold to a literal interpretation of Genesis.

That is truly amazing, I had no idea so many Americans had developed the skill to read and understand ancient Hebrew. Or didn't you know that when you read an English Bible you're holding to a literal interpretation of some other human's translation and interpretation of the Bible? Didn't you know that the Bible was culled, edited, and assembled from source texts by humans?

Of course we know the English Bibles are translations. As are the Hebrew and Greek. I believe that NIV, NIRV, KJV, NASB, et al, all contain the literal word of God.

Look at it this way: you have implicitly acknowledged my belief that the original (whatever that means) version was written by God. Is it that much of a stretch to imagine that God protected His word thru each generation of oral tradition, reduction to written word, translation and retranslation?

Or this way: I don't merely believe that God inspired, say, John to write his Gospel. God also inspired the anonymous monks, vicars, committees and secretaries who have touched the word since then.

Rob

Re:Sorrry, not buying it

[DoubleWhopper]

No, what ID says is that species we see today were designed into their current shape by an intelligent force.

One of us is confused, and I'm not too arrogrant to admit that it could be me. But my understanding of ID is as stated above, that they embrace evolution by design (ignoring all the other absurdities for the moment). One other poster below this thread has noted the same distinction. I believe you are confusing "them" with "us", which was the reason for my initial post. Have a look at what they say again... at what the ID official stance is. I will happily admit if I'm wrong, but I think you'll find that's what they say.

True fundamentalism demands avoidance of modern medicine and treatments;

This is a ridiculous, even laughable perversion of the entire Bible. Obviously you've never read it or else you wouldn't reduce yourself to such error. You needn't step beyond the Pentateuch, if you don't want; it contains several counter-examples.

101 Myths of the Bible

[tannhaus]

Anyone who thinks Genesis is literal should read the book "101 Myths of the Bible" which was actually written by a bible scholar. The creation story in Genesis is nothing more than a rehashing of egyptian creation myths. Not only that, but if you read closely, there are actually 2 different creation myths. Things are created in different orders.

Re:101 Myths of the Bible

[schuttsm]

Good comments...As a fundamentalist, I wrestled with these issues until I took Hebrew and really began to see Genesis for what it is. I would like to read that book, seems interesting and if I believe something that isn't true, then I will drop it like a hot rock. Here's my thought on what you said: Genesis is a polemic (attack) against the Egyptian creation myths for several reasons: 1) Note what the author calls the sun and the moon. "Greater Light" and "Lesser Light". He doesn't even use the Hebrew word for Sun and Moon. The reason is because in ancient Near Eastern culture: "Sun" = 'Sun God' and "Moon" = 'Moon God'. He didn't use that name because he wanted to distinguish them. 2) There is no fighting to begin creation. YHWH doesn't fight with any other gods because there are none (Judeo-Christianity is monotheistic by the way; Ancient Egyptian culture was polytheistic). 3) Man is the pinacle of Creation in Genesis, he is an afterthought in the pagan cultures of the day. As for the 2 creation stories, it can easily be reconciled by the fact that one is focusing on the Creation of the entire world, whereas the second focuses on the creation of the Garden of Eden and man. Hope that keeps ya thinking...I would welcome debate.

Re:No, it's YHWH because Hebrew doesn't write vowe

[Anonymous Coward]

regardless of how it is spelled, the OP is just a smug bastard. Why not just say GOD and be done with it? Noooo....he has to stand out....snob!!!

Just a thought...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm amused that people who who lead their small children on for years about Santa Claus' existence have the audacity to think that God wouldn't pull the same stunt on them with the book of Genesis.

Re:Just a thought...

[Surt]

And since a simple experiment has verified both for me and for many others that the Bible is easily corrupted, I think you have to conclude that it ain't.

grassroot...

[grumpyman]

I'm a catholic and haven't paid much attention to what vatican said on ID before. For all the priests that I came across on the issue all mentioned that we can't take genesis literally. And a lot of them do point out that evolution does not necessary 'conflict' in the teaching of bible.

Re:Evolution isn't a theory about the start of lif

[Cerberus7]

I see this argument constantly, but it has a fundamental flaw. With any question, you will inevitable get to a point where the abstract logic dancing has to stop. For instance:

• What is a tree made of?
• What is that made of?
• What is that made of?
• What is that made of?

And so on ad ininitum. Eventually, you have to come to a point where you can say this is what it's made of, be it quarks, strings, whatever. There has to be a fundamental limit to the "what is that made of" question. We may not have an answer, but there has to be one, otherwise nothing exists.

The Problem with Logic and Faith

[virg_mattes]

You post demonstrates the problem with crossing logic and faith, and goes to the heart of why ID is seen more as an attack on science than a rational alternate. Simply put:

> The real problem people have with God, and why humanists love evolution and atheism, is that if God exists, He made us.

This doesn't follow. The Christian version of the story says so, but to assume that means it's universal, or that it must follow by logic, is a fault.

> And if He made us, then we have a duty to respond to Him.

Even if the first part is right, again, this doesn't follow. And again, you extend the Christian version of the story to be "The Story" and just expect everyone to take it as a given.

This is why people chafe when you claim to understand what drives atheists and humanists. It shows in your writing that you have difficulty grasping anything outside your faith (take that as insult if you must) and so it colors your perspective badly enough to be wrong. I'm an atheist, and I'm not an atheist because I feel guilty about not responding to God or because I subscribe to "eat, drink and be merry..." at all. I recognize that I have a responsibility to the society I live in that extends beyond my own life. To make it most personal, my descendants will need to live in the world I help create so I must do what I can to make their world a better place. I believe in no god, because I reflected on it and that's what I came to. Like any other following of faith, it guides my perception, but one thing it doesn't do, that your faith seems to, is forbid me from seeing other points of view. Notice I don't say that people who believe in God do it just because of reason A or situation B, because I realize that faith is a very complex, very personal thing. You should consider that before you preface comments with, "The real problem people have with God, and why humanists love evolution and atheism...", because so far you haven't shown that you understand that that's a bad idea.

Virg

Re:The Problem with Logic and Faith

[max99ted]

Well said...sorry no mod points today :)

Re:No, it's YHWH because Hebrew doesn't write vowe

[Phreakiture]

Good grief, people! You all sound like you need to take a vowel movement!

(/me ducks)

The Vatican did not reject Intelligent Design

[xmartinj]

From the cited article: 'He said the real message in Genesis was that "the universe didn't make itself and had a creator".' To say there is a creator is to say there is Intelligent Design. It seems like many people who are participating (including the author of the original post) in this discussion are unfamiliar with the correct use of the term. I'd recommend reading the Wikimedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_design The article would be better titled: "The Vatican Rejects the Young Earth Theory" "The Vatican Rejects literal Genesis account" "The Vatican Rejectc Fundamentalism"

Re:The Vatican did not reject Intelligent Design

[typobox43]

My post title was drawn from the last paragraph in the article. (And note the question mark, as the paragraph in question was drawn from the interpretation of others.)

Not that it really makes it any better. :)

However, I wouldn't say that the existence of a "creator" is equivalent to ID. ID is usually construed as meaning that the creator was guiding the whole process, not just setting the whole thing in motion - a case which is more accurately called the clockmaker hypothesis.

But, they are Catholics

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone knows that Catholics aren't Christians. Same goes for Babtists, Mormons, Jews, Muslims, etc.

Well you know, you just can't explain some things

[Anonymous Coward]

What really gets me about these ID folks is their constant insertion that science can't understand anymore about a subject then is already understood. In the trial that ended Friday, the leading scientist for the (ID side) testified that "science" can not explain the evolution of the immune system. Even when confronted with stacks and stacks of papers and books on the subject, the ID whiteness still maintained that there was no explanation for it. What seems transparent to me is what he meant was.....if it can't be summed up in a declarative sentence of no more than 10 short words his followers will not understand it; hence can not be explained.

How It Happened

[Alien54]

HOW IT HAPPENED - Isaac Asimov

        My brother began to dictate in his best oratorical style, the one
which has the tribes hanging on his words.
        "In the beginning," he said, "exactly fifteen point two billion
years ago, there was a big bang and the Universe--"
        But I had stopped writing. "Fifteen billion years ago?" I said
incredulously.
        "Absolutely," he said. "I'm inspired."
        "I don't question your inspiration," I said. (I had better not.
He's three years younger than I am, but I don't try questioning his
inspiration. Neither does anyone else or there's hell to pay.) "But are
you going to tell the story of Creation over a period of fifteen billion
years?"
        "I have to," said my brother. "That's how long it took. I have it
all here," he tapped his forehead, "and it's on the very highest authority."
        By now I had put down my stylus. "Do you know the price of
papyrus?" I said.
        "What?" (He may be inspired but I frequently noticed that the
inspiration didn't include such sordid matters as the price of papyrus.)
        I said, "Suppose you describe one million years of events to each
roll of papyrus. That means you'll have to fill fifteen thousand rolls.
You'll have to talk long enough to fill them and you know that you begin to
stammer after a while. I'll have to write enough to fill them and my fingers
will fall off. And even if we can afford all that papyrus and you have the
voice and I have the strength, who's going to copy it? We've got to have a
guarantee of a hundred copies before we can publish and without that where
will we get the royalties from?"
        My brother thought a while. He said, "You think I ought to cut it
down?"
        "Way down," I said, "if you expect to reach the public."
        "How about a hundred years?" he said.
        "How about six days?" I said.
        He said, horrified, "You can't squeeze Creation into six days."
        I said, "This is all the papyrus I have. What do YOU think?"
        "Oh well," he said, and began to dictate again, "In the beginning --
Does it have to be six days, Aaron?"
        I said, firmly, "Six days, Moses."

Re:How It Happened

[Anonymous Coward]

That is awesome.

Re:How It Happened

[xee]

O.K. plagiarist, where is that from? For those of us who havent been enlightened by asimov... yet. :)

Re:How It Happened

[Oniko]

You mean how he says at the top "How it Happened - Isaac Asimov"?

Re:How It Happened

[ScrewMaster]

He's not a plagiarist ... he provided proper attribution.

On the other hand, he'd best watch out for Asimov's estate coming after him for theft^h^h^h^h^hcopyright infringement.

A New Paradim...Parotdym...Whatever You Call It.

[hullabalucination]

This completely straightened out my thinking on the entire Evolution/Creation controversy:

http://www.besse.at/sms/descent.html

Re:I don't see the big deal behind intelligent des

[ugmoe]

>> At best it's simply a "somehow something somewhere is wrong with evolution."

There is currently a worldwide multibillion dollar business based on intelligent design. (Human) engineers have been designing organisms for years.

Some scientists claiming that intelligent design should not be taught because some religious people believe in it is silly. Scientists should focus on the message, not the messenger - newscientist is much very good at this

As an example scientists are actually having difficulty determining if a particular plant is naturally occurring, whether it was created, or whether it is a cross between a naturally occurring plant and a human-created plant. http://www.newscientist.com/channel/life/gm-food/d n7729

Researchers at the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology in Dorset, UK, tested the herbicide glufosinate ammonium on plants in fields previously sowed with oilseed rape modified to carry a gene conferring resistance to the herbicide. But a single charlock plant carried on growing happily, raising fears that the gene for herbicide resistance had crossed over to the charlock and created a herbicide-resistant strain.

For a theory to be "scientific," it must provide the basis for testable hypotheses.

Here are two sides of this particular debate:

1) "There is no superweed and there never has been," echoes Brian Johnson, ecological geneticist at English Nature, the nature advisers to the British government. "It's more likely that herbicide resistance in charlock has evolved naturally."

or

2) But according to some media reports, "genetic testing of the purported hybrid showed that it carries the same gene as the GM crop."

How do you decide which hypothesis is correct? You do science. But what if science shows that the new plant was not evolved naturally through mutation and/or natural selection, but was in fact created? Then you have a provable example of intelligent design.

Why would anyone want to close their eyes and cover their ears and say "I can't hear you - there is only evolution - there is no intelligent design - I'm not listening to you"? When actual real scientists are creating organisms which other scientists cannot distinguish from similar species found in nature?

Simple really

[ichigo 2.0]

Well obviously the last übergod goes back in time to create the first god. That should be a small feat for a god, hell, even John Titor did it!

meaining of the universe

[Anonymous Coward]

"The Orthodox rabbis I've spoken find it amazingly amusing that people take the creation story as literal truth, rather then a story about YHWH's power."

    Actually just sounds like a case of dumb and dumber. Although I firmly believe people should have the right to do so---(from my perspective) it's amazingly silly in today's world that anyone would seriously consider a God exists with zero evidence to support the case. I'm not anti-religion-- just give me a tiny indisputable shred of physical evidence to at least consider it.

Why God? Why not tooth fairies? Or the Stay-Puff marshmellow man?

    However I'm not again altrustic behavior like some non-secular wackos that negate everything because it comes from the mouth of someone religious. Far from. Many religiously derived values provided (and still provide) valuable evolutionary advantages for man. It allowed us to function as a group beyond just a clan. We could not be where we are today without having gone through that step first.

  But it does make me laugh when otherwise sane people scoff at the scientologists for believing that aliens came with DC-10s as a "cult"--then snip their wankers, drink the blood of Christ, or circle a rock to prove their faith. And I also find it a little scary when someone in charge of nuclear weapons says "God Bless America". The biggest political problems in the world today are directly the fault of militant followers of three of the biggest religious groups who even drag in non-secular cultural decendents into the fray.

I honestly say this about creation and the ultimate meaning of the universe... I really don't know but hope one day mankind does. Does this make me stupid or insane to say this?

I just know I wish to exist in it and even wish for as many different varieties of you to exist in it too. It sure would be boring alone or living in a world of exact grey clones.

Oh well. I suppose I too have the fanatical mythologies I must live with.

Everyone please feel free to point them out to me as I would be prefer to be 100% wrong and live with wisdom-- than waste my thoughts and life in destructive dogmatic foolishness.

Animal Abuse!

[Anonymous Coward]

So now you want to abuse some lions by feeding them extra fatty meat?

Re:Assumptions are critical

[cmholm]

You've hit the nail on the head. Science is useful within its assumption... that Nature responds consistently. So far, this seems to hold true. If God elects to have Nature as a whole interact with Man in particular in a way inconsistent with previous behavior, we will react to it. In the meantime, we deal with what we've been dealt, which seems to be consistent.

Re:And given the Hindus, some agnostics, etc., etc

[Grab]

ID proponents are *absolutely* using Genesis as the reason for what they're doing. Whilst it isn't the reason they're giving in court, the Wedge Strategy is totally based on literal interpretation of Genesis.

Grab.

Ring! Ring! It's the Cluephone!

[stonedonkey]

In other words, the fundies are taking a text they did NOT write, and they claim to be the only ones who know the correct interpretation (i.e. claiming to be something equivalent to a Pope). Under what basis? With what authority?

The Patriot Act. Come on now. That's an "interpretation" of another document known as the Bill of Rights. This kind of thing happens all the time, with the authority going to whichever multimillionaire senator who can smear his opponents most effectively.

Re:And given the Hindus, some agnostics, etc., etc

[konkani]

Hindu theology is very different from christian theology. The Brihat Vishnu Purana states that "the aquatic life precedes the monkey life" and that "the monkey life is the precursor of the human life." (From:http://www.atributetohinduism.com/thoughts.h tm)

In the Mundaka Upanishad(chap.1, verse. 7), we find this verse:
As the spider sends forth and draws in its thread,
as plants grow on the earth,
as hair grows on the head and the body of a living man
--so does everything in the universe arise from the Imperishable.

There is no conflict between this verse and the theory of evolution. Also the verse makes no reference to a creator of any sort. Here, the imperishable is interpreted to mean an algorithm or program in the same sense as the Platonic world of pure mathematical objects.

Speaking of chick.com....

[Lonath]

Apparently Catholics aren't real Christans anyway... They really aren't.

Won't change anything

[Guppy06]

Most fundamentalists hate the Catholic church about as much as they hate Darwin, Freud and Galileo. Heck, most of the fundamentalist sects in North Americare are here because they were trying to get away from the Catholic church.

Pick up a Chick tract. Good ol' Jack practically rails against evolution and Catholicism in the same comic.

Abortion and homosexuality are about the only things fundamentalists and Catholics agree on.

The God Code

[Flwyd]

So God implemented the eye several times.

So He created some species and then decided they weren't very good. He refactored Homo erectus into Homo habilus!

So God was lazy and screweed around for the first days of the project, then got under a deadline rush and had to work on the weekends.

I see nothing to discount my theory that God is a programmer. Maybe He even reads Slashdot.

And I can't blame Him for some of the problems of the world. DNA is a tough API, and the best debugging tool is a toad.

THEORY of Relativity

[benhocking]

While we're on the subject of the Theory of Relativity, I think that teachers shouldn't be allowed to teach the theory of relativity without stressing that it's just a theory. Similarly, alternative theories (quantum loop theory and string theory) should be given equal time. In fact, I don't think you could even find one scientist that even believes the general theory of relativity since it clearly breaks down at the quantum level!

OK, maybe that's a bad metaphor since what I've just posted actually makes a lot more sense than teaching Intelligent Design. But could you imagine teaching String Theory or Quantum Loop Theory to high school students who haven't even been exposed to Bessel functions or Legendre polynomials yet?

Re:THEORY of Relativity

[dclydew]

Which is why I would prefer to see our students taught to:

A) Question everything
B) Use the Scientific Method to examine the usefulness of information in A.

If we taught people HOW to think, instead of WHAT to think, we'd likely be better off.

Re:THEORY of Relativity

[tyrione]

You have too much faith in the ability of the average teenager being able to grasp String Theory--Quarks and all, Quantum Mechanics, General Relativity and the rest in their most basic qualitative sense.

Hell they barely manage to grasp the difference between a scalar and a vector. Oh look at the kitty.

Re:THEORY of Relativity

[SirPavlova]

If we taught people HOW to think, instead of WHAT to think, we'd likely be better off.

Not what to think, nor how to think, but rather how to learn to think. If they can adjust their own thinking, you get two possibilities:

1. Doublethink
2. Robustly adaptive thinkers who could change their way of thought to suit a situation

Personally I think the risk of the first is worth the second (actually I'd love it if I could do the first - in comparison, the second is a piece of cake).

Learning how to learn to think sounds like a useless complication, but if you're stuck in the scientific method as your way of thought, it's a pretty big restriction. It's the best method, in my view, but to be able to think in different ways could offer insights. It could even deal with the fabled problems between men & women :P

Re:THEORY of Relativity

[dclydew]

Well said... Model Agnosticism, in my opinion, would get rid of a number of major issues ;-)

(Model Agnosticism (agnostic toward the model you choose to interpert reality through), not religious agnosticism)

Open Your Eyes, Protestants

[jack_csk]

Being raised in a Catholic environment, maybe I can shed some light on this topic.
The controversy is on whether God created us just as how we look nowaday. As archaeologists have proven from what they dug out, the people in the history has a bit different in body shapes compare to how we look like now. When the Bible said God created the man in His image, it does not necessary mean the physical appearance. I believe His image that God created us has something to do with our souls, and it is what distinguished us from those monkeys and apes.
Those who insisted on intelligent design-ism (as in anti-evolution) nowadays is actually no difference from those who claimed that earth is the center of universe in the middle age. Why can't we Christians just open up our mind and clear up our misunderstandings of God's words?
I was graduated from a reformed Christian college, and I am so proud that at least some of our professors are not stuck with that anti-evolution thing.

Re:Open Your Eyes, Protestants

[Anonymous Coward]

wow. you are really confused. you were raised a catholic and converted to calvinism in your studies and still have no idea of your theology. ironic considering the catholoics invoked everything in their power during the birth of calvinism to wipe them out as heretics.

catholic is more pagan in my book. they deny a mojority of christian doctorin. visit www.carm.org before you start vomiting

My god can beat up your god

[Scrameustache]

Back on topic: Orthodox Jews can't take creation literally, because it anthropomorphizes G-d.

He started as an anthropomorph, but as the religion evolved, and the need for one's god to be stronger than the other guy's god grew, he became more and more powerfull, and eventually transcended human form.

Does the Vatican believe God's desired death???

[Kojow777]

The Bible clearly states in many places that God created the world perfectly and that death and decay simply did not exist. Rather it states that death came into the world as a result of the "curse" at the fall of Adam and Eve. For the Vatican to believe in Evolution would imply that God used death in His plan all along. O death where is your sting? For some good articles on the Creation side of this topic check out http://answersingenesis.org/ .

'You have researched a new species'

[Anonymous Coward]

2. 'You didn't put warm-blooded vertebrates in the spec. I'm going to have to clear the whole planet and start again'.

3. You've played Sim/Tycoon games - you spend all your budget at the start, then you have to go off and make a cup of tea until you aquire enough points to build something else.

Also, any science teacher should also ask the kids :
Where did the designer(s) come from?

Even if you could explain that, you would be left with, 'where did that come from'.
And if you could explain that, you would be left with, 'where did that come from'.

How did eyes know they wanted to see?

[DroopyStonx]

One thing that gets me about evolution is... let's take, for example, eyes...

Now the development of such a part generally (unless I'm misunderstanding something) happens from a freak genetic mutation. Now how did organisms begin to develop "sight" - obviously not having eyes yet - and eventually leading down to fully developed optical nerves and all that?

It's not like an organism was born and *poof* had a freakish new ability called sight - it had to develop slowly over millions of years.

Wings of a bird.. same thing. Before it actually had the developed wings, obviously it couldn't fly yet.

Obviously the whole "god" and Intelligent Design theories are more or less ignorant BS, but this is just one thing that really seems to be lacking in evolution.

It's hard to ask the question, but maybe you get what I'm tryin to say.

I wonder if DNA has some sort of... plan, or mind of its own.

Re:How did eyes know they wanted to see?

[MightyMartian]

The eye is in fact a rather good example of evolution. Light sensitive organisms have been around for a long time, and there are many examples even now of simple organisms with the ability to orient themselves based on light. We also see other organisms that have some ability not only to detect light but to detect differentations in light. Such an organism, even if cannot resolve an image, can still detect movement, and as either predator or prey has a distinctive survival advantage.

As to bird wings, there's still a good deal of debate, but many think that wings may have, in fact, first evolved as a form of thermoregulation. Co-opting of features to new functions is certainly a part of evolution as well. Go back to the eye example. Primitive organisms really don't have nervous systems, but once even a primitive one develops, a primitive eye can co-opt it to allow more complex behaviors based upon what is "seen".

Evolution may be blind in the respect that it cannot answer future needs, but there is always variation in any population, and that is the fuel of evolution. Thus a wing might have evolved for one purpose, but as we can see from even semi-flying creatures like the flying squirrel, half a wing, like a half an eye, can indeed be much more useful than no wing or no eye at all.

Re:How did eyes know they wanted to see?

[Lobachevsky]

Either your post is +1 Funny or +1 Troll if you had proper education; or, if you don't have proper education, there should be a -1 Uneducated moderation. See here for a complete synposis of the Teleological argument and its scientific refutes so we don't have to replay hundreds of years of history on a Slashdot thread. If you're too lazy to read, here's the summary:

Teleological argument (quotted from wiki):
1. X is too complex to have occurred randomly or naturally.
2. Therefore, X must have been created by an intelligent being.
3. Y is that intelligent being.
4. Therefore, Y exists.

The Eye Argument (quotted from wiki)
Many creationists cite the eye as a prime example of this principle; "What use is a partly-developed eye?" they ask. Evolutionists provide an explanation for this and may state that creationists are arguing from ignorance, for scientists have devised working hypotheses on how certain body parts and organs could have evolved.

The explanation by evolution gives major evolutionary steps of:
1. No light sensitivity at all.
2. Cells that can sense the presence of light and send a signal to the brain.
3. Development of multiple, co-ordinated cells.
4. Development of a lens to focus the light.
5. Development of the brain enabling processing of this information, into instructions to muscles which operate the organ to detect light in other places.

Creationists would counter that each step in this process is in reality, a huge leap. However, evolutionists would argue that each step is not completed in one change; rather, these are only the major milestones of development, which itself is going on all the time.

QED

Re:How did eyes know they wanted to see?

[DroopyStonx]

Either your post is +1 Funny or +1 Troll if you had proper education; or, if you don't have proper education, there should be a -1 Uneducated moderation. Or it could be modded +3 "It's an honest question pertaining to the topic, quit taking things so seriously." Thanks for the link.

Oh yes, there will be religon!

[Friar_MJK]

In my professional opinion (see nick) I would say all religon is overrated. And in my opinion that is a fact. It blows my mind how many fools are out there that would believe in things that there is no proof for. For whatever reason I guess it gives them a sense of purpose to believe in something, but you can count me out.

wrong Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[boxlight]

> If I recall corectly, the Pentateuch was writen by Moses as dictated to him by God.

Which, if true, must have been very depressing to Moses, since his death is recorded in the second of the the five books.

I guess it's easy to throw around untrue statements and get modded up.

The death of Moses is in Deuteronomy 32:48-52; 34:1-12. This is the end of the FIFTH book of the Bible.

boxlight

Re:I don't see the big deal behind intelligent des

[JesseMcDonald]

Just because we can explain their motions with gravity and predict their future positions through mathematical models does not necessarily mean that they can't also follow the same patterns as everyday events on Earth. I'm not an astrologer, and and I don't really see any evidence that there is a causal relationship between the motions of the planets and world events (either way), but it is possible that world events tend to happen in syncronization with the motions of the planets, if only for the reason that world events may be precipitated by the predictions made by astrologers.

Just pointing out that astrology and astronomy are not fundamentally at odds with each other, just like the Theory of Evolution is not necessarily at odds with the idea that the world was "created" by "God", whoever He might be, and whatever the word "created" might mean outside of a linear, temporal frame of reference. One should also note that it is impossible to tell the difference between an *apparent* past and a real one; one can keep extrapolating back in time until they reach the apparent beginning of the universe, but there is no test that could show whether the past so extrapolated actually occurred. It's like a perfect holographic image: there is no way to tell that the image isn't real without an outside frame of reference.

Everyone would probably be better off if Evolution had been "marketed" as a way of expressing the relationships between the various species, and not as the actual *origins* of the species. While it's true that any self-reproducing bit of matter undergoing random mutations can eventually develop into just about anything given enough time, that hardly rules out intentional design. You could randomize the atoms in a junkyard and end up with a computer, too, but that doesn't mean that computers weren't designed. We don't know enough about the purpose of the universe, or the design constraints that were involved, to judge the intentions of the Designer, or even to say whether such a Designer even exists.

Question

[thefirelane]

have chosen to believe it is God's literal word

Question: Do you avoid all fabric blends? It is a serious question, because even so many literalists do not, and it is very clearly stated as a mandate (Leviticus 19:19)

Re:Question

[Darby]

Question: Do you avoid all fabric blends? It is a serious question, because even so many literalists do not, and it is very clearly stated as a mandate (Leviticus 19:19)

Equally as evil as being gay or eating lobster.

"Intelligent Design" debate not about religion!

[RexRhino]

The whole "Intelligent Design" issue that you see in the United States is more about social class and political power than about religion.

For a long time now, the cultural and social elite in the U.S. have had a terrible disdain for religion, the nuclear family, and the traditional working class who value such things. While the social elite tend to consider themselves "progressive" or "socialist", they are almost exclusivly upper middle class to extremly rich bougiouse. They dislike religion because A) strong religion is a tradion of the working class, and therefore declasse and distastful to the upper class. B) The elite control the state and the media, but not religion and familu, and therefore it is a challenge to their power structure.

For years, the elite in New York, Hollywood, etc., have been leading a cultural war on the working class. They have forced the strongest anti Judeo-Christian bigotry into schools and universities (I am an athiest by the way, so don't accuse my of being some religious zealot and imagining it)... the government can use tax money to fund artwork like "piss on christ", or to show pictures of the virgin mary covered in dung in publicly funded meusums, or art installations glorifying the destruction of Judiasm, where if the same kind of depictions were made of Mohomed, or Bhudda, or calling for the destruction of any other religion besides the Jewish faith or Christianity, it would be considered a hate crime. The ACLU supports the right of high school students to wear satanists t-shirts or t-shirts proclaiming their homosexuality (which is good, the ACLU SHOULD do that, the students SHOULD have that right), but at the same time doing nothing when students are expelled for wearing a Christian t-shirt... the ACLU will defend a graduates right to make an anti-war speech at comencement (which is good, they should be allowed), but not defending a student's right to say a prayer during a speech at commencement (which is just as much a valid form of speech).

In nearly every aspect of education, entertainment, etc., real working class culture is being attacked.

So naturally, the working class, now that they have a leader who is a Christian zealot and not part of the traditional social elite, are able to mount a political counter offensive against the elite that have been so long degrading and oppressing them. It is sad that mythology is being adopted by the state, and we are having stuff like "Intelligent Design" being promoted in schools, and things like stem cell research being banned.

But to stop the trend, you have to admit and understand what the trend REALLY is. What is happening is that the real working class are standing up to the Bougiouse "progressive/socialist" who claim to want to help the working class while at the same time trying to destroy them. Until the leftist elite admit their own arrogancy and bigotry, and their real disconnect with the true working class in America, it will be a matter of pride to spit in the face of their social goals.

Re:"Intelligent Design" debate not about religion!

[FooAtWFU]

Curiously enough, the infamous "Piss Christ" work was supposedly created as some sort of symbolism as to what Society was doing in general to Christ: designed as artistic reporting of a trend, of a sort. Now, what that means with regards to the artists' other works involving bodily fluids.... eh, I won't comment.

Re:"Intelligent Design" debate not about religion!

[RexRhino]

Regardless if it was defending Christianity, or offending Christianity... the social elite felt that the factory worker in Ohio, the dock worker in Jersey, the single mother waiting on tables in Detroit should be compelled to provide a portion of their income to subsidize a crucifix in a jar of urine.

If the social elite were truly in touch with the common man and working class as they claim, they would realize how outragous that is!

Re:"Intelligent Design" debate not about religion!

[FooAtWFU]

Oh, I'm not disagreeing with you there in the least. Elitist attitudes have troubled me elsewhere, particularly when I hear some certain Democrats I know denounce the "sheeple" of the world, presumably those who vote Republican. It's curious, I suppose, that the Democrats were historically the party of the South, of the Catholic Church, and of black people. (Yes, we could still call them 'black people' back then). They have lost much of the South, are losing the Catholic Church over issues such as abortion and gay marriage, and I've heard it speculated that they are at risk of losing broad swaths of support from the African-American community. Other curious matters involve a series of contradictions: supporting campaign finance reform and other matters which could be construed as limitations on free speech, supporting the general Islamic Middle-East and 'cultural diversity' over the evil evil evil Americanized West despite the issues of human rights and especially woman's rights which have historically been associated with their party. Not all of these are part of the Democratic Party platform, mind you, but consider it food for thought...

Re:"Intelligent Design" debate not about religion!

[Anonymous Coward]

The Democrats lost the (white) South when they broke and supported the Civil Rights act, where rights for black folks had historically been a Republican (remember, party of Lincoln and all that...) theme, if only in theory. (Truman's 1948 platform started this split.) Then, Nixon started the Republican takeover of these people with his "silent majority" intimations that Republicans would keep them safe from "flower power" just as they had "kept them safe" from Communism in the State Department.

Nowadays, all the rednecks who wouldn't mind if segregation stayed around vote Republican. And the blacks passed by them in the opposite direction, heading toward the Democrats.

Remember, Strom Thurmond was originally a Democrat!

Gay marriage had nothing to do with the decline of Democrats in the South.

Re:"Intelligent Design" debate not about religion!

[FooAtWFU]

Clarification: I'm not blaming it for such, I'm just blaming it for the Catholic Church. And I'm not saying the Democratic Party is doomed, just that it ought to be expressing a reasonable and judicious level of concern over such matters. As should the Republicans, for that matter.

Re:"Intelligent Design" debate not about religion!

[Legion303]

"The ACLU supports the right of high school students to wear satanists t-shirts or t-shirts proclaiming their homosexuality (which is good, the ACLU SHOULD do that, the students SHOULD have that right), but at the same time doing nothing when students are expelled for wearing a Christian t-shirt...the ACLU will defend a graduates right to make an anti-war speech at comencement (which is good, they should be allowed), but not defending a student's right to say a prayer during a speech at commencement (which is just as much a valid form of speech)."

Such rampant stupidity on Slashdot tonight.

Please provide citations for your claims. With any citations you do miraculously manage to cough up, please also detail how the people involved went to the ACLU and were turned down. But before you do that, you might want to take a peek at these:

ACLU of New Jersey Joins Lawsuit Supporting Second-Grader's Right to Sing "Awesome God" at Talent Show
September 20, 2005
http://www.aclu.org/ReligiousLiberty/ReligiousLibe rty.cfm?ID=19116&c=139

Colorado Agrees to Restore Jewish Prisoner's Kosher Diet in Response to ACLU Lawsuit
October 13, 2005
http://www.aclu.org/Prisons/Prisons.cfm?ID=19253&c =127

City of Omaha and ACLU of Nebraska Announce Settlement in Lawsuit Over Muslim Woman Barred from Public Pool
February 18, 2005
http://www.aclu.org/ReligiousLiberty/ReligiousLibe rty.cfm?ID=17523&c=141

ACLU of New Jersey Successfully Defends Right of Religious Expression by Jurors
December 22, 2004
http://www.aclu.org/ReligiousLiberty/ReligiousLibe rty.cfm?ID=17237&c=29

ACLU of Nebraska Defends Church Facing Eviction by the City of Lincoln
August 11, 2004
http://www.aclu.org/ReligiousLiberty/ReligiousLibe rtylist.cfm?c=142

The ACLU certainly has more compassion and tolerance for delusional kooks than I do. I mean, look at that last one, for example. "Church of the Awesome God"? If I ran the ACLU I'd demand that they not only be forced out, but perhaps tarred and feathered for good measure. Maybe it's a good thing the ACLU is run by people who care about freedom for *everyone*, eh?

An *excellent* sanity test

[Lifewish]

I was reading Answers in Genesis the other day (yes, I was bored. It happens). It's a comparatively well-written Creationist site which, for example, comes down heavily on people who use dodgy evidence in support of creationist claims.

The author makes it a major plank of his argument that "if we Christians really understood that all evidence is actually interpreted on the basis of certain presuppositions, then we wouldn't be in the least bit intimidated by the evolutionists' supposed 'evidence.' We should instead be looking at the evolutionist's (or old-earther's) interpretation of the evidence, and how the same evidence could be interpreted within a biblical framework and be confirmed by testable and repeatable science." I was almost convinced... but then I whipped out the FSM test!

As far as I can tell, every single bit of this guy's argument as to why Christian creationism is equally valid is also applicable to FSMist creationism. Hence it is likely to apply to an infinite number of other hypotheses. Hence, as science attempts to find the most probable hypothesis, I must be missing something. Thus forewarned, I was able to visit the Talk Origins site and note that, for example, the AiG comments (later in the same article) about possible variability of dating techniques are dodgy as they provide no explanation for why a large number of diverse dating techniques would all vary in precisely the same way. That and a number of other points make it clear that it's not just a difference in presuppositions distinguishing creationism and evolution/abiogenesis/cosmology.

The Flying Spaghetti Monster saved my sanity! Repent and His Noodly Appendage can save yours too!

Requisite "Old News" Post...

[Errandboy of Doom]

JP II discussed this in an encyclical 1996, where he said that if science and religion disagree, it's useful to remember that truth cannot contradict truth. (Implying that if science and religion disagree, and you've checked your scientific facts, maybe you don't actually understand your religion.)

I also like this quote: "In the domain of inanimate and animate nature, the evolution of science and its applications give rise to new questions. The better the Church's knowledge is of their essential aspects, the more she will understand their impact." I.e., a good theologian is first a good scientist.

JP II emphasises that the interplay between science and religion was heavily discussed by theologians in the 16-18th centuries; his stance is not exactly terra nova. So this story is really only about 300 years old, or: slightly fresher than the SCO lawsuits.

Mod parent up!

[Anonymous Coward]

Very well put. It I still had my mod points from last week, I would give you a bucket full.

Excellent point

[Kadin2048]

This should really be modded up.

There are a lot of scientists out there who are theists, and still effective at their fields, because theism doesn't contradict any known scientific theories. You can still accept evolution, even the "primordial soup" theories of where life self-replicating life began, and have a place for God at the Very Beginning.

This is not true with Intelligent Design.

you missed the most important questions!

[robbo]

Why does a supposedly benevolent designer hate amputees and love slavery?!

...or Brooklyn's

[John Guilt]

The Lubavitcher Rebbe was a stalwart critic of evolution.

Of course, the sentence "Rabbis disagree with each other," is redundant given the undelying thesis, "Rabbis exist."

Re:I don't see the big deal behind intelligent des

[MightyMartian]

When you can produce a falsifiable theory of Intelligent Design which answers any question at all, be my guest. As to genetic modification and breeding, in one case one is shortcircuiting evolution by transplanting genes (though this does in fact happen among some bacterial populations naturally), while the other is simply applied evolution, producing pressures upon populations and harnessing the power of natural selection for a specific end result.

Re:Evolution isn't a theory about the start of lif

[forkazoo]

The problem isn't what the Theory of Evolution is, it's what Intelligent Design isn't. It isn't science. The one fundamental assumption of science is that the universe is consistent and guided by a set of rules. This has yet to be proven false. Even though some parts of quantum physics are pushing it.

On a similar note, a slightly different explanations of science is that it explains the world around us as best it can, using only what we can see.

ID requires something we can't see. It isn't science. It may be right. Science just can't address things we can't observe. Whether we were programmed into a great computer, created by bored aliens, or zapped into being by god, unless there is conclusive evidence, science has to ignore all those suggestions. If science resorts to explaining phenomena with an unobservable explanation, then all of science would go out the window, because everything could actually be secretly controlled by fairies and invisible alien robots, and gods.

Re:Evolution isn't a theory about the start of lif

[Anonymous Coward]

I've heard this argument before. This is one of the narrow minded views that causes such stubborn debate. The idea that "We may not have an answer, but there has to be one, otherwise nothing exists" is wrong. There can be 2 answers:

1 - it exists because of some event or action that created it

2 - it has always existed

Some people have argued that ID theorists do not understand the concept of billions of years of evolution. Over hundreds of years there are little to no observable changes within a species. Over millions and billions, new species are evolved.

On the other hand, some have also argued that evolution theorists do not understand the concept of timeless or forever. Sure new species can evolve over billions of years, but there are some things that have always "existed".

Re:I don't see the big deal behind intelligent des

[Black Parrot]

> Everyone would probably be better off if Evolution had been "marketed" as a way of expressing the relationships between the various species, and not as the actual *origins* of the species.

FYI, science is in the business of explaining stuff.

Which is yet another reason ID is pure bunkum: they want to take a shortcut and insert "somebody did it" at arbitrary places where we don't have a detailed explanation. ID means rejecting the pursuit of knowledge in favor of arbitrary belief systems.

A Christian's perspective on outspoken Christians

[PenchantToLurk]

Frankly, it's unclear to me what all the fuss is about. I consider myself a devout Christian, but I don't find evolution that difficult to listen to, or even accept.

The Word says:
God created the Heavens and the Earth, creatures, and mankind.

I'm cool with that.

Science states that:
Evidence indicates that the the universe is still expanding from an originating event from a miniscle mass of particle-energy soup. Proteins, single-celled organisms, monkeys, me.

I'm *mostly* cool with that too. How? In the same way that I believe that God provides for needs, even while I'm at work earning for my needs. In the same way I believe God provides direction, even though I'm making the choices.

The essense of faith is choosing a belief, without respect to evidentiary claims. The essence of science is choosing an understanding based on standing on the shoulders of giants, and current observation and theory.

Which is the fundamental issue, the misapplication of discipline. I don't expect scientific understanding to save my soul any more than I expect my faith to help me discern quantum physics. I don't need Pat Robertson to tell me that the school board is possessed by demons, and I don't need scientists telling me that God is dead. Neither is the other's discipline.

Re:Evolution isn't a theory about the start of lif

[cbreaker]

I thought that was a joke, and it was pretty funny until I realized that it was actually meant to be serious.

All I can say is... Jesus Fucking Christ.

The Church is also fallible

[tfotl]

I guess this article, which needs more context to see what the official actually said, will be proof that "fundamentalists" are these wacky nuts who are not even aligned with "mainstream Chrisitans" such as the Catholic Church. While it would be tempting, but wrong, to attack the Church's stance on the Heliocentric view of the universe (i.e., when the Church stated that the Earth and not the Sun, was the center of the universe), the real point is what it always should be: evidence.

Unless one believes that the Church can speak with infallibility, then their pronouncement does not mean anything regarding whether evolution is true. The more we move the debate to the realm of evidence, the more we will progress on this issue. And having said the word "evidence," I'm sure I will trigger some comments about the the overwhelming evidence for evolution and those stupid fundamentalists. Oh well ....

Designed by WHO?

[trurl7]

Guys (and the occasional girl),

Picture this: your friend Tom comes to tell you about his friend "Bob". Now, you've never met Bob. For some reason Bob is never around, and Tom has never introduced him to you. But Tom tells you that Bob exists, and they hang out, and talk, and things like that. Frequently, Bob will have these amazing things that Tom doesn't, and Tom will excitedly tell you about them. Sometimes Tom relates things that Bob has told him, or opinions he has based on something Bob says.

Now, what kind of behavior is that? If Tom is 8, we call that "having an imaginary friend". If Tom is 30, he's probably hallucinating, or schizophrenic (or experiencing some psychosis). But....if Tom is 30, and we replace "Bob" with "God", and this is said in the context of "faith and community" then Tom is a fundamentalist christian who has a "personal relationship with God".

So, what's the difference? What's the difference between a serial killer who "hears voices in his head" telling him to go into McDonalds and let loose with an Uzi, and a drunk frat boy hearing the voice of God saying "You will be president", and staging a couple of wars? It's only a question of degree, yet the first is clearly a candidate for a white jacket and a padded cell, while the latter is the "Leader of the Free World (tm)".

Ladies and Gentlemen: There Is No God. None. Nada. He ain't there. Nobody home. Get it? Stop using your insecurity and inadequacy, and face the world for what it is - a harsh, brutal, and sometimes beautiful place. It's harder this way, but at least you are an adult human being, not a kid hiding behind an "imaginary friend". Any form of belief that starts out with "there's an invisible man who did X" is utter madness and self-dulsion. This is the 21st century! How did 300 years of progress and science and rational thinking pass you by? ID is crap not because it's not consistent, or because it's not a theory, but because it presupposes the existence of a god. Stop whining, get off your knees, and quit talking to yourself - no one's listening. Whipe your own butt and face reality like Monday morning - it's tough, and you're tired, but when you get up you are a Man.

Re:Designed by WHO?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, but here is the flaw in your hypothesis.... You cannot disprove the existance of God in the same way that I cannot prove His existance.

...unless of course the Babelfish exists....

The Babelfish is proof of the non-existance of God.

God: I refuse to prove I exist, for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.

Man: but the babelfish is a dead giveaway isnt it? it could not have evolved by chance. it proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you dont.

God: oh dear, i hadnt thought of that.

*God disappears in a puff of logic.*

Re:Designed by WHO?

[chord.wav]

Thank you. Really. It's not irony nor a joke.

Re:Designed by WHO?

[mad.frog]

http://www.jhuger.com/kisshank.php

This morning there was a knock at my door.

When I answered the door I found a wellgroomed,
nicely dressed couple. The man spoke first:

John: "Hi! I'm John, and this is Mary."

Mary: Hi! We're here to invite you to come kiss Hank's ass with us."

Me: "Pardon me?! What are you talking about? Who's Hank, and why would I want to kiss His ass?"

John: "If you kiss Hank's ass, He'll give you a million dollars; and if you don't, He'll kick the shit out of you."

Re:Designed by WHO?

[Anonymous Coward]

someone modded this tripe insightful?

Re:Designed by WHO?

[epimetrias]

Ladies and Gentlemen: There Is No God.

Prove it.

Re:Designed by WHO?

[tavilach]

Your commentary is very insightful (no sarcasm indended) and Score:5 worthy, but I'd like to correct you on a few points. First of all, while people may be deluding themselves into believing in a creator that/who does not exist, and there is no proof of this creator's existence, this is not proof that the creator does not exist. Granted, the likelihood of there being a creator that/who matches anyone's description (i.e. a "God" who talks to people) is infinitesimal, but it's there. And the likelihood that there is a general creator that/who may not match anyone's description is even higher. In fact, even the beginning of the space-time continuum can be regarded as "the creator," as nothing preceded the arrival of time. Who knows. Just remember that lack of evidence does not imply implausibility.

As for your point that believing in a creator helps to alleviate insecurity and inadequacy, sure it does. Who wouldn't feel better knowing that everything will be all right, that the world is fair, and that he/she will eventually be happy? But if one's primary goal in life is to be happy (and isn't it?), then why not choose the happier path? It's probably BS, but unless one ends up trying to fill the lives of others with BS, why not? Sometimes it's just not necessary to face the cold, hard truth.

Re:Designed by WHO?

[mlewan]

While I agree that there are plenty of reasonably good arguments against the existence of a god, the thing that really baffles me is when people have a definite opinion, which they try to spread - be it that God exists or that he doesn't.

The statement "God exists" is not supported by any scientific facts, but neither is "God doesn't exist" a falsifiable scientific truth.

The inner nature of God, if he exists, is rarely touched upon by (successful) religions, and that is of course a clever trick. However, it is equally silly, when the die hard atheist denies "God" without defining what he denies.

Do you deny a first mover of the universe? Well, there was a first move, the Big Bang, so there you would go against science.

Do you deny any plan in the universe? Well, it seems pretty structured to me.

Do you deny a conscious thought process behind the universe? I thought so. But how do you define consciousness and thought? And what about an unconscious God, who creates and shapes and leads the universe in spite of a lack of deliberate design? Would you deny him too?

Do you deny heaven and hell? Be my guest, but, please, tell me what kind of experiment you will design to prove that they aren't there.

Do you deny the God that listens to our prayers and gives us comfort, when we need someone to listen to us? Then you go against what is scientifically verifiable. A believer clearly gets comfort from his God, whether that God actually "exists" in any physical way.

Don't get me wrong here. I don't say that a God necessarily exists - definitely not one that fulfills all a particular religion's doctrines anyhow. But I say that it is up to each of us individually if we choose to believe in him or not - science cannot help us, and neither can the die hard believers in his absence or existence.

Re:Designed by WHO?

[Anonymous Coward]

As a logical argument, the existance of god has been disproved many times over a long time ago. The only way to assert the existance of god is to defy logic and at that point... well, there is no point to having a logical argument about it... or anything really...

Just an introduction with one of the (many) classic arguments: God is meant to be an omnipotent being, but it is not possible for an omnipotent (all powerful) being to exist.

An omnipotent being should be able to do anything, but can this being create a rock so large that it can't be lifted? If no, then she/he is not omnipotent because she/he can't create it. If yes, then she/he is not omnipotent because she/he can't lift the rock. Therefore, it is not possible for an omnipotent being to exist.

Since god is meant to be omnipotent, she/he can't exist (unless you are willing to compromise and say that god is not all powerful, in which case, we're not talking about the Christian god).

Re:Designed by WHO?

[foniksonik]

So how do you explain the reality distortion effect of Steve Jobs?????

Re:Designed by WHO?

[trurl7]

Original poster here. In light of some comments, I feel I should clarify something: my statement "Ladies and Gentlemen: There Is No God" was meant along the lines of an exhortation - an emotional appeal.

As posters have pointed out, neither I, nor anyone else, has proof that God does or does not exist (the "big-rock" argument is quite nice, but I think would ultimately fail as a conclusive "proof"). However, that's not the point I'm trying to make. The first point is that claiming a belief in God, from a practical standpoint (remember: the claimer can't prove God exists!), is equivalent to schizophrenia (inability to distinguish real and imaginary things). The second point should, perhaps, be elaborated on:

As a self-aware creature, Man owes a responsibility to that self-awareness. Being a true human being, being Man, means, effectively, the same thing as being an adult - accepting final responsibility for your actions. Thus, if humans decide to start a nuclear armageddon, god's not going to step in and stop the rockets. If humans decide to turn the Earth into a biohazard wasteland, god's not going to hand us a new planet. Final responsibility is ours - we can't shoulder it off on god. That's being an adult.

Conversely, saying "I believe in God, so he'll forgive me", is the whining of a small child who's been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. The excuse that "God's mercy is infinite", and "it'll be better in the afterlife", or "God wants me to do this", are the symptoms of humans with stunted development - like children who refuse to grow up. And unless a given person can throw off this yoke of belief, he will forever be denying his own heritage, his gift as a self-aware rational creature.

As should be obvious, it is "belief" I disagree with, not existence of God. I think Man should stand firmly on his own feet, and admit that he's out there clawing his way to survival by his own efforts. Then, and only then, can humanity look in the mirror and say "we are adults". Trying to have "faith" is perhaps compatible with this, but I find that hard to believe.

Ultimately, consider this - suppose God really does exist. What does he want from his creatures? To see them forever sniveling and making mud pies, or does he want to one day regard his creation and look proudly at their achievements, to admire them for the adults they've become? Isn't that the goal of a parent? (Cause let's face it, guys - thus far our actions, especially motivated by religion are the equivalent of bullying little children, lieing, and torturing insects.) Whether God exists or not, belief in him stunts the development of Man. If God truly exists, then perhaps denying this existence is the ultimate act of faith, for it allows you to become worthy of being His (or Her) child by your own efforts. And if God truly does not exist, then you'd look really stupid bowing to a figment of someone's imagination. Either way, rejection of belief in God is, I believe, fundamental to an individual becoming an adult socially, and humanity becoming an adult species as a whole.

Re:Designed by WHO?

[GSwarthout]

Omnipotence does not include the ability to do the logically impossible (although the physically impossible is possible for the omnipotent). People who believe that God is omnipotent (and understand the issues) don't believe that God can create a stone so heavy even he can't lift it, any more than they believe that God knows whether the statement "this statement is false" is true or false, or any more than they believe that God can make 2=3.

Re:Designed by WHO?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't you stop telling other people what to believe?

Do you think you're actually giving anyone but the most conceited retard a reason to listen to you?

Grow up, only children and adolescents should be able to have your degree of hubris. When you have grown up you're likely to stop making absurd comparisons that doesn't convey any understanding of what other people actually believe and you'll stop behaving like those you want to distance yourself from (because you didn't realize that is what you're doing right now right?).

Re:Designed by WHO?

[wirehead_rick]

The statement "God exists" is not supported by any scientific facts, but neither is "God doesn't exist" a falsifiable scientific truth.

Overall it doesn't matter. The base position of "god exists" is a statement of theory that must be shown to be valid through emperical evidence. No evidence exists. Therefore the counter "god doesn't exist" is an assumable fact in absence of emperical evidence. On a scientific and logical basis the concept of "god" is ludicrous and no different than believing in the FSM.

It always cracks me up when religious "folk" try to use "science" as method of justifying their faith. They lose every time. Though I am an atheist, the "god believers' I respect the most are the ones who openly acknowlege that they have made a consious decision to take the leap of "faith" to believe. When they openly admit there is no proof and yet they decide to believe. At least they are honest about their self-delusion and decide that regardless it is good for them. I cannot argue that. I don't agree but I respect that they are at least that much honest with themselves.

What irks me are the "believers" who feel they need to "prove" their faith. They have decided either by Pascals Wager or quite simply the fear of Hell to believe. Such crazy mental behavior of course runs down the long slippery slope to cults, religious fanaticism, the modern neo-conservative republican fascist movement, and wars based on lies. It really is very dangerous to have a large populous of self-deluded god-fearing lemmings.

Re:Designed by WHO?

[schuttsm]

Enjoyed your post (honestly). As a fundamentalist, it is interesting to see Atheists attempt to "proselytize" others. However, there are several straw man's in your argument I feel obligated to correct:

Being a true human being, being Man, means, effectively, the same thing as being an adult - accepting final responsibility for your actions.

This is a foundational principle of Christianity, that all people are in the end responsible for their own actions (which is why I oppose many conclusions of psychology). This is why the concept of an afterlife is so pivotal in the Christian worldview.

Conversely, saying "I believe in God, so he'll forgive me", is the whining of a small child who's been caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

I agree with you completely. James 2 has some pretty strong attacks on those who use this arguments. And there are some just downright wrong statements

Whether God exists or not, belief in him stunts the development of Man

. I don't know about you, but I want to believe the truth. If that is atheism, so be it. If Christianity, okay. If something else, just as well. However, what I have found points strongly to Christ.

Ultimately, consider this - suppose God really does exist. What does he want from his creatures?

I think he would let us know what he wants. And I believe he has. Speculation gets us nowhere. You are right that belief in God does indicate weakness. But, I see this is an incredibly positive thing: Similar to a cancer patient acknowledging his bleak future and then accepting treatment (forgiveness provided through Christ). However, it is not all that great. Acknowledging that most of the world is incredibly evil is hard to do. And following the command of God even when it hurts is seldom comforting. Furthermore, realizing that most of the world is on the path to Hell is the kicker for me. However, as I mentioned before, I am bound to believe what is true and not what I like.

Re:Designed by WHO?

[Anonymous Coward]

>Furthermore, realizing that most of the world is on the path to Hell is the kicker for me.

Ah, the nature of your faith is revealed. I hope that God approves of it.

>...However, as I mentioned before, I am bound to believe what is true and not what I like

The irony is delicious.

Re:Designed by WHO?

[Legion303]

"The statement 'God exists' is not supported by any scientific facts, but neither is 'God doesn't exist' a falsifiable scientific truth."

That's irrelevant. The burden of proof is on the people who claim existence. No proof, no existence, by default. Welcome to the wonderful world of science.

Re:Designed by WHO?

[mlewan]

"The burden of proof is on the people who claim existence."

Definitely not. The burden of proof is on people who claim to know something about it. If you claim to know that God doesn't exist, you have to prove that this is the case. If you claim to know that he does exist, you have to prove that. Neither statement has any scientific value.

Re:Designed by WHO?

[Legion303]

You don't know much about science, do you?

Re:Designed by WHO?

[agapits]

what if you are just another schizo telling me there's no God just because you are not hearing anything? If you are going to dictate to me that there's no God, i wouldn't just believe you just because you told me so. Give me a proof.

Re:Designed by WHO?

[mlewan]

Your reply seemingly implies that you think that it is a scientific fact that God does not exist.

It also implies that the reason for this fact, is that no one has managed to prove that God does exist.

If this is what you mean, a 17th century scientist could safely claim as a scientific truth that there is no mammal that lays eggs, as no one at the time had proven that there was. (The platypus wasn't discovered until the end of that century.)

This in its turn means that your idea of science is a system which can confirm blatantly false statements.

I hope I'm wrong in my assumption of what you mean, but I cannot see how.

Re:Designed by WHO?

[Legion303]

I'm going to refer you back to my original reply, in which I said it's irrelevant whether the statement "God doesn't exist" is falsifiable. Of course it isn't. It is, however, a completely useless argument to make because (again, as I already mentioned) by default we don't need to start assuming there is a designer unless believers show evidence. The burden of proof is still on them. This is how science works.

Re:Designed by WHO?

[mlewan]

Of course we don't have to assume there is a designer! Who said we did? If you're answering someone else's posts, why do you post answers to my entries?

My point is not in any way new or controversial. Already Wittgenstein said "Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muß man schweigen." That was more than 80 years ago, and you still haven't understood it.

Re:Designed by WHO?

[Legion303]

I guess you didn't read your own post. Let me quote you:

"The inner nature of God, if he exists, is rarely touched upon by (successful) religions, and that is of course a clever trick. However, it is equally silly, when the die hard atheist denies "God" without defining what he denies."

I see no problem at all in denying a ficticious idea for which believers offer no evidence. Let me break this down further for you:

Believer: "I think a supernatural being created the universe and everything in it."

Atheist: "What's your proof?"

Believer: "I don't have any, but I was personally affected and so I have faith."

Atheist: "You've given me no reason to believe you, so I'll keep assuming there is no such supernatural being."

In other words, why should I have to define a nebulous concept to deny it? The burden of proof is *still* on the believers, and they haven't done a good job of it in the last couple of thousand years.

Re:Designed by WHO?

[mlewan]

"I see no problem at all in denying a ficticious idea for which believers offer no evidence."

OK. So you think right, but you are talking about something completely different.

If by "deny" you mean "claim the right not to consider a proposition particularly likely", you are right, but I never talked about that, and that is not denying existence in a scientific sense. Neither is it the sense a die hard atheits denies God. It is the way an agnostic uses the word.

If by "deny" you mean "make a scientifically valid statement that something cannot possibly exist", you would be wrong, but it seems that's not what you mean. You do not mean "deny" in the sense "I deny the possibility that there is a black hole hidden in the Empire State building's basement, as a black hole would have swallowed the entire planet". That's the sense I write about, and if you use that you have to be sure what it is you deny the existence of.

Re:Designed by WHO?

[Legion303]

"Neither is it the sense a die hard atheits denies God. It is the way an agnostic uses the word."

Counterexample: I, a die-hard atheist, has been using that definition for years.

"If by 'deny' you mean 'make a scientifically valid statement that something cannot possibly exist', you would be wrong, but it seems that's not what you mean."

I was under the impression that I had just spent the past 5 or 6 posts defining it for you.

Re:Designed by WHO?

[mlewan]

"Counterexample: I, a die-hard atheist, has been using that definition for years."

So you are an atheist, who thinks it is possible that there is a god?

I think the discussion should end there.

Re:Designed by WHO?

[Legion303]

"I think the discussion should end there."

I think you should pull your head out of your ass.

atheism
n.

      1.
                  1. Disbelief in or denial of the existence of God or gods.
                  2. The doctrine that there is no God or gods.

I think "it is possible that there is a god" the exact same way as I think it's possible there's an Easter Bunny. Since neither is likely to ever be proven, they're both ridiculous concepts that I don't spend time worrying about.

Thank you!

[Oink]

Thank you, thank you, thank you... Thank you Vatican for being composed of intelligent people. I don't particularly agree with any type of creationist science, but I have little qualm, and in fact would have a lot more respect for an "intelligent designer" to have set up a self-sustaining and evolving system. Otherwise the intelligent designer isn't so intelligent.

Irony Defined

[BillPhillips]

I think there is a great deal of irony in the fact that those who most vehemently attack intelligent design and/or fundamentalist Christianity on intellectual grounds are so woefully ignorant of what ID proponents or fundamentalist Christians actually believe.

There are two things that are cause for concern here:
1. The immediate appeal to hysterical emotial arguments (they are trying to push their dirty filthy ideas on you!) undermines any intellectual argument that may eventually be presented.

2. The vehemence of the rejection of these ideas without serious examination reeks of dogma.

Scientists should not be afraid of testing their theories. The proof of the pudding is in the eating.

Re:Irony Defined

[nagora]

The vehemence of the rejection of these ideas without serious examination reeks of dogma.

ID and fundamentalist Christian arse-wipe are not new. They are old, old ideas which the ignorant and stupid have pushed for thousands of years. The rejection of them came at the end of a long and often bloody examination of their ideas and the evidence. ID has been waved about again recently simply to try and pretend that religion has not lost every argument and is not in fact a hollow vessel devoid of ideas an value. But it is. And that's a considered opinion, not dogma. Show me some evidence to the contrary and I'll consider it. Repeat the same old claptrap again and I'm happy to dismiss it out of hand. It is not my responsibility to keep wasting time on someone else's drivel which has already been delt with in great detail.

Scientists should not be afraid of testing their theories.

Here's the ID theory: god exists. How do I test it? I can't. Intelligent Design (AKA god-lite) is specifically intended to be untestable. Since it can't be tested, just as the existence of Peter Pan can not be tested, it can not be disproved, just as I can not prove that Peter Pan does not exist. This does not change the fact that anyone believing either that Peter Pan really exists or that ID explains anything is either a child or an idiot.

Life on Earth is abundant with examples that show that if it was designed it was not "intelligent", nor for that matter by anything which was beneficent. Octopus eyes, the black death, whales' legs, the human back, the human birth process, the appendix, the dodo, mass extinctions, etc etc. None of this is the work of any rational creator.

TWW

Re:Irony Defined

[Russellkhan]

I don't care what you or any other christian believes. I did my time living as a christian and found it to be not right for me. It's what you want to believe? Fine. Good for you.

What does bother me is christians trying to disguise their religion as science and force it into public schools.

Science is not tested in public schools, it's taught there.

Re:Attack the messenger (correction)

[farrellj]

No one expects the Spammish repetition!

spamspamspamspamspamspamspamspamspamspamspamspamsp amspamspamspamspamspamspamspamspamspamspamspam

ttyl
          Farrell

Hah!

[Anonymous Coward]

now usually, I pay no nevermind to what the vatican says. keep in mind these are the guys that rejected zero. but this one's funny.

Someone has been reading.

[Morinaga]

Someone at the Vatican read some Dan Brown and came up with a new theory.

Better marketing

[Crouty]

I heard the 1633's campaign for an earth-centered universe did not go too well. Now the pope makes sure he will not be the laughing stock in the future, just as Urban VIII is today.

Intelligent Design should be taught

[Hard_Code]

Alongside, and in the same fashion, as notable (and/or infamous) religious and philosophical traditions. It can be in the classroom, it just should be in the Social Studies/Psychology/History classroom, not the Science classroom. I support the idea that every student should be forewarned about this idiotic sect of people.

3 possibilities

[Anonymous Coward]

1) evolution - everything is simply an accident. This fails to explain how the univers started in the first place. Poof - big bang - what caused the big bang?

2) Genisis - as written by man (long before science had ways to describe what they believed that they understood)... snap...poof...Earth v1.0

3) God Inc. created the universe v2.4444.5.55598b one of many thousands - some of them run on an advanced physics engine too complex to be fully understood by those outside of God inc. Each universe explodes into existance and creates a balance of space/time this space/time system controls the growth and scope, and over many eons the universe forms, stars light up and worlds cool. Many of these worlds go into a new phase where the design allows life to form and adapt. This adaptive life sometimes forms a small intellegence of its own. Sometimes attempts are made to contact it. It is well known that this life will never be capible of fully understanding the creator or his ways. The creator can sometimes download the patterns (souls) created by this life into other universe/systems, think The Matrix. Until recently the life on Earth v1.3 thought that their star revolved around them and assumed that their world was flat... silly humans... now many believe that they understand their origin... silly fools... so much to learn, such little pinhead brains... I think I'll mark them for deletion and redesign the software.

Re:3 possibilities

[Halvy]

Until recently the life on Earth v1.3 thought that their star revolved around them and assumed that their world was flat... silly humans... now many believe that they understand their origin... silly fools... so much to learn..

Actually there are theories that the Sun simultaneously moves around the earth as it (Sun) moves (rotates) among the galaxies (a proven theory).

Also the earth is indeed 'flat' for all intense purposes, or we would not be able to calculate the simplest of things during the day without using calculus.

What you are saying, is like saying since something is considered a 'solid', we will not consider the fact at all that it is really NOT a solid, but rather a large mass of atoms rotating at extremely high speeds.

--

Firmly entrenched in 'Bad Karma', now I can freely speak my mind.. :)

Re:I thought they already settled their problems..

[jack_csk]

In the middle age, people would go crazy if you tell them that not all the stars and planets are revolved around the Earth (nowadays, at least we know that Venus and Mercury don't).
As a christian, I see that how people totally rejects evolution is not a big difference from that middle age belief.
I think the problem is that we are too ignorant, thinking we already understand every part of God's works based on literal understanding.

In regards to the article only:

[The NPS]

Hooray!

OK

[John Courtland]

There's this civil engineer who has a dream of a super-interstate-highway running from Los Angeles to Washington DC. After years of lobbying, he finally is awarded a contract to construct a perfectly-flat, perfectly-straight 16-lanes-each-direction highway from Los Angeles to Washington. So he employs all the best surveyors, to make sure the highway is a perfect straight-line from LA to DC and to make sure it stays perfectly flat. He subcontracts with only the best construction crews and uses only the best materials. He decides the existing tunnel-diggers and mountain removers just aren't up to the job, so he has bigger ones built, ones that can remove a half-mile swath of the Rockies in a week. They start in LA, and a few months later, they're overlooking the greater Washington metropolis.

Just one more hill to remove before they start work on the terminus and the merging into DC's outer belts. It's a small hill, really, but it's got to go. So they call in one of the smaller mountain-removers to remove it, and just as the machine's getting ready to erase the hill, a snake pops up out of the hill and screams "Wait!"

Obviously, this catches everyone by surprise, so they wait. The snake continues, "My name's Nate. Nate the Snake. You can't destroy this hill! You mustn't!"

"Why not?"

"Because there's a lever buried under this hill, and it's attached to a doomsday device. If the lever is tripped, it'll blow up the entire Earth!"

The engineer consults with his team. "What do you think?" "It's a talking snake." "Yeah, but do we believe him? Do we go around the hill, or do we plow it over?" "Do we believe him!? It's a talking snake! Who'd believe us?" In the end, they decide to err on the side of caution and build the highway around the hill. So, when they're finished, they've got a highway running from LA to DC that's perfectly-flat and perfectly-straight, except for this minor detour around a hill.

So they've got the ribbon-cutting ceremony, and as a perq for designing and building the highway, the engineer gets to be the very first person to use it. So he hops into his Lambourghini in LA at dawn and floors the pedal. 30, 40, 50mph. Shifts into 2d gear. 70, 90, 110mph. He keeps accelerating until the car just can's go any faster.

Shortly before sunset, he's approaching DC, and he remembers the hill. So he slows down to around 225mph to negotiate the slight turn. And he sees Nate crossing the road! He can't squish a talking snake! Especially one that kept them from blowing up the Earth. So he swerves to avoid hitting Nate, and plows into the hill at over 200mph. He trips the lever, and the Earth blows up.

The moral of the story...

Better Nate than lever.

Maybe you should change that opinion

[Darius Jedburgh]

Note that I don't think that the fundamentalists are evil

This is like pointing to a caged tiger and saying "look, tigers are perfectly safe". They are as long as they are in the cage, but fundamentally they're not safe to hang out with. The fact is, fundamentalists are not evil only because they lack the power to be evil. They are bound by the laws of the countries that they live in and so they have to behave. But look at almost any place or time in the world where religious fundamentalists have significant political power and you'll see tyranny. As a result, the constitutions of most civilised countries explicitly exclude religious groups from power.

In the US we see religious groups still trying to wield power but as long as the First Amendment is there they are no more evil than cute little tigers in zoos are dangerous.

By the way, you share a misconception shared by many Catholics:

evolution never says there is no God, God could be directing evolution

'Evolution' is usually used as shorthand to mean 'Evolution by natural selection'. This is completely incompatible with the notion of God directing evolution. (OTOH This notion is compatible with wider notions of evolution however, such as those that predated Darwin, but that's not what people are talking about here.)

Re:Maybe you should change that opinion

[Dirk Pitt]

This is completely incompatible with the notion of God directing evolution.

I have no idea why this is incompatible. Catholics believe man was granted free will by god, but this does not mean that god does not know man's actions.

Similarly, just because some god designed the system, and knows its transient and final states, does not mean that the system won't behave according to some vigorous set of rules (i.e., biology).

If you define natural selection by its most-(over)used one-liner, 'survival of the fittest', who is it to say that god didn't predetermine Man (and insect, and rabbit, etc) to be the fittest? If you could go back in time and introduce some different organism that evolution selects features from, would you be violating natural selection? Science describes the process; it does not constrain its starting point.

Re:Maybe you should change that opinion

[Darius Jedburgh]

Catholics believe man was granted free will by god, but this does not mean that god does not know man's actions.

I'm not even going to touch this one. You say your statement innocently but you know full well (I'm sure) that this is a highly controversial statement and to many people it's an oxymoron.

who is it to say that god didn't predetermine Man (and insect, and rabbit, etc) to be the fittest?

What's going on here is not that Catholics embrace evolution, they just don't want to be seen as backward and so they pay lip service. It's cargo cult science, not the real thing. If we went along with what you suggest we could twist just about anything and claim it's compatible with science. The motion of atoms in a fluid are random so if a message from God were to suddenly appear in a bottle of water you could simply say "yeah, it's random, but God tweaked the initial conditions just right so he predetermined that the message would appear". You're saying anything could happen, regardless of the laws of physics, because God could have made it so, but you're still going to claim that no physical laws are violated. You want to have your cake and eat it too, miracles and science. I'd rather have dealings with the fundamentalists who are far more honest in their beliefs - they'll say things like "God can break the laws of physics whenever he feels like". When you argue with a fundamentalist they don't try to trick you into thinking that they think like you do.

If you could go back in time and introduce some different organism that evolution selects features from, would you be violating natural selection?

I have no idea what you are saying here. Maybe you can elaborate. Time traveling does a lot more than "violating natural selection", whatever that means. Whatever thought experiment you have in mind, I'm sure you don't need time travel to explain it.

Re:And given the Hindus, some agnostics, etc., etc

[geoffrobinson]

While Gen. 1 is congruent with design, design doesn't necessitate Gen. 1.

Re:I don't see the big deal behind intelligent des

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not? At least some of the core astology concepts have hard underpinnings.

A key part of astology is knowing where the heavenly bodies are. How is this different from astronomy?

Ask any mental healthcare worker what time of the month that their clients are looniest. You'll see that there is a connection between astonomical phenomena and human behavior. Note too the lunar roots of the word looney.

Now if you ask me if I think that many astrologers are out to make a buck off the gullible, I'll agree with that. Of course the same can be said for more main stream religious "practioners".

I find the title amusing

[GWBasic]

Having spent 12 years in Catholic school, (fall 1987- spring 1999), I find the question mark at the end of the title quite amusing. During those years, every effort was made to teach modern science, including the big bang theory and subatomic particles. We were taught evolution and given numerous examples to support it, including fossils of land-walking animals that slowly evolved into whales. What surprises me today is that I've found that not all *public* education is as thourough (sp?) with modern science with regard to the origin of the universe and of man.

Ignorance

[exabrial]

If this news surprises you, you have a dim view of the world. I am from Kansas, and I am Catholic and have attended catholic schools my entire life. I have never ever been taught creationism, and you will be laughed if you mention it. I am surprised the Vatican would ever come out with a statement such as this; They have never denied evolution, it is your idiot fundamentalist school board members that are the problem.

I think the problem is a mis-naming

[slappyjack]

Calling Creationism "Intellignt Design" is basically marketing spin on behalf of the fundamentalists.

A lot of people see evolution itself as "intelligent design:"
Some big omnipotent all-powerful robed bearded dude(ette) set up the system, threw a bunch of stuff into the pot, and gave it a good hard spin. Evolution is part of that system. I think that's what the Roman Catholics are getting at.

The Fundamentalists are saying that intelligent design is the aforementioned dude(ette) waving his arms and making everything wih one big POOF! Which is a nice way to explain things - if you're a little kid.

Its nice to see the religion of my youth stepping away from crackpottery a bit. I mean, sure, they're still fairly totemic (what catholic doesn't remember the hubub in church when a splinter of the cross came through on one of its tours) and they like big ceremony (but really, who doesn't?) and they think homosexuals are going to burn in eternal damnation forever no matter what; just give them a little time. Its a big slow boat to steer.

Re:I think the problem is a mis-naming

[LWATCDR]

What I find as really funny is no gets it.
I wasn't complaining about the statement by the Roman Catholic Church. It happens to be right in line with my spiritual view. Even then I do not think it should be taught as science since I for the life of me can not figure out how to prove it or test it.
My post had more to do with the really posting on slashdot saying it "refuted" Intelligent Design. It is fact codifies it at the cosmic scale. A friend of mine that became a priest once told me that religion isn't about how but about why.

Listen to a Jew

[Eli Gottlieb]

The simple fact is that nobody was around to tell whether God or the Big Bang or the Flying Spaghetti Monster "made" the Universe, or how life got to be. In a display of obviously selective intelligence, ID/Creationism supporters acknowledge this. In a rare display of selective stupidity, many Evolution supporters do not, and continue to claim that belief in anything other than the Literal Revealed Truth of the Big Bang, Earth being Formed From Space Dust 4 billion years ago and Life Evolving over 600 million Years makes you stupid. It does not, it merely makes you selectively intelligent on certain subjects, which they seem to be well-aquainted with being.

The really important conclusion to be drawn from the "We don't know" fact is this: It doesn't fucking matter. Whichever story is true, the Universe and Earth and the human race are still here today. What's important is what we do about that self-evident fact, and this is where each story has its own place and its own use.

Amein.

Re:Listen to a Jew

[MightyMartian]

For goodness sakes, you can't even get the facts straight. Your whole post is like some sort of textbook definition of a strawman. Let's set the record straight:

The Big Bang is based upon key evidence, mainly nucleosynthesis, the blackbody radiation and the red shift of distant galaxies. It states, in simple terms, that the Universe was once very dense and very hot, and that it began to expand and cool. Thus far, every observation has confirmed this, and thus, as theories go, it is very well supported.

Second of all, the Earth is, by best measurements, about 4.5 billion years old, and life has existed for at least 3.5 billion and possibly 3.9 billion years. I have no idea where your 600 million year number comes from.

As to why it matters, well, in part, people are inately curious. The other thing to always remember about science is that any line of research, no matter how lacking in immediate utility it may seem, can ultimately lead to progress of a very tangible kind. Early researchers into electricity could do little more than make interesting parlour tricks and make frog's legs twitch. All Newton could do was explain the motion of the heavenly bodies. All 18th and 19th century physicists could do was attempt to explain the structure the matter. And yet these discoveries, no matter how little they may have helped people at that time, have lead us in a few short centuries to harness nuclear power, to build computers, to use the properties of matter at the smallest level for reliable high speed communications and countless other technological developments.

So who is to say that understanding how energy behaved at the earliest moments of the Big Bang won't be of great use to us at some point in the future? Who is to say that understanding how organic molecules can produce self-replicating systems may not at some point lead to a whole host of techological breakthroughs.

Science matters because it, unlike any other explanatory system previously developed, actually works. It can actually produce results, allow us to understand nature, to predict it and to harness it.

The alternative is simply to declare "Hey, we're here, what does any of it matter" which is nothing more than a recipe for stagnation and decay.

Re:Listen to a Jew

[Eli Gottlieb]

I really should have expected this sort of thing on Slashdot.

You say that any scientific theory can lead to useful information. Great, call me when it does. I don't see any use to a theory (such as modern unification theories) that begin to operate only at energies so great that it would be completely impractical, possibly even dangerous, to achieve them under laboratory or technological conditions.

I'm really wondering what exactly your "stagnation and decay" are, since even stopping all investigations of the Big Bang wouldn't kill off the majority of experimental science.

Furtheremore, you claim that science allows us to predict and harness nature. This is perfectly true, but the more important question that you overlook is "for what?". There are good things to harness nature towards (shelter, elimination of deadly diseases, fun geek toys), and there are bad things (nuclear weapons, pointless holy wars on Slashdot, scientific pie in the future stories like those employed by Communist and Capitalist alike).

I fully expect that this post and my previous one will be modded down, but you and the rest of Slashdot need to face facts: Slashdot is disproportionally full of Diests and atheists of a particularly militaristic "our-way-is-the-only-way" variety, but commenting and modding in favor of each other isn't going to make your Holy Science Of Peer-Reviewed-Journals the state religion.

Re:Listen to a Jew

[MightyMartian]

And you seemed to have ignored my point that you can't predict how research will aid humanity, and beyond that, people have certainly dedicated their lives to more worthless ventures than prying the secrets out of the cosmos. I don't see why we can't investigate the natural world and feed the homeless at the same time.

Oh, and I'd love to know what you're definition of "religion" is.

Re:Listen to a Jew

[Eli Gottlieb]

I'm not saying stop scientific research, I just don't like how people (particularly Slashdotters) become so attached to their scientific theories that they fight over them as though they were religions. There were even insults today in the article comments on Dr. Mills and his Classical Quantum Mechanics theory, which is far more scientific than anything we flame each other for in this article! The Holy Wars in the Name of Science are the only thing that needs to stop here.

Define religion, eh? That's sort of a koan, and so I leave you with a koanish answer: "There is no Master but the Master, and QT-1 is His prophet!"

Re:Listen to a Jew

[le duf]

I have no idea where your 600 million year number comes from.

He's probably thinking of the Cambrian Explosion which took place about 540 Ma.

Nice Strawman.

[pavon]

It could be that the creator of the entire biological process was stupid and didn't understand his own creation.

Or it could be that he wanted to allow man to realise on his own that he was incomplete without woman, so that he would have a deeper appreciation and understanding for her rather than if she was there from the begining.

When refuting irrational beliefs, it helps if you don't use logical fallacies in your own arguments.

PS: this was moderated Interesting when I responded. If you are weren't being serious, then concider my remarks aimed towards the moderators not yourself.

Re:Nice Strawman.

[Fiver-]

Wait, are you people seriously arguing that there was an Adam and Eve? I'm not sure how to reply to your posts until I gauge how ignorant you actually are.

ID???

[obdulio]

What the Vatican is saying (and has been saying for some time, at least since the early 80s, when I went to a Catholic School) is that the Genesis is not to be taken literally. They even agree with the Documentary Hipotesis, which states that the Genesis was not written by Moses, but several centuries later.

This has nothing to do with ID. It does contradict Creationism, but not ID.

Who is this "YHWH"???

[brian0918]

And, more importantly, what does he have against vowels?!?!

Re:Who is this "YHWH"???

[Anonymous Coward]

YHWH is the transliteration of the 'name to holy to speak'. when god told moses his name. it is represented in messianic text with four letters. Vowels were added to the language at a latter date.

When spoken it is tranliterated as Adoni. The vowels for Adoni were later to the letters YHWH to remind the reader of the correct pronunciation. This has often led to the mis tranlation as Jehova.

Re:Who is this "YHWH"???

[Carewolf]

It's the name of God. The name we are not supposed to take in vain, and most people consequently have forgotten to the point that it is not even used in many translations of Bible anymore, and that some people have gotten the odd notion that you are not supposed to say God in vain.

Re:Who is this "YHWH"???

[Anonymous Coward]

All early Siniatic languages don't have vowels, the greeks/romans added them after taking the alephbet and spreading it around the world.. they also added a few symbols over time which are just repeats of existing ones.. The letters I'm using to type this email are pretty much the same as ancient hebrew glyphs.. just they've been re-orientated a bit and slightly modified..

now for the Name.. I always get a kick out of this one.. if you actually studied the bible in hebrew/aramaic then you realise where the name is from..
YHVH are the exact letters
Y=Arm
H=is a person (look sideways minus the head Ex: Saying Hey!)
V=is a throwstick (boomerang)

Translate the Glyphs to their meaning "Give is go is".. or
"I was, is, will be.." or a condensation of "I am, that I am"...
It's not a name.. but what God told moses on the mountain.. technically
he never said his name, he's commonly refered to as AL (pronouced EL) as in
Gabriel (God's strongest) Ariel (God's 1st) etc...
And just FYI "You shall have no other God's before me" People wrote there's one god, El's father just happened to be Bael he had a wife.. bothers etc.. most of that was cleaned out of Hebrewism 1st/2nd Cen. BC.. temples to his wife are still around in Israel.. Temples fro his father are in lebanon...

Re:Who is this "YHWH"???

[Anonymous Coward]

I was joking, but it seems people around here are better at splitting hairs than sensing humor.

In case you though all hypocracy was religious:

[Anonymous Coward]

"but when you try to force your worldview on me or society as a whole, I will attack you with whatever tactics I have at my disposal"

But, you try to force your worldview of non-ID. As you go about attacking, are you surprised when others react just as you say you do?

Re:In case you though all hypocracy was religious:

[i8puppies]

i dont think it's "his" or anyone's worldview.
it is the worldview that has been proven by scientific method.

i think the general message was "dont tell me 2+2=5, nor try to teach it in school."
the same message does not work for "2+2=4", because 2+2=4.

Re:Evolution isn't a theory about the start of lif

[jacekm]

Your line of thought is too materialistic. God did not need creator since according to all major religions He is the source of everything. Your line of thought is limited to the materialistic Universe that we are living in, where time exists and therefore timeline of some creation must exist including therefore need to somehow create God. According to Einstein time did not exist before Big Bang so thinking in a realm of "who created God" makes no sense. It is probably difficult to understand what it exactly means, but neither space nor matter nor time existed before Big Bang. If you want science to explain existence of the world then something obviously must caused our Universe to come into being including the time itself out of complete nothingness. Show me one law of physics that allows something to come into existence out of nothing and stay that way. Explanation of the existence of Universe is beyond science. If you think about Big Bang, it violates all our most basic laws of physics such as preservation of energy, entropy, charge, barion number, lepton number etc. What we call science is nothing more, than observation of relationships between the cause and effect. If certain event always causes certain effect it becomes a scientific truth and it can be then extrapolated further into the explanation of systems that use more complicated sets of basic relationships that we already discovered. Those relationships are not even 100% guaranteed. Quantum mechanics makes it a random process in which laws apply only most of the time but not deterministically always. The problem with this scientific approach is that it will never be able to explain existence of whatever is the base of creation of the Universe, and we might not be able to explain the existence of the base relationships within our Universe. Since in scinece something obviously must exist to cause the effect, the origin that exists without the cause is be beyond realm of science. Even "nothingness" that our World supposedly come into existence from must be a realm that somehow exists. How is science going to explain existence of original nothingness that the World somehow came into existence from ? Current cosmology is now forced to assume existence of infinite number of universes that we will never be able to see physically in order to explain anthropocentric nature of our Universe. Biologists are struggling to explain origins of life. If it is so easy, what about Fermi paradox. How it is scientific to claim, that life must be common across the Universe, when in fact we don't have a single proof of any life beyond Earth despite years of search ? Occham razor obviously doesn't apply when it comes to eliminate God at any price :-) JAM JAM

Their Hailmarry- No longer relevant.

[CDPatten]

All puns intended. This is the Vatican's hailmarry at becoming relevant again. It has little to nothing to do with what the church believes or what the bible says. It is about what society believes. All this really is, is the church saying to people "see we aren't so different, come join us, again, please, pretty please."

Without expressing my personal belief on this subject; this is similar to the debate about homosexuality in the church. Either you believe what the bible says or not. It says very clearly in the old and new testaments that homosexuality is wrong ("an abomination"). It's pretty cut and dry. The same principal applies here; If you believe what the bible says, then you believe that the earth was created in 6 days.

Again, I am not expressing my personal views on those subjects, just my view that if you are going to say you believe in a religion that is based on a book (Christianity), you can't just change it every time something is unpopular. OR if the book is wrong, then you have to address the fact the book is wrong. The church can NOT reconcile LOGICALLY their position. They may be able to reconcile it scientifically, but the bible is very clear, and even clearer in its original transcripts. 6 days, not millions of years. Evolution requires millions of years, not 6 days.

I believe this will backfire on the church. People will see them as just blowing in the wind, and eventually even the third world countries will ignore them completely. The Catholic Church has lost its relevance in the modern world. I don't believe religion has, just the Vatican.

Re:Their Hailmarry- No longer relevant.

[FooAtWFU]

You seem to misunderstand something, somewhere. The thing is, the Catholic Church is not based on a book. It is based on a tradition of faith, and considers Scripture to be divinely inspired, but the Catholic Church has for a long time explicitly rejected the doctrine of 'sola scriptura' which defines Scripture as the one and only source of truth. That's a purely Protestant notion. (And a fair amount of the argument against it is that Sola Scriptura is not itself defined in Scripture.)

And with regards to homosexuality: The Catholic church has never said anything to the effect that "homosexuality is not wrong". It's in fact staunchly set against it, any little business about how the crimes of Sodom and Gamorah being explictly identified or otherwise aside... What they have said is that homosexuals are not inherently bad and evil people, any more so than the rest of us sinners. "Hate the sin, but love the sinner" -- don't tell them vindictively that they're going to Hell and they deserve it: heck, according to this doctrine of Original Sin here, you deserve it too.

The TRUTH about Darwin and Evolution.

[Anonymous Coward]

Genesis 1:20 And God said, Let the WATERS bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl [that] may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.

see http://jahtruth.net/evolut.htm for the complete article

Re:Evolution isn't...

[memeplex]

I beg to differ. Before actual single-celled organisms evolved, certain long chains of molecules evolved by natural selection. Picture a bag of legos the size of a blimp being constantly jostled. Certain pieces would, according to the laws of nature, start systematically sticking together in certain ways. This actaully happened in the primordial soup. Think proteins, amino acids. I'm sure you've all seen the experiments where they zap a hypothetical primordial soup with electicity and "create" amino acids, etc. Evolution is a paradigm (forgive me) which encompasses more than biological life.

ASSERT(government == education) should fail

[BillEGoat]

(Disclaimer - I don't know ID, but I'm open to it because I'm one of those evangelical fundie types who reads Genesis literally.)

I think the evolution/ID debate is controversial because:

1. Fundies like me believe that science and religion are not separable.
2. Fundies and evolution types agree that there is only one reality, and we should do our best to understand it in full truth. (Most of us agree that truth is knowable, though the post-modernists in our midst may object.)
3. Fundies and evolution types do not agree on many foundational assumptions. (Take age & maturity for example - as a Fundie, I believe God can create things that are both young and mature. Just for kicks, read Genesis literally and ask yourself how old Adam was the day he was created. The text implies he was only a day old, but mature enough to feed himself and even to "know" a woman - wink wink, nudge nudge.)
4. In the US (where this debate is centered), we have a legal construct that keeps gov't from establishing a religion. Evolution types view ID as religious.
5. Fundie types object when they believe their children are asked to contradict the things they are trying to teach in the home, especially when the source of the conflicting information is not disclaimed. If you ask my kid how old the earth is, and expect an answer that contradicts my view and I have a problem. HOWEVER, and this is vitally important to many Fundie types, if you ask my kid how old evolution theory teaches the earth is, and I'm cool. Teach my kid evolution. Test him on it. Just don't require my child to testify that evolutions is true in order to get the grade.
6. To date, there has not been a good public example where a local gov't (i.e. state education system / school board) has been willing to establish and enforce such a discalimer as described by #5 (really, it's simply a citation of the source, not even a disclaimer). The infamous "only-a-theory sickers" placed in textbooks was a not-so-subtle attempt to provide such a disclaimer.

My solution to all of this - get the government out of the buisiness of providing classroom teaching. Yes education is vitally important and must be available to all equally and fairly. But the classrooom is and always will be a proving ground for many forms of ideology both good and bad. Send your kids to an evolution only school, I'll send mine to one that presents Genesis as history and evolution as a competing secular theory, and someone else will snd their kids to a school that puts all origins teaching on the same footing. After all, given enough time, won't the weakest teaching strategies will be selected out?

Re:ASSERT(government == education) should fail

[Anonymous Coward]

# Fundies and evolution types agree that there is only one reality, and we should do our best to understand it in full truth. (Most of us agree that truth is knowable, though the post-modernists in our midst may object.)

Boy are you wrong. Truth is not Knowable. Humans are a bunch of clueless idiots. All humans. Anyone claiming to know truth is an idiot, who doesn't realize how stupid humans are. But worse than that is when someone willingly defers to someone else for "truth" because they are too damn lazy to think for themselves and stop being a lazy moron.

Re:ASSERT(government == education) should fail

[mrpeebles]

Hi:

I appreciate your comment. I think it is very reasonable. I do have a question though- isn't focusing so much on whether Genesis is literally true sort of theologically boring? Especially when, as you put it, God can create things that are "mature." (I take that mean that God can create an Earth that "looks" old but is in fact in some sense "young", althought maybe you didn't mean it that way.) But, and I say this as another Christian, we both follow a religion that says that God is One but also Three. A religion that speaks of God as being infinitely good, but has his Jewish people slaughter entire cities, leaving no men or women or children alive, and a God who allows the World Wars and the Holocaust. A God who didn't send our Savior until at least 3000 years into human civilization, and then left huge swathes of people politically or physically unable to worship that Savior and achieve salvation. A God who sent us 10 commandments that arguably say nothing about whether its OK to terminate the existence of a 10 day old embryo for medical research, or allow patents to deny important AIDS medication to impoverished countries, or whether its OK to enlist nuclear devastation to end war earlier.

I could go on. My point is, it seems to me there are a lot of other apparent contradictions that are much theologically serious and interesting than how Genesis can be true if there is evidence for, say, an earth that is 4 billion years old.

Astrolgy & astronomy

[SpinyNorman]

Actually, if astrology ever did have anything going for it, it certainly hasn't done so for a least the last thousand years or so. It used to be that your star sign was the zodical constellation that the sun was (if plotted against the night sky) in at the time of your birth. The significance of the zodiacal constellations vs any others merely being that they lay on the plane of earth's rotation hence on the path that the sun appears to take through the year... something of significance if you believe the sun and planets to be gods as the Romans did.

What happened well over a thousand years ago is that star signs became divorced from astronomy and instead bcame fixed to months of the year. Thanks to the "precession of the equinoxes" caused by the varying axis of earth's rotation, the two are not fixed, and nowadays your astrological sign is not the same as the constellation you were "born in". In another 25,000 years (it's a 26,000 year axis wobble cycle) we'll be back were the fixed (broken clock) is correct and your modern star sign corresponds with the astrominical reality, for what that's worth (not very much).

hmmmm

[GmAz]

If you take into consideration that God wrote every book in the bible through the hands of men, why does a man think he can deem something right or wrong. The organization called the Catholic Church was created a couple hundred years after the death of Christ. But didn't Christ's death ratify his new covenant? Christ created his church. The fact that many so-called churches exist today is the failure of man and his stubborness to realize he is doing wrong.

In Galations vs 8 and 9, it says: 8But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. 9As we said before, so say I now again, if any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed.

If any man has changed the words of God either by adding to or taking away from the bible, he has done what was spoken against in the two verses above in Galations. So, if God says that he made life in the glimmer of his eye, this he made life in the glimmer of his eye. If little Johnny asks where life came from, I would say that God created life. If he asks how he did that, I would say that I don't know. The bible tells us what we need to know to prepare us for Heaven and in Heaven is where we will be let known the things we do not know here on earth. Consider earth your proving grounds. You fail here, you don't get the reward of heaven.

Does he disagree or not?

[bmh129]

He says evolution fits with the Genesis creation. Doesn't that mean he believes in some sort of intelligent design, since creation says a supreme being made it happen?

And if people actually DO take creation literally, they should be reading it in Hebrew, in which the six days of creation COULD INDEED be translated as six AGES of creation.

This concept of an age-day was around in ancient times just as it is now. But don't take my word for it. Look it up.

Re:Forget it! Zeus did it and is still doing it!

[edlinger]

Considering Zeus has been relegated to "Mythology", I'd like to state that I think it would be good for all students to be exposed to "Contemporary Mythology". That class would teach the fundamentals of religions in existence worldwide in much the same way the old Greek and Roman religions are taught in "Mythology" classes today. I don't see much difference between the topics of "contemporary" mythology and the so-called "classic" mythology...

Flamebait?

It's been a while...

[FirstTimeCaller]

But, I for one welcome our Intelligent Designing overlords!

Your troll doesn't seem to be working

[Medievalist]

Hinduism is essentially pantheistic, and all this seems like inconsequential bibble-babble from a pantheistic point of view. It's not particularly pertinent to real spirituality or useful philsophy. Perhaps that's why you aren't getting a lot of Hindoo responses?

PS: Pantheism is not a belief in multiple gods; that would be some form of polytheism or animism (Hinduism transcends these boundaries in a manner very confusing to American WASPs, incidentally).

Re:Your troll doesn't seem to be working

[geoffrobinson]

Yes, because it violates the laws of non-contradiction. There are no distinctions? So I've reached Nirvana? err, no...

Re:Your troll doesn't seem to be working

[Medievalist]

I just read a large chunk of your website and I feel confident that you will never understand any explanation I might tender, nor would you wish to. I need to go take a shower now, maybe I'll eventually be able to pry this beam out of my eye.

Re:Your troll doesn't seem to be working

[geoffrobinson]

Feel free to try. There's a difference between agreeing and understanding.

Check out the missing books.

[Dhaos]

I believe the Parent was referring not just to textual versions- although it could be argued that in creating 'new and more accurate' translations a certain amount of interpretation has taken place.

Instead, take a moment to look up the 'lost books' of the bible, such as the book of Thomas. These are books that the -church- chose to leave out of the bible- but why? If all of the bible is divinely inspired, why did the church exclude passages?

And if the bible has been culled, and edited, how do you know that what you have is really the truth? That the exclusion of certain books from the bible isn't a perversion of its message?

That's the difficulty with trying to literally read the bible...you're reading a story that has been carefully groomed down for you by a church. Doesn't that make you nervous? It seems to me that the only way you can really read the bible is to find the spirit of God that connects the books, because it would be the only portion immune to perversion by selective editing and other earthly pressures.

YMMV.

Re:Check out the missing books.

[halivar]

Actually, I struggled with just this very thing, long before I started going to church. As an intellectual non-Christian, I found it disturbing that the Nicene Council just categorically removed entire texts of the Bible, and that early coptic and gnostic texts were ignored.

It was not until I began studying the Bible as a Christian that I found that the Bible itself rules out many of these texts; for instance, you refer to the Book of Thomas. I'll assume you're speaking of the gnostic text (there is a coptic "Gospel of Thomas" that is different). Gnostic theology is thoroughly rejected in the Bible itself, especially in the Pauline epistles where he refers to it directly as heretical. A text containing such contradictory doctrines can hardly be included in the very book that rejects it.

Other books were excluded simply because there was no evidence that they belonged. Every book but one in the Old Testament as we know it was quoted by Jesus in one of the four gospels, and so those books were taken as divinely authenticated. The only other book, Song of Songs (or sometimes Song of Solomon) is definitely older than Jesus, and yet is believed to contain messianic prophesy.

I agree with you that no one should accept what they're handed without careful scrutiny. The Bible itself asserts this. True devotion to the Bible (and therefore, to God) requires far more scholarship and investigation into the texts and doctrines than I believe is given by the modern church. The problem, I imagine, is a knee-jerk reaction against "science", or scientific-y sounding things like "critical analysis". It's the same reason many modern Christians have a hard time following or understanding (on an intellectual level) Jesus's dissection of the Old Testament (as reported in the gospel's) or the apostle Paul's deductions; understanding his epistles is difficult without at least a passing understanding of the ancient Greek philosophy and proof technique.

Re:Check out the missing books.

[jsebrech]

So, basically your argument is that the bible asserts the accuracy of the bible, so the bible can not be doubted.

That's not actually very convincing.

Re:Check out the missing books.

[brian0918]

You realize you've proved the parent's point about the current version of the Bible being "groomed" by the Church, right?

Re:Check out the missing books.

[halivar]

I'm not trying to prove to you that the Bible is true. That's a different discussion, and one I've never though fruitful for either side of the argument. I'm merely saying that the Bible is internally consistent, and that consistency provides the litmus test the early church used to decide what was canonical or not.

Re:Check out the missing books.

[halivar]

Yep. I was trying to give a motive to it, too.

Re:Check out the missing books.

[Dhaos]

I understand what you're saying and appreciate the well-reasoned response, but I don't think I agree with you.

The problem with accepting the bible as the literal word of God does lay in the contradictions. While the church may have edited the document for internal consitency, how can you be certain they made the right choice? If you believe, as many do, that Satan can take a direct role in the affairs of man, how do you know that he didn't insinuate one book into acceptance over another? How do you know that -your- decision to follow the book as written hasn't been influenced by the pre-selection that the church has laid out for you?

I do agree with you entirely that in order to really be religious, you have to investigate and to think for yourself. But I disagree that the fear of critical thinking and interpretation stems from a fear of science. Sad as it may seem, many churches are locked to dogma as a means of control. I guess that's the problem with having wordly churches...

Anyway, nice to read a post from an intelligible, rational, christian on slashdot.

Re:Check out the missing books.

[Darby]

I have two questions based on your post if you'd care to answer.

As an intellectual non-Christian, I found it disturbing that the Nicene Council just categorically removed entire texts of the Bible, and that early coptic and gnostic texts were ignored.

Why did you find this "disturbing" It's typical human nature. The winners write history. Plus, read "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire". That is how the New Testament was edited into place. As a way to consolidate power. Basic methods of control and all.

True devotion to the Bible (and therefore, to God)

Being of a religious bent as you are, shouldn't that implication go the other way (or maybe not) ? Don't you think that might be a fundamental problem? It certainly seems to give a good explanation for all the murdering done in the name of interpretations.

Re:Check out the missing books.

[jsebrech]

Internal consistency is to be expected for any long-lived religion. If it is trivially easy to demonstrate that the religious scriptures of a certain religion could not actually be truth, then that religion will not likely survive.

The problem with the internal consistency litmus test is that it does not do anything to explain why that particular canon is valid, since many consistent canons could be (and have been) made.

Re:Check out the missing books.

[mydn]

Internally consistent?

1. Is god a tempter?
   • Genesis 22:1 And it came to pass after these things, that God did tempt Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham: and he said, Behold, here I am.
   • James 1:13 Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man:
2. Jehoram's son was 2 years older than his father? And was he 22 or 42 when he became king?
   • 2 Chronicles 21:20 Thirty and two years old was he when he began to reign, and he reigned in Jerusalem eight years, and departed without being desired. Howbeit they buried him in the city of David, but not in the sepulchres of the kings.
   • 2 Chronicles 22:1-2 1: And the inhabitants of Jerusalem made Ahaziah his youngest son king in his stead: for the band of men that came with the Arabians to the camp had slain all the eldest. So Ahaziah the son of Jehoram king of Judah reigned.
     2: Forty and two years old was Ahaziah when he began to reign, and he reigned one year in Jerusalem. His mother's name also was Athaliah the daughter of Omri.
   • 2 Kings 8:26 Two and twenty years old was Ahaziah when he began to reign; and he reigned one year in Jerusalem. And his mother's name was Athaliah, the daughter of Omri king of Israel.
3. Did Michal have children or not?
   • 2 Samuel 6:23 Therefore Michal the daughter of Saul had no child unto the day of her death.
   • 2 Samuel 21:8 But the king took the two sons of Rizpah the daughter of Aiah, whom she bare unto Saul, Armoni and Mephibosheth; and the five sons of Michal the daughter of Saul, whom she brought up for Adriel the son of Barzillai the Meholathite:
4. Was Joseph's father Jacob or Heli?
   • Matthew 1:16 And Jacob begat Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ.
   • Luke 3:23 And Jesus himself began to be about thirty years of age, being (as was supposed) the son of Joseph, which was the son of Heli,
5. Did Jacob see god?
   • Genesis 32:30 And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel: for I have seen God

Re:Check out the missing books.

[halivar]

I had started a huge write-up with a point-by-point refutation. After a while I stopped because almost all of your "contradictions" stem from the fact that the KJV, even when the English was still contemporary, was a bad translation. It was translated from Latin, while modern Bibles are translated from manuscripts dating almost back to the lives of the men that wrote the original books.

If you're genuinely interested, I'll post the point-by-point up. If you don't really care, I'll just save myself the trouble. ;)

Re:Check out the missing books.

[mydn]

Oh, ok. So which bible is internally consistent? Anything can be "internally consistent" after all the errors are identified and edited.

Re:Check out the missing books.

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you for pointing out my exact problem with Bible interpretation. I cannot find a proper way of making choices, making sense out of the book. Which part to take literally, which rules to follow and what rules to ignore...

The same goes for interpreting religious experiences of people.

Which means I feel G-d left us with no useful info, which feels very unfair. Which made me choose to just take it as one moral opinion, one culture out of many, probably entirely made up by... men. It's the only sense I can make out of it all.

Re:Check out the missing books.

[WiFiBro]

I am interested in your response!

Re:wrong Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Golias]

My mistake. It is indeed in the fifth book, but still long before the end of the Torah.

The book goes on to describe Joshua and Caleb leading the next generation of Isrealites into the Promised Land, which Moses never got to see himself.

Then there's the problem of Numbers 12:3...

"Now the man Moses was very humble, more than all men who were on the face of the earth."

If Moses wrote that himself, it's hard to make a strong case for his humility, isn't it?

Deuteronomy 34:10 makes it even tougher...

"There has never been another prophet like Moses"

Since most of the Hebrew prophets came after Moses, it seems strange (assuming that it was divinely revealed to Moses what the prophets would be like) that this line would be written in the past tense... unless it was written by somebody else after the time of the prophets.

So, in spite of my getting mixed up on whether his death is recorded in Exodus or Deuteronomy, there's no debate that it happened before the end of the five books, which means that he either recorded his own death (after failing to see the Promised Land himself) and the events which followed (not to mention constant references of things which stand "to this day"), or that somebody else picked up where he left off (some scholars like to say Joshua filled in the gaps), or else it was written by some other person(s) entirely.

Re:I don't see the big deal behind intelligent des

[Dictator For Life]

What an ironic id you have, given your apparently naturalistic perspective ;-)

But really, it appears that you would have us believe that scientists operate without presuppositions. That, of course, is absurd, and it is doubly so when it comes to questions of cosmology and human origins.

Claims that humans descended from apes are *not* scientific, strictly speaking, because they are not reproducible. Where are our lab experiments demonstrating human evolution from gorillas or whatever? They do not exist. And even if they did exist, that would only demonstrate a *possible* explanation of our existence, since none of us was there to see exactly how it actually happened.

Much more important, however, is the fact that naturalistic scientists cannot reasonably be said to be objective or unbiased, because they have an a priori commitment to explaining things in purely naturalistic terms. Any suggestion of a supernatural explanation is even on the table for discussion with them, because they have rejected it out of hand at the outset. This may or may not be valid, but it is manifestly *not* objective or unbiased. A genuinely unbiased observer would allow for *either* possibility, but this simply cannot be said for the majority of scientists.

alchemy

[chancycat]

> No reason astrology can't be merged with astronomy either.

And I want to see alchemy and chemistry merged too. More fun. Easier to make gold from lead too.

model?

[pete0t2]

Instead of not teaching evolution in schools, or wasting time teaching intelligent design, we should just say that this theory is probably wrong and is just another theory like newton's laws. It is a useful model for how the world works and nothing more. Intelligent design has no scientific purpose, and therefore should be left for the philosophy classes or something. There is no room for "intelligence" or "magic" in sciencentific theories. Evolution is a powerful model that can can account for more than just the length of a bird's beak. It does this without introducing any magical all powerful decision makers.

Assuming those are honest concerns...

[QMO]

...some of them are interesting, and I'll respond to a few.

"how come better interpretations from God himself haven't been put into a 2005 version?"

Not everyone believes that there is no more revelation from God. In fact, assuming that God existed in Biblical times, as described in the Bible, using the patterns of communication described in the Bible, it seems likely that he would continue the same pattern of communication today.

"why does he insist on using middlemen to try to communicate with us?"

You could answer that yourself if you gave it a little thought. I'll give you a hint, though. The scriptures have many clear examples of God using middlemen, and other clear examples of not using middlemen.

"Faith alone is not enough to convince many of us here."

What does convince people? A short read of /. would quickly show that neither evidence, nor logical argument, nor emotional argument is effective at convincing people.

Re:Assuming those are honest concerns...

[Anonymous Coward]

"why does he insist on using middlemen to try to communicate with us?"

You could answer that yourself if you gave it a little thought. I'll give you a hint, though. The scriptures have many clear examples of God using middlemen, and other clear examples of not using middlemen.

I think you miss an important point that the previous poster was trying to make:

All of the writers of the scriptures are middlemen to us.

Re:Assuming those are honest concerns...

[Ced_Ex]

They are legitimate concerns, and they are among the many concerns that I have that prevents me from believing.

I'll ask for you to explain in depth why it is believed that it is God and not some other god (i.e. Zeus, Odin, Allah, etc..), or aliens that is behind all this?

I have not seen evidence of God, or anything supernatural.

Re:Assuming those are honest concerns...

[QMO]

"I'll ask for you to explain in depth why it is believed that it is God and not some other god (i.e. Zeus, Odin, Allah, etc..), or aliens that is behind all this?"

I'm not sure what you're asking here. If you're asking why others believe, then I can't answer. If you're asking why there has to be only one right answer, then I would say that multiple right answers (to the question of who is God?) don't make sense to me.

But, perhaps you're asking why I, personally, believe that God lives (and why He is Who I think).
I don't feel comfortable sharing the specifics of my reasons in this forum, due to their personal and sacred nature. Still, I will say that I have plenty of evidence, of many kinds, of the reality of God. I will also say that everyone has to find out for themselves.

Thank you for the conversation. I'd be happy to be more specific if you can find an appropriate place/forum.

No person knows everything

[serve]

The Orthodox rabbis I've spoken find it amazingly amusing that people take the creation story as literal truth, rather then a story about YHWH's power. If God is as powerful as these stories talk about, then why would anyone have to fabricate a story to express it? If God is all powerful, isn't he capable to do all of those things that stories talk about? It is true that every leader or member of a particular group or belief, be it a Rabbi, a preacher, or even your everyday follower of that particular religion, is not always going to accurately portray what the religion is about. Like anything in life, if you want to know the facts about Judaism or Christianity, you can go straight to the source by reading them first-hand in the Bible.

This is not just intelligent design

[hellfire]

The main difference between intelligent design and Religion is that intelligent design is being packaged in a way to pass itself off as science. The vatican admits what religion is, and is perfectly willing to say that Evolution is science. They then say that God gave man science, and established the rules of science, and acknowledge that this belief is creationism. There's a clear line between evolution and creationism there.

Intelligent design is in fact trying to blur those lines so children ask the wrong questions about Evolution. Questioning an established theory is great, as long as you ask the right questions.

Re:This is not just intelligent design

[hey!]

I have an aquaintence who is the pastor of the evangelical church in town. He's a very brilliant man, with a DD and a MD. He also believes in ID.

We had a spirited debate on this, and this is what I said to him: "Brad, I think it's a very bad idea to mix religion and science. Religion is about faith, and science is about doubt. If it cannot be doubted or negated it's by definition not science. If it is subject to testing it is by definition not faith. This Intelligent Design stuff gives both sides a raw deal, because it introduces faith into science and doubt into religion."

He didn't have anything to say to this, but he looked thoughtful. As a person highly trained in both fields, I think he was attracted to tying them up together in a neat package. He's a really wonderful man, but I think it would be a shame if as pastor he set a bunch of people up to lose their faith; and it's often the literalists who do lose their faith when confronted with the inconvenient factual findings of science of biblical scholarship.

The problem can better be stated in terms of...

[darkharlequin]

...politics. Evangelical christianity is famous for incorporating many of the psychological programming techniques that we often see in a cult--not necessarily to the extent that a cult would apply them--to encourage membership and facilitate control by priviledged members. To allow a contradictory theory to confuse the members--such as evolution, or proper theological studies--would open the door for questioning of the authority of the controlling members. This is a common occurrence in almost all groups, even in the scientific and educational community. To allow or accept the possibility of other realities in conflict with the 'fundamental interpretation' of the bible would be a bad political mistake. I would chalk this up to attempts to maintain control of the political base in order to facilitate growth and dominance, rather than a quest for the truth. It may be that the common member might actually believe the story, but it should be hard to believe that the more 'superior' members of the more radical evangelical groups believe the statements. Although, it is possible that the mechanisms that enforce the rigid fundamental interpretation that were set in place in the late 19th and during the 20th century might have been bought in to by the current leadership, it is hard to believe that it is more than simple political control actions.

Physical Violence is no good!

[Anonymous Coward]

"i hear physical violence is good for that. "

Actually its not. The ID's are actually quite good at beating and killing people seeing as how they like to beat up gays and blow up abortion clinics. So these guys could lay a good ass-whuppin' on you.

All in god's name, I suppose.

Re:wrong Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Anonymous Coward]

Still, a heck of a way to end a five book trilogy. "Perhaps he was dictating."

Re:Forget it! Zeus did it and is still doing it!

[erroneus]

yeah, you saw right through me -- I was being sarcastic and I too see little difference between contemporary mythology and classic except that little by little, classic mythology is giving way to being disproven... as they are disproven, they accept where they were wrong in an effort to keep their membership up.

Let's face some reality here -- "church" is one of the most profitable business models on the planet.

Re:Evolution isn't a theory about the start of lif

[Cerberus7]

Why can't #2 be true for a creator if it can be true for the universe? This is the core of the problem I'm getting at. If I can follow a chain of thought like this:

1. What is a tree made of? Various elements.
2. What are elements made of? Protons, neutrons, electrons.
3. What are those made of?

I can stop asking, for all practical purposes, with the answer "various elements." Protons, neutrons, quarks and the rest may not matter for my purposes. As far as I'm concerned, the chemical elements are sufficient explaination for the composition of a tree. Sub-atomic particles are not neccessary for me to explain the tree.

Likewise, I can say that the universe doesn't have a creator because it's not required. I can stop with "the universe has always existed" because the answer is good enough for me. Asking any further just introduces all kinds of difficult questions.

Evolution and Genesis are NOT compatible

[SamerAdra]

Genesis and evolution: Believe one or the other is true, but not both. To believe that man is made in God's image is not compatible with evolution. Having hundreds of millions of years of death and suffering (i.e., natural selection) BEFORE original sin is not compatible with Genesis. Genesis 3:17-18 and Romans 8:19-22. The first day (yom), the second day, evening and morning, and so on, are very literal wordings. Claiming to be written by God's own finger, Exodus 20:11 affirms the literal interpretation. In Mark 10:6, Jesus affirms creation. If you want to allegorize the literal six-day creation presented in Genesis, then you're also going to have to allegorize sin and the fall, and therefore judgment, redemption, the cross, and most things about Jesus. If you're going to admit to all of that, then there's no point in holding on to any form of Christianity any longer. Take a position, but don't try to hold two contradictory positions simultaneously. The Bible is all divinely inspired or none of it is. Believe God or believe man. Jesus said it best: "For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me: for he wrote of me. But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe my words?"

Re:Evolution and Genesis are NOT compatible

[mrpeebles]

LOL! What are you talking about, with your doom and gloom, that we cannot take apparently contradictory positions. Here are two from Christianity: God is One and God is Three (the trinity). Or: Jesus was fully human and fully God. Or from modern physics: light is both a particle and a wave.

I'll assume you made this post in ernest, and have read the Bible, presumably more than I have- its full of contradictions. Just like life. I would argue that's a prerequisite for it being true.

Re:Evolution and Genesis are NOT compatible

[SamerAdra]

There is a very big difference between apparently contradictionary and actually contradictory, and I think you made that distinction yourself with the wording you used. Two actually contradictory things cannot both be true, but two apparently contradictory things can be true if you examine them on a deeper level and resolve the apparent contradiction. It is much more difficult in this case because the Bible doesn't hint at evolution, but it is something people try to read in there to make the Bible work. If they do that, I'm saying they're going to need to explain a whole lot of things if they expect to get anywhere, because there are significant repercussions if there is evolution and natural selection before sin and death, affecting a wide range of Bible doctrines that many theistic evolutionists still hold.

Re:Evolution and Genesis are NOT compatible

[mrpeebles]

Yes, certain things are logically impossible, e.g. that 1==3. However, the point I was trying to make is that genesis vs evolution is only at least apparently contradictory. The burden of proof, though, is as much to prove that is is actually contradictory as it is to prove that there is no contradiction.

As to your statement "the Bible doesn't hint at evolution"- perhaps. I'm not a Biblical scholar. However, I suspect that e.g. before Augustine, people might have said that the Bible doesn't hint at original sin either. It took religious genius to show them. Ditto for the trinity.

But this process of "explain a whole lot of things if they expect to get anywhere, because there are significant repercussions if there is evolution and natural selection before sin and death"- doesn't this sound interesting? To me it does. (I'm don't think I agree with you that evolution and natural selection before sin and death has such serious repercussions, but thats not so important.) What might be said? Interesting things, I bet.

Christianity has been ingenius. It will continue to be so. A religion that can come to terms with a fully human, fully God, completely innocent Messiah being put to death for the sins of humanity can figure out a very interesting solution to little problem like this in, say, 500 years tops, I bet. Have a little faith.

Re:Evolution and Genesis are NOT compatible

[SamerAdra]

Augustine? Romans 5:12 makes original sin quite clear! Augustine only invented Calvinism. ;-) The Bible does not teach there are three Gods. The Bible says what it says, and the clear literal meaning is creationism. Thereofre, the burden of proof should be on a person who goes against the literal meaning to show how the allegorical meaning works out. I doubt anybody things the Bible hints at evolution...What is happening is people take its clear meaning and try to read evolution in there. I haven't really seen any plausible explanations (not proven, just vague possibilities) to bring together both Genesis and evolution being true. At the very least, it requires a potential explanation of the logical inconsistencies. Let future generations figure out the exact details, but I think at least a possible explanation is required...Currently if a person believes in evolution and tries to believe the Bible, Genesis' first few chapters are relegated to the realm of fairy tales, something in the author's imagination as a cute story to explain something, much like those in Eastern religions. It it's TRUE, however, there is still a very long way to go. From its beginning, evolution has been a religion of "it will all be sorted out within a few hundred years, tops." This is apparently no exception.

Re:Evolution and Genesis are NOT compatible

[mrpeebles]

I've always wondered what is meant by "literal meaning". What exactly does that really mean?

And are you saying you do not believe in the Trinity? (Which of course is fine, and which I grant doesn't conflict with saying there is one God.)

And I didn't mean to say that evolution would sort it out in a couple hundred years, but rather that Christianity would. I would say evolution is pretty much worked out by scientists because it doesn't give a hoot if it agrees with genesis. (By evolution, I mean simply the dates of the different fossil records.) Now the various varities of natural selection are a different matter, but that is off topic, and besides, I convess I'm not a biologist and would have difficulty arguing evolution convincingly.

Re:Evolution and Genesis are NOT compatible

[SamerAdra]

To interpret something literally is to take the primary interpretation of the passage, if it makes any logical sense, unless dictated otherwise by the context. When the primary meaning of a passage makes "common" sense, we should seek no other, but take each word literally, by its dictionary definition, unless the immediate context says otherwise...If the Bible's literal meaning is not correct, there is no way of knowing which interpretation is. If the Bible is the Word of God and God gave it to reveal truth to us, then there must be a logical way to discern what it means without each person guessing his/her own metaphorical interpretation. Isaiah 17:1 says: "The burden of Damascus. Behold, Damascus is taken away from being a city, and it shall be a ruinous heap." I take this to mean Damascus will literally stop being a city, and be wholly destroyed, because it is the clearest meaning. When the Bible says Jonah was in a whale, I believe it, because it's the simple, 2nd-grade meaning of the passage without going deeper, and it makes common sense, although people disagree with it on other grounds. In John 10:9, Jesus said: "I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture." I take this metaphorically instead of literally because the literal interpretation does not make common sense, for Jesus to be a walking, talking door. There is no reason to indicate the passage is literal--on the contrary, the context explains that Jesus is the door meaning He is the way of entrance, and this fits with other Scripture that says Jesus is the only way to Heaven. No, I'm just saying the Bible doesn't teach three gods, so there is no grounds in saying it states that 1 == 3. The Bible says there is only one God. If it said there are three *gods*, that would be a real contradiction. Instead, it teaches a trinity, but the definition of that word excludes three gods--that would be tritheism or a triad. Jesus said "I and my Father are one," and the trinity teaches that three persons are one in essence. There are a variety of viable explanations (though many may disagree) for the tri-unity; some look no further than man, created in the image of God, with body, soul, and spirit. Certainly God is infinitely more complex than us, and understanding the infinite would blow our minds, but it's a starting point to the trinity dilemma. Whether it's Christianity or evolution...well, I think it's both. It's Christianity fitting into the evolutionary mold, and I think holding science above the Bible in that manner (although I do think my faith is scientifically tenable) makes science a religion of sorts, since it is taking the primary position (I like 1 Timothy 6:20, KJV, as far as that goes). I don't think these Christians are going to find any missing links, because millions of people looking at a few chapters in Genesis is not something that's going to take years to decipher--the ideas are either there or they aren't. As far as fossil dating, it's interesting that evolutionary geologists date fossils by the rocks they are in, yet they date the rocks by the fossils that are in them (circular reasoning).

Re:Evolution and Genesis are NOT compatible

[mrpeebles]

1) To my mind, in your post you still don't established what "primary interpretation" means. Nor do you establish what "common sense" means. (Not that this doesn't mean there is not a more satisfying answer.) Does "common" mean that we sort of vote on what the Bible means. And is this what we think it means the first time we read it, or the 100th (or what ever.) And what about different cultures. For example, in college I read a paper where an anthropologist claimed that a culture of people didn't think in terms of cause and effect, but in terms of events and cycles. I personally wasn't convinced by the paper, but it was a famous paper, so many were. How would such a people's "common sense" or "primary interpretation" of Genesis differ from ours, I wonder. I would think it could easily be very different from our Wester perspective.

To be more immediate, I am a physicist, and especially after studying modern physics, part of me suspects that we can understand ONLY through "allegory", or through models that in some sense are dependent on our own psychology, and that God, or even some hypothetical alien species, would not need to understand the same events. So for me, I'm not even sure if your "literal" reading even makes sense. It's certainly not my common sense reading.

Or what about the Gnostics. I certainly could not convincingly argue a Gnostic interpretation of the Bible, but to them I would presume this was the most straight-forward way to read the Bible. Why your interpretation, and not theirs (assuming the answer is not simply that they were stupid.)

In short, to me "common" or "literal" seems to mean "naive" reading (not to say the person reading is naive), and it seems if I trust a naive reading, I am really only making a statement about my own cultural or personal prejudices. In short, this still doesn't get past the problem of "Which interpretation is the right one?"

2) You write "holding science above the Bible ... makes science a religion of sorts." Perhaps. I personally think, and I think most philosophers of science would agree, that all science the method can really do is claim that a hypothesis is false. In some sense, whenever scientists claim something is "true", really what they probably should be saying is "we feel this is the best hypothesis that we've got, and we haven't proven it wrong yet." But for purposes of education children (and this, of course, is where the rubber really hits the road on this issue, why every one is not just having happy conversations as we are now) how do we make these subtle distinctions? I claim this IS NOT the same as saying "evolution is just a theory." Science is also a social institution, and on evolution, for now, the verdict is in: the vast majority of scientists support evolution with some version of natural selection. A dozen PhD's does not a controversy make.

3) While I think the trinity is difficult to understand, my 1==3 comment was not meant to refer to it. I know its more subtle than that. I do think that Jesus as fully human and fully God is more logically difficult. But my point is this- it is not terribly interesting to ask whether there is a Trinity, or how Jesus cana be fully God and fully human. It is much more fruitful to accept these as true, and ask what it MEANS. I think the same is true for evolution and Genesis.

4) As to you comment about the fossil dating- I think you are over-simplifying, and I'm a physicist, not a palientologist so I don't know the details, but yes, it probably is ultimately circular. But it always is. Seriously, I would argue all of science is one big circular argument. That's the best we can do. We come up with some new scientific principle, and we test it, usually relying on some other scientific principle. The best we can hope to be is consistent. Thats what I mean by (2), that science can only prove things false. However, this got us to the moon, and it let us build jet airplanes, and it lets us build nuclear weapons, and gene therapy, and all the other wonderful and terrible things we do in the modern age. Somehow, it works. But it is a kind of miracle.

slashdotting Chick!

[FooAtWFU]

Dude, we're Slashdotting chick.com. This is kind of awesome. :)

Re:slashdotting Chick!

[dragonman97]

That pleases me to no end...

This Is All About "Penis Envy"

[cannuck]

This is all about Penis Envy - my penis is bigger than your penis - type arguement. My god is bigger than your god - so you must listen to what my god says that you MUST do - and of course god just talks to me. Now just don't listen to me - but give me your money - so that I can live the life of the rich and famous (including the hookers). And by the way here's a list of people to kill in my gods name.

Mod Parent Up

[randalx]

That was a really clear explanation. Someone please mod parent up. So many IDers are still confused by the definition of a "Scientific Theory". The proponents of ID use that confusion in their favour.

YHWH?

[Anne_Nonymous]

YHWH? WTF? IINAR, but IIRC YHWH is PITA. RTFM. LOL.

Depends on the ID'er. Behe, for example...

[ianscot]

Most ID I've heard has tended to be things like "God invented the eyeball"...

That's probably accurate for the run-of-the-mill IDer on the street. "Look at your hand, isn't it a marvel of engineering" is close to the mark. The public face of the IDer thing, though, is more like Michael Behe, who wrote "Darwin's Black Box."

Behe's not publishing anything in peer review journals (HA!) but he'd like to at least present a front that's intellectually coherent for the sympathetic layperson. As a result he concedes evolution on the species level, and even on the cellular level if memory serves. (Lots of his readers don't seem to realize this, of course, but he does it in the book's forward.)

Behe's particular "irreducible" argument is made on a subcellular level, about things like cilia. In the end it's just another form of his previous watch-watchmaker arguments about things like whale ancestors -- those were disproven as that particular niche in the fossil record got lots of work done in the last 20 years or so. He just chose the edges of whatever science was working on when he wrote his book, same as he did with the whales. Also his book is out-of-date, with lots and lots of his examples seeming to have been explained since he said they were unexplainable. He probably needs to re-edit it to reflect God's being just that little bit more complex now. ;-)

And yeah, it's still a whacked theory. I don't think Behe does (or anyway argued in his book for) the "Humans are outside of macroevolution" thing our parent poster tried, but it's just as much of a mess the other way. God created the cilia, which is complex and can't be explained, way back in time, and then intervened in the bajillion specific bioligical interactions along the way to human evolution, so as to produce John the Baptist? That didn't exactly clean things up for me...

In the end I'd like to give these people credit for sincerity at least. Between science and the ID PR onslaught, though, it's pretty clear which "side" enforces a process and method that can correct for human foibles, and which side is just an example of those foibles.

rubbish

[evenprime]

The menaing of day is somewhat muddleded by time....the "day's" from the bible are not to be translated literally...but more a spans of time while "god" or whatever you beleive in calling a supreme being worked on creation. So Day can equal Millions of years...
From: Chris Thompson

Response: The day-age hypothesis has been put forward numerous times as support for the biblical account of creation. While it solves the time issue, it does nothing to solve the glaring inconsistencies in astronomy and paleontology. For example, light seems to appear before the sun is created, and birds are created before sea creatures.

It seems impossible to reconcile the biblical account of creation with scientific evidence. It demeans both to make the attempt.

Re:rubbish

[jnaujok]

"...light seems to appear before the sun is created..."

According to the current Big Bang theories, the first moment of the universe is a massive expansion of nearly pure energy. For 300,000 years, there is so much energy, that the universe is actually opaque. In other words, the universe is so filled with light that light can't penetrate it. Solid light.

Then, at 300,000 years, the universe expands and cools to the point where suddenly, the universe becomes transparent. This moment, where the light is "separated from the darkness" is the source of the microwave background radiation that permeates the universe. All this happened 8-9 billion years before the sun ignited.

"...And God saw the light was good, and he separated the light from the darknesss..."

Funny, I don't see a contradiction.

not

[memeplex]

A theory, in scientific terms, is not merely a conjecture. That's what it means in every day use, like: "My theory is that Donovan McNabb doesn't like T.O." In science a theory is a tested and testable (?) system of thought. An hypothesis is not a capital-T Theory. This is the main tripping point for non-scientists. A true scientific theory is usually pretty good. It is, howvere, always subject to revision or complete overturning. Some aspects of relativity, for example, will undoubtably be replaced at some point due to the advances in quantum mechanics. ID is not a scientific theory. It is a belief. I want to believe. In a group of intelligent star-hopping aliens who made first contact with humanity around 4000BCE and gave humans technology and science. Nearly every culture on Earth has a version of this story, passed down orally for thousands of years. Ever wonder why agriculture, architecture, astronomy, brewing and law all arose very suddenly in the near-East? It was the Annunaki, or Nephilim. The "angels" or messengers who took to wife the daughters of men. Watch the X-Files.

Re:wrong Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Golias]

Still, a heck of a way to end a five book trilogy. "Perhaps he was dictating."

You were being funny, but that's not far off from the traditional Fundamentalist view (both among Evangelical Christans and some Orthodox Jewish sects.) The idea is that Moses was simply writing down exactly what God told him to write down.

There are at least a few lines in there which can be used to argue that this is how the Torah is meant to be read.

To me, it's not terribly important. I come at Old Testament validity from the opposite angle: Since I happen to believe in the divinity of Christ, and consider Him to also be the greatest Rabbi in history, the fact that He taught from those same scriptures instructs me that they are worth reading and trying to understand.

As a non-Jew, the issue of whether Moses wrote them or not matters about as much to me as the instructions to never eat shellfish, never cut my earlocks, and always wear tassles on the corners of my cloak.

Re:I don't see the big deal behind intelligent des

[geekwithsoul]

Scientists may have presuppositions, but science does not.

As for your argument about reproducing the jump from apes to humans in the lab, it is completely specious. No one has ever blown up Washington D.C. with a nuclear bomb, but there is no reason to believe that the laws of physics are somehow different there and that a bomb wouldn't blow up. That is not to say the evolving a human from a lower life form is not possible in a lab setting, but it would take thousands of generations and millions of years. However, you sound like a low enough life form that maybe we could start with you.

Evolution as the method of differntation in species has been proven in the lab and in the field. From amoeba to finches, we see the evidence of it every day. And as I said at the beginning, no one believes that scientists are not human and are somehow immune to bias. The difference is that science as a discipline works to remove that bias, while faith cannot exist without it.

Huh?

[Run4yourlives]

Are you saying that in order to believe in God I need to chuck all observable logic out the window?

Seriously, such stupidity does little good to anyone. To say that a book that has been in the pocession of mankind for about 2000 years (longer for the scripts in question) and translated into all sorts of languages, including the one you read it in (unless you read hebrew) is infalible to the point of expecting the literal definition is idiocy.

Re:Huh?

[SamerAdra]

If you're going to believe in the Bible and the main tenets of Christianity, then you need to get your head out of the sand and see what it obviously says. If you can show me how any of the passages in the Hebrew don't support creationism, then go for it, but the Bible clearly teaches that God created Adam, and then Adam sinned and death after that. To pretend that a straightforward concept can't be translated from Hebrew to English is ignorant unless you can show it specifically. And the creation/evolution debate isn't as clear-cut as you make it, from a purely empirical standpoint, by saying to believe in the former is to "chuck all observable logic out the window."

Re:Huh?

[Run4yourlives]

To pretend that a straightforward concept can't be translated from Hebrew to English is ignorant unless you can show it specifically.

Sure: yom

Oh, and about logic:

1. Plants (Day 3) are made before the sun (Day 4) is.
2. Cain and Able find wives, somewhere.

Re:Huh?

[scheming daemons]

Here's a question for the "Genesis is literal" crowd?

When Cain murdered Abel, the bible says he ran and hid because he was afraid of the "others".

What "others"? He murdered his only male sibling... supposedly, other than Adam, the only other male on earth at the time.

Doh!

Re:Huh?

[SamerAdra]

He could have had sisters at that time, for one thing, and Adam and Eve would've probably been fairly wroth. In Genesis 5:4, we see Adam and Eve had other sons and daughters. God commanded them to be fruitful and multiply. Obviously Cain assumed there would be more a'comin', and he was right, and would have had good reason to fear them in the future. The wording "...every one that findeth me shall slay me" would allow for that.

Re:Huh?

[SamerAdra]

People try to grapple with the word "yom" and neglect to explain how there can be millions of years of death and sin before the fall, which brought death and sin. Anyway, as far as yom goes, it's in the OT 2301 times, and, neglecting Genesis 1, used with an ordinal number (410 times), it always means a normal day, same whhen used with both "evening" and "morning" (38 times) and yom + either "evening" or "morning" (23 times) and yom + "night" (52 times). These clues in the context make the meaning clear, yet if it weren't a normal day, there would still be other things to worry about (e.g., if promoting evolution, then death before sin). 1. That would lean toward a 24-hour day, if they had to survive for a day without the sun. At the beginning when God said "let there be light" and the sun didn't exist, there are obviously other forms of light possible, so there is no contradiction. 2. They married their sisters (gasp!).

Re:Huh?

[Run4yourlives]

1. Plants don't use just any light for photosynthesis, they use sunlight. Which still creates a logic issue (not for me, you just wanted examples)

2. If death is simply a method of transformation, then its relevance to sin is not by itself contradictory to the notion of a "story" of Genisis. Or, if you will, there was no "evil" until Adam and Eve where made aware, regardless of what actually occured. I don't see any problems here. This is the same as God not caring about marrying a sister until moses.

Re:Huh?

[SamerAdra]

When I asked for examples, I meant examples of how the Hebrew wording supports some theory over creationism, namely, evolutionism. How does your (1) support evolution? It seems you're just playing the "Bible contradictions" game. 1. There's no problem. There's no way to show that there wasn't the necessary light before the sun was created. Comparing plant science of today with back then can also be iffy, before the fall and before the flood, but assuming it was pretty much the same, then big deal if they survived 24 hours without sunlight (assuming there wasn't a comparable form of light, i.e., "Let there be light"). If evolution and Genesis work together, there is a huge discrepancy with that account, by the day-age theory you were apparently arguing earlier. 2. Your explanation doesn't make much sense. According to Genesis, Adam and Eve sinned, and as a result of that, death and the curse came about. James 1:15 says "sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death" and Romans 6:23 says "the wages of sin is death." The same cause-effect relationship is evident when God warns Adam of the results of disobeying him, death. Evil wasn't about them being made aware of anything, but rather directly disobeying God's commandment. Theistic evolution and the day-age theory do not make any sense of this matter, with death existing before its cause, which is sin. Now, it seems you take Genesis as merely a story written by men to explain things. Fine. My main argument is against people in Christendom who claim the Bible is the Word of God, as the Catholic Church does, and then try to maintain God's Word is true by allegorizing its meaning when it disagrees with what fallible men tell them.

Re:Huh?

[Russellkhan]

Wait a minute! First we're taking it all literally, then we're assuming it doesn't mention all of the children? Genesis 4 mentions Adam "laying with his wife" (NIV phrasing) exactly 3 times. The third time, Eve even says "God has granted me another child in place of Abel, since Cain killed him." Obviously, this is all of the children she had, or else the Bible would say so.

As in aside, I'd say we all turned out incredibly well, considering how horribly inbred we are!

Re:Huh?

[SamerAdra]

Obviously it was a patriarchal society, and it is fairly well-accepted, throughout the Bible, that the birth of a son is treated differently than the birth of a daughter, as far as the recording of it goes...Just read a few more chapters in Genesis and look at the genaeologies. Look almost anywhere in the Bible where it lists a person's children, and it will generally show the sons only. As far as literal interpretation goes, it means taking the Bible at its word instead of twisting it metaphorically to meet our preconceived notions when there is a simple, logical literal interpretation supported by the context. That it mentions two times when Adam knew his wife does not mean there were not other times in all that span, and I think it is almost certain that they did have sex in between the mentions of it...it doesn't say otherwise, and husbands and wives do tend to do that, especially with no Internet or TV back then. There was sufficient genetic variation in the first humans that inbreeding was not yet a problem. Inbreeding would also exist with evolution.

Re:Huh?

[Run4yourlives]

Um, I don't recall ever saying that Genesis would directly support evolution. That would be rather ridiculous, no?

My point was that I don't agree that "being a Christian" means:

1) Taking the story of Genesis literally, and;
2) Completely rejecting evolution.

There is some direct evidence that evolution - at least in part - exists. Why would any thinking person, christian or not, suspend the logic in that observation simply to maintain a concrete argument? Is your faith so fickle that a simple "I'm not sure" troubles you? Isn't that the nature of faith?

The thinking you adhere to is the same thinking that locked up Gallileo. Even a Bible literalist these days wouldn't dare purport to argue that Christians should believe the earth is the centre of the universe! Yet at one time, they did.

Considering that a good deal of animals created by God on day 5 could eat nothing but meat, (assuming no evolution - and no change) equating death with origninal sin is rather silly.

Re:Huh?

[SamerAdra]

If the Bible is the Word of God, which is a viewpoint generally taken by Christians, then God is speaking to humanity...How are we to understand Him if not literally? If the primary meaning of a passage seems to make sense literally, then it should be taken as such unless there are clear indications to the contrary in the immediate context. Otherwise you have people guessing at a whole myriad of metaphorical interpretations (and also the literal) and no way to know for sure. If somebody holds that the Bible isn't of God, then that's more acceptable, but God cannot lie. It's definitely possible to be a "thinking Christian" and not believe in evolution. Secular scientists have written against evolutionism, so it's not as clear-cut an issue as some choose to make it. I'm convinced by the non-biblical evidence that creationism occurred, but that is somewhat beside the point. I believe you mean center of the galaxy, not universe, because those are completely different issues. As far as the whole Catholic Church debacle goes, the Bible never hints that the earth is flat (it actually suggests otherwise) and everything revolves around it. The RCC was simply buying into manmade traditions. Genesis 1 is completely different. The ground was cursed after Adam's sin, and the flood certainly changed things as well. It's highly probable the plants at the time provided the adequate nutrition. I do believe in microevolution--that is, the gradual filtering of inherent, preexisting genetic traits within an invidivual. I don't believe evolution ever adds new genetic information. At the time of creation, all animals, and men, ate plants: Genesis 1:29-30 And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so. In Genesis 9:1-3, God gives Noah explicit permission to eat animals. Isaiah 65:25 says "The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion shall eat straw like the bullock: and dust shall be the serpent's meat. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain, saith the LORD," perhaps a shadow of things to come, and a picture of God's ideal.

Do words mean anything???

[Robowally]

Of course, it'd probably be best if fundmentalists [sic] actually talked to, say, the rabbis who wrote the whole thing down. The Orthodox rabbis I've spoken find it amazingly amusing that people take the creation story as literal truth, rather then a story about YHWH's power.

Really? Do words mean anything?

Funny how astrophysics seems to have played right in to the hands of the Bible in the last 80 years. These guys below are NOT Christians, they are scientists. And the site the quotes come from is ........ Judaism Online!

"This is an exceedingly strange development, unexpected by all but the theologians. They have always accepted the word of the Bible: In the beginning God created heaven and earth... [But] for the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; [and] as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries."

- Robert Jastrow
(God and the Astronomers [New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1978], 116. Professor Jastrow was the founder of NASA's Goddard Institute, now director of the Mount Wilson Institute and its observatory.)

"As we survey all the evidence, the thought insistently arises that some supernatural agency - or, rather, Agency - must be involved. Is it possible that suddenly, without intending to, we have stumbled upon scientific proof of the existence of a Supreme Being? Was it God who stepped in and so providentially crafted the cosmos for our benefit?"

- George Greenstein (astronomer)
Greenstein, G. 1988. The Symbiotic Universe. New York: William Morrow, p.27.

Source: http://www.simpletoremember.com/vitals/Science_Quo tes.htm

Re:I don't see the big deal behind intelligent des

[Kohath]

No reason astrology can't be merged with astronomy either.

Don't do it! It's bad mojo.

Here's another one

[FooAtWFU]

After you've apologized to everyone for your rudeness and ignorance, we MIGHT let you back in!

Welcome to my foes list

[p3d0]

This is not the place for the flame war you're trying to start.

Re:Evolution isn't a theory about the start of lif

[Darktan]

For some reason this reminds me of Spacemoose.

Watch - Watchmaker is as old as Darwin at least

[ianscot]

You make ID sound like a new thing recently proposed by fundamentalist politicians. This is not the case; the idea has been around for as long as I can remember (admittedly, that's only about two decades, but still...), and has long been held as a possibility by Christian scientists...

Darwin describes the essential outlines of the ID argument in "Origin of Species." He's often misquoted by creationists (IDers, other permutations thereon) who don't realize (or at least admit) that he proposed ways to argue against his ideas, and that they're quoting him from those passages. Darwin was an intelligent man who genuinely was interested in arriving at the truth as far as human beings could.

Despite the "it's so complex we don't understand it" frontier having moved from areas like the human eye (early on) to fossil whales (recently) to subcellular structures, the same essential argument has continued to be made, and re-made, by people objecting to evolution. ID isn't really even a variation on it; it's as simple as the argument that a watch is so complex it must've been designed rather than spontaneously appearing in the world.

But I basically agree: the difference here is that we've gotten to a sort of tipping point at which politicians see this sort of "social right" position as a wedge issue they can use to win elections. (Personally I pray to God they lose that bet and wind up having allied themselves to a thoroughly disgraced Presidency that results in a Republican party I could imagine voting for again someday.)

/One/ God?

[ratboy666]

Um...

In a word, no.

Please read Genesis/Exodus carefully. It does say /You shall have one God/, and does ascribe Creation, but, by the time of Moses, "God" is taken as the most powerful (Moses duplicating Pharos Magis feats). God is careful to tell "his" people to not worship other Gods... Even though (reading literally) the "other Gods" are able to imbue the power to (eg.) turn staffs into snakes.

Which is a cool trick.

It does look like a rewrite of Genesis happened sometime, with a monotheist slant. Which disappears in Exodus. And then reappears.

Ratboy.

Re:/One/ God?

[atsabig10fo]

actually.. no. moses' staff turning into a snake came from God. all miracles came from God in order to demonstrate His power. all other 'gods' have no power, and hence were not to be worshipped. it doesn't even mean they exist. the bible is pretty clear that anything you worship becomes 'your god.' it has no power though because it doesn't actully exist. jesus' miracles had power from god as well. the dintinction between magic (evil) and miracle (coming from god) is made quite clear. i Have read the whole thing (carefully), i think it is you that needs to do so.

2 fallacies: Occam's razor and Falsifiability

[jgardn]

I want to bring to the table two logical fallacies.

The first is the argument people around here call "occam's razor". It says that apparently the simplest explanation is the correct one. A simple exercise in thinking can reveal that this isn't true. After all, Newtonian mechanics is far simpler than quantum field theory. But it is more incorrect. Even QFT is incorrect, and physicists readily admit to its limits and ponder what could be used to replace it. Physicists and mathematicians wish the world were as simple as the theory of electrodynamics (thanks to Maxwell's insight), but even that model is incorrect and limited.

The second argument I hear is that of falsifiability. "If some theory can't be exposed to experiments that could prove it false, it can't be true." This is also incorrect. I would like to turn your attention back to physics. Give a 5-year-old child a bunch of blocks, explain Maxwell's equations, and ask him to invent experiments to prove it wrong. Just because he can't come up with experiments that could potentially prove the theory of electrodynamics is wrong doesn't mean it is false.

I am a physicist by education. I must tell you that those who were professors around me cautiously acknowledged their own inferiority to a superior being. Many regularly attended their religion of choice. None were terribly happy with the theory of evolution, nor any other theory they taught about in physics class. Being a physicist means being honest. Ask some professor about whatever theory you like. Then ask them about its limitations. Every theory I learned about had a realm where it worked and a realm where it didn't, even the most advanced theories.

It's absurd to think, by simply observation, that man knows anything about the universe around him. Even our physicsts can barely explain the simplest of phenonema correctly. (Why do bicycles work? Why do airplanes fly? Physicists were wrong up until a few years ago when someone explained that the point of contact being behind the axis of rotation helped keep the bike upright and the angle of attack of the wing caused more lift than Bernoulli's principle.)

As a scientist, my only allegiance is to the theory that we are all idiots and that perhaps by careful observation I might find some way to advance that theory by turning conventional wisdom and/or science on its head.

On the subject of religion, why are so many people upset by it? Religion addresses a whole region of the human experience that science, by definition, cannot approach! Science deals with observation of the five senses; religion deals with observations of the spiritual side of man. Trying to use one to bludgeon the other is like using a sword to cut water! Let the religionists preach salvation and knowledge of the divine, and let the scientists measure the world around us and postulate on its mechanics. Never let one limit the other!

I am perfectly happy about learning about the THEORY of evolution and relativity and Newtonian mechanics, but I am also perfectly happy about learning about man's need for a savior and the true way to approach God for an absolution of one's sins. They aren't mutually exclusive.

By the way, I don't think that there is enough evidence in the earth's outer crust to either prove or disprove evolution. Ultimately, whether you BELIEVE man evolved or was created is an exercise in religion. So don't try bringing science into a realm where an infinite and omnipotent being interferes with the lives of man. Religion triumphs in matters of belief.

FINALLY: If you BELIEVE in the theory of evolution, you are not a scientist. In fact, you are what the Catholic Church was to Galileo.

Re:2 fallacies: Occam's razor and Falsifiability

[John Meacham]

This is a common misconception of what Occam's Razor is. It has absolutly nothing to do with "simplicity". It's exact wording is

one should not increase, beyond what is necessary, the number of entities required to explain anything.

An example would be saying that "The man died because of his heart attack and he was wearing blue pants". the "blue pants" are not needed to explain the fact he died, so can be dropped from the assertion without changing its validity. The application to the ID situation is a whole lot more obvious now and doesn't use overloaded terms like 'simplicity'.

Re:2 fallacies: Occam's razor and Falsifiability

[mrpeebles]

You write:
"If some theory can't be exposed to experiments that could prove it false, it can't be true."

Someone may have written that, but what they should have written is that any scientific theory must accompany an experiment (preferably many experiments) that can disprove it. This is why, say, string theory is always talked about by physicists with the footnote that while it may be interesting and promising, it is still only philosophy and math- because no one has come up with a way to test (ie, potentially disprove) it. If we did not have experiments to test Maxwell, then his theories would still be philosophy as well. Theories are not so much true in a given region as they are false outside that region.

If a 5 year old were to say that he was not convined of Maxwell's equation because he could not understand it, I would marvel at his mature skepticism. Anyone is welcome to be a skeptic. Tell a biologist you are not personally convinced by evolution, and he (or she) should certainly respect that decision. Just don't try to say that there is a serious discontent within the scientific community about Maxwell's equations or evolution- because there is not.

Re:2 fallacies: Occam's razor and Falsifiability

[Legion303]

You say you're a "physicist by education," then you go on to completely ruin the definition of "Occam's razor." Of course, my favorite part had to be: "Never let one limit the other!"

I guess you didn't get much education in the history of science at...where was it you were educated, again? The University of Wal-Mart? Science has had a rich history of being fucked over by religious authorities in the name of ignorance.

Theory needs work

[amightywind]

The Orthodox rabbis I've spoken find it amazingly amusing that people take the creation story as literal truth, rather then a story about YHWH's power.

If you look to the clergy to settle the matter you are no more scientist than Reverand Jimmy in his Waco Texas megabox church. He is just as convinced that the bible is infallable. He makes blind assertions too.

Why do people come so willingly to evolution's defense? The lack of a rigorous formulation makes it vulnerable. It provides a plausible explanation for the origin of species, but has no predictive power at all. Even the theory of econometrics is more developed in this sense. If I were a biologist or an geneticist I would be embarrassed at the state of the field.

Re:Theory needs work

[Hrvat]

Erm...evolution is not predictive because it depends on the actual environmental state. Since you can't really predict environment and its state in the long term, you can't predict how a species might evolve in reaction to that state.

I guess the simplest example of evolution would be the existence of the "superbug". (you can also look up "Antibiotic resistance"). Bacteria existed for a long time with many different strains. Then penicilin came along and killed off a lot of bacteria, all except for the ones carrying the resistance genes. Now the superbug can multiply unhindered, since the death of competing bacteria left plenty of food and room.

Re:Theory needs work

[benjj]

[Evolution] provides a plausible explanation for the origin of species, but has no predictive power at all.

How come even a cursory glance at the recent articles in the open access PLoS journals reveal lots of people making predictions from evolutionary information?

Protein Molecular Function Prediction by Bayesian Phylogenomics

Whole-Genome Analysis of Human Influenza A Virus Reveals Multiple Persistent Lineages and Reassortment among Recent H3N2 Viruses

Comparative Genomics and Disorder Prediction Identify Biologically Relevant SH3 Protein Interactions

Fools! Don't they know that evolution has no predictive power at all?

Re:Theory needs work

[lptport1]

I do not understand what you mean by lacking predictive power. Could you perhaps explain what you mean?

Re:Theory needs work

[Wavicle]

It provides a plausible explanation for the origin of species, but has no predictive power at all.

Oh that's just nonsense.

Before the rise of antibiotic resistant bacteria their existence was predicted by evolution. Researchers knew if a single bacteria, through random mutation, developed a resistance to an antibiotic, it would have an obvious survival advantage and spread more rapidly. In several countries, if you contract a disease from a local prostitute, it's almost gauranteed to be a super-resistant strain because some genius government there thought they would be clever and give these women antibiotics as a prophylactic measure. Worked for a little while, then that damned evolution thing kicked in.

That's why HIV carriers are on a drug cocktail. It's far less likely the virus is going to develop an immunity to all the different drugs at once. If you were to give the drugs one at a time, however, evolution predicts the rise of an HIV virus that could resist them all.

Re:Theory needs work

[itchy92]

If you look to the clergy to settle the matter you are no more scientist than Reverand Jimmy in his Waco Texas megabox church. He is just as convinced that the bible is infallable. He makes blind assertions too.

The difference is this: while there is no concrete or "rigorous formulation", every observable fact leads to this conclusion. It's not called the Theory of Evolution because some guy just thought it up, it's called such because it has not yet been authoritively proven. That doesn't discredit its merit; every field of science generally agrees that all life evolved from single-celled organisms. But since there are still a few holes to be patched up, scienctists refer to it as a theory.

Now, in my opinion, there's nothing wrong with Intelligent Design inherently. I'm an agnostic (who leans towards atheism) who believes in and supports the theory of evolution, but I also believe ID is a possibility, just not a probability. The problem I have with Intelligent Design is that there is NO EVIDENCE to support it, as opposed to MUCH EVIDENCE for evolution. Just because they are both technically "theories" does not put them on the same footing, as ID supporters claim.

/* Rant

Regardless of whether you believe in evolution or ID, god or God or gods or no god, I think there is one fact that no human being can honestly deny: Human beings are logical. Whether we were designed this way or evolved into it, we are a species that possesses a great capacity for logic and rationality (regardless of how or if we choose to use it...). If god/God created us, it would be wrong of it/Him to expect us to forgo our logic -- the very thing which makes us human-- to believe something for no reason. And if we evolved this way from nothingness, it would be wrong of us to stop evolving by not utilizing our abilities.

End Rant */

Re:Theory needs work

[Bush Pig]

I'm not quite sure why you think evolutionary theories lack rigour, especially when compared to _anything_ the economists say.

Re:Theory needs work

[iocat]

ID doesn't argue that evolution doesn't happen; it argues that some elements that "evolved" were so improbably they must have been intelligently designed. Like, God was like "man it would sure be cool if the eye existed," and sort of slightly intervened to enable the "guided evolution" of the eye.

That's a fine conjecture, but it doesn't seem any more fine to me than "dude you have no clue how long a million years is, never mind tens or hundreds of millions, and given your total lack of perspective about time, it's not surprising that the eye seems like it never could have evolved on its own to you. To others, it doesn't seem weird at all, and doesn't suggest the existence of ID."

To me, the most irritating part of ID is people want to use it a "proof" that god exists, when the whole deal with god -- at least as I was taught -- is that there is no proof, and no need for proof. That's why it's called "faith."

Re:Theory needs work

[Eccles]

Evolution has plenty of predictive power.

Look in rocks estimated to be 100 million years old? You'll see 100 million year old fossils, with characteristics similar to 110 million year old fossils and 90 million year old fossils. You will not see any interaction with critters from today or from hundreds of millions of years prior. That's a prediction, borne out by fossils discovered long after Darwin proposed his theory. Darwin's theory needed a mechanism, and Watson and Crick discovered its form. And what did we discover? That it behaves exactly as we would expect, that creatures we think evolved from a common ancestor have similar DNA, and so on.

Moreover, it has plenty of predictive power, it just takes longer than most of us are alive for most species. But Bush and co. are proposing spending billions on a prediction that avian flu may mutate to a form that spreads easily to and across species. Sounds like an evolution prediction to me.

Re:Theory needs work

[Shakrai]

That's why HIV carriers are on a drug cocktail. It's far less likely the virus is going to develop an immunity to all the different drugs at once. If you were to give the drugs one at a time, however, evolution predicts the rise of an HIV virus that could resist them all.

Your theory is perfectly valid with bacteria (natural selection prefers resistant bacteria) but I don't think it applies to HIV.

IANAMD but as I recall the HIV cocktail reinforces your immune system so that your body be more successful at fighting off HIV. The drugs don't do anything (directly) to the HIV virus. We have yet to come up with a drug that will directly attack any virus -- let alone HIV.

Re:Theory needs work

[Anonymous Coward]

Whether we were designed this way or evolved into it, we are a species that possesses a great capacity for logic and rationality
If god/God created us, it would be wrong of it/Him to expect us to forgo our logic

"Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction." - Dick Cheney
"We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." - Condolezza Rice
"In Iraq, a dictator is building and hiding weapons that could enable him to dominate the Middle East and intimidate the civilized world -- and we will not allow it." - George Bush

Re:Theory needs work

[mfrank]

A few years ago Scientific American had an interesting article about people who had the left and right halves of their brains seperated (last ditch treatment for profound epilepsy). The way they responded to some experiments afterwards displayed quite powerfully how we humans go to extraordinary lengths to explain reality, well beyond the use of reason. Humans are *not* logical, and people who can reign in irrational thoughts well enough to calmly engage in scientific reason are, by a long shot, the exception rather than the norm. I mean, seriously, do you think being able to think logically is something that will increase your chances of propogating? This is slashdot, for crying out loud.

Re:Theory needs work

[Mr. Shiny And New]

Actually, we have several drugs that can attack viruses; Tamiflu, the anti-flu medication, is one current example. We just don't have any that are as broadly effective as antibiotics are against bacteria.

Re:Theory needs work

[Fulcrum of Evil]

Erm...evolution is not predictive because it depends on the actual environmental state. Since you can't really predict environment and its state in the long term, you can't predict how a species might evolve in reaction to that state.

So does Physics. Just because you can't predict the exact result of a hard break in 8 ball pool doesn't make it non-predictive.

Re:Theory needs work

[Fulcrum of Evil]

It's not called the Theory of Evolution because some guy just thought it up, it's called such because it has not yet been authoritively proven.

And it never will be. That's part and parcel of being a theory.

Now, in my opinion, there's nothing wrong with Intelligent Design inherently.

Nor in mine, just don't call it a theory, because it isn't.

Re:Theory needs work

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because you can't predict the exact result of a hard break in 8 ball pool doesn't make it non-predictive.

You're wrong ! Physics is nothing but an ellaborate fairy tale disguised as science. The fact that you can't predict the result of a break can only prove that God designed pool (and also that this is what He really plays, not dice).

Re:Theory needs work

[amightywind]

I do not understand what you mean by lacking predictive power.

Scientists refer to 'evolutionary forces'. Can those forces be quantified? Can they be used to predict morphological changes in subsequent generations. Can we show by mathematical deduction why humans have changed so much in 4 million years and a Coelocanth has not changed in 350 million. The theory is out there. Generations of organisms are responding to some stimulus. Mathematically, what is it?

Re:Theory needs work

[Jerm]

I'm sorry, but you are wrong on the "direct interaction" front. Almost all HIV drugs interact directly with some protein belonging to the virus. I believe the cocktails attack multiple pathways at once; the protease, the integrase, etc.

The drugs that got the most press initially (and started the reversal of fortune) were protease inhibitors. They directly interact with HIV protease that cleaves the polyprotein of the virus into it's many components. If the HIV virus can't do this, it can't assemble. The protease inhibitors bind in the cleavage pocket of the protease, and shut down its function.

There is no reason why HIV couldn't randomly mutate to become resistant to this drug. However, these cocktails ensure that if one pathway of the virus assembly/infection "breaks through," it gets shut down at a different stage.

Re:Theory needs work

[Anonymous Coward]

Your comment has nothing to do with the comment you replied to. Idiots like you are why Slashdot discussions like this are practically unreadable(in addition to the people who mod you up). Please learn how to respond to the appropriate comment in a thread. Slashdot really needs to get an explicit moderation option for you morons.

Re:Theory needs work

[itchy92]

Point taken. I don't know how much it will invalidate my argument to concede that humans aren't wholly rational, that we are still subject to our emotions, as well as physical and subcognitive processes. Certainly I don't mean to say that a human is 100% logical, all the time. And certainly, people, to a certain degree, choose to be irrational and illogical; or rather, to disobey logic. And I believe that every such action goes against our true nature, which is not to say it's wrong, just unnatural.

I guess my point was on a slighty more basic level. Strip away from a human all societal knowledge, memes, culture, beliefs, etc. In fact, strip away everything that makes a homosapien a human. On an organism level, you still have a creature that is chemically and physically more capable of logic and problem-solving than any other known species. We have the ability to recognize logic and engage in abstractual thinking. From this premise, I drew my conclusions about the importance of logic; without it, we would be poorly-architected apes... whether or not you believe in evolution.

So while humans as a species do go against logic, and while I admit that I don't think it's wrong, I also don't think it should be encouraged by society.

Re:Theory needs work

[rnws]

Damn, I so wish I had mod points right now. Go to the front of the class :-)

Re:Theory needs work

[itchy92]

Right. Exactly right, actually. I wholly accept the possibility of Intelligent Design. However, I also recognize the vast improbability of it, in the face of so much support for pure evolution. Like I said, there are still a few holes in the theory, but I am more confident that they can be explained by science than by a nudge from a noodly appendage.

Re:Theory needs work

[SupaKoopa]

Yes, this leads perfectly into my theory of the Intelligent Ball-Roller!

Re:Theory needs work

[chriso11]

Oh yeah - show me how ID uses mathematics. And not just "Noah's ark was 100cubits long".

How about this - several years ago, some bacteria were found to be able to digest nylon. Evolution explains that nicely - there was no nylon available, so there was no need to develop the ability to digest it. Once nylon was invented, it then became an 'evolutionary force' (although I think that factor is a more approriate term). Some years pass, and eventually some bacteria, through random mutation, developed that ability to digest it.

So, how would ID explain the nylon eating bacteria?

Re:Theory needs work

[tompaulco]

I don't know about ID, but I would explain it as "before the invention of nylon, bacteria that were capable of digesting nylon did not eat nylon."
Unless we can prove that that same species of bacteria was not capable of digesting nylon previously, then there is nothing to note.
Even if it could be proven that the bacteria developed the ability to digest nylon, that is merely natural selection due to mutation of genes accidentally providing a benefit. We've seen that before.
What would really be interesting is if we observed the species of bacteria grow arms and legs, learn to talk and start weaving the nylon into clothing and wearing it.

Re:Theory needs work

[DarkProphet]

I have thought about this as well, though I am not a scientist.

In your example, we'd need to have good hard data on environmental factors that may impact survival, such as a inhospitible climate shift or short food supply, for example. The correct factors must be determined.
Then it would be necessary to analyze data on those factors and how likely they were to impact survival at any given time.

This analysis would have to be done covering the entire 4 million years. At some point though, one has to add additional factors, such as social/cultural culling and technological advance, which can negate environmental factors. You don't need thick fur and/or fat to live in an extremely cold climate if you can reliably make fire. Where the cold weather would have been an evolutional factor before, now is a moot point.

I don't think there is necessarily a mathematical formula can be derived from all of this to reliably predict exact evolutional paths, though I suppose it is possible to come up with one that will give a narrow range of probable evolutional paths.

With that said, such an equation could predict a species' evolutional path until that species reach the point where purely environmental factors cease to wholly impact survival. Apes are social creatures. The society itself can provide other culling factors, such as competition for a mate. Present-day sociotechnological and evironmental analysis could probably predict a simian species' evolutional upgrade paths within a vary narrow range of result. Assuming no undue intervention from other species (humans, via deforestation), that is.

And then you have dominant species with no natural predators that has social structure which is used to almost completely negate purely environmental factors. There is no telling in what way homo.sapiens.sapiens will branch, because human procreation and survival is mostly dependant on social acceptance and the ability to coexist in that society. What will our decendants look like in 10,000 years? 50,000? A million? Assuming we don't become extinct through some environmental (Earth collides with asteroid) or social (nuclear war) impetus, that is. Perhaps nerds in general will get the opportunity to procreate even less than we do now(due to society's obsession with beauty and daily showering), and our analogues in the future will beautiful, smell good, and very stupid. Perhaps then homo.sapiens.regressus will dig up a 10,000 year old nuke and accidentally blow the world up with it. Mapping an evolutional upgrade path past that point in time wouldn't make sense. Or perhaps nerds will get to procreate more and 10,000 years from now our decendants have a fantastically advanced society and unimaginable technology, but are horribly, horribly ugly, antisocial, and have habitually poor personal hygiene. Who can say? ;-)

Anyway, such a mathmatical construct should work fairly reliably for tracking a present-day species back to the past for 'simple' organisms that are most likely to have evolved under 'pure' environmental paradigm. For species with the sociotechnological element, I suppose a fairly accurate and unbiased culture history could accurate reasons why species Y is derived from species X or even A. To use a programming analogy: It'll generate a species' changelog and developement roadmap. Changelogs contain detailed information about what changed from one version to the next. Development roadmaps lay out a framework for the developmental direction, but contain few specifics and cannot accurately be used to predict line 10,234,234 of DNA.homo.sapiens.sapiens.c sixty thousand years from now, though the roadmap may or may not outline that line's general area of modification.

Re:Theory needs work

[susano_otter]

So, how would ID explain the nylon eating bacteria?

Trivial.

The Intelligent Designer designed bacteria such that their internal logic included the capability to develop nylon-eating characteristics. When the circumstance arose, the bacteria performed exactly as they had been designed.

Besides, since pure evolutionary theory doesn't have a lot of predictive mathematics either, it's not a very useful point of comparison--except to say that it isn't superior to ID theory in this particular way.

Re:Theory needs work

[susano_otter]

Okay, here's what I want to know, regarding the predictive power of Evolutionary Theory:

Shouldn't it be trivial to culture some bacteria, put them in a hostile environment (too hot, too cold, whatever), and then bombard them with cosmic rays and whatnot to induce random mutation?

And couldn't we get some very useful benchmarks on the evolutionary process, which is essentially the interaction between random mutations and environmental forces to produce successivly more viable generations?

Shouldn't we know by now--for certain standard experimental bacterial cultures, at least--exactly how many mutations per year per bacterium is typical, and how many of those mutations are beneficial? Shouldn't we have some pretty solid numbers regarding how much mutation in a bacterial culture is too much? Shouldn't we have a pretty good idea of how often a beneficial mutation is likely to occur in a bacterium, and what other factors lead to a more viable culture, rather than complete extinction?

At this point, shouldn't we be applying all this hard data to experiments with rats and other more complex organisms?

Have I missed this whole area of research, into forcing evolutionary progress in a laboratory, to see if it even remotely matches evolutionary theory?

If this kind of thing is actually going on, can anybody tell me the results?

I mean, if

Random Mutation + Natural Selection = Evolution

Then it should be pretty easy to test the whole thing out on bacteria in a lab in something less than Epic Amounts of Time, neh? After all, you're asserting that it happened with bacteria in the real world in less than a century's span. Surely the most advanced labs in the world could beat that time under controlled conditions. So: have they? If so, what were the results? If not, why not?

Re:Theory needs work

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey -- irregardless of whether his arguments have merit or not, he is NOT making a case for or defending ID. Please: don't let your rhetoric descend to the level of that of the fundies.

Re:Theory needs work

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Real ID- like the Catholic Church's version above? Exactly the same way as evolution......after all, evolution is the method that God used to create the world, not the book of Genesis- RTFA.

Re:Theory needs work

[Dwonis]

dude you have no clue how long a million years is, never mind tens or hundreds of millions, and given your total lack of perspective about time, it's not surprising that the eye seems like it never could have evolved on its own to you.

Yes. Now take that number, and multiply it by the number of trials going on simultaneously...

Re:Theory needs work

[markbark]

Quoth the poster:
That's a fine conjecture, but it doesn't seem any more fine to me than "dude you have no clue how long a million years is, never mind tens or hundreds of millions, and given your total lack of perspective about time, it's not surprising that the eye seems like it never could have evolved on its own to you. To others, it doesn't seem weird at all, and doesn't suggest the existence of ID."

Indeed they have no concept of a million years. You forget, you're talking to folks that believe the universe was created at 4:30 in the afternoon of October 26th, 4004 BC. A million years have not elapsed yet, so HOW could evolution take that long?

Ain't circular logic GRAND?

To me, the most irritating part of ID is people want to use it a "proof" that god exists, when the whole deal with god -- at least as I was taught -- is that there is no proof, and no need for proof. That's why it's called "faith."

Didn't Douglas Adams address this RE: the whole Babelfish thing?

--MAB

Re:Theory needs work

[Hal_Porter]

That's not true.

AZT for example is known to block reverse transcriptase. It's kind of cool actually - normal cells store their genes as DNA and convert to RNA which is passed out to ribosomes - little nanomachines that build proteins based on the RNA 'program'. The HIV virus is a retrovirus and retroviruses store their genes as RNA and need a special enzyme, reverse transcriptase to convert it to DNA to be inserted into your cells.

I guess the problem is that drugs like AZT probably mess up other enzymes too causing side effects, and aren't 100% efficient against reverse transcriptase. Even worse, reverse transcriptase has such a high bit error rate as it copies that HIV can mutate quickly, and some of the viable strains are very resistant to AZT.

But it's not as if people aren't trying to attack the virus itself. I've stressed the software parallels a bit because of this site, but they are striking - ribosomes for example even look like Turing machines with the RNA as the tape. But unlike software, you can't (yet) make something which will block the viral enzyme 100% and have no effect on any others. At least not last time I looked.

Re:Theory needs work

[Mateito]

The Fundamentalist response to this is that HIV was developed by God to kill all the nasty homosexuals, unchaste women and all those horrible unbelievers in Africa.

You can't really apply logical reasoning to an argument built from a fundamental premise that is illogical.

Re:Theory needs work

[tomhudson]

Shouldn't it be trivial to culture some bacteria, put them in a hostile environment (too hot, too cold, whatever), and then bombard them with cosmic rays and whatnot to induce random mutation?

And couldn't we get some very useful benchmarks on the evolutionary process, which is essentially the interaction between random mutations and environmental forces to produce successivly more viable generations?

Youdon't need to be so complicated. Just take a piece of carcass from an animal (say, a pig) that died of disease, put it in a box with a source of mild radiation, and wait a month. Open the box. There's a chance that some of the bugs that survived, reporduced, and mutated into new forms will do you some serious bad shit to you.

Re:Theory needs work

[amightywind]

I love the moderators of this site. This post is so not intended as flamebait. It is a serious *critical* discussion of an important idea. The process of evolution is observational fact. I just maintain that the mechanisms are poorly understood.

Re:Theory needs work

[timbo234]

These experiments you describe have been done many, many times over the past 100 years or so. Google around for things like 'fruit fly experiments + evolution' and things like that.

Re:Theory needs work

[susano_otter]

The top Google result for 'fruit fly experiments + evolution' seems dedicated to the proposition that not only have these experiments been conducted at great length, but that the experimental results strongly suggest that mutation does not produce new species. However, other Google results (see below) indicate that the fruit fly experiments were not actually experimenting with induced mutations, so this result might completely beside the point.

The second and third top links seem to be irrelevant to our discussion.

The fourth Google result indicates that the fruit fly experiments focused on applying Natural Selection to existing mutations.

The remaining results on the first page seem to fall into two main categories: They either use the experiments as a basis for arguing against evolution, or they describe the experiments as being concerned with selecting for existing traits.

This process by which existing traits are tested by the environment for viability, and only beneficial traits are passed on to the next generation, is natural selection, and I don't have any problem with that.

But this process is not the process by which new traits are introduced into a species. For this, we need random mutations. Natural selection filters existing traits. And the fruit fly experiments demonstrate its mechanisms quite clearly. But only a constant influx of new, random, traits can give the process of natural selection something to filter.

My question is, have there been any experiments done with induced mutation, combined with natural selection, to establish benchmarks for the end-to-end evolutionary process under controlled conditions?

For example, has anyone bombarded bacteria with cosmic rays in a laboratory, and made a note of how long it takes for speciation to occur? (For that matter, has anybody been able to trigger speciation in a lab at all?)

Re:Theory needs work

[susano_otter]

If it's that easy to conduct such an experiment, then I'm even more amazed that nobody has thought to do it yet, and published the Nobel-prizeworthy results so that all may see this incredible proof that the theory of Evolution is, indeed, fact.

Re:Theory needs work

[tomhudson]

Its been done lots of times - heck, I remember reading about how you can do this at home, back in the late '60s, in one of the popular science articles. Usual cautions about making sure to wipe everything down with lysol, how to make yourself a glove box, hyow to culture samples in petri dishes, etc.,

Like I said, this is so old its NOT news.

Re:Theory needs work

[lptport1]

I do not follow your distinction. The "internal logic" you describe sounds similar to evolution, save for the fact that you make it sound as if the ability to consume nylon arose immediately (and within those specific bacteria). How do you distinguish between the two?

Re:Theory needs work

[susano_otter]

Interesting. What radiation source was proposed, for these home experiments?

Additionally, were these experiments ever actually carried out in a lab, with proper scientific controls, and results published in a reputable peer-reviewed journal?

Re:Theory needs work

[PhysSurfer]

Why do people come so willingly to evolution's defense? The lack of a rigorous formulation makes it vulnerable. It provides a plausible explanation for the origin of species, but has no predictive power at all. Even the theory of econometrics is more developed in this sense. If I were a biologist or an geneticist I would be embarrassed at the state of the field.

No predictive power? Have you ever heard of DNA? The theory of evolution predicted its existance, because there would have to be some physical way of organisms passing their traits to their offspring while at the same time allowing for variablity.

Also evolution predicts the existance of intermediates, such as archaeopteryx in the fossil record.

Perhaps you should learn something about a subject before you argue about its validity.

Re:Theory needs work

[tomhudson]

Low-grade ultraviolet. Even that is enough to break some of the bonds in the gene, allowing them to fualtily recombine. Look through old copies of "The Amateur Scientist" from the '60s. This is really elementary biology - high school stuff. Guess the quality of education has gone down over the decades.

Re:Theory needs work

[SirPavlova]

[T]hat is merely natural selection due to mutation of genes accidentally providing a benefit. We've seen that before.

You realise you've just supported the very thing you're decrying? That's what evolution is. What you're actually arguing is that evolution happens, but only on a really small scale.

If you add up lots of small scales, what do you get?

• One really big scale.
• The requirement for a lot of time to have all those small scales in.

So where's the problem?

Re:Theory needs work

[chasingporsches]

sadly enough, this is very true. i have fundamentalist friends that believe the crap jerry falwell was spouting on TV after katrina, that they deserved to die because new orleans was a sinful city. that is not the god i know.

but from what i've found, evolution fits perfectly with the creation story in genesis. 1:20 "and god said, let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life" - first mention of life, and where do most evolutionists think micro-organisms came from? the sea. and after that god created creatures "after their kind", which implies that different kinds of creatures stemmed from common ancestors, and there is nothing in evolution or natural selection to say that god didn't invoke it. but hey, just my $0.02

Re:Theory needs work

[zombieSlug]

Evolutionary theory has plenty of predictive power. Here are just a few examples;

* Darwin predicted, based on homologies with African apes, that human ancestors arose in Africa. That prediction has been supported by fossil and genetic evidence (Ingman et al. 2000).
* Theory predicted that organisms in heterogeneous and rapidly changing environments should have higher mutation rates. This has been found in the case of bacteria infecting the lungs of chronic cystic fibrosis patients (Oliver et al. 2000).
* Predator-prey dynamics are altered in predictable ways by evolution of the prey (Yoshida et al. 2003).
* Ernst Mayr predicted in 1954 that speciation should be accompanied with faster genetic evolution. A phylogenetic analysis has supported this prediction (Webster et al. 2003).
* Several authors predicted characteristics of the ancestor of craniates. On the basis of a detailed study, they found the fossil Haikouella "fit these predictions closely" (Mallatt and Chen 2003).
* Evolution predicts that different sets of character data should still give the same phylogenetic trees. This has been confirmed informally myriad times and quantitatively, with different protein sequences, by Penny et al. (1982).
* Insect wings evolved from gills, with an intermediate stage of skimming on the water surface. Since the primitive surface-skimming condition is widespread among stoneflies, J. H. Marden predicted that stoneflies would likely retain other primitive traits, too. This prediction led to the discovery in stoneflies of functional hemocyanin, used for oxygen transport in other arthropods but never before found in insects (Hagner-Holler et al. 2004; Marden 2005).

and

# Bioinformatics, a multi-billion-dollar industry, consists largely of the comparison of genetic sequences. Descent with modification is one of its most basic assumptions.
# Diseases and pests evolve resistance to the drugs and pesticides we use against them. Evolutionary theory is used in the field of resistance management in both medicine and agriculture (Bull and Wichman 2001).
# Evolutionary theory is used to manage fisheries for greater yields (Conover and Munch 2002).
# Artificial selection has been used since prehistory, but it has become much more efficient with the addition of quantitative trait locus mapping.
# Knowledge of the evolution of parasite virulence in human populations can help guide public health policy (Galvani 2003).
# Sex allocation theory, based on evolution theory, was used to predict conditions under which the highly endangered kakapo bird would produce more female offspring, which retrieved it from the brink of extinction (Sutherland 2002).

And

# Tracing genes of known function and comparing how they are related to unknown genes helps one to predict unknown gene function, which is foundational for drug discovery (Branca 2002; Eisen and Wu 2002; Searls 2003).
# Phylogenetic analysis is a standard part of epidemiology, since it allows the identification of disease reservoirs and sometimes the tracking of step-by-step transmission of disease. For example, phylogenetic analysis confirmed that a Florida dentist was infecting his patients with HIV, that HIV-1 and HIV-2 were transmitted to humans from chimpanzees and mangabey monkeys in the twentieth century, and, when polio was being eradicated from the Americas, that new cases were not coming from hidden reservoirs (Bull and Wichman 2001). It was used in 2002 to help convict a man of intentionally infecting someone with HIV (Vogel 1998). The same principle can be used to trace the source of bioweapons (Cummings and Relman 2002).
# Phylogenetic analysis to track the diversity of a pathogen can be used to select an appropriate vaccine for a particular region (Gaschen et al. 2002).
# Ribotyping is a technique for iden

Re:Theory needs work

[arminw]

.....Look in rocks estimated to be 100 million years old? You'll see 100 million year old fossils, with characteristics similar to 110 million year old fossils and 90 million year old fossils....

How are these ages determined? Nobody was around then. In order to measure the age of something you need a reliable clock that lasts at least as long as the time you want to measure. The clock also has to tick at a constant rate over the measurement interval. Do we KNOW for sure that whatever clock or timing device is used for this age determination is accurate. What assumptions are made about the clocks we use?

To determine the age of trees, we can count the rings, knowing that one is added for each growing season. What do we count for rocks and fossils?

Re:Theory needs work

[Wavicle]

First, you do not need radiation for mutations to occur. You already have an internal copy error rate of about 1 in 500,000 base pairs. And radiation has far more effects than simply screwing with DNA. Irradiating with an unusually concentrated source will do more than just mutate DNA.

Next, consider complexity. Suppose you have 1 coin, but you aren't sure if it is fair or not. How many tosses will it take you to determine this? Now, say you have 5 coins, you aren't sure if they are all fair or not, and you have to flip them all simultaneously, how many tosses does it take to determine if the coins are biased?

In living organisms there are 6 copying possibilities at each location: Correct base pair copy, mutation to one of 3 possible different bases (substitution), removal of base (deletion), adding a new base (insertion). These do not all occur with equal probability (indeed, a correct copy occurs 99.9+% of the time).

The latter 5 possibilities all open up the possibility for change. Some of these changes will occur between coding regions, in which case they do nothing. Of those that occur in a DNA coding region, there are several more possibilities: silent mutation (a substitution that does not change the amino acid being coded for), a change in amino acid being coded for, a reading from shift (an insertion or deletion that does occur as a multiple of 3).

Each one of those possibilities also has possible outcomes: No change (protein being coded for still works), partially functioning protein (anywhere from almost 100% to almost 0%), non-functioning protein (protein can no longer fold due to structurally change), differently functioning protein (protein now acts in a way slightly or drastically different than it used to).

Now consider that in a simple bacteria of say 3 million bases, there are 3 million places for any one mutation to occur. In a rat, the number of bases is over 100x more numerous.

Lastly, what do you mean by "good" mutation? Is resistance to antibiotics "good"? If a bacteria spontaneously develops antibiotic resistance, but is in a petri dish that exposes it to a lot of UV radiation, and it dies from UV exposure, has it developed a "good" mutation? That particular mutation would be "good" if the bacteria were inside a host and protected from UV, and that host were likely to take antibiotics. If that host were not likely to take antibiotics, it would be a useless mutation.

Now I'm not saying that the data you're after doesn't exist, but you are severely trivializing the amount of work it would take to obtain this data, and quantify "good" vs. "bad" mutations. And in the end, once we had it, what good would it do us?

Re:Theory needs work

[Ignorant Aardvark]

It's not called the Theory of Evolution because some guy just thought it up, it's called such because it has not yet been authoritively proven. That doesn't discredit its merit; every field of science generally agrees that all life evolved from single-celled organisms. But since there are still a few holes to be patched up, scienctists refer to it as a theory.

You have no idea what an actual scientific theory is. See Wikipedia for the full explanation. In addition, you don't know how science works either if you think science "proves" things. Again, see Wikipedia.

Re:Theory needs work

[Wavicle]

Come on. Just googling for the result is not enough. The fact that the top result for that search is an anti-evolution website does not mean you've gone anywhere towards appropriate research.

My question is, have there been any experiments done with induced mutation, combined with natural selection, to establish benchmarks for the end-to-end evolutionary process under controlled conditions?

Sort of. There have been uses of evolution with unnatural selection to create life that did not exist before. The critter was even patented. And everyone shuddered at the implication.

Re:Theory needs work

[neurojab]

Human beings are logical. Whether we were designed this way or evolved into it, we are a species that possesses a great capacity for logic and rationality.

True, humans do have the capacity for logic, but I don't think we should fool ourselves into thinking that logic is a major factor in our decisions. People reason more often by analogy than by logic. Given any situation, we ask ouselves "what is this situation most like", and based on our experience with that like situation, we act in that way. We are not bilogical computers.. we're more like well trained monkies.

Re:Theory needs work

[timbo234]

My question is, have there been any experiments done with induced mutation, combined with natural selection, to establish benchmarks for the end-to-end evolutionary process under controlled conditions?

For example, has anyone bombarded bacteria with cosmic rays in a laboratory, and made a note of how long it takes for speciation to occur? (For that matter, has anybody been able to trigger speciation in a lab at all?)

The work of Herman Muller who was a pioneer in these radation bombardment experiments:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/quotes/muller.html
http://www.aboutnuclear.org/view.cgi?fC=History,Ha ll_of_Fame,Hermann_Joseph_Muller
http://nobelprize.org/medicine/laureates/1946/ (he received the Nobel prize for inducing mutations through radiation bombardment)
Another example of mutation inducing experiments:
http://www.ansinet.org/fulltext/jbs/jbs14269-271.p df (http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:762TTjEpLBAJ: www.ansinet.org/fulltext/jbs/jbs14269-271.pdf+mull er+%2B+flies+%2B+radiation&hl=en)

Some more general links:
http://science.howstuffworks.com/evolution5.htm
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.htm l (recorded examples of speciations)

Google and ye shall find :)

Re:Theory needs work

[SirPavlova]

To me, the most irritating part of ID is people want to use it a "proof" that god exists, when the whole deal with god -- at least as I was taught -- is that there is no proof, and no need for proof.

It's frustrating isn't it? It boggles the mind that they could be so mind-numbingly ignorant of the core doctrine of the faith, yet so adamant about the peripheral crap which doesn't matter.

Re:Theory needs work

[Anonymous Coward]

You can only find theories. Even scientific "laws" are theories. That's the whole point of science. Nothing is certain. You can disprove a theory, but never prove it.

You can of course provide enough evidence to say that it's very likely to be true. But once someone says that a theory is the only answer, you step outside the science box and into religion

Re:Theory needs work

[Unipuma]

Actually, from a pure technical point of view, Tamiflu doesn't attack the virus itself, but prevents further distribution of newly form virii by preventing them from leaving the infected cell. So it interacts with the human cells, not the virus.

The cocktail that is administered to HIV patients doesn't do anything against the HIV virus, but is important to combat secondary infections. Since the immune system of HIV patients is severely weakened, simple infections that healthy people wouldn't even notice they had, can become life-threatening for HIV patients.

Re:Theory needs work

[Mycroft_VIII]

Multiple "clocks" are used, and when most of them agree on 100 to 102 million years ago we can be fairly confident it wasn't last wednesday or even 80 million years ago.
    I am not familiar with all the various dating methods, but there are several that rely on fairly well understood mechanisms.
    You can probably find more googling around for info.

Mycroft

Re:Theory needs work

[Shaper_pmp]

From this and your follow-up posts, you appear to have a problem with evolution because it doesn't make nice, mathematically precise predictions - because there's no precise anal-retentive algebra of evolution.

Your criticism is therefore not with "evolution", but "biology".

But you're right - let's ignore everything that doesn't fit into a nice mathematical derivation, completely ignore the difference between "science" and "maths" and just argue that anything that can't be reduced to maths is worthless and stupid, right?

Uh oh! I've got news for you - nothing in science is like this. Sure, physics kind of looks math-y from a way away, but you can only test those hypotheses and theories as far as the precision of your sensing apparatus. Only no sensing apparatus is infinitely accurate, so you don't ever know any mathematical equation maps perfectly onto real life.

And while we might love to lie naked in bed and rub our bodies all over with maths equations, they aren't any use at all unless they map somehow to the real world. Sure, 1 + 1 = 2, but unless someone had somehow applied that to the nasty, dirty, imprecise real world you'd still be living on the savannahs of africa, eating your meat raw and occasionally getting eaten by lions.

Chemistry? Sure, you can construct elegant chemical reaction equations, but messing about with all those test-tubes and chemicals is so... well... messy. And when you get right down to it, "chemistry" is just a convenient molecule-level oversimplification of physics, with all the drawbacks we already know physics has.

And biology! Evil, I tell you! Messy, oozy, damp, slithery life-forms! The most complex collections of organised matter in the known universe, where macroscopic results depend entirely on molecular-level (hell, some theories say quantum-level) results. But, but, but, y'know, just because we don't have a supercomputer powerful enough to perfectly simulate an entire ecosystem of individuals, and all the billions upon billions of variables that entails... that clearly means biology's bunk too, right?

Maths is simple and abstract, deals with perfect inputs and gives perfect, absolute answers and predictions.

Physics deals with the most simple and "perfect" inputs in the real world, so (big surprise) it can in many cases make pretty damned accurate predictions.

Chemistry deals with much more complex states, and the sensory apparatus isn't nearly as precise (you can count asteroids and measure their path - ever tried doing that with a single water molecule?). Thus, chemistry of necessity makes vaguer predictions and is prone to more experimental error. Same process, just less-precise observations are available.

Biology is the study of the most complex collections of matter in the known universe, subject to the state of billions of variables at any given instant. As such it has to make use of a great deal of simplifications and generalities. This doesn't invalidate the work any more than asserting Newtonian Physics wasn't "science" because Relativity made better predictions.

Evolution studies when these blobs of impossibly complicated matter also interact with each other, and different types, living in an even more complex metaorganism known as an "ecosystem". Of necessity, even wider generalisations are used, and predictions are of necessity more qualitative and less quantitative. Don't be mislead - evolutions can be used to make quantitative predictions (another poster, above, volunteered a whole list), but it's hard to given the enormous number of variables to watch.

So, basically, if you want to dispute evolution for not being "mathematical" enough for you, you should also start disputing the rest of biology, chemistry and physics at least.

What was your point again?

Oh yes, and "people come so willingly to evolution's defense" because, despite it's limitations (limited solely

Re:Theory needs work

[Anonymous Coward]

..that is merely natural selection due to mutation of genes accidentally providing a benefit. We've seen that before.

Yes, and we called it "Evolution".

I assume you're trying to create some distinction between "Micro" and "Macro" evolution. You don't seem to realise that the distinction is an invention of IDers. There is no such thing as "Macro" evolution as ID defines it, and every biologist acknowleges this. Large changes over time are simply the combined result of a very large number of much smaller changes.

Re:Theory needs work

[Eccles]

There are multiple clocks, multiple mechanisms, all of which point to a consistent approximation of dates. Moreover, even if you question the timing, the sequence is even less questionable.

But maybe it did all happen in the mind of God in an instant, ~6000 years ago. Seems to me we're still studying the mind of God, then. Questioning the motivations of God seems a fool's errand, but God certainly seems to have created a world that is consistent Him setting it up billions of years ago such that it would eventually create humanity, into whom he could breathe souls.

ID could even be considered an insult to God -- "You couldn't set it up to work that way without cheating!" Why do you think God isn't capable of setting up such a universe?

Re:Theory needs work

[Hrvat]

Except that in Physics you can get a relatively closed system with few variables. Pool break is extreme because there are a relatively large number of balls with complex interactions between them. However they will all behave the same way when struck individually. Also, if you could observe all contact points and direct the cue ball at a precise strike point with a precise force you could apply known formulas and get and almost exact break paths. The reason we can't do the prediction of a pool break is due to the sheer number of interactions of imperfect objects.

Evolution is different in the way that it depends on the random changes, which will result in (currently) unknown results and different properties in the observed object/organism. We don't know what a particular gene mutation will do to an organism (unless it's a REALLY simple organism, but even then I doubt it), and that is what currently makes evolution a non-predictive science.

We can make general statements as in "In case of higher toxicity this organism MAY develop immunity. But it also MAY just die out if there is currently no organisms with immunity to that toxic environment." If you take the analogy to the pool table you could say, "If I hit that yellow ball with my cue ball just so it will roll into the pocket. However, if it suddenly changes properties (rougher surface, different weight, whatever) this will change the path and the ball will miss the pocket."

Re:Theory needs work

[amightywind]

Oh yeah - show me how ID uses mathematics. And not just "Noah's ark was 100cubits long".

I am not a proponent of 'ID'. I am a proponent of evolution. I just point out that evolutionary theory is underdeveloped. For whatever reason the ideas have stagnated since Darwin, so that now blithering idiots like yourself vehemently defend evolution without even understanding it deeply.

Re:Theory needs work

[Fulcrum of Evil]

Evolution is different in the way that it depends on the random changes, which will result in (currently) unknown results and different properties in the observed object/organism. We don't know what a particular gene mutation will do to an organism (unless it's a REALLY simple organism, but even then I doubt it), and that is what currently makes evolution a non-predictive science.

And yet, it successfully predicted antibiotic-resistant viruses.

We can make general statements as in "In case of higher toxicity this organism MAY develop immunity. But it also MAY just die out if there is currently no organisms with immunity to that toxic environment." If you take the analogy to the pool table you could say, "If I hit that yellow ball with my cue ball just so it will roll into the pocket. However, if it suddenly changes properties (rougher surface, different weight, whatever) this will change the path and the ball will miss the pocket."

And if you attempt a 5 ball combo, you may be able to predict the final state of the table, but perhaps not. Each error is magnified, and they result is unpredictable. For the same reason, we can't predict the position of the planets in 150,000 years.

Re:Theory needs work

[mink]

I'm all for stronger drunk flying laws for cosmic beings.

Re:Theory needs work

[Alsee]

Except that in Physics you can get a relatively closed system with few variables.

The more elements and variables involved the harder it becomes to predict detailed outcomes in specific cases. Absolutely nothing unusual about that. However even in extremely complex cases it is still posible to make general predictions of outcomes and to predict certain outcomes will never occur. For example no matter how complex a pool shot becomes, you always have the general prediction that no individual ball will ever be seen with a velocity higher than the velocity of the initial cue ball.

if you could observe all contact points and direct the cue ball at a precise strike point with a precise force you could apply known formulas and get and almost exact break paths. The reason we can't do the prediction of a pool break is due to the sheer number of interactions of imperfect objects.

Evolution is different in the way that it depends on the random changes

No, it is no different. To exactly predict a long and complex pool shot you would need to factor in the exact bumps and dust particles at the impact points between balls or the bumpers at the edge of the table. You would even need to factor in the chaotic motion of the air and any cosmic ray impacts. And you would need to do some serious calculations to figure out the effect through a series of fifty impacts. Well to exactly predict evolution you would need to factor in the chaotic chemical motions that caused the mutation or cosmic rays or whatnot. And of course you would need to do some serious work to figure out the effect of that mutation.

In both cases the exact prediction becomes impractical. However evolution still makes many many general predictions. One of many pool physics predictions is that for any resultant ball speed you observe there was *always* a predecessor ball with higher speed. One of many evolution predictions is that for any species you observe with a vestigil structure (human apendix, ostridge wings, nonfunctional eyes on cave-fish), that there was *always* a predecessor species with a functional version of that structure.

Functional complex structures only arise through a series of relatively minor alterations from less complex structures, and that complex nonfunctional structures only exist from the decay of previously functional complex structures.

Evolution also includes commondecent and that life on earth will be arranged in an extremely distinctive tree structure. For example it predicts that newly discovered species or newly discovered fossils may be found that share signifigant characteristics exclusively from birds and signifigant characteristics exclusively from dinosaurs, or find species or fossils that share signifigant characteristsics exclusively from whales and signifigant characteristsics exclusively from land mammals, but that you will never a species or fossil with peculiarly dinosaur/whale mix of features or with a peculiarly land-mammal/bird mix of features.

Evolution makes many predictions. In fact genetic analysis has opened an enoprmous body of powerful prediction-confirmations of evolution.

You're certainly right that physics generally deals with more tractable problems and makes a larger number of directly useful explicit predictions, but evolution is indeed being used in some practical predictive applications. I'm not familiar with the details, but I know that it is quite signifigant in formulating more effective flu vaccines each year. That certainly involves imprecise predictions, but weather forcasting is certainly imprecise as well. That does not mean that meteorology is not a predictive science.

-

Re:Theory needs work

[aminorex]

> Indeed they have no concept of a million years. You forget, you're talking to folks that
> believe the universe was created at 4:30 in the afternoon of October 26th, 4004 BC.

A straw man is such a wonderful thing to defeat.

Re:Theory needs work

[mfrank]

Strip away societal knowledge, etc. and you get a human the way they were ten thousand years ago. Worshipping trees and pissing themselves whenever there's an eclipse. You aren't going to have any Wittgensteins (sic?). You're going to have naked apes that are good at the pointy stick thing. Not creatures of pure logic.

Our ability for rational thought is like our spine adapting to walking upright. It's a good start, but there's still a lot of work to do. Unfortunately, thinking "logically" isn't evolutionarily sound. After all, what man in his right mind would get married and have children? :)

Re:Theory needs work

[arminw]

.....There are multiple clocks, multiple mechanisms....

The problem is that time itself is not absolute. Einstein has shown that and it has been experimentally verified. If space-time changes, the clocks, all of them, will change also and thus all agree. As the universe expanded, space-time expanded with it and whatever clocks we might use to determine time past need take that into account. When the universe was small and dense, the nature of space and gravity were such that the atomic processes by which we measure time today were much faster then. Since the universe is still observed to be expanding, the clocks used to measure atomic time are also still slowing down.

Indeed, we are studying the mind of God. Just as you can tell some things about a designer of a human product, so it is possible to tell some things about God in His design of nature. That is the realm of science.

Just as it is impossible to know the person of a human design, it is impossible to know the God of nature unless both of these persons choose to REVEAL things about themselves that can only by known by communication from both. In the case of God, studying that revelation is religion, not science.

Re:Theory needs work

[susano_otter]

You've just answered the question "what was the radiation type?". The question I asked was "what was the radiation source?" Please tell me more about your superior education.

Also, you seem to have no clue if such experiments were ever carried out by a reputable research laboratory. We don't normally look to grade-school hobbyists as the front line of cold, hard, scientific fact.

Surely the experiment must have been carried out under rigorously scienitific conditions, long before it was published in magazines and taught in schools. It's the records of those experiments I'm interested in. Any ideas, or do you get all your scientific facts out of Popular Science?

Re:Theory needs work

[susano_otter]

The experiment I proposed was quite specific:

Take an "industry standard" bacteria culture and subject it to a hostile environment. For example, an environment that is too hot to support the culture. Then, induce mutations at as high a rate as possible. I suggested radiation. If you know of a better method to induce mutation, feel free to substitute it here. In the expermient, a "good" mutation would be any mutation that promoted survival of the mutant bacteria at the higher temperature. The important part would be to make sure that the heat-tolerant trait was a new trait caused by mutation after the start of the experiment.

I recognize that it would be a lot of work to collect this data. But I also think that collecting this data would give us real, statistical information on the core process of evolution: mutation + natural selection = speciation. And this is why I am surprised that nobody seems to have made the effort to collect any data like this, if it were at all possible. I mean, the claim is that this is how all life on earth developed. Shouldn't somebody have made some attempt to replicate the process in human-time?

Please note that the comment to which I replied asserted that nylon-eating bacteria evolved in less than fifty years by exactly this process. Shouldn't there be an ongoing study somewhere, running for the past 20 or 30 years or so, that is showing some promising preliminary results, at least?

I mean, heck. If radiation is such a problem to bacteria, then why hasn't there been any studies of how bacteria evolve in response to the naturally-selective effects of the radiation being used to trigger random mutations in them?

Re:Theory needs work

[susano_otter]

You missed my point.

The fruit fly experiments studied the mechanism of natural selection, not the mechanism of random mutation combined with natural selection to produce beneficial new traits and new species. The top result was interesting because it made this point very clearly. The other results were interesting because they supported this point, either by discussing what the experiment did do (prove the theory of natural selection) or what it did not do (prove speciation through random mutation combined with natural selection).

I am not interested in experiments which prove natural selection. I do not consider the mechanisms of natural selection to be controversial or unproven or even difficult to prove.

What interests me is experiments which prove the end-to-end process of the evolution of new species, beginning with random mutations and ending with speciation due to the filtering effect of (well-understood and noncontroversial) natural selection. Do you know of any such experiments?

There have been uses of evolution with unnatural selection to create life that did not exist before. The critter was even patented. And everyone shuddered at the implication.

What implication? That an intelligent designer, working outside the system in "unnatural" ways, can create new species at will?

Re:Theory needs work

[tomhudson]

The importance of amateurs to science: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/284/541 1/55

Also, you seem to have no clue if such experiments were ever carried out by a reputable research laboratory. We don't normally look to grade-school hobbyists as the front line of cold, hard, scientific fact.

Any ideas, or do you get all your scientific facts out of Popular Science?

You must be right up there with the "Intelligent Design" people. The Amateur Scientist column was from Scientific American - but hey, its not my fault if you're so backwoods as to not recognize the title.

They also had columns on how to make your own x-ray machine for $10 (it would be several hundred bucks today), using copper tubing and lots of wire to make an oudin coil, and how to make the vacuum tube, etc., including the safety prcautions to take when testing it. Another article detailed how to use off-the-shelf parts (compressors run in reverse, substituting a silicon-based oil for their regular lube) to make a high-vaccuum chamber to look for cosmic radiation.

Now on to the rest:

You've just answered the question "what was the radiation type?". The question I asked was "what was the radiation source?" Please tell me more about your superior education.

Low-grade UV radiation - think for 2 seconds and you'll get the answer. If you don't, then you're aleady way out of your league, but most high-school science students should be able to figure it out.

Also, you seem to have no clue if such experiments were ever carried out by a reputable research laboratory. We don't normally look to grade-school hobbyists as the front line of cold, hard, scientific fact.

Again, the articles were designed to stimulate people, and get them to do their own experiments. But I guess you don't realize that science has ALWAYS depended on amateurs for a large part of the discoveries. Astronomy, biology, chemistry, physics - a lot of the important discoveries were by non-professionals. We can't afford to just junk all the stuff that was ever produced by people when they were not "working as scientists". Case in point - arguably the greatest discovery of the last century - was produced by some dude working as a patent clerk.

You come across as a pompous buffoon. But that's okay, because this way everyone can see that what you post is pure uninformed drivel.

Re:Theory needs work

[susano_otter]

So if amateur hobbyists were a critical component in proving the validity of the theory of evolution, where are all the experimental results published by amateur hobbyists, proving the validty of the theory of evolution?

Re:Theory needs work

[Wavicle]

Yes, it all sounds so simple... except how do you induce this high rate of mutations? Oh, you suggested radiation. Grand idea, except you don't seem to understand that radiation is not only mutagenic, but lethal. You have to play a balancing game between increasing mutation rate, and increasing mortality. The higher your mortality rate, the higher the probability that a "good" mutation will be killed due to radiation even though it had a survival advantage in heat.

You want to take a process that normally takes at least 1,000 years and cut it down to 20 years. By doing that your experiment becomes simple (um, have you ever applied for 20 years of grant funding??).

It is not as easy as you say. Your entire thought experiment hinges on fast mutation with low mortality. You haven't solved that problem.

Re:Theory needs work

[tomhudson]

So if amateur hobbyists were a critical component in proving the validity of the theory of evolution, where are all the experimental results published by amateur hobbyists, proving the validty of the theory of evolution?

Nice try. Show me where I said that ... Better yet, respond to the points I made, instead of trying to stuff words in my mouth. Oh, right, you can't. And your precious ID supporters just lost their election. Awww.... Just more empirical evidence that God either doesn't exist, or he's powerless. Personally, I prefer The Flying Spaghetti Monster. At least pastafarians can prove that Spaghetti exists.

By the way, I see from your journal (you can delete it now, since its preserved here forever) http://slashdot.org/~susano_otter/journal/24500:

The End

[ Add Friend | #24500 ]
Tuesday February 18, @08:51PM
User Journal

I'm leaving Slashdot.

Here's why.

Goodbye!

You really need to work on your consistency.

If you're going to troll, at least learn how to troll properly. Show some ingenuity. Some originality. Some insight.

Re:Theory needs work

[Wavicle]

What implication? That an intelligent designer, working outside the system in "unnatural" ways, can create new species at will?

No. Google for it. Hint: may not be the first result returned.

Re:Theory needs work

[susano_otter]

Dude, joke.

Based on the fact that new species created by the direct and "unnatural" (your word) intervention of an intelligent being isn't much of an endorsement of the theory of evolution, but rather bears an eerie resemblence to the theory of intelligent design.

Re:Theory needs work

[susano_otter]

Ooh.

You caught me. I said I was leaving Slashdot. Then I changed my mind.

I'm not sure where I said I supported ID. We've been pretty solidly stuck on this thing about the amateur scientists.

Speaking of which, what you actually said on the subject was
But I guess you don't realize that science has ALWAYS depended on amateurs for a large part of the discoveries. Astronomy, biology, chemistry, physics - a lot of the important discoveries were by non-professionals. We can't afford to just junk all the stuff that was ever produced by people when they were not "working as scientists". Case in point - arguably the greatest discovery of the last century - was produced by some dude working as a patent clerk.
Was I wrong to paraphrase that as hobbyists being "a critical component in proving the validity of the theory of evolution"? I hope I didn't cause any misunderstanding! If they're not a critical component, why do you keep pointing me at fifty year-old articles about them? And if they are a critical component, where did they publish their experimental results, that have so advanced our understanding of the theory of evolution? Where is Darwin's own patent clerk?

Re:Theory needs work

[susano_otter]

There's a grandparent post in this thread, which alleges that nylon-eating bacteria evolved in less tha 50 years. That's a pretty impressive allegation. I wish the poster would be more forthcoming with evidence to support such a dramatic and ground-breaking claim.

Most of what I've been trying to get at since that post has been, do we have any idea of how likely that is? Have we collected any statistics on that mechanism and its success rate?

What you seem to be saying here is that what little experimentation we've been able to do doesn't actually tell us anything one way or the other.

That our experimental support for the theory of evolution amounts to nothing more than "well, the numbers are really big, so intuitively the sums must add up; but we can't really test this assumption experimentally, so we're just going to go with it anyway". Is that what you're saying? That in the realm of things we can't study scientifically, hey, anything could happen, so why not evolution? Here's a thought: since we can't scientifically study meta-space and meta-time, anything could happen, so why not Intelligent Design? For all we know, Intelligent Designers might be statistically more likely than the natural evolution of complex sentient organisms. After all, it's not like we can effectively test either theory using science.

Re:Theory needs work

[tomhudson]

Nice try, but yu fail it. When debating, you don't get to confabulate 2 arguments, which is what you just did, again. You might want to join us for some fun tomorrow, though ...

NOw, to get back to the aain point (which is pretty much what people tend NOT to do on "slushdot") - there is more physical evidence to support evolution than there is for "creation", by either a god or a designer, intelligent or otherwise.

Actually, let me rephrase that - there is NO evidence for either the existence of god or an intelligent or unintelligent designer. Thats why people talk about "belief" and "faith" - they have no proof, or they wouldn't need "faith."

People who claim that the complexity of the universe, and that we wouldn't exist if the universe were slightly different, as "evidence" of intelligent design screw up because of the "anthropomorphic principle" - they arge from a human-centric position.

If we didn't exist, something else would. So what? That wouldn't give THEM the right to argue their existence as being proof if a designer.

It also begs the question - "Who made the disgner?"

Its no coincidence that most of the people who support ID aren't that intelligent. There are exceptions, just as there are otherwise - intelligent people who believe in god. They're entitled to their beliefs. They're NOT entitled to push their beliefs in a science curriculum. Their chief argument for doing so is that "ID" is not necessarily connected with a belief in God; they lie, because a "designer" would BE a god by any working definition.

They play word games to deceive others, because they are first deceived themselves; they are to be pitied, as their superstition is irrelevant in the 21st century. And, yes, it is superstition by definition (a belief in the supernatural).

Now, I've made my personal position quite clear. The question is, do YOU believe in a "designer" or a "god", and if so, why?

Then again, the flip side

[QMO]

Atheism and moral relativism are very attractive to anyone wishing that there was no long-term accountability or consequence for their choices.

There will always be people that fight awfully hard to preserve that illusion. (examples available on request)

For those that have trouble with written English: This post neither asserts nor implies that atheism is the same as moral relativism.

Inteligent Design was Hijacked

[JungleBoy]

I have two thoughts on ID and Genesis, but since I'm posting on the thread late, they'll probably get buried.

1) The label "Inteligent Design" was hijacked by the Young Earth Creations (those who believe that the years is no more than 10k years old and was created in a six literal 24 hour days. Inteligent design has its roots in Michael Behe's book, "Darwin's Black Box". Behe's purpose in this book is to provide counter examples to current evolutionary theory at the biochemical level. I think it's a great book and asks the right questions, scientifically, about evolutionary theory. Though I think his answers are weak. Basically his answer is: if current evolutionary theory can't explain a biochemical system, then God did it. Luckly, the book is mostly questions and counter-examples to evolution and a little of his answers. It is a very good read.

2) On the book of Genesis. Christian fundamentalists try to view Genesis from a western, scientific perspective. Which is why they try to see it as a scientific text. This view and culture is so different from the original intended audience that their interpretations are laughable. 15th century BC nomadic herbrew tribes were certainly not a scientific, post-enlightenment culture. The stories recorded in Genesis were intended, in my opinion, to give the hebrew tribes a perspective on who they were, who thier God was, and how they were different from the people around them. Whether the creation story in Gensis is literal or mythical isn't really knowable, and doesn't really matter. What mattered was what it meant spiritually to the ancient hebrew tribes. Anything more than that is speculation.

Re:Inteligent Design was Hijacked

[sickofthisshit]

The real problem with Behe's "argument" is the final link in the chain.

He sets up these criteria like "irreducible complexity" and then argues that "irreducible complexity" implies "could not have arisen by evolution."

Which is a strawman representation of evolution, which has to start simple and change only in a straight line from simple-->complex. Ignoring the fact that simple-->complex-->still complex but very different is much more likely.

There are at least two ways I know of in which irreducible complexity could result from evolution.

1) "Scaffolding": a complicated system evolves, typically by jury-rigging pre-existing mechanism together in a novel way, but then, as evolutionary pressure refines the mechanism to perform their new role more efficiently, the extra functionality is lost piece by piece until only the central function remains.

2) "Duplication and divergence" This is the theory behind blood clotting: that originally one protein was involved, but through genetic duplication, redundant versions of the gene developed. These then diverged in ways that created a chain-reaction mechanism: A evolved to AA evolved to AAA ... evolved to AAB, then ABC, then BC, or whatever.

The evidence for these changes is mostly indirect, because the original forms died off long ago without leaving DNA behind for study.

In any case, these mean that pseudo-analytical criteria like "irreducible complexity" don't offer evidence against evolution. Just against simple-minded evolution.

Re:Inteligent Design was Hijacked

[AlXtreme]

Behe's purpose in this book is to provide counter examples to current evolutionary theory at the biochemical level. I think it's a great book and asks the right questions, scientifically, about evolutionary theory. Though I think his answers are weak. Basically his answer is: if current evolutionary theory can't explain a biochemical system, then God did it.

It is interesting to note that most, if not all, of his questions have since been answered (eyes for example evolving multiple different times via photosensitive cells). Also, in spite what most people believe, Behe isn't an ID'er: he doesn't deny for example that humans evolved from apes. He merely tried to pinpoint areas that weren't yet explained by evolution. The loonies took his ideas and grossly distorted them for their own purposes.

What about life?

[badevlad]

I think, when somebody will be able to create life from dead materials, we will be able to discuss a Theories Of Creation Without The Creator.

Re:What about life?

[sickofthisshit]

I think, when somebody will be able to create life from dead materials, we will be able to discuss a Theories Of Creation Without The Creator

Um. This was the basis for the beginnings of "organic chemistry": Woehler's synthesis of urea showed that the chemical substances in living things are no different than the chemicals in dead things.

People are very close to synthesizing viruses from scratch, for instance. It is a matter of complexity, not a matter of chemistry. Chemical synthesis is *hard* to do in the lab. That doesn't mean there is anything magical about the chemicals that make up the human body, for instance.

Humans can't build the Himalayas with a bulldozer. That doesn't mean God made them, does it?

Re:What about life?

[badevlad]

It would be correct, if the philosophical and medical problems of life were be decided. Nobody knows, why the people die, is'nt it? And there are no unequivocal definition of life. We are as far from creating life, as the medieval alchemists :)

Re:What about life?

[sickofthisshit]

This is not a philosophical problem. A living bacterium vs. a dead bacterium (or human, for that matter) is determined by whether certain chemical reactions are occuring or not.

Starting such reactions from scratch is extremely difficult (impossible) *technically* but not *philosophically.*

We know very well why people die. Their body is unable to continue the biochemical processes we identify as "life." Like a heart beating, central nervous system working, etc. This is no different, except in complexity, than the various ways your computer can stop working, or your car can break down.

Now, we happen to care a lot more about people dying than computers crashing, for good reason. We don't have the technical ability to restart it, for one reason, but mostly because we care about other people for very deep reasons. That's moral philosophy. We also don't know why these chemical reactions cause "consciousness" or "free will" but there's no concrete reason to believe these are a result of anything other than the neurons in the brain acting according to the laws of chemistry and physics. Religion tells us that some kind of "life" persists beyond the body, but it doesn't provide any way to *observe* this; basically admits it is an inaccessible mystery. But these are not the determinant of "living." People are alive even when they become unconscious, and it is hard to see how a bacterium, which is undoubtedly alive has any sort of free will or consciousness.

think about houseplants...

[Run4yourlives]

The other responders below both provide the background on the eye issue, but it's much more in-your-face than that... think of plants.

Plants don't have any eyes, yet they do have an uncanny ability to orient themselves to light. In this sense, they can certainly "see". Taking something so everyday, and then applying the same evolutionay theories as you would to, say, walking on two legs, and you can see that it's not such a far strech.

Natural Selection, Not Evolution

[Anonymous Coward]

That's precisely what I was wondering. Why would the rejection of natural selection necessitate the rejection of evolution?

Isn't ID more about the process of evolution being guided by the hand of God (instead of natural selection) more than it was about rejecting evolution.

I was under the impression that evolution said: "Simple things slowly produce more complex/varied things through genetic variation & heredity." And then natural selection said: "The process of evolution is guided by the concept of survival of the fittest."

Why couldn't you reject natural selection without rejection evolution? In fact, this seems to be exactly what the Vatican's statement is saying. And, just for kicks, I googled ID and found this on intelligentdesignnetwork.org: "The theory of intelligent design (ID) holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause rather than an undirected process such as natural selection. "

Which is a long way from the article's description of "the universe is so complex that some higher being must have designed every detail." Sounds more like a bad analysis of the Vatican's statement than it does a blow to ID.

To expand on Parent poster...

[Spy der Mann]

That's what I say to the fellow fundies when I cite them passages proving the catholic beliefs of the Eucharist (John 6), confession of sins (John 20), the primacy of Peter (Matthew 16:18).

The problem with literal interpretation is that it comes from a need to have an unified interpretation of the Bible without having to resort to any teaching authority, i.e. the Catholic Church. (Remember protestantism appeared after Luther's rejection of catholicism). Still, not all christians believe in a literal interpretation, so the literal interpretation isn't a solution, but rather another face of the same problem: Doctrinal division among protestant christians.

you spoke to the rabbi's?

[taskiss]

wow! you're pretty good.. what, you caught a ride with Dr. Who? Or was it one of the Enterprise "back to the future" gigs?

BS, what is the mechanism?

[snowwrestler]

Intelligent design argues (or attempts to argue) from scientific evidence, that evolution is not a sufficient explanation for different species without some sort of guiding force.

Until you can describe, in precise, technical, repeatable detail, HOW such force guided evolution, ID is at its base no different than creationism. Both require the pre-existence of an all-powerful being, who through some all-powerful but mysterious mechanism (noodly appendage?) shaped (i.e. created) life as we know it today.

Whether it took 6 days, 6000 years, or 600 million years, if some all-powerful force shaped the development of life, it is a creationist story, as it involves a Creator. How long it took is simply an attribute of the main story.

I said it before and I'll say it again--ID and fundamentalist proponents would like NOTHING MORE than for the nation to think they are two separate schools of thought. Why? Because the nation has thoroughly and completely rejected the literal interpretation of the Bible, and the only way ID has any chance is if it is completely disassociated from the failure of fundamentalist literalism. Sorry, but we see through the sheep's clothing of science lingo, to the same old tired wolf within.

Re:BS, what is the mechanism?

[Fished]

Until you can describe, in precise, technical, repeatable detail, HOW such force guided evolution, ID is at its base no different than creationism.

Here you arrive, unintended I'm sure, at the reason why Evolution is more an ideology than a scientific theory, just as Intelligent Design is. Namely, none of this is repeatable. You can't setup an experiment to show what did happen. Even if one could show conclusively that a designer could exist, it would still not prove that one /did/ exist, or that one actually took part int he design of the universe. And, I'm sad to say, none of it seems to be willing to consider falsifying evidence. This is the precise reason why Popper (more or less father of modern Philosophy of Science) rejected the notion that history could be scientific.

Re:wrong Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[raider_red]

Never mind the fact that it (The Pentateuch) ends with Moses' death.

A preacher I know once told me that the Bible doesn't have to be literally true for us to have faith in God. He believed that those who hinge everything on the absolute truth of every word of Scripture are those who really lacked faith. They need something outside themselves to justify what they believe.

The Bible tells us about God, in the best way the authors knew how, and it represents an evolving view of our relationship to him. The creation story tells of God's ultimate power, and doesn't imply a final result. The ideas of justice evolve throughout the Old Testament. In several place in the Hebrew Scriptures, it is stated that God's judgement would pass to the third generation. In Ezekial, the prophet proclaims that we were each responsible for our own actions, and that a son would not be held responsible for his father's actions. If nothing, this shows that we still have a lot of room to grow as a species, and that God's not done with us yet.

Oops

[QMO]

"The problem with your comparison is that the OSS crowd is not trying to force our view onto everyone else"

So, no OSS supported has ever "hacked" proprietary software? No one has ever used OSS support as a rationale to spread malicious code?

"we are certainly not trying to force fundimental changes in highschool science curriculums."

Like introducing OSS into the computer science classrooms isn't a fundamental change? When I was in high school we ONLY had traditional proprietary software, and never knew there was anything else.

OK. As much as I agree with your basic premise that software disagreements are not identical to religious disagreements, my point is that you could have chosen better examples.
One place where software ideology disagreements are very like this ID non-ID debate, is that there are a LOT more than two opinions/sides in the debate.

Re:Oops

[Izaak]

> So, no OSS supported has ever "hacked" proprietary
> software? No one has ever used OSS support as a
> rationale to spread malicious code?

I have never encountered anyone like that. In my
experience, people who hack proprietary software do
so because they want to use proprietary software.
People who spread malicious code do so for many
reasons (building spam networks, stealing credit
card info, ego gratification)... I suppose it is
statistically possible that some fringe element
might do it 'in the cause of OSS', but I have
never ran into that and would hardly consider
such behavior as representative of the OSS
communitity. The closest I can come up with is
supposed dDos attack on SCO, but even then the
evidence was very thin that the attack even
happened, or what the motives were if it did.

> Like introducing OSS into the computer science
> classrooms isn't fundamental change? When I was in
> high school we ONLY had traditional proprietary
> software, and never knew there was anything else.

I would not consider that a fundimental change.
As long as the basic theory and concepts of
programming are still taught, it does not matter
wether the platform is proprietary or open. I
do feel that open platforms are a better fit for
most schools, but that has more to do with the
cost of operation and administrative issues, not
the classroom content.

> OK. As much as I agree with your basic premise that
> software disagreements are not identical to
> religious disagreements, my point is that you could
> have chosen better examples.

Probably, but I was trying to work within the
constraints of the post I was replying to.

> One place where software ideology disagreements are
> very like this ID non-ID debate, is that there are
> a LOT more than two opinions/sides in the debate.

How true.

Cheers,

Thad

Re:Evolution isn't...

[tgibbs]

I beg to differ. Before actual single-celled organisms evolved, certain long chains of molecules evolved by natural selection. Picture a bag of legos the size of a blimp being constantly jostled. Certain pieces would, according to the laws of nature, start systematically sticking together in certain ways.

The fact that some chemical reactions occur in preference to others is not natural selection. To get natural selection to work, you have to have not merely change, but reproduction--for example if one chemical catalyzes the production of additional molecules of the same chemical. Furthermore, there must be inheritance--variations in the structure of the reproducing entity must be passed on to the "offspring" and affect their reproduction.

You're So, So Wrong.

[Ieshan]

"The Intelligent Designer doesn't have to be the Christian God, nor does it even need to be a God at all. It could be little green men."

No. This is a philosophical problem called "First Cause". This is what will happen. You will say it was little green men. I will say something like, "And where did they come from?", and you will say something like, "Oh, the little green men before them." And I will say, "And where did THEY come from?" and you will say, "The little green men before THEM". And then at some point, we will reach the end.

Intelligent Design is an absurd argument that rests on assigning the complexity of origins of one thing (say, for instance, very complicated molecules) to the infinately more complex and unlikely appearance of something that could have created these things (say, God). The reason we must have God as the intelligent designer is the simple reason that God gives us the clever property of having always existed and very nice things that solve the issue in the Argument of First Cause. Not nicely, mind you, because there IS no way to solve that issue nicely (Where did GOD come from? etc).

Intelligent Designers are very clever creationists in sheep's clothing. This is not a difficult thing to understand. They don't want to talk about God, because as soon as they do, they give up the game.

There is no science in Intelligent Design. If you can name one paper in a recently published, reputable scientific journal (i.e., peer reviewed) with new empirical data (not simply a review article of previously published hogwash arguments, but NEW EMPIRICAL DATA), that is derived from the viewpoint of intelligent design, I will stand corrected.

Re:You're So, So Wrong.

[Fished]

Intelligent Design is an absurd argument that rests on assigning the complexity of origins of one thing (say, for instance, very complicated molecules) to the infinately more complex and unlikely appearance of something that could have created these things (say, God).

Like many others who attack ID, you are illegitimately broadening the scope and beating up on a straw man. The only question in scope here is the question of species formation. Creation of the universe, etc., while many ID proponents certainly have strong opinions on it, is not part of the core theory, any more than it's part of the core theory of darwinism.

Consider this: can you not agree with evolution and support steady-state, Big Bang, or just "God made it"? The question of species formation is completely distinct from the cosmological question.

Re:You're So, So Wrong.

[Ieshan]

Like many others who attack ID, you are illegitimately broadening the scope and beating up on a straw man. The only question in scope here is the question of species formation. Creation of the universe, etc., while many ID proponents certainly have strong opinions on it, is not part of the core theory, any more than it's part of the core theory of darwinism.

What? No I'm not. Intelligent Design is an absurd argument which tries to say that species formation (a very complex thing) is less likely than a much more complex thing (God creating species and accounting for their diversity). No matter how unlikely species formation is, God, as an "intelligent designer", is more unlikely.

What is so difficult about this?

Re:You're So, So Wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, you're abusing the notion of likelihood. It would seem to you that God is an unlikely manufactured explanation for everything, and we fabricate it because we can give it the exciting property: "came before everything else".

It's not clear that this God thing is unlikely, because some people find it very natural and simple to believe in, truly. I don't... but I don't find it less likely than the bullsh that's coming out of quantum physics these days -- there's just nothing there for me to put any faith in, either. Except that maybe it's based on 'science', but science is despairingly flawed. It's speculation, the best we can do; aside from our own meagre intuition about the universe, or religious texts/culture. In my lifetime, science will never give me anything more 'obvious' to believe in, so all that's left is to make do with haphazard, simple faith in the great unknown, and scraps of moral intuition with which the bible continues to astound me. *shrug*

Re:You're So, So Wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

Its plum too complicated fer me so I jist shrug and says SHUCKs, I reckon god done it.

Re:You're So, So Wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

Take a deep breath. Give up the fight. Belief in god is really fear of death, the most profound fear we have. You cannot fight it. If someone needs god to face mortality then you can forget about reasoning with them. Death is too powerful. ID is a joke, yet so many accept it. They can't face death.

Re:You're So, So Wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no science in Intelligent Design. If you can name one paper in a recently published, reputable scientific journal (i.e., peer reviewed) with new empirical data (not simply a review article of previously published hogwash arguments, but NEW EMPIRICAL DATA), that is derived from the viewpoint of intelligent design, I will stand corrected.

That's hillarious! Such a safe bet to make. Can you name any reputable scientific journals that would publish a paper that looked even slightly sympathetic to the Intelligent Design viewpoint, regardless of empirical data? I suggest that you could not. Look what "peer review" does to arguments in favour of Intelligent Design here -- invariably downmodded to oblivion, and not always justly. So if what you mean by "there is no science in Intelligent Design", is "reputable scientific journals refuse to publish papers on the subject", then sure, we agree. If, on the other hand, you're suggesting some kind of philosophical underpinning to your argument, then your reasoning isn't satisfactory.

Re:You're So, So Wrong.

[Shelled]

"The question of species formation is completely distinct from the cosmological question."

Who or what does ID propose as The Intelligence then? Do they draw from the physical world or leave it at That of Whom We Cannot Speak? The Kansas Board of Ed and the Bush adminstration aren't arguing to permit the concept we may be the result of alien tampering in the classroom. If ID proponents side step the issue, it's not much of theory:

"X caused this."

"What is X?"

"I dunno."

"What would be it's neccessary characteristics?"

"I dunno."

"Animal? Cosmic force? Vegetable"

"Could be."

If they draw from the physical world it puts them in danger of being grouped with those donning Keds and jumpsuit waiting on the comet. If it's a 'universal force', it's outside the realm of science and they're closet creationists, loading the theological muskets while the fundies shoot. So what specifically do they contend is the Intelligence in ID?

Re:You're So, So Wrong.

[Old Wolf]

"The Intelligent Designer doesn't have to be the Christian God, nor does it even need to be a God at all. It could be little green men."

No. This is a philosophical problem called "First Cause". This is what will happen. You will say it was little green men. I will say something like, "And where did they come from?", and you will say something like, "Oh, the little green men before them." And I will say, "And where did THEY come from?" and you will say, "The little green men before THEM". And then at some point, we will reach the end.


Straw man. The Intelligent Designer could be little green men, who evolved naturally on Mars. Then they came to Earth, intelligently designed it, and left again.

(Not that I support that theory, I'm just pointing out that "First Cause" does not disprove some variations of ID, and especially, does not distinguish between God and LGMs).

Re:You're So, So Wrong.

[Xiroth]

Ah, I think you've made a slight mistake here. When the grandparent post referred to "very complicated molecules", I'm fairly sure that (s)he was talking about the set of occasionally rather complex molecules which are necessary for life as we know it.

Re:You're So, So Wrong.

[Quince alPillan]

No. This is a philosophical problem called "First Cause". This is what will happen. You will say it was little green men. I will say something like, "And where did they come from?", and you will say something like, "Oh, the little green men before them." And I will say, "And where did THEY come from?" and you will say, "The little green men before THEM". And then at some point, we will reach the end.

You're very clever, young man, very clever, but it's little green men all the way down!

Re:And given the Hindus, some agnostics, etc., etc

[Anonymous Coward]

And the merits or faults with ID theory aren't established by anyone any more than in Galileo's day.

Not true. Galileo's theories led to experiments that attempted to falsify his thery. What experiment or observation might falsify ID?

Right. That's why it's not science.

The Earth is flat, center of universe!

[gearmonger]

-- Fossils were made by Lucifer to tempt the wicked.
-- The sun revolves around the Earth.
-- Disease is caused by foul vapors in the blood -- a good bleeding via leeches is helpful...

And other arguments made by the dogmatically mind-numbed show how far (not at all) religion can get you down a path of scientific inquiry.

Even social policy doesn't have a great record when religion is the primary guide:
-- The Crusades
-- Salem witch trials
-- Slavery/segregation
-- Women as chattle in Middle East

Re:wrong Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Golias]

Never mind the fact that it (The Pentateuch) ends with Moses' death.

So who wrote "The Israelites grieved for Moses in the plains of Moab thirty days, until the time of weeping and mourning was over"?

Or, for that matter, "He buried him in Moab, in the valley opposite Beth Peor, but to this day no one knows where his grave is"?

created yesterday

[PMuse]

Why is falsifiability important?

1. Assume an omnipotent being, i.e. one who can alter any observable evidence.
2. Consider the assertion: "the world was created yesterday".
3. Exercise: disprove the assertion using only observable evidence.

Re:created yesterday

[gothzilla]

The second you insert an omnipotent being into the equation you eliminate the ability of science to deal with it. That's why creationism is not science and is not a theory and should not be taught in school as science. Science is the study of observable phenomena. An omnipotent being is not observable so it cannot exist in anything even remotely resembling science.
Your argument proves this point very well.

Re:I don't see the big deal behind intelligent des

[Dictator For Life]

Scientists may have presuppositions, but science does not.

Science is a human enterprise. It is silly to speak of science as though it tells us anything independent of human interpretation. Scientists have presuppositions; ergo the results they produce are inescapably colored by those presuppositions. The only question is whether those presuppositions are valid.

It is foolish to carry around (as naturalistic scientists do) the untestable presupposition that only natural causes may produce natural effects.

You overlook the second half of what I said about reproducibility: namely, that even if it could be done in the lab, it would say nothing whatsoever about what actually happened other than that evolution would be a possibility. That is a long way from conclusive demonstration.

Furthermore, if the naturalistic explanation of human origins was actually correct, the inevitable consequence is that human beings are nothing more than sacks of interesting electro-chemical reactions. And if that is the case, the inevitable consequence is that we are incapable of making truth claims, because electro-chemical reactions are incapable of making truth claims: boiling water, for example, doesn't make truth claims. It just boils. Lightning doesn't make truth claims. And if we are incapable of making truth claims, then it is impossible for you to say anything about human origins whatsoever. Ergo the naturalistic scientist has already defeated himself: he can't really say anything to anybody, and if he does, it's no more signicant for purposes of speaking truth than a bubbling swamp.

So you see that among other things, the naturalist has foolishly assumed he can speak truth - but on his own terms, he can do no such thing at all.

Very interesting comment

[Run4yourlives]

Not so much because of its content, but because it's so contradictory to the sig at the end of it.

I would agree with you, however, that science and religion should remain separate. Both have their place, and those that see science as religion are about as closed minded as those that would discount science.

definitions of words....

[Danathar]

When you get into arguments over these types of discussions it invariably turns into disagreements about what words mean. What exactly is "intelligent". Just because you can whip out the Websters definition does NOT mean your opponant agrees with it.

When you start ANY philosophical argument it helps considerbly to start with an agreed upon set of premises and definitions that both sides accept, then you can work your way forward and find out exactly WHERE the difference is.

Most times when people argue about ANYTHING people talk past one another and make assumptions about why people believe whatever they believe, and then construct conter-arguments that make NO sense.

Evolution and Christianity... opposing worldviews

[grandemtn]

The Pope and the Roman Catholic church are wrong on this one.

The reason many Christians get so up in arms about this is that Macro-evolution (one 'kind' of animal evolving into another 'kind') is not just a little bit off theologically, but it's contrary to the entire traditional Christian message.

The Christian message is that people were created perfect (Adam and Eve), chose to sin, and death entered the world. Humankind, and the world itself, needs a Savior, because without external intervention it will continue to get worse and worse. The only times the world has gotten better is when God intervines and gives us a 'boost' of grace. Major examples on a wide scale are the Israelite nation, Jesus's birth, ministry, death and resurrection, and the Protestant Reformation. Death is the final enemy that will be conquered when Christ returns.

The message of Evolution (Macro) is that all things continually improve without God. Death is not the result of sin, but a natural part of 'getting better' and is actually a good thing. The world, and all species will continue to improve over time, until... well who knows where it will all end? Star Trek? Q was worried humans would evolve into 'gods' one day themselves. Everyone wants to be God, right?

Adaptation or micro-evolution (all species of dogs came from a root ancestor dog) is directly observable and I think most people readily admit it. Macro-evolution, Astronomy, Geology (the parts about millions of years ago) are all based on a lot of very intelligent arguments, but are not directly observable. Was the Grand Canyon created by a little bit of water over a long period of time, or a whole lot of water over a little bit of time? Depends on your point of view. The facts can support either.

I don't know enough of the science to debate that any more than what I just pointed out... but I'm trying to shed some light on why this is such a big deal to people. This is a clash of worldviews. Without directly observable evidence (like large and small cannon balls fall at the same rate), everyone will interpret the evidence in light of their worldview.

'bout time

[Joey Cajones]

At last. Some sign that established Christianity realizes that this ID crap is utter bullshit, and as offensive to mainstream christian doctrine than it is to science. I guess the vatican (correctly) realizes that the "theory" of ID waters down their message as much as it does to that of evolution and rational science. I think the reason why ID "works" (for lack of a better word) for some people in the US is that it looks, smells, and tastes like good ol' American compromise; a way for evangelical pseudo-neo-luddite christians to have their cake and eat it too. Slap a lab-coat on creationism, and all of a sudden, it gets a strange, albeit sort of legitimacy. In fact, that compromise is perfect for the powers that be. We have a president who, irregardless of what you think of his policies, has to return the reach-around he regularly gets from the evangelical right, and do without compromising the facade that he is a president who rules by consensus. Slipping ID into a speech here or there serves that purpose wonderfully.

Falsifiability does not work

[Estanislao Mart�nez]

#1. Show how ID is not scientific because it cannot be falsified.

Ah, the good old Popperian argument, as transmitted to common scientific wisdom. There's a simple problem with it: it doesn't work. In more than one way.

First, Quine showed that you can't falsify any one individual hypothesis, nor distinguish in general between "empirical" and "non-empirical" statements (or "observational" from "theoretical," or whatever). Why? Well, the falsification procedure requires you to state a hypothesis H, and then infer that if H is true, then you must observe P. If in actual fact you observe not P, then h must be false.

The problem here, however, is that to get from the hypothesis H to the expected observation P, you're going to need extra assumptions. The fact that you observe not P doesn't logically require that H be false; it requires that at least one thing in the union of H and the extra hypotheses be false. In other words, no amount of evidence can make you abandon H, as long as you're willing to sacrifice some other assumption.

Second problem: scientists make extensive use of statistics to analyze experimental data. Strictly speaking, experimental data pretty much always falsifies the hypothesis; when you plot the data points and the curve predicted by the hypothesis, they never match. We use statistical techniques to measure how close of a match there is, and thus say that the data support or fail to support the hypothesis, depending on whether the statistical degree of confidence is higher than a conventional threshold. The experiment never falsifies or confirms the data, it just changes the confidence we assign to the hypothesis (and, again, as per the first point, given other assumptions that we just happen to be less willing to abandon).

Third, more general, and more important (and controversial): traditional writings on the philosophy of science just have very little to do with the actual practice of science. They're philosophical fantasies aimed at giving scientifically-oriented people a warm and fuzzy feeling about how their work allows them to uncover pure, objective, empirical truth, untarnished by human interests and frailities. This picture has very little to do with the real world, where scientists participate as members of our society, competing in a market for research funding and publication, facing pressures to deliver results by timelines, and so on.

Re:Falsifiability does not work

[tez_h]

Statistical analysis is indeed used to analyse models. But, of course, when some scientist claims something is true, or that some model conforms to reality, there will always be the proviso that it conforms to x significant figures, or some other measure of inaccuracy or uncertainty.

This will have to be the case with any reasonably complex experimental setup, since no one assumes that any experiment can possibly nullify all-but-one of the independent variables. That is the purpose of repeatability.

If you really want some clear-cut example of falsification, look at the details of the discovery of the photoelectric effect and wave-particle duality.

As to your comment about assumptions being dropped are added when experiments prove a proposition false: scientists value parsimony in their descriptions of the world. It does in fact help distinguish useful theories from mere lists of ad-hoc hypotheses.

-Tez

Fundamentalist Agenda

[Anonymous Coward]

This "Intelligent" Design crap is spewed out by the wacko Christian Fundamentalists. The Vatican has been making inroads into accepting scientific facts for more than 50 years, and, more recently, scientific theories. Fundamentalist Christians bomb abortion clinics and support the death penalty. Catholics don't like abortion clinics or the death penalty, but seem to be waffling on allowing their priests to molest their children.

We are the designers

[Anonymous Coward]

There is wealth on the moon called He3

but why do that?

[PMuse]

Those who spend time pitting revealed truth against observable truth are missing a question that, especially within their belief system, is pretty damned important. Namely, "why?"

Consider the facts as a IDer-creationist perceives them:
1. There is an omnipotent creator.
2. There is a large body of evidence suggesting (falsely) that life arrived in its present form via evolution.
3. But evolution was not (per the IDer-creationist's beliefs) the mechanism.

From these, it appears that the creator at least wanted people to think that evolution had happened. Why go to all that trouble? Was the creator trying to convey some message by making evolution appear to have been the mechanism? If so, what is the message?

Re:but why do that?

[cyborg_zx]

It's a bit rich expecting people's baseless theories to actually make any damn sense now. Putting a god in the equation raises far more questions then it could ever hope to answer. Especially when the gods that are put in place are those created by people who were blissfully ignorant of the modern concerns of their decendents.

No it can't

[Sycraft-fu]

Because of the nature of their claims. God isn't testable. Take, for example, praryer tests. A few tests have been conducted to see if praying for people helps their condition (we are talking severe illnesses here) or not. They've all shown no difference between prayer and non-prayer groups. Well the faithful are undeterred. They claim that god doesn't like being tested, god works in mysterious ways, etc. As far as science is concerned, it's done. You either revise the theory, or devise a new test or there's nothing more to talk about, ti's been falsified.

Same is true with the ID people. They don't even have a theory for HOW god handles species creation and change. Remember that's what science is all about. The intrest of evolution isn't that species change, we know that, it's how and why they change. Science is about explaining the natural world. We observ things and then formulate theories to explain the interactions. We then test those theories to see which ones work and which don't.

The reason why people are so worried about ID is because it seeks to attack and weaken science. The most imporant thing about science is it's concern with the testable, the falsifiable. That's what seperates real science from pseudo science. ID seeks to countermand that and say "We have a hypothesis that has no evidence for it, and indeed is untestable, but we want it considered as science anyhow." That's dangerous. That people don't immediatly recognise it as non-science is evidence enough that people don't understand what science is. Letting it in would be a disaster.

That doesn't mean it's a topic that can't be thought about and debated, but it's a matter for philsophers and religious scholars, not scientists. Now maybe some day they'll figure out a way to do a scientific test on it, then it's a matter for science.

A true scientist is open to new scientifi theories. A scientific theory is a hypothesis, that is testable and falsifiable, and is backed by at least some observational evidence. ID fails that, it lacks evidence, and it's not falsifiable.

I mean hell, some ID proponents like Dwane Gish believe Genesis is literal to teh point the world is only a few thousand years old. Now we have MOUNTAINS of evidence falsifying that, yet they remain undeterred and push their agenda. Ok well that's not science then. You can't just ignore evidence that says something you don't like, or pass the buck with "god works in mysterious ways" because that's not how science works.

NOT a fallacy

[fmaxwell]

The first is the argument people around here call "occam's razor". It says that apparently the simplest explanation is the correct one. A simple exercise in thinking can reveal that this isn't true. After all, Newtonian mechanics is far simpler than quantum field theory. But it is more incorrect. Even QFT is incorrect, and physicists readily admit to its limits and ponder what could be used to replace it. Physicists and mathematicians wish the world were as simple as the theory of electrodynamics (thanks to Maxwell's insight), but even that model is incorrect and limited

Occam's razor states that the simplest theory which adequately explains the situation is probably the correct one. Newtonian mechanics has been proven to be inadequate, therefore it's no longer a viable theory. Put it this way: If a cop came upon a scene where a body was found, bullet through the temple, gun in hand, and suicide note on the table, would you trust him if he said "I believe that a robot did this, faking the suicide and writing the note. I further believe that the robot was sent millions of years ago from an undiscovered planet orbiting a star in the Andromeda galaxy."? Okay, it's not the simplest explanation, but it's not impossible. Somehow, I think I'd give a better chance to the theory that the the despondent person committed suicide.

Rejecting intelligent design?

[bsquizzato]

FTA:
His statements were interpreted in Italy as a rejection of the "intelligent design" view, which says the universe is so complex that some higher being must have designed every detail.

I don't see how this can be true (and I especially dislike how that end of the article makes the headline here), seeing as how the Cardinal said his belief was that the story of Genesis shows how God was creator of the Earth and all things on it, whether it was by way of evolution as His tool or otherwise.

I think the Cardinal is saying that God could have orchestrated every element of evolution, using it as his tool to create life, and I fail to see how this rejects any views that the universe was formed by means of an intelligent designer.

Re:Rejecting intelligent design?

[Russellkhan]

The thing you seem to not realize is that "intelligent design" (ID) is a very specific creationist pseudo-science which claims that evolution is false based on the idea that living things are too complex to have evolved.

For more on ID, see the wikipedia article on it.

Re:Rejecting intelligent design?

[mrpeebles]

This has confused me too. I always thought that ID was against evolution. However, I saw somebody on the Daily Show who almost seemed to say that ID was against simply natural selection, or maybe even some sort of weird alternate "interpretation" of natural selection.

Perhaps confusion was the idea.

furthermore

[memeplex]

Who created the laws of physics? I have had many drunken discussions of this with my friend Nirav Mehta, a quantum theorist working on the three-body problem. They just are? Deh jus' is? Did God bust out his powerbook and write these laws? Did he use algbraic language? My head hurts. I need a drink.

Re:furthermore

[tgibbs]

Ultimately, when you start thinking about origins, you end up running in to the problem that there has to be something that "just is."

So the question is what that something is. Physicists tend to want that something to be very simple, with as few adjustable variables as possible, because simple hypotheses are easy to test. On the other hand, religions like to presume that the something is some kind of a sentient entity, infinitely complex, and preferably benevolent.

Re:furthermore

[Darby]

I have had many drunken discussions of this with my friend Nirav Mehta, a quantum theorist working on the three-body problem.

Damn, Dude. You're a mean drunk. I would have at least mentioned that Poincare proved it couldn't be solved ;-)

Re:wrong Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Scrameustache]

The idea is that Moses was simply writing down exactly what God told him to write down.

Why would god need a spaceship... I mean: scribe? Why would god need a scribe?

Umm

[QMO]

2 + 2 = 4 is not a theory.
It's more of a definition.

When I was taught Geometry in high school I was not only taught that parallel lines never intersect (also more of a definition than a theory). I was also taught that there are other geometries where parallel lines DO intersect (also not a theory). This didn't create confusion about Euclidean Geometry for any student in the class. Also, the fact that it was a Euclidean Geometry class didn't preclude the mention of other geometries.

I did get confused in high school science in Biology class. I was required to memorize this made up classification of plants and animals. The memorization requirement was presented to us as SCIENCE, which it's not. I didn't even fully realize what was wrong with that until years later.

I agree that science education needs work, but as was pointed out to me IANAPST (Public School Teacher).

Religion is Evolved Behavior

[TheSync]

The funny thing about this is that religion is probably an evolved behavior, supported by identical twin studies showing correlated levels of religious feeling of identical twins separated at birth. There are also physiological findings that are localizing spiritual feelings in brain.

Pratchett or McIntyre (should) have patent on ID

[anonymo]

Terry Pratchett: Strata. 1st edition 1981.
The Company designs and creates inhabitable planetary systems on order. An employee founds out that there was an ancient race that designed the current universe, and for fun they created a mechanical flat planet with spheres.

A bit later Vonda McIntyre: The Starfarer Saga. 1st Edition 1989.
An artist creates fossils of mad-up, never existed fantasy creatures and embeds them into the basalt slabs mined on the Moon and transported to the 1st human starship. An alien race with superior technology believes that these are the fossiles of an ancient race that was the 1st starfaring race and want to keep in touch with humans only to excavate those artefacts.

Re:wrong Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Golias]

Answer: He wouldn't. He might want one, though.

That's the problem with kids today, they think their the first ones to ever come up with such questions. Sunday school children have been pestering their teachers with "tough" riddles like that since looooong before you were born. I'm neither a Fundamentalist nor a Catholic, and even I was able to shoot that one down.

Now you've done it...

[Eric S. Smith]

God writes:

Then one day I was near a river and saw haw the water would adapt its flow to accomodate the shape of the rocks and sediment, and it just hit me. How simple!

Just wait'll all the Christians find out that God's an enlightened Taoist.

Re:Now you've done it...

[Anonymous Coward]

The Lord God (813116)?
Eric S. Smith (162)?

Eh? Since you're older than God, couldn't you settle this argument once and for all. Thanks.

-- The Human Race

Just to be clear...

[caudley]

The actual rabbis that wrote the whole thing down were unavailable for comment.

And...

[Anonymous Coward]

In other news...

rats flee sinking ship

-radioelectric

Re:Sorry, not buying it

[Allasard]

No, what ID says is that species we see today were designed into their current shape by an intelligent force. This is functionally the same message as Genesis, and about as far from modern theories of genetics and natural selection as you can get. The only thing ID has in common with real biological science is one slice of the data set--current life. ID proponents don't even recognize the validity of the fossil record.

This is, of course, incorrect. :)

I'm tired of people arguing that ID is the same as creationism. It's not. In the book Darwin's Black Box which started much of the current debate over ID, Michael Behe, a molecular biologist, agrees with many of Darwin's evolution threads, including natural selection, except for one. Behe sees various mechanical and biological systems as irreducibly complex.

Evolution and intelligent design are NOT mutually exclusive.

ID only says that some systems, such as blood cloting, cannot evolve in small steps with modern understanding and must have been evolved in a unexplainable "leap" to it's current state.

Behe says there must be some intelligence behind how these systems came to be. (He actually didn't discuss God. It could have easily been the Architect in the Matrix. Or highly improbable chance.)

True ID involves modern genetics, natural selection, and yes, fossils. It even allows evolution of modern humans over the ages. There are only a few systems affected by this irreducible complexity. Other than that, it has no issues or differences with evolution and modern science.

It has nothing to do with creationism or fundamentialism, and it frustrates me that so much of the current brewhaha breaks the argument into "creationism vs. evolution" and lumps ID in with the 1st. Even the fundamentialists now seem to think it's something they created to slip creationism by. When, if anyone actually read the source, they would see that goes against what is presented in the exclusive modern scientific argument.

I'm glad the Vatican came down on the side of evolution. And it's interesting that in the article, ID is only mentioned as an editorial and not actually mentioned by the cardinal.

Male Nipples and What They Debunk

[SeanDuggan]

Honestly, I'd always heard it as a refutation of those against evolution. If we were created perfect, why all of the redundant systems like nipples for men?

Now, of course, once one considers male lactation, one wonders if maybe it's not so much an evolutionary dead-end as that we just don't get around to using them properly. Personally, I believe God designed us by method of nudging along evolutionary changes. Some things are not ideal, but there's an amazing amount of human development which serves a purpose that we don't recognize. Just look at the people who were saying that humans would eventually have their little toe shrink and disappear over the years... now, we find it's got a crucial balance function.

Re:Male Nipples and What They Debunk

[drinkypoo]

If god was omnipotent and omniscient, he wouldn't need to nudge along evolutionary changes. He'd be a master of the game of life, and the system he set up would play out just as he desired. Evolution would do his will.

Re:Male Nipples and What They Debunk

[Anonymous Coward]

Men has nipples because of
A. Æstethic reasons
B. Erotic reasons

So...God did create us "perfect".

Re:Male Nipples and What They Debunk

[Anonymous Coward]

B. Erotic reasons

Exactly. I was almost beginning to think I'm the only one who gets hot when his gf plays with his nipples. And the nice part is that she can do it fairly inconspicuously in public places, unlike if I would be fudging under her t-shirt.

Re:Male Nipples and What They Debunk

[tehdaemon]

Need to? Of course not. Just like I don't need to post this.

But I thought this post was a good idea. So, perhaps nudging was also a good idea.

Re:Male Nipples and What They Debunk

[SteeldrivingJon]

"Personally, I believe God designed us by method of nudging along evolutionary changes. "

This implies one or more of the following:

a. God makes mistakes and needs to go by trial-and-error.
b. God doesn't know where evolution will end up.
c. God is in a hurry and needs to rush things.

None of these seem appropriate for a God who exists outside of space and time, who created the universe in some fashion.

God having to tweak and nudge evolution along is like a pool hall trick shot artist who has to move the balls by hand step by step, rather than just knocking the cue ball once and letting physics take care of the rest, in the ways the player intended.

Re:Male Nipples and What They Debunk

[samjam]

I've yet to see a supposition into the mind of God take into account the reason he did it all for. (Never mind "why do we think omnipotent beings will be easy to understand)

If blind-spots, appendixes, male nippes and menstrual cycles promote critical thinking in mankind and give natural unbelievers a real fair chance to believe or not (instead of it being obvious) then its all been well worthwhile.

Nothing like a small perturbation in a perfect system to make things happen, eh?

Sam

Re:Male Nipples and What They Debunk

[SteeldrivingJon]

"If blind-spots, appendixes, male nippes and menstrual cycles promote critical thinking in mankind and give natural unbelievers a real fair chance to believe or not (instead of it being obvious) then its all been well worthwhile."

Given that appendixes are prone to infection and can burst, with fatal results; and the way that childbirth carries a significant risk of death for child and mother for a variety of reasons including the mother being unable to accommodate the head of the child during birth, I wouldn't care much for a deity who fucks us up in order to score petty points.

That's a worse argument than "God hid fake dinosaurs in this 6,000 year-old world in order to test our faith" used by young-earth creationists, which posits that God is a liar.

Just like the Rabbis wrote down Gilgamesh?

[Baldrson]

Silly people. The book of Genesis is largely derived from the Epic of Gilgamesh. So if some "Rabbis" (if you want to call Moses a "Rabbi") wrote it down, it was probably copied from some Sumerian legend.

Re:Just like the Rabbis wrote down Gilgamesh?

[Creepy Crawler]

Have any sources about that other than a wikipaedia article?

Re:Just like the Rabbis wrote down Gilgamesh?

[arc.light]

ReligiousTolerance.org (with cites), Google search.

Re:Just like the Rabbis wrote down Gilgamesh?

[Creepy Crawler]

I can do a google search, AND also read the fucking wankpaedia article.

I want REAL sources... Of course Baldrson cant get past his Jew hating anti-semite attitude. Too bad rusty didnt boot his ass. (go read the recent poll on kuro5hin.org to see what I mean)

Re:Just like the Rabbis wrote down Gilgamesh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Would you like for me to mail you a dead-tree encyclopedia? I don't understand your malfunction.

Re:Just like the Rabbis wrote down Gilgamesh?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can do a google search, AND also read the fucking wankpaedia article.

apparently you are capable of neither.

What I think

[DaCool42]

I am a Christian (protestant). I have not found any Biblical basis for discounting evolution. I personally highly doubt a lot of current evolutionary theory, but that has very little to do with my religious beliefs. I just don't see very much solid evidence for it. We know a lot less about how the universe works than most people think. Chances are a lot of theories we think are solid now will be laughable in the near future.

Re:wrong Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[benjj]

As a non-Jew, the issue of whether Moses wrote them or not matters about as much to me as the instructions to never eat shellfish, never cut my earlocks, and always wear tassles on the corners of my cloak.

And presumably the stuff about man not lying with another man as he would a woman too?

Fascinating subject

[kjdames]

It amazes me that people get so passionate about this subject, but what justification is there in belittling other's beliefs? I believe there is a God. You may believe there is not. Neither of us can prove ourselves correct or each other wrong, so why get worked up about it? I do not believe in Darwin's theory of evolution, but obviously I can not prove it is incorrect. Even if I could, should I think less of someone that believed it? It is the differing of opinions that eventually brings enlightenment to all (you can quote me on that). I haven't made up my own mind on the origin of the species, but I believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that what I call God directly had a hand in it. I just can not comprehend how life could be created from non-life without the intervention of an "intelligent designer".

Re:Fascinating subject

[IdntUnknwn]

I think most people are fine with the coexistence of religion and science. The real problem though is that Intelligent Design advocates are trying to blur the lines of science such that they can fit in their own religion-based theory. Unfortunately, the ID definition of the word theory does not meet the rigorous and well-defined scientific definition of theory. And then you have people trying to get it into the classrooms, kids get involved, and everybody starts throwing tantrums.

As many other Slashdotters have stated, its would be fine to teach religion in school. But it would break the very ideals of science to teach religion as a science.

An ID-equivalent action would be requiring churches to quietly note that their beliefs may be wrong, and in addition requiring churches to teach evolution. People would be *really* polarized then.

Re:wrong Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Scrameustache]

Answer: He wouldn't. He might want one, though.

Because that way His Holy Writing appears more suspicious and will be the source of "Sunday school children pestering their teachers with 'tough' riddles like that" for ever and ever?
Yeah... that makes PERFECT sense.

Serious about science?

[QMO]

I have heard (over and over and over) that Intelligent Design has no place in science class because it is not a scientifically testable theory.

I tend to agree.

Why do these same people never object to the non-existence of God being claimed (or assumed) in science class. Undirected Chance (specifically as an opposite of ID) is (if possible) even less scientifically testable than Intelligent Design, and yet it is claimed or assumed regularly in science classes with little outcry from these same people.

It would not be out of place in a science class to mention (once or twice) that SCIENCE currently can't answer whether there is Intelligence behind the workings of the universe, ignore the topic otherwise, and avoid assuming either idea.

Apology, just in case: If any of the slashdot posters that decried ID in science class (because it's scientifically untestable) also decried non-ID in science class (for the same reasons) previous to this post, please show me where, 'cause I missed it, and I'm sorry.

Re:Serious about science?

[terjeber]

Why do these same people never object to the non-existence of God being claimed (or assumed) in science class

I have never met a science teacher that spent time in class claiming the non-existence of God. Why would he? It is not part of the curriculum. On the other hand, the non-existence of God is the only scientific attidute towards God. Science has to assume the non-existence of God for the same reasons it assumes the non-existence of Santa Claus. There is no data indicating eithers existence.

Re:Serious about science?

[ultranova]

On the other hand, the non-existence of God is the only scientific attidute towards God. Science has to assume the non-existence of God for the same reasons it assumes the non-existence of Santa Claus. There is no data indicating eithers existence.

Actually, no. The only scientific attitude towards the existence of God, Santa Claus, Flying Spaghett Monster or any other entity whose existence you cannot either prove or disprove is to say "I cannot prove or disprove the existence or nonexistence of this entity at this time". Claiming that "I don't have evidence of the existence of this entity at this time, therefore it doesn't exist" is logically erraneous.

Or to put it in other words: If you don't know, don't claim that you do.

Re:Serious about science?

[dancpsu]

Or to put it in other words: If you don't know, don't claim that you do.

I think you're confusing the more humble "I don't know" with the more direct statement of "That cannot be known." In such a case as God, many agnostics believe the believers are nutcases because such agnostics believe that the existence of God cannot be known. Many of these same people state that agnosticism is the more humble belief of "I don't know". This is misleading and serves to distort discussion on the subject.

Re:Serious about science?

[ultranova]

Or to put it in other words: If you don't know, don't claim that you do.

I think you're confusing the more humble "I don't know" with the more direct statement of "That cannot be known."

Why do you think so ? I'm sorry, but I simply don't see any reason in my post to suspect such a thing. Please explain ?

Re:Serious about science?

[shutdown -p now]

The non-existance of the Invisible Pink Unicorn (blessed be her holy hooves) is also being assumed in a science class! Truly shocking, isn't it?

Re:Serious about science?

[dancpsu]

Your statement "I cannot prove or disprove the existence or nonexistence of this entity at this time" is muddled by the last statement "If you don't know, don't claim that you do." The first is stating "That cannot be known", the latter is stating "you don't know". The result is a confusion of the two, which is common in agnosticism.

Re:Serious about science?

[QMO]

"I have never met a science teacher that spent time in class claiming the non-existence of God."

I have met at least two, real science teachers, not counting sociology, psychology, philosophy (the original science?), anthropology, etc. teachers.
I will freely admit that the "soft" science teachers spent much more time on it than the "hard" science teachers.

I have also met several real (as in working, publishing, actively discovering useful things) scientists that believe that God lives, and it doesn't hinder them at all. Some of these scientists were/are teachers too, and it didn't diminish the quality of their science teaching either. And though I haven't seen a science teacher spend class time claiming the existence of God, I expect that it happen in that direction too.

Think about it. NO empirical evidence or mathematical formula actually depends on the the existence (or non-existence) of God.

Re:Serious about science?

[ultranova]

The first is stating "That cannot be known",

No, it is stating that I know of no way to prove the matter at this time. This is completely different from claiming that there is no way of proving the matter, and that it will therefore be impossible at any given future time too. And of course proving and knowing something are completely different matters: someone could very well know that God exist (by, for example, having received a vision), but still be unable to prove this to anyone else.

Re:Serious about science?

[Anonymous Coward]

May He smite thee with his noodly appendage!

Re:Serious about science?

[Alsee]

>a science teacher that spent time in class claiming the non-existence of God."
I have met at least two, real science teachers

To interstingly butcher Voltaire,
I agree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death that you have no right to use this class to say it!

Boy, it would certainly be an interesting experience to personally bite that teacher's head off for it.

I'm no hypocrit on this, a teacher acting in an offical capacity as an agent of the government cannot hijack that power to push his religious beliefs. Whether it is Biblical creationism, atheism, Satanism, whatever, all equally unconstitutional.

-

Re:wrong Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[ModernGeek]

Someone must have forgotten to read the book of Numbers.

Great New Yorker article (URL)

[marianne1017]

People are wrong, I think, to dismiss ID as stupid, just like creationism, and so on. ID is attempting to be subtle. Their science, if you want to call it that, is flawed, but it is not the same as creationism and "poof!"

Recall the maxim, Keep your enemies closer. Read this great 8-page New Yorker article from May, 2005 to understand better where these people are coming from:

"Why Intelligent Design Isn't"
http://www.newyorker.com/printables/fact/050530fa_ fact

Marianne

a statistical counterpoint

[Anonymous Coward]

"For the umpteenth time, Intelligent Design and creationism are not the same thing."

Check out these exhibits from the Kitzmiller case comparing the usage of certain key phrases over time in the book now known as "Of Pandas and People."

You can see two things in these analyses:
(1) The verbiage of "creation science" has been directly searched-and-replaced with that of "intelligent design."
(2) The vocabulary change happened immediately after a court ruling which declared teaching "creation science" in schools unconstitutional.

Coincidence?

See http://www2.ncseweb.org/wp/ for more coverage of the Kitzmiller case.

Re:wrong Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[avgjoe62]

Ah, yeah... The Pentateuch is the first five books of the Bible (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy). Check here and see for yourself.

Re:wrong Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[raider_red]

That's what I'm talking about. It actually records that Moses died and was buried in an unknown place. It's an argument that it was at least ammended by those who followed Moses, or that it was committed to writing after (possibly long after) his death.

Re:Forget it! Zeus did it and is still doing it!

[evilviper]

This way we can each follow our own and with more diversity comes more tollerance right?

No. There's nothing about diversity that inherently breeds tolerance.

It would most likely turn into a "My God is more powerful than your god," argument.

For a completely insane example, look at the intolerance between Jews, Muslims, and Christians. All three worshipping the very same God, with their holy books being largely identical, and yet they can't get along.

A Jew's perspective

[AB3A]

Having read "Bresheet" (Most English speakers call it the Book of Genesis) for many years in the original Hebrew, and having been through the experience of a technical education, these are my opinions:

1) The Catholic Church isn't stupid about this issue. They've learned a thing or two since they contradicted Galileo. Basically, The Bible is not a text to tell us what we can figure out for ourselves. It is a text for the purpose of telling us the appropriate morals upon which we can build a lasting society. To assign it a purpose other than that would denigrate the human race's image in God's eyes.

2) The real miracles are not physical. They are social. The miracles we should be thankful for are when a criminal develops a concience and turns him/her-self in; when a person finds a large sum of unmarked money and returns it to the owner; or when a person reveals the truth on the witness stand in a court of law. Those are the acts of faith that we should all take note of and be thankful for. If they didn't exist, our societies would not last long.

3) Many people are happy with a very childish God-in-Sky view of things. But for those who seek it, there is plenty more to study in most religions. I am quite content and clear minded about my beliefs. I also don't think those beliefs have anything to do with Science except in an extremely abstract way.

4) Fundamentalists and cults of all faiths attempt to install a denial of surrounding community in their followers so that they can wrench their flock from the communities and build one of their very own. It's a power trip. There are plenty of wide eyed people who are willing to follow because they do not understand the nature of religion. I fault the leaders of these movements, but I also fault the followers just as well. We all have a responsibility to understand the world around us better. You can't get that veiwpoint from inside a cult, a fundamentalist movement, or even from a nebulous bit of philosophical quackery called Intelligent Design.

Re:A Jew's perspective

[Robowally]

I believe this Jew would disagree with you:

http://www.geraldschroeder.com/gbb.html

Certainly the greatest Jews ever did too: Jesus. The Apostle Paul. The disciples. Moses. The list goes on.

Do words mean anything?

Re:A Jew's perspective

[kg4czo]

So now you can speak for Jesus? Jesus was anti-religious and anti-political. He aledgedly taught against the Church. Of course, people turn around and make his teachings and collections of stories into a "religion." *shakes head* Paul obviously had problems with his mother, since he put down women so much. He also felt the need to "one-up" those who he correspondence with. I suspect this is the reason we get a "supernatural" response from his writtings. The Disciples were just drinkin' buddies for the most part, but they also helped conspire against the Church of the time. Moses was wise, but I'm going to guess not the most sane person either.

Many of the writtings int the Torah and Bible were written well after the events supposedly took place; as much as 500 year or more. Many of the stories are rip-offs from prior religions, redressed to fit the Church's agenda.

These are but a few reasons I quit the Christian system of behaviour. The lies, blood, and idiocracy the representatives of Christianity have brought about makes me sick. Many people can ignore these atrocities, I will not.

Re:A Jew's perspective

[Robowally]

So now you can speak for Jesus? Jesus was anti-religious and anti-political. He aledgedly taught against the Church. Of course, people turn around and make his teachings and collections of stories into a "religion." *shakes head*

Wrong.

Paul obviously had problems with his mother, since he put down women so much. He also felt the need to "one-up" those who he correspondence with.

My wife (a woman) would totally dosagree with your take on this.

I suspect this is the reason we get a "supernatural" response from his writtings. The Disciples were just drinkin' buddies for the most part, but they also helped conspire against the Church of the time. Moses was wise, but I'm going to guess not the most sane person either.

I don't know what Bible you have been reading. Must be different to mine.

Many of the writtings int the Torah and Bible were written well after the events supposedly took place; as much as 500 year or more. Many of the stories are rip-offs from prior religions, redressed to fit the Church's agenda.

Nonsense. This is demonstrably false.

These are but a few reasons I quit the Christian system of behaviour. The lies, blood, and idiocracy the representatives of Christianity have brought about makes me sick. Many people can ignore these atrocities, I will not.

Christianity is a relationship, not a system of behaviour. I don't think you really understand what or who you are shooting at. Atrocities are caused by humans of both Christian and (for example) atheist persuasions. The difference is that an atheist can justify his "immoral" behaviour by claiming Darwin as his bedrock (e.g. Richard Dawkins) but a Christian cannot. It is wrong for a Christian to, for example, commit adultery. For an atheist however, it is not "wrong" since objective moral values do not exist in the atheist system. Atoms and molecules do not have a conscience or any sense of good or bad. If you want to claim atheism (sorry, I am guessing) then if you want to talk right and wrong, you are stepping on my turf. Objective right and wrong are not arrows in the atheist's quiver. Thanks for writing. Cheers ;-)

Re:A Jew's perspective

[AB3A]

Unlike several major religions, Judaism does not have a central or final authority to interpret what the religion means. It is normal for there to be disagreements among even the most famous rabbis. Judaism emphasises study, thought, and careful consideration of past traditions. However, in the end, the decision of how to act is yours and yours alone.

Judiasm takes interesting views on morality. For instance, if a leader asks a person to kill, and that person kills another, there is no fault assigned to the leader. The individual is responsible for his own actions. Likewise, it's entirely possible for other reasoned people, especially Jews, to disagree with me. I do not pretend to speak for all Jews. I merely speak for myself, as one who has received a formal Jewish education.

Make of it what you will.

Re:A Jew's perspective

[csmatyi]

1) The Catholic Church isn't stupid about this issue. They've learned a thing or two since they contradicted Galileo. Basically, The Bible is not a text to tell us what we can figure out for ourselves. It is a text for the purpose of telling us the appropriate morals upon which we can build a lasting society. To assign it a purpose other than that would denigrate the human race's image in God's eyes.

Okay, but still, the Catholic church's opinion isn't the final opinion, it is only just another group of people's opinion. How can we figure out for ourselves how the universe and all that began? We need an eyewitness. Therefore we have Revelation.

2) The real miracles are not physical. They are social. The miracles we should be thankful for are when a criminal develops a concience and turns him/her-self in; when a person finds a large sum of unmarked money and returns it to the owner; or when a person reveals the truth on the witness stand in a court of law. Those are the acts of faith that we should all take note of and be thankful for. If they didn't exist, our societies would not last long.

Again, I don't think you're quite getting it. Look at how sinful human beings have been for centuries and centuries. Why, even look at the Jews who made a golden statue of a bull and started idolizing it when Moses went up Mount Sinai to receive the law from the very hands of God. Look at how many times Israel was unfaithful to her God. The basic Ten Commandments which, if we abide to would guide our societies in moral questions. Yet it is this very same set of atheists, liberals and materialists who would take it out of our courtrooms and schools who propogate the ideas of evolutionism. I think that these basic mora values have to be stressed again and again, because basically, there are many people who don't quite get it when it comes down to "though shall not covet". Like those rioters in Paris...

About point number 3, why would we want to hinder God in making revelation about any part of reality He wants to?

About point number 4, I would like to ask you how many fundamentalist leaders do you know, have you ever been to such a church, how many people's lives do you know who are fundamentalist? Do you think they are so stupied not to have learned anything from the Middle Ages?

Also, as a Jew, what do you think about the racial implications about the theory of evolution? Also, I heard they don't teach evolution in Israel. What's the truth about this?

Re:A Jew's perspective

[AB3A]

Also, as a Jew, what do you think about the racial implications about the theory of evolution? Also, I heard they don't teach evolution in Israel. What's the truth about this?

To answer your last question first, some of my experience was from having been in Israeli public schools for fourth grade and for seventh grade. Yes, we did study the Hebrew Bible as a seperate class from science. The two were considered unrelated and taught as such. I don't know what you are referring to when you ask about Racial Implications.

About point number 4, I would like to ask you how many fundamentalist leaders do you know, have you ever been to such a church, how many people's lives do you know who are fundamentalist? Do you think they are so stupied not to have learned anything from the Middle Ages?

I have spoken to a fair number of fundamentalists, cult members, and mystics, both here in the US and in Israel. I must confess, there is something about the Middle East that brings the very worst out of religious leaders. Baha'is, Jews, Moslems, Zoroastrians, and Christians have done things there which are remarkably untrue to their faiths. In any case, I never meant to indicate that there was the slightest stupidity involved in any follower's behavior. Laziness? Possibly. Ignorance? Probably. But not stupidity. Were that the case, I would have no reason to expect better of them.

Considering my third point, I was expressing my personal opinion. You are welcome to call physical events miracles. In a very abstract sense, the consistency of nature itself (the fact that the same natural laws seem to apply everywhere and all the time) is no small miracle. However, I do not expect an omnipotent being to screw around with natural laws just to fit my world view --or especially to change it. Were that the case, I'd be highly inclined to believe the Flying Spaghetti Monster is real.

You wrote that the Catholic Church isn't the final authority. I agree, it isn't. I see it as merely one authority among many. You cited the Book of Revelations as your authority. I'm sorry, but that book holds no religious significance to me, and even if it did I'm not sure how you arrive at the conclusion you seem to be reaching for.

Please understand, I bear no malice toward other religions, even fundamentalists, mystics, or cults of personality. Like most Jews, I recognize that righteous behavior can come from anyone and anywhere. I'm not trying to evangelize my own religion --in fact, I'd prefer to do just the opposite. What I am trying to emphasize is that issues such as Intelligent Design are not essential to a religious person's view of the world. Those who insist otherwise are pushing an obvious religious belief.

But go ahead, have at it while you can. I'd like to see what will happen to proponents of ID, when the technology to compare entire gene sequences of nuclear and mitochondrial DNA of related species becomes available. Of course, to a believer in miracles, facts are just annoying details...

Re:A Jew's perspective

[csmatyi]

Dear AB3A! Thanks for your response.

I don't know what you are referring to when you ask about Racial Implications.

Well, just to mention one thing, the Holocaust, Arian race, etc... Also Communism stemmed from the idea of evolution. I've written a 25 page chapter about Lysenkoism and therefore know how highly interwoven Marxist dialectic materialism is with evolution. Should know as a citizen of a former Eastern Bloc country.

I have spoken to a fair number of fundamentalists, cult members, and mystics, both here in the US and in Israel.

Hm, could you please name the denomination of the christian fundamentalists? It's important for me, I only accept mainstream Protestants as Christians (Reformed, Lutheran, Anglican, Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian).

In a very abstract sense, the consistency of nature itself (the fact that the same natural laws seem to apply everywhere and all the time) is no small miracle. However, I do not expect an omnipotent being to screw around with natural laws just to fit my world view --or especially to change it.

Oh yes, true, but then again one must make a difference between operative science done in a lab and the extensions we make based upon measurements which we extend into the past. ID is not screwing around with natural laws, and trying to change what the distant past was like simply because we don't have direct evidence for it. To wit, when man went out into space they saw that the world was rwally round. Therefore the idea of a flat earth was debunked (this is not mentioned in the Bible), but we cannot do the same thing with evolution, we don't have a time machine. But if we're discussing the scientific nature of ID (that is, if we want to make a verdict about it), then I don't understand why evolutionists would reject ID and still hold on to the SETI program (Search for Intelligent Life). you see, the basic principle of ID is when studying the world we assume that all this amazing complexity around us could only be due to the intelligence of a grand Designer, the Creator. If we churn millions and billions of our taxpayers money into SETI, (with no result yet), then I find it mind-boggling not to support Id. You know, I think it has a lot to do with pervasive materialistic ideology in our culture.

You cited the Book of Revelations as your authority.

I meant Revelation in general, in your case the Old Testament. In my case that plus the New Testament.

I'd like to see what will happen to proponents of ID, when the technology to compare entire gene sequences of nuclear and mitochondrial DNA of related species becomes available.

Have you heard of mitochondrial Eve?

Re:A Jew's perspective

[AB3A]

name the denomination of the christian fundamentalists?
Honestly, from where I sit, it matters little. I've spoken to fundamentalists of several religions, including Christianity. From where I look at things, the fundamentalist approach is a dead end. There are verbs, nouns, scribe marks and the like in the Hebrew Bible which we simply do not know the meanings for. An interpretive view is the only option.

Regarding ID versus SETI, I don't regard either effort with much positive light. We can certainly learn from these efforts, but I personally don't see them as admirable things to do with one's life.

That's it for now. I have kids to put to bed...

Re:A Jew's perspective

[csmatyi]

Honestly, from where I sit, it matters little. I've spoken to fundamentalists of several religions, including Christianity. From where I look at things, the fundamentalist approach is a dead end. There are verbs, nouns, scribe marks and the like in the Hebrew Bible which we simply do not know the meanings for. An interpretive view is the only option.

Well, it does to me, because within Christianity there is a lot of bad theology going around.

Also, what would happen if you compared the events of Genesis to other parts of the Old Testament? For example the Psalms which are full of references to creation and other people mentioned in Genesis 1-11. For example Noah in Ezekial 14,14 and 20.

Re:wrong Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Mormons got their stuff engraved by God on golden tablets, but they had to get them back to Blockbuster at the end of the week.

Slashdot has been religioned

[Shishberg]

The only force in nature more powerful than a slashdotting.

1217 and counting...

Origins of ID, life and everything

[anonymo]

Citing Wikipedia:
"The phrase was coined in its present sense in Humanism, a 1903 book by Ferdinand Canning Scott Schiller: "It will not be possible to rule out the supposition that the process of evolution may be guided by an intelligent design" and was resurrected in the early 1980s by Sir Fred Hoyle as part of his promotion panspermia"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_design

So SF writers Terry Pratchet (Strata 1981) and Vonda M. McIntyre (Starfarers 1989) were a bit late, but more fun.

Imho in a way Fred Hoyle's idea may be possible but with a different twist: pre-life (RNA, virus?) can survive very harsh enviroments.
Let's imagine that a supernova has sent parts of an inhabited planet toward the Solar system just as into all other directions and one or more particles of pre-life landed on Earh and/or other planets. The Earth happened to be a surrogate mother for life as we know. All other (maybe not all?) planets did not fit for this kind of life.
Intelligent Design? - No way!

Let me have a grand ;) SF view: There was a civillisation ignited by a similar source that started life on Earth. They spent more (or less?) on military expenses and found rests of the initializing pre-life on other, dead planets in their own stellar system. They realized that they have no capacity to send seeding ships and know that their Sun will explode in a few million years anyway so the leaders decided to speed this process up to make it big enough to send pre-life particles into space...
This embryo to an SF-novel is Creative Common for me to all of you!

Others are even better

[Anonymous Coward]

Blowing up abortion clinics and beating up homosexuals, while vile, is nowhere near the professional persecution of religious by atheists during/following communist revolutions.

Re:I don't see the big deal behind intelligent des

[sickofthisshit]

the inevitable consequence is that human beings are nothing more than sacks of interesting electro-chemical reactions.

Ah, yes. But very interesting reactions indeed, as far as humans are concerned.

And if that is the case, the inevitable consequence is that we are incapable of making truth claims, because electro-chemical reactions are incapable of making truth claims: boiling water, for example, doesn't make truth claims. It just boils.

Hmmm. So if I find a piece of paper with "1+1=2" printed on it, it must have come from a human? Or could it have been printed by a computer? Is it any less true when an unintelligent machine makes the "truth claim" than when a human does? Or is it not a "truth claim" when a machine makes it?

Yes, you might say, "a computer printout proves that a human designed and programmed it", but then that means that the creation of "truth claiming ability" is no more powerful than a geek who knows how to program. Surely if natural evolution can make flies able to do amazing flight maneuvers with only a few hundred neurons it can make symbolic reasoning happen given a few billion.

And if we are incapable of making truth claims, then it is impossible for you to say anything about human origins whatsoever.

Your philosophy of logic is very strange.

Weaken science?

[anomaly]

Are you serious? How can ID - which is not science per se weaken "science's" explanation of origins? Origins is not the 'stuff' of science!

Explanation of speciation is in the realm of scientists, and other testable natural processes are, but origins can neither be observed or tested. It's speculation. Materialists have their non-testable theories about origins, and so do deists.

Neither is science, and neither should be taught in the science classroom. Both could be debated in the philosophy classroom. ID proponents want their theory taught in science classrooms specifically because materialist philosophy is taught in the science classroom and should not be. If we're going to teach non-scientific philosophy there, we should be inclusive.

Since scientists won't stop injecting their non-science views, deists want theirs included too.

Respectfully,
Anomaly

Re:Forget it! Zeus did it and is still doing it!

[Cro Magnon]

That brings up an interesting question. If Zeus was the god of the Greeks, who would be the god of the Geeks?

And worst...

[aepervius]

Quote : "For me, I have faith in the Bible because (by faith) I have chosen to believe it is God's literal word."

You don't even need to skeem between the various bible translation (don't even start me on the night hag/screech owl/Lilith story...). Just ook at the contradiction inside the bible itself !

Which one of the genesis is the gp believing in ? The first one ? The second genesis version ? Does he eats shellfish (Deuteronomy forbid it) does he take slave (OK by bible standard) ?

So how about sex ? Like the two sister (Sraha and ?) having sex with Abrahm one after the other, and then since they were bare, they ask their servant to bear kids. Or the guy having sex with their sister/mother/slave whatnot. And naturally everybody bear sons (because nobody bear girl, hey).

Bible-litteralism people never EVER read either the old or new testament

What does materialism have to do with it?

[anomaly]

what has materialism got to do with it?

It's materialistic philosophy that demands that abiogenesis occur. ID says 'what if there's a non-material root cause for biogenesis?'

Materialists - otherwise known as naturalists - require that nothing non-natural be considered when examining the universe. Frankly this seems absurd to me. If I find a watch on the beach, I'm not going to assume a natural process got it there. If I found an obelisk on the moon, I'd know it was not natural.

Why then must we completely do an about-face when it comes to universal origins or biogenesis? It's philosophy, not science that makes that demand.

Make sense? (Note that I'm not asking to you agree, just asking if you follow my reasoning.)

Respectfully,
Anomaly

Re:What does materialism have to do with it?

[Black Parrot]

> > what has materialism got to do with it?

> It's materialistic philosophy that demands that abiogenesis occur.

Abiogenesis had to occur anyway. The only difference is whether we attribute it to natural or supernatural causes.

> ID says 'what if there's a non-material root cause for biogenesis?'

Some generalized pop notion of ID might say that. But the pseudoscience being peddled as Intelligent Design says nothing about abiogenesis; they merely claim that certain biological features could not have evolved, and that therefore there must have been some intelligent tampering somewhere along the way.

Also, when they're being carefule they claim that their "proof" doesn't necessarily mean a supernatural designer (wink-wink).

> Materialists - otherwise known as naturalists - require that nothing non-natural be considered when examining the universe.

And rightly so, since there's absolutely no way to show that one supernatural explanation is any better than another.

> If I find a watch on the beach, I'm not going to assume a natural process got it there.

Nor would you assume God made it.

> Why then must we completely do an about-face when it comes to universal origins or biogenesis? It's philosophy, not science that makes that demand.

No, it's merely pragmatics that makes the demand. If you can define 'supernatural' and show us how to study it (rather than merely making unsupportable assertions about it), you'll find lots of us willing to consider it.

Re:I don't see the big deal behind intelligent des

[Anonymous Coward]

can of tuna my cat worships?

This is a grave blasphemy. The righteous cat does not worship the can. That is merely the vessel. The true creator is the CAN OPENER, which, through its great and wonderous humming power takes a can, which does not taste or smell like anything worth bothering over, and makes the GREAT TUNA appear within it. *That's* transubstantiation for you, bub!

Yes, we must involve the priesthood of humans to allow the power of the can opener to be revealed. But they are just the conduit for the can opener's power.

Which day length?

[Midnight Thunder]

Earth was apparently created in seven days. Not entirely impossible, if you consider that maybe earth was not a reference point then. Time is meant to be slowing down and who is to say that we aren't talking Martian days, Jovian days, or even a galaxian day?

The problem is always down to literal interpretation. I have always seen books such as the Bible and the Koran as guides, which should not be taken at face value. They might not be 100% right, but then again they also probably represent the simplification of facts, to help guide a populous that wouldn't have understood the details (just watch the news today to see this in action). Unfortunately simplification sometimes means some of the important facts are lost to time. I would rather keep an open mind about the possibilities, rather than trying to choose a camp, based on a poor basis of facts.

Re:Which day length?

[SirPavlova]

Have you ever tried to explain that point of view to a rabidly anti-Christian atheist 16 year old? Just explain, not convice. I was arguing with one guy, & he couldn't get over Deuteronomy or Genesis... science was a religion to him.

You'd think it would only be a problem when talking to the literalist believers, but it's just as bad talking to literalist unbelievers. Being a moron who sees the world in black & white is all too common, unfortunately.

None of this is aimed at you, I'm just venting mildly because what you said is exactly what I've said in the past, to no avail. It's frustrating.

P.S. The word translated as 'day' is used in other parts of the Bible to mean a literal day, & in yet others to mean an aeon, i.e. a really long yet indefinite period of time. I choose the latter for Genesis, myself.

To know God's reasons?

[SeanDuggan]

*does his best to do a Jewish shrug* Who are we to know the reasonings of God? If you believe this "free will" doctrine, he allows some latitude in life. Now there's been many debates in that area, as to whether the idea of free will negates omniscience. It's kind of a practical example of "Could God create a rock he couldn't lift?" as the idea of us having free will would indicate that God could not accurately predict the future, as there's a matter of randomness. It also kind of digs down into whether free will can exist. Do we, as humans, really decide things, or are we victims of a collection of electrical and chemical impulses which would act the exact same way in the exact same situation every time? Or is more random? Is our self not the result of years of developing who we want to be and having the environment mold us? Or is it all the result of whether an impulse went left or right that decided our general bent in life?

It's all really heady stuff and, in my opinion, only fit to be mused upon by the theologians and philosophers of the world. Me, I know that God's in his heaven, all's right with the world, and that I perceive myself as being someone who can make choices in life and ultimately affect the world's destiny from that free will, even if it's just a little bit.

On an unrelated side-note, there was a really cute short story I read a number of years ago phrasing the 7 days of creation as the week before God's science project was due. He got a C+. There's another bit - I found it online at one point - where it's stated in a series of developer e-mails with God giving elaborate requirements such as rivers flowing with milk and honey, a 50% mix of land and water, the moon being a genuinely light-producing surface, etc and various angels (including Lucifer as the tech actually implementing things and therefore blamed for it not meeting spec) complaining about how the proposed requirements weren't plausible and suggesting design changes. Wish I could remember where I found that... had a Russian name in the website's citing of the joke, I think.

Re:To know God's reasons?

[SteeldrivingJon]

"It's kind of a practical example of "Could God create a rock he couldn't lift?" as the idea of us having free will would indicate that God could not accurately predict the future"

Except that He necessarily exists outside of time as we know it. For an entity in that state, seeing the future is as easy as seeing the exit of a cornfield labyrinth when you're looking down from above. We don't have that advantage, we're inside of time, just like someone inside the labyrinth can only see a small amount at a time, and must explore different paths on foot to find the way through.

It seems like a lot of ID/Creationist supporters - especially the hardcore - prefer a weak, limited God, whose limitations are not unlike their own.

Re:To know God's reasons?

[nolesrule]

It seems like a lot of ID/Creationist supporters - especially the hardcore - prefer a weak, limited God, whose limitations are not unlike their own.

Sounds like Jesus if you ask me. He lived and died just like a non-omnipotent/omniscient human, right?

Re:To know God's reasons?

[SteeldrivingJon]

"Sounds like Jesus if you ask me. He lived and died just like a non-omnipotent/omniscient human, right?"

Er, yeah that was Jesus. However, we're talking about the guy who created the universe. The Father, you know,
not the Son.

(It's not *my* fault you guys want to play in poly- AND mono- theism. )

It's understandable why people would prefer Jesus, he being after all the Good Cop, compared to
the Father's Bad Cop. But Jesus wasn't the one involved with Creation. When talking creation, I'm going to
go with the Jewish version, not the complicated Gentile retcon which is right up there with "Greedo shot first".
The Jews got it first-hand, but Jesus was all about the cheese makers.

Re:To know God's reasons?

[nolesrule]

Sorry, forgot to include the sarcasm tags. I'm not one of those people you refer to that tries to call polytheism monotheism. My ancestors "got it first-hand" as you put it, and that's what I go with too.

Re:Pratchett or McIntyre (should) have patent on I

[anonymo]

Sorry fellows,

ID in current form was defined a bit earlier, see relevant Wikipedia article I pointed out somewhere in this thread.
Anyway, Pratchett was more fun than these pseudo-scientific ID-believers.

I wish the "Strata" was learned in school of Kansas under religion classes to keep it fair and balanced! >:->

Re:Evolution? I don't think so.

[MightyMartian]

Even more curious is that no organic chemist makes the argument that you claim. I haven't known too many chemists in my time, but those I have talked to don't seem to create idiotic strawmen of the kind you just did.

Occam's Razor

[jgardn]

I understand that; however, the way people I have seen try to argue evolution using Occam's Razor describe Occam's Razor is as I asserted above.

If Occam's Razor is "the simplest theory is correct", then Occam's Razor is wrong. This means that many's perception of Occam's Razor is wrong.

If Occam's Razor is that only what is necessary should be included, then it is a concept that everyone shares and is part of common sense.

Re:Occam's Razor

[mykdavies]

Occam's Razor is an expression of the Principle of Parsimony -- I believe that the exact translation of the phrase William of Ockham used is "pluralities ought not be supposed without necessity". It may sound very simple, and if as you say, "it is a concept that everyone shares and is part of common sense", then we should be pleased that such a fundamental tool for scientific enquiry is firmly rooted in people's minds.

Darwin proposed evolutionary theory to explain certain observations he had made. The fossil record has allowed us to draw a reasonable model of the chain of descent, but there are gaps in it. ID supposes that these gaps require us to postulate an "intelligent designer", with some sort of ability to interfere with inheritance in some unspecified manner (and for unspecified reasons). This is clearly not "common sense" as it raises more questions than it claims to address.

Re:Occam's Razor

[jgardn]

But, to an ID thinker, and I am sure you would agree to this, they are trying to explain the gaps. Evolutionists are more than happy to ignore the gaps. The ID thinker is trying to fill them in. Quantum Mechanics raised more questions than it answered. So did Quantum Field Theory and General Relativity. However, that did not mean it is not correct.

Re:I don't see the big deal behind intelligent des

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering that ID is a form of Christian Creationism, it is the Christian god with a tolerance for minority gods when they can offer some sort of aid to the movement. If Creationism was ever to became policy, it would hae the energy to focus on the only one that "matters" to the movement.

Re:wrong Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Baricom]

The God of the Bible is often portrayed not as taking action himself, but instead by working through others. Some examples off the top of my head:

1. Moses parts the sea with his staff. It doesn't just part when the Israelites approach it. Same with the water from the rock.
2. God doesn't strike Goliath down; he gives an untrained shepard the ability to do it with a slingshot.
3. David isn't protected by a forcefield or some other visible miracle when Saul is trying to kill him; he is hidden by friends and relatives.
4. Jonah has to be thrown into the ocean before being swallowed by the big fish.

Given these, I don't think it's inconsistent to believe that the Bible was written down by man at God's direction.

Wikipedia link uninformative

[SeanDuggan]

I was with you up until the last link, which links to one of those "Everytime you masturbate, God kills a kitten" pictures. But yeah, to some Christian sects, Catholics are worse than Satanists. Of course, with their leaders perpetuating myths like saint worship and cabalistic societies, it's little wonder some of their followers are a bit confused.

{Starts humming "They'll Know We Are Christians By Our Love"}

Re:Wikipedia link uninformative

[Darby]

Of course, with their leaders perpetuating myths like saint worship and cabalistic societies, it's little wonder some of their followers are a bit confused.

Of course, the Fundies are no better with their whole "A being powerful enough to create *everything* only likes you if you're willing to believe in him *precisely* in a way written down by desert nomads and explicitly without proof." That way being, of course, that he made us the way you are but if you act according to how he made you you'll burn. Well, unless, of course, you accept that he loves you so much that in order to forgive you for acting how he designed you to act he figured the only way he could actually forgive you for such horrendous transgressions was to torture and murder his own son. Oh yeah, and he'll erase any verifiable evidence for that too.

So really, there's not much for a moral person to like in any of that.

Re:Wikipedia link uninformative

[Lonath]

I was with you up until the last link, which links to one of those "Everytime you masturbate, God kills a kitten" pictures.

That's really scary that you weren't thrown off by the timecube.

Living violas?

[SeanDuggan]

Nowhere does The Theory of Evolution say, "viola life!"
Thank <DEITY> for that... could you imagine the havoc that living stringed instruments would cause?

Re:Evolution? I don't think so.

[Russellkhan]

I play poker with a bunch of chemists regularly. I just sent them a link to the GP post, hopefully one of them will jump in.

A strange criterium for a theory...predictivity...

[FatSean]

So you are dismissing Evolution as a theory because it does not predict what will happen? Goodness.

Consider the vast scope of evolution: everything that ever did and ever will exist on Earth!

And you wonder why there is no predicitivty to it. Shit man, they can't predict the weather either.

severa Popes = Vatican

[FooAtWFU]

Are you aware of the late John Paul II's Address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, October 22, 1996 and other papal utterances on the matter? Allow me to quote...

In his encyclical Humani Generis (1950), my predecessor Pius XII had already stated that there was no opposition between evolution and the doctrine of the faith about man and his vocation, on condition that one did not lose sight of several indisputable points.

Re:severa Popes = Vatican

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm, aware of that address made by Pope John Paul II? Did you even bother reading my original post? I already cited it (indirectly) and gave you my synopsis of it. Furthermore, do you merely recitate what some opinions on the net say about it? Please re-read my post. I already answered that question with my own opinion of that address made by John Paul. It's not just *my* opinion either, but, the officially stated *TRANSLATION* of the Catholic Church as well as those attending that conference and interpreting the French with which he spoke. You sorely misunderstood the late Pope's words and are all to willing to latch onto one bad interpretation of his French (and routinely circulated on the net). Such a dis-service to yourself and others...

You really need to do more research yourself before assuming so much was lost on others. Please, you only cheat yourself by making such uninformed blanket assumptions about this address by the Pope, and assuming it to be as such just because others have *willfully* interpreted it as such. Are you even Catholic? Do you even know what the Catholic Church or Pope John Paul said about it himself? I'll leave that for you to explore and research. If you really want to that is...

Re:severa Popes = Vatican

[Anonymous Coward]

The other AC post is correct. Even the snipet you cited must be put into proper context. Do you really need me to put that quote you extracted back into context for you? Please, read more about that address by the Pope at that symposium and understand what he meant by even that quote you gave.

Just a hint for your research: Pope John Paul by that statement was merely addressing a prior Pope's attempt at saying there need not be any conflict between those who pursue the THEORY of evolution and those who believe in traditional Christian creationism. In other words, in the pursuit of intellectual honesty, ALL concepts and theories should be discussed! Wow! Imagine that! Of all things?! The Catholic Church - the last bastion of Scientific purity...

You really need to do more research on that quote you cited and give the AC and other Catholics a little credit...

Interpreting the Bible 'Literally'

[potironhead]

An Evangelical Biblical Literalist believes that the Bible is literally true. What does this mean? It means that there is ONE correct interpretation of the Bible, the so-called 'literal' interpretation. The vast array of Christian belief systems show us that the Bible is interpreted in many ways. So, even if the Bible were the literal word of God, how could one know which of the belief systems was God's system? Is it possible to objectively study the Bible at all? Simply given the number of translations over time from the 'first' Bible, I would argue that such objectivity is impossible. The abstraction involved in language generally, and translating between languages specifically, proves that, if anything, the bible can only be a guide to the word of God.

Re:Interpreting the Bible 'Literally'

[Anonymous Coward]

There are more schalarly copies and translations of the Bible than any other book in history. This is not cause to discredit the Bible but to applaud it. There are very few copies of the Homer's works. So the Bible today has more to back it up than any other work. Cheers

Re:I don't see the big deal behind intelligent des

[Dictator For Life]

But very interesting reactions indeed, as far as humans are concerned.

Of course, if the naturalist is right, things like "interest" are really non-existent. Chemical reactions don't display interest. They just occur. ;-)

So if I find a piece of paper with "1+1=2" printed on it, it must have come from a human? Or could it have been printed by a computer? Is it any less true when an unintelligent machine makes the "truth claim" than when a human does? Or is it not a "truth claim" when a machine makes it?

Imagine that you lived 3000 years ago, spoke some Eskimo language, and/or could not read. If you find a piece of paper with those marks on it, those marks would be 100% unintelligible. Which only goes to demonstrate that such a thing is subject to interpretation by humans. But if the naturalistic scientist is correct, then there is no "person" to do the interpretation. "True" and "False" are not meaningful categories in such a world. Imagine how silly it would be to suggest that chicken soup "believes" something or "interprets" something. But if the naturalistic scientist is correct, there is nothing fundamentally different between a bowl of chicken soup and a human being; the only difference would be something like degree of complexity of the chemical reactions. But chemical reactions don't interpret; they just exist.

Surely if natural evolution can make flies able to do amazing flight maneuvers with only a few hundred neurons it can make symbolic reasoning happen given a few billion.

This doesn't follow at all. You might as well hope that a tornado spinning for a billion years in a junkyard will somehow put together a brand new Dell computer: it's completely nonsensical even to suggest. Even setting aside the odds it makes no sense. There is no scientific formula for sentience ("mix two parts dirt with three parts water, shake well, and get ready for an argument").

Oh, and by the way: a fly has a few more neurons than a "few hundred": see here. It's more like 250,000. :-)

Re:Evolution? I don't think so.

[Tiny Elvis]

The theory that atoms and molecules "randomly collide" and just happen to "create" DNA millions of base pairs long, enzymes with specific functions and other complex biomolecules is ridiculous.

Yes it is ridiculous and makes a great strawman for you to knock down. No one who believes evolution would claim that, and for you to state that 'evolution' proposes it makes you either disingenuous, frightfully uniformed, or joking.

I'm not sure that I follow you

[anomaly]

I'm a hypocrite because I use the word materialist to describe.... materialists? I'm baffled by this. Can you clarify for me, please?

Can you explain to me how the study of origins is a scientific pursuit? It's neither observable nor testable. It's not falsifiable using the scientific method. How is that science?

Scientists should be free to investigate whatever they like, any way they like.
I agree with the first clause. Scientists are free to study whatever they like. They are not free to block expression of competing ideas in the marketplace, but no one tells a scientist what to study (other than the grant committee.)

The second clause, I disagree with. Scientists MUST be bound to follow the scientific method, precluding many ways of investigation.

Respectfully,
Anomaly

Discworld's Pascal's Wager

[SeanDuggan]

I think it was in the Hogfather book, but Terry Pratchett had a similar saying in his Discworld series. There was a footnote along the lines of the that the philosopher in question died and found himself in the afterlife surrounded by gods bearing clubs who proceeded to beat him about the head and shoulders complaining about "people who were too bloody clever by half for their own good." ^_^ Typical Pratchett.

Re:wrong Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Golias]

Not to mention the act of creation itself was one of passive instruction.

"And the Lord said 'Let there be light'"

That descrption sounds more like He created things by simply granting them permission to exist.

Throughout the entire Bible, it would appear that the God of Abraham is not One to get His fingernails dirty. He's got people.

IMHO...

[Anonymous Coward]

I am a Christian... I believe that Christ created the earth and the people and animals in it. Sin came in the world and Christ (the Son of God) became a man to redeem it by paying the ultimate price. He became sin that God might destroy sin and anyone who trusts Christ as their Savior will be saved. He died for our salvation and was risen to keep us saved. No religion (following a moral code to appease any god) has a living and risen savior to have a relationship with. Cheers

"Peter's chopped-off ear"

[SeanDuggan]

Or healing Peter's chopped off ear?
Sidenote, but Peter cut off Malchus's ear. I guess, in a manner of speaking, it could be "Peter's chopped off ear"...

Re:"Peter's chopped-off ear"

[walmartshopper]

You're right. That's what I meant. The argument is still the same... that Jesus healed somebody's chopped off ear. But yeah, it was Peter that did the chopping. Thanks for the correction.

My rabbi is smarter than your rabbi

[Anonymous Coward]

Your rabbis do not represent authentic Jewish thought.

My Rabbi, Menachem Mendel Schneersohn, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, blessed be his name, has taught us that G-d, blessed be his name, created the world in six days, and rested on the seventh. Furthermore, the Rebbe teaches us that contrary to old-fashioned medieval ideas, the Sun revolves around the Earth, as the Torah teaches, rather than the Earth revolving around the Sun. In a scholarly letter to Jewish scientists, the Rebbe wrote:

This matter of the sun and the earth is a further case in point. To declare categorically in the name of science, that the earth revolves around the sun, and not vise versa, is, as noted above, turning the scientific clock back to the 19th century and Medieval science. It is also at variance with the theory of relativity, which has likewise been universally accepted. Science now declares--as categorically as it is permissible for contemporary science--that where two bodies in space are in relative motion, it is scientifically impossible to determine which is at rest and which in motion.

It is very saddening to think that those who should be the champions of the Torah-hashkofo and its advocates, especially among Jewish youth in general and academic youth in particular, are timid or even ashamed to expostulate it. This is all the more regrettable precisely in this day and age, after science had finally come out of its Medieval wrappings, and accepted the Heisenberg principle of uncertainty, etc., etc. which makes it so easy for an orthodox Jewish scientist to espouse the Torah-hashkofo boldly and forcefully, without fear of contradiction. Yet some Jewish scientists have not yet managed to free themselves from the fetters of the 19th century approach and inferiority complex. Surely the time is ripe for a reassessment as to where they stand.

http://www.torahscience.org/torahsci/rebbeletter.h tml

Letter from Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneersohn, the Lubavitcher Rebbe to a member of the Association of Orthodox Jewish Scientists, 19711

By the Grace of G-d

5731

Dr. _________

Association of Orthodox Jewish Scientists

New York, NY 10011

Sholom uBrocho:

Although I don't know you personally, I am taking the liberty of writing to you, having just received the ____ with your article in it. I find myself in the agreement of some points brought out in your article, which encourages me in the hope that as Editor and influential member of your Association you may be able to give new impetus to the Association and its members, and, especially, help clear up once and for all certain misconceptions which--as it seems to me--are still troubling some orthodox Jewish scientists.

Specifically, I find it incomprehensible and regrettable that some of our orthodox scientists still evince an apologetic attitude vis-à-vis science and certain scientific theories. This is evident also in some articles in the present ____ and I have seen it also in personal discussions with some genuinely frum [observant] scientists.

To put it bluntly, some orthodox scientists seem to be ashamed to declare openly their adherence to such basic tenets of the Torah as, e.g. that G-d created Adam and Chava, or the possibility of a miracle (Ness) in the present day and age, as a Ness is defined in Torah, namely, an occurrence in defiance of the (so-called) laws of nature. When I asked them, squarely, how do they reconcile this lack of conviction in basic Torah-matters with what every believing Jew believes and professes, the answer was that they have managed to 'departmentalize' their day--Tefila [prayer] and Torah, etc., being one 'department,' science--another.

Needless to say, such an attitude is untenable. For, when a Jew declares daily, Hashem hu ha'elokim, ein od milvado [G-d is the Lord, there is nothing but Him], it is plainly meant that this is the whole day,

Re:My rabbi is smarter than your rabbi

[Anonymous Coward]

Thou shalt go ye forth and circumcise

In Solvat Russia...

[Anonymous Coward]

Intelligent Design reject you!!

Yeah sure.

[jotaeleemeese]

And the fossil record is a figment of our imagination.

Re:Evolution? I don't think so.

[Endlestorm]

That is an incredible statement, clearly from a non-scientist (as per your use of quotes in "randomly collide" and "create" which are serious concepts). It sounds to me like you've never taken a real science class at all. I, on the other hand, actually AM an organic chemist (3rd year grad student, UC Berkeley) and I cannot recall meeting a single chemist, or for that matter biologist, biochemist, or any other serious scientist who does not believe in human evolution.

Molecular evolution is something we think about a lot. The idea is even used to discover drugs. If you are able to wrap your mind around the idea that you can "naturally select" certain molecules, it takes minimal imagination to further the selection process to larger and larger biomolecules. Biomolecules = life. Selection = evolution.

Three cheers for the Vatican.

Re:I don't see the big deal behind intelligent des

[vingilot]

And which God would that be?

my perspective: the one I worship
your perspective: the one you worship
the guy with a turban: the one he worships
your cat: can of tuna

And thats the whole problem with teaching ID, at some point someone will say my God is responsible for this.

Ranking scientific theories

[amightywind]

These are all great studies. They come to real conclusions. But the methods used to arrive at the conclusions are empirical in nature. You just strengthen my argument. There is no governing dynamic theory that these studies apply beyond basic statistics.

Compare these findings with...

• Quantum mechanics (Useful Explanation=A, Predictive Ability=A)
• Newtonian mechanics (A-, A-)
• Weather prediction (A, C)
• Climatology (C, D)
• String theory (B, D)
• Earthquake prediction (B, D)
• Microeconomics (B, C)
• Evolution (B+, D)

Can you dispute evolution's position on this list?

Re:Ranking scientific theories

[CaymanIslandCarpedie]

Hard to dispute without knowing what criteria use based these rankings on. What exactly do you mean by "predictive ability"?

To me the "predictive ability" of evolution is pretty amazing. On one hand is idea of common decent. We know "Animal A" exists and we believe it evolved from known "animal C". For this to be true, some unknown "Animal B" would be quite likely as a transitional specices. Some of these hypothosis, and later discovery of fossils which match this expectation shows there is cetainly some pretty decent predictabilty. Now I don't think there has ever been a 100% match to "expected" Animal B, but there would be no reason to ever think such an animal could even roughly be predicted without evolution.

Another example would be genetic diagnosis. If you have genetic marker X then you will have disease Y. Some of these "predictions" based on evolution are 100% while others have a VERY strong corrilation and this will only increase as our knowledge of these topics increase.

Re:Ranking scientific theories

[Anonymous Coward]

"Can you dispute evolution's position on this list?".

Certainly can.

Useful explanation of how all the earth's species of life came about. A+.

Predicts the existance of an inheritance mechanism - therefore predicts DNA, and also predicts the "twin nested hierarchies" wherein the physical similarities and differences between species is exactly matched by differences and similarities in their DNA. A+++.

Re:Ranking scientific theories

[benjj]

But the methods used to arrive at the conclusions are empirical in nature... There is no governing dynamic theory that these studies apply beyond basic statistics.

I might be wrong, but isn't that statement meaningless? All scientific theories are empirical - how else are they formulated and tested? What is a "governing dynamic theory"? What is the "governing dynamic theory" of weather prediction?

All these studies apply statistical techniques that are based around the theory of evolution. I don't understand what else you are driving at to try and deny this. I also don't understand your criteria for grading theories from A to D. On the face of it it seems absurd.

I suspect your problem is that Newton can make simple testable predictions for the movement of objects. If this is the case then you problem is not with physics but with the whole of biology, which deals with complex systems and so things are more messy (although in turn, the predictions are arguably more impressive when correct).

Re:Ranking scientific theories

[bigsteve@dstc]

Anyone can dispute it. That is not the point.

What is more cogent is can you justify evolution's position on the list? Can you justify any of the scores on the list?

Scores like these are only meaningful if they are derived by an objective, transparent and justifiable process that is informed by factual information.

Re:Ranking scientific theories

[MP2030]

None of what parent mentions are predictions in the sense of GP's post. Those are all observations from testing an existing scenario. You only know you'll get a particular genetic disease for that marker. You can't predict the results of a change in general. If you change the dna to have a stop at/near the front of a protein ok you don't make that protein... awesome... but if you make a non-trivial set of changes, what disease or benefit or whatever do you get? That is not really something we're able to predict in the same way that newtonian physics can predict the flight of a thrown object.

Re:Ranking scientific theories

[mydn]

You forgot:

• Intelligent Design (F, F)

Re:wrong Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Gizzmonic]

So God is a mysterious, passive drama queen who furtively pulls the strings? Sounds more like the Godfather to me! Seriously, the things people will worship these days.

Re:wrong Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Scrameustache]

The God of the Bible is often portrayed not as taking action himself, but instead by working through others.

As far as I know, god never does anything himself, even for miracle: He has angels do the actual deeds.

Not Exactly

[ballantrae]

Not quite.

The majority of Orthodox rabbis happen to support the fundamentalist position.

See "Mind over matter" a compendium of letters written by the late Lubavitcher Rebbe, who very definitevely stated that the Genesis account is absolutely literal with no possibility for evolution.

Besides which, I find it very amusing to see so many "open minded" people accepting the evolutionary dogma as holy scripture, without even bothering to consider the many flaws in the theory. I wonder how the people here would react if a new, better theory came up (which it undoubtedly will sooner or later, the current one is so pathetic).

-ron

Re:Not Exactly

[tony1343]

But not as pathetic as intelligent design.

Should we ignore intellectual dishonesty?

[Ranger]

You are rejecting the argument, unexamined, because of the people who make it. And it stinks.

The only thing that stinks here are the creationists who are disguising themselve in the sheeps clothing of intelligent design. I have examined the argument and that is how I can tell it is nothing but another flavor of creationism. Calling intelligent design creationism is not an ad hominem. Calling into question the integrity and motives of the main proponents of ID is an ad hominem. Saying they have no scientific credibility is an ad hominem. The tragedy here is that some of those proponents have scientific credentials and should know better.

If ID is a scientific theory, what predictions does it make? Is it testable? Is it falsifiable? Intelligent design is a false analogy. A watch implies a watchmaker, thererfore a universe implies a universe maker. Well who made the universe maker?

Nice description of ID, what it is, criticisms of it, and who are it's champions. ID falls apart on it's own merits. It's not science. So you have to wonder why does it keep rearing it's non-scientific head?

Mod Parent Up

[mosb1000]

If we are going to have a fair discuccion of the merits of Intellegent Design, people should at least understand what says. It is not a rejection of evolution.

Why all the insecurity?

[PhreakOfTime]

I never understood this argument. Not on its face value, but on the state of mind it describes for BOTH sides.

Lets teach it in school, bring it on. Its just another sentence uttered by a teacher, and we all know how infallible they are.

I went to a Catholic school for 8 years. I remember them trying to teach us this back then, with some vague references to the earth only being a few thousand years old. But then, I realized that almost ALL of the behavior of the teachers meant absolutely nothing outside of the walls of the school. Which, inevitabely led me to the conclusion that the things they said, as well as the things they did were merely the imperfections of mankind.

upon realizing this, it became clear what the result was of being presented this information was... that reality has a way of uprooting incorrect assumptions. It may not happen that all of the things I know that are incorrect will be uprooted in my lifetime, but nevertheless, they WILL be uprooted.

So please, lets just back off and accept the fact that even though they are 'kids' who we are trying to protect from either side of this argument. The end result is that they will not learn anything by restricting information. Not one single person has become more intelligent because of information that is ommitted.

Hell, I have a physics textbook from the 30's that talks about the 'luminiforous ether' as if it actually exists. Well, guess what, nobody became stupider by learning that. In fact, I would say quite the opposite. By being presented something as 'fact' there are certain people who will notice that reality does not fit 'fact' and will relize that reality is more of a truth than 'facts' will ever be. For example, we are all taught that storms rotate on the earth due to the 'coriolis effect'. So is that the same reason the earth rotates on its axis? Is that the same reason the earth rotates around the sun? Is that the same reason that the sun rotates around the galaxy? If these are all similar physical events... then what is the galaxy rotating around? In other words, with just a small amount of personal reflection, it becomes obvious that the world we live in is so complex that questions will always exist, and the people who dont care to know any more will always use the horizon of knowledge to 'explain' their beliefs.

If we, as progressive thinkers, can accept the fact that being homosexual is how you are born, and that there is nothing wrong with it. Then why cant we accept the fact that there are people who are born religious, and that there is nothing wrong with that either?

So just stop with all the personality disorders on both sides of this argument, and release the idea that you have any control over how somebody else thinks.

Re:Why all the insecurity?

[IdntUnknwn]

The real crux of the issue is that Intelligent Design advocates are attacking the very ideals of science. They're attempting to muddy the waters to insert their own agenda into science classrooms through sleight of hand tactics. The scientific process is very well-defined, Intelligent Design advocates are trying to blur that definition such that they can include their own "theory" under "science."

Science has nothing against religion. Most scientists are perfectly fine with the fact that science coexists with religion. I also judge that it works the other way around, too. Its just a specific group of people making large amounts of trouble over an issue that really shouldn't be an issue.

As many other Slashdotters have stated, it would be alright to teach religion in school. Just not in a science class.

Re:Why all the insecurity?

[PhreakOfTime]

Im just wish I could see what will happen to the kids that go to college.

For some reason, Im stuck with an image of Adam Sandler in the back of a college biology classroom talking about alligators... :)

Re:A strange criterium for a theory...predictivity

[amightywind]

And you wonder why there is no predicitivty to it. Shit man, they can't predict the weather either.

But atmospheric scientists understand why they can't. Many dynamical systems become unpredictable when initial conditions not known to high precision. It is inescapable mathematically. But there is nothing wrong with Navier-Stokes equations, just the stability of the numerical solution. Where are evolution's dynamical equations?

Good for the vatican... +1,,,,, -10^10 left

[Atdtstdn]

In the beginning the earth was without form and void

Re:Evolution? I don't think so.

[DNAofDestruction]

I am also a graduate student in organic chemistry. In my time doing professional research, I have only encountered one scientist (chemist or otherwise) who did not believe in evolution. He was a nut job, a terrible chemist, and prayed for new compounds. I kid you not. No one took him seriously. Only this one person, and I'm from the heart of bible-thumping country in the midwest. I know plenty of anti-evolution and anti-Darwinian people--but only one in any kind of scientific field. I think that scientsts are taught to question and think, two things that are not done by those who do not believe in evolution. Yes, I don't have my PhD yet. But I have never talked to anyone who held a PhD that did not believe in evolution, regardless of the field.

Re: why Genesis is important

[BillEGoat]

It's important because Jesus refers to the same body of text to help derive his authority. If the truthfulness of Christ's authority is not absolute, then we as Christians have no basis upon which to claim exclusivity on the really important things - God's love for us and his salvation from our sins. In short, God said it, Christ repeated it, I believe it - if you have a problem with the text, the problem is with Christ, not with what I believe. A part of me hopes that sounds a little harsh, as I think too many Christians try to prove their case without the help of Christ. The non-believing world has problems with what is taught in scripture, especially what is taught by Christ, not what I choose to believe or not believe. If the world has a problem with the content, no amount of blaming me for believing it is going to change the situation. Christians need to understand this, and redirect the argument straight back to the source - God & Christ.

Along those lines, Genesis is by all rational readings authored in a manner that appears intended to depict history, not fantasy. If you don't believe it or don't want to believe it, perhaps you are better served to reconsider the resurrection and whether you're willing to belive Christ really died and really came back to life. Paul even says that if there was no resurrection, then we have believed in vain, "And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith." 1 Cor 15:14. Certainly if God raised Christ from the dead, he could do other miracles as well, including the creation.

Just as in the techno-security realm, we talk about "chains of trust", in the realm of scriptural text we talk about chains of authenticity or chains of truth. People dig on Fundies all the time because we're so "absolute" about things - but what we are attempting is the same that any scientist or philosopher attempts - consistency, predictability, and logical progression. It's just that when I do it I'm a "fundamentalist", but when a scientist does it s/he's thorough.

I wish I could answer your other questions, which might be (over)simplified in asking why a Good god lets Bad things happen. I have an answer or two for myself, but I can't point you to the Book of Tough Questions chapter 5 verse 12, so I won't claim to have been given some authority to speak on that topic. Suffice it to say we probably agree as Christians that we live in a fallen world and God chose not to lay out for us all the reasons why.

Re:wrong Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[LittleBigLui]

Why would god need a scribe?

Didn't want to mess up the papyrus with sauce bolognese?

Re:wrong Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[samjam]

As a point of principle, if God is all powerfull and all knowing, and can inspire prophets to... you know "prophesy", I don't think he would have much trouble with some of this stuff.

You points are still interesting, but I just thought to add something to the interpretive context.

Sam

What are the facts?

[jccampana]

Can anyone find a link to what the Vatican officials actually said? The context of their statements would be nice. The titles and content of articles on this bit of news are spin city. I have combed the internet for a transcript of their actual words with no success.

The best thing that could happen

[phillwall.name]

People wont stop people stop assuming that being a Christian automatically means you are a young earth creationist until the christians that believe truth is more important than dogma make more noise and get more airplay. Until then .. relative silence is implicit approval !

Re:wrong Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[samjam]

Perhaps he did it to give the stubborn a safe reason to not-believe and avoid getting dammed to the helliest hell for groundless rejection of his word. Do you think?

alternative answer:

Perhaps he just didn't feel the need to explain all of his all-wise decision to finitely minded people even though they imagine they woulkd be able to understand and stop saying "but why" and get on with improving personal behaviour.

Sam

Re:wrong Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[roastedMnM]

As it is obvious that the particular ceremonial (or judicial) laws he mentions are on the same level as a moral commandment ("abomination" doesn't seem to go with either of the other general types). yeah, sure.

Nope, you don't get it

[snowwrestler]

ID only says that some systems, such as blood cloting, cannot evolve in small steps with modern understanding and must have been evolved in a unexplainable "leap" to it's current state.

No, that is what ID *proponents* say. It is the marketing they use to sell their "theory."

But irreducibly complex structures are not a theory, they are evidence, i.e. "facts" (or at least they would be if they in fact existed).

Theories describe processes, not facts. The "theory" of ID is that the process by which life develops is controlled by some "intelligence" rather than natural phenomena. "Irreducible structures" are one set of supposed "facts" that supposedly support the "theory" of ID.

In much the same way, damage from falling 10 meters is not what the theory of gravity "says." But when accurately and precisely measured, and compared against theoretical prediction, it can be evidence in support or contradiction of a specific theory of gravitation.

And thus we reach the fail point of ID. There is no way to objectively, accurately, and precisely measure "irreducible"--it is an interpretation not an observation. Put grammatically, it is an adjective not a noun.

If a metal ball deforms 3.56 cm upon impact from 10 m height--that is an observation. Calling a structure "irreducible" is not, in that further evidence could invalidate such a conclusion. There is no further evidence that can invalidate a measurement of 3.56 cm--it is what it is, and thus it is scientifically valid evidence.

True ID involves modern genetics, natural selection, and yes, fossils. It even allows evolution of modern humans over the ages. There are only a few systems affected by this irreducible complexity. Other than that, it has no issues or differences with evolution and modern science.

This shows such a fundamental misunderstanding of science I'm sure I can't correct it here. Let's just suffice to say that if you postulate any kind of intelligent designer you are NOT "involving" either modern genetics or natural selection--you are misinterpretting and bastardizing them for your own ends. Natural selection is the theory that the traits we observe in species today were both or either selected for or not selected against, by natural phenomena. Natural phenomena are those that can be incrementally and repeatably observed--i.e. birth, death, mutation, disease, etc. Further, they are reducable to base physical processes--cells don't just die, there are certain chemical reactions that fall out of balance and cease. Chemical reactions are controlled by quantum mechanics. A mysterious and unquantifiable intelligence is not observable, not repeatable, not incremental, and not reducable to any base physical processes. Effectively is sits outside observable nature--thus it is "supernatural" not natural.

Further, because science is a study of processes, not facts, you cannot "involve" theories. You can't pick and choose which "systems" are affected by your ID "theory." Either the process is wholly natural or it is not--all facts must conform to one or the other theories--theories cannot coexist. Science is not politics--contradictory ideologies cannot be logically tolerated. Either Newton or Einstein is right about gravity; it can't be both and it can't be piecemeal. One theory must explain the range of related phenomena--not some here and some there. It literally makes no scientific sense to say that that only "some" systems are "affected" by ID, or that ID "involves" genetics and natural selection.

Evolution and intelligent design are NOT mutually exclusive.

You can yell all you want, but you obviously don't understand what you're shouting about.

Re:Nope, you don't get it

[Allasard]

But irreducibly complex structures are not a theory, they are evidence, i.e. "facts" (or at least they would be if they in fact existed).

Ok. I never said the structures were theories. They are facts on which the theory of ID was based. (all of which were micro-biological, if I remember right) [read it 8+ years ago]

This shows such a fundamental misunderstanding of science I'm sure I can't correct it here. Let's just suffice to say that if you postulate any kind of intelligent designer you are NOT "involving" either modern genetics or natural selection--you are misinterpretting and bastardizing them for your own ends.

Um, I think you mistake me with an idiot. Remember, Behe is a microbiologist and a professor, and his whole book is in that context. His argument is that Darwin's basic observations were correct, he just didn't have all the low-level facts. Today (with modern biology) we do have the ability to break cells down to the atomic level. Which, is where some structures become impossible to steadily evolve and not be removed by natural selection.

eg.: Why the heck would a bacteria have a flagellum that is missing the few cells to make it move? It would be a waste of tissue and be discarded by natural selection. And why would it, inversely, have spinning cells unless there was a flagellum to spin?

Either Newton or Einstein is right about gravity; it can't be both and it can't be piecemeal.

Of course they can....oh wait...I get it...that's why you can't comprehend my argument. My argument is evolution and intelligent design can both be true.

Evolution and intelligent design are NOT mutually exclusive.

You can yell all you want, but you obviously don't understand what you're shouting about.

I wasn't yelling. Was highlighting my main point.

You mistake everyone who believes in ID to be a fundamentialist fool. I have degrees in both science and world religion from a major engineering school. I know that the first chapter of Genesis conflicts with the second. I know it was writen by at least 4 sets of people and can explain why, in detail. However, I find Behe's arguments scientifically convincing, and until he is proved wrong scientifically, I agree with them.

Why can't we KILL this???

[Anonymous Coward]

This is so basic and simple, yet no-one in the media seems to be ariculate enough or willing to pin this down so that the general public can get it:

What is/should be taught in PUBLIC schools is HOW we got where we are. This is commonly called evolution, where there is a ton of agreement that scientific evidence shows we evolved incrimentally over time from less and less sophisticated life forms.

What ID says is that "OK, we agree that the evidence supports incrimental changes, but if you look at the SIZE of the incrimental changes, they are just to big to have been random, so they must have been guided by an 'Intelligence'!".

This makes perfect sense, and the majority of normal Americans would probably agree with this. The HUGE distinction is that this explains WHY we evolved, not HOW, and the WHY of our existence should be taught in the home or in whatever 'spiritual guidance' organization you feel like attending or sending your kid to.

Let me state that again: the ID people now AGREE with evolution (or at least realize that they can't counter the overwhelming scientific evidence by just saying 'you gotta have faith!), but now they say that we evolved so fast and so well that there must be a god. It is not a competing or alternative theory to evolution, just a 'religious' extension trying to use scientific terms to justify pushing their 'god' agenda!

Why people (school boards etc.) cant see this and just toss these nuts out on their butts is beyond me!

Re:wrong Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Scrameustache]

alternative answer:

Perhaps some guy wrote down stuff and said a superhuman power was backing it up so the fearfull and gullible would do as they're told? No... THAT would be nonsense!
No, an all powerfull pan-universal being chose to communicate with Humanity as a whole trough some guy in the desert... that's much more likely. Much, much more likely.

Nothing left to say

[joshsnow]

From the letter to the Hebrews, Chapter 1

1God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets,

2Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds

That means that there's nothing left to be said.

Anne Rice's Memnoch the Devil

[olddotter]

Interesting that this has been posted on the same day I was home sick and reading Anne Rice. For the last hour I have been reading a description of creation as told to the Vampire Lestat by Memnoch, the Devil.

In Anne Rice's version there is both evolution and inteligent design. So if ID is taught in school's then I think Anne Rice's theory should be taught as well. To quote the book:

"I believe God worked back from a blueprint of Himself. He created a physical universe whose laws would result in the evolution of creatures who resemble Him."

I'm not trying to start a religion based on an Anne Rice novel (stranger things have happened). But I point this out because it seems so strange to me that so many people think that a belief in God and believing evolution are mutually exclusive.

The First Cause question

[Nerdposeur]

...God gives us the clever property of having always existed and very nice things that solve the issue in the Argument of First Cause. Not nicely, mind you, because there IS no way to solve that issue nicely (Where did GOD come from? etc).

Or you can rephrase that, "where did the energy for the Big Bang come from?"

This question ("Where did God come from") is out of the realm of science, obviously, but I look at it this way: time itself is a property of the created universe. Therefore, if God created the universe, there is no such thing as "before" God. He is not on the timeline; he drew the timeline. He is the fundamental fact of the universe.

If you don't believe that, fine, but it's a question of faith, not science. And if you don't answer the question with "God," you still don't have a neat way of saying what caused the events that brought the laws of our universe into being, or how events can happen without space-time.

Re:The First Cause question

[listen]

I hope you realise that your time argument is very very close to a refutation of the need for a creator : cause and effect is a property of the universe, so we have no reason to believe that the universe itself needs a cause. Ask a meaningless question....

creatition and evolution are both wrong...

[Hosiah]

The Universe was a core dump from a Lisp machine running a recursive, self-replicatiing operation.

That's not a news article, that's a rant

[Jedi_Knyghte]

Newsflash #1: One cardinal speaking--even one in charge of a pontifical congregation--does not equate to an official statement from the Holy See. Newsflash #2: Intelligent Design and the "fundamentalist" Creation theory are not the same. If you want to view them as equally unscientific, that's your choice--but they are not saying the same thing. Newsflash #3: What the cardinal said was a statement against a literalist interpretation of Genesis. Only on Slashdot, major US media outlets, and (apparently) Italian and Australian papers with too much time on their hands, does saying "Genesis is not incompatible with evolution" equate to "Vatican Rejects Intelligent Design". I'm probably going to get karma-ed into oblivion for this. So be it.

So now I'm more confused

[anomaly]

Abiogenesis had to occur anyway.
It did? With all due respect, on what do you base that claim?

Nor would you assume God made it.
If you find a watch, you don't assume that God created it. Neither do I. We assume, based on our framework of knowledge that:
  an intelligent designer designed it,
  someone arranged for production, then
  some distribution mechanism occurred to deposit the timepiece in the sand.

Given what we know about the universe, it's occam's razor.

How then can we look at the myriad complexity of biology and believe that something which is orders of magnitude more complex came to be as a result of time, chance, and favored characteristics?

Respectfully,
Anomaly

Re: So now I'm more confused

[Black Parrot]

> > Abiogenesis had to occur anyway.

> It did? With all due respect, on what do you base that claim?

Start with abiogenesis = a-bio-genesis, "non-biological origin".

Add the fact life was impossible in the early universe, but now exists, and it follows inexorably that life started from non-life at some point.

Or, to be anal retentive about it, if you conjecture that supernatural beings exist and qualify as "life", then rephrase it as "it follows inexorably that life had a non-biological origin at some point".

As I said, the only question is whether you want to attribute abiogenesis to natural or supernatural causes.

> > Nor would you assume God made it.

> If you find a watch, you don't assume that God created it. Neither do I. We assume, based on our framework of knowledge that: an intelligent designer designed it, someone arranged for production

More specifically, "we assume that people made it, since we know that watches are made by people".

> How then can we look at the myriad complexity of biology and believe that something which is orders of magnitude more complex came to be as a result of time, chance, and favored characteristics?

That's precisely the question that the theory of evolution addresses.

The argument that "people make watches, therefore God made biology" is absurdly bad analogical reasoning.

BTW, what definition of "complexity" are you using? Are the Rocky Mountains complex? Can you give a good argument that complexity can only arise from intelligent intervention?

pssh

[Danzigism]

god damn bible thumpin' bastards.. just open your mind for a sec, and realize what millions of years of developing communication can do for one species..

one thing a lot of ID and creationist people think of, is "well, we're so advanced, how could any animal possibly evolve in to what we are today?"

well its simple.. figuring that we've found human skulls dating way over 10,000 years ago, and similar homo-type species even millions of years ago, don't you think that gives an ape/monkey-like animal (which have been proven to make their lives more efficient) PLENTY of time to develop communication?? plenty of animals communicate.. monkeys and humans however, have been able to use their communication skills to teach others.. to talk to one another.. to discuss and work together, to make life efficient.. when you have thousands of years of communication, it makes everything we are, and everything we have done, seem so easily possible without the help of an Unintelligent designer..

... the blind watchmaker ...

[splint3r]

Ho,

To all who are interested in the Intelligent Design theory, and evolution, you might want to check out Richard Dawkin's book "The Blind Watchmaker". It's well thought out, easy to read, and enlightening - and it deals with the Watch Maker theory specifically (which is the most common example Intelligent Design proponents use to explain Intelligent Design).

I'm religious myself (Baha'i), but I'm loving it (though I haven't finished yet - took some time out to read trashy sci-fi ;)

No, actually what we've arrived at ...

[snowwrestler]

Is how poorly you understand what you're talking about.

Here you arrive, unintended I'm sure, at the reason why Evolution is more an ideology than a scientific theory, just as Intelligent Design is. Namely, none of this is repeatable.

Laughably wrong. In fact every college with a biology department performs the same genetic and selective experiments every year in a class called (wait for it) "Genetics."

With good starting info and simple organisms, it's possible to make extremely accurate predictions of the statistical distribution of phenotypes after a certain number of generations and under certain conditions. Thousands of students do it every year.

Like many, you've assumed the foundation of modern biology rests on stories about the past. Wrong. Science is not a collection of stories that contain facts, it is a collection of descriptions of processes. Processes are effectively timeless.

Modern genetics and natural selection are theories that explain the processes of biology, both right now and in any time in the past or future of life. Stories about past life flow from this understanding, but (this is important) they flow from the theory--they are not the basis for the theory.

Of course no one can repeat the evolution of the horse. No one can "repeat" the orbit of Mercury either (it's just a tad too big). BUT, using incremental hypotheses and achievable tests, we can develop an understanding of the processes that control it. Then we can test our understanding by making quantitative predictions of what the orbit of Mercury will be in the future. Yay! We were right. And until the observations don't match the predictions, we'll stick with the theory. The same thing is possible in the study of genetics and natural selection; it's what students learn in Genetics and Evolutionary Biology classes.

You can't setup an experiment to show what did happen.

No, but you can set up experiments that can falsify your model of the processes by which it happened. Note that this is not possible in ID.

Even if one could show conclusively that a designer could exist, it would still not prove that one /did/ exist, or that one actually took part int he design of the universe.

This makes no sense. You can't prove "conclusively" that something "could" exist.

Look, the fact is the word "prove" doesn't even belong around a concept of a being that is supposedly powerful enough to shape the course of every detail of the entire biosphere in intelligent ways, whenever it wants, without any apparent physical mechanism. In the face of omnipotence, the human concept of "prove" holds no meaning.

And, I'm sad to say, none of it seems to be willing to consider falsifying evidence. This is the precise reason why Popper (more or less father of modern Philosophy of Science) rejected the notion that history could be scientific.

I totally do not understand this leap. Please explain how Popper's opinions on history bear on the study of phenomena and facts that are observable in the present.

Re:wrong Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Hosiah]

the Bible doesn't have to be literally true for us to have faith in God. He believed that those who hinge everything on the absolute truth of every word of Scripture are those who really lacked faith.

I should know better than to wade into religious issues, but I just remembered that, before I renounced the monotheistic patriarchal grace-based faith I was raised in, the subject of this remark was one of those things that bothered me most. I mean, if it's the word of God, isn't it worth getting *RIGHT*? So why write it in metaphors and similes and coded riddles? And if parts of it are not to be taken literally, then how do I *know* which parts are literal? Yes, I'm to be guided by faith, but is that in one of the literal parts of the book?

I just ended up taking the Sermon on the Mount, the Diamond Sutra, and parts of the Doctrine and Covenants and whatnot and took away with me the general idea that I should try to be nice and if everybody's nice to each other, it's a better world. And after I'm dead, whatever B/being/s I happen to find myself under the judgement of, my only defense will have to be, "Sorry, You made me too stupid and the riddles too hard. Do with me whatever You have to do to reaffirm your sense of dominance."

Re: why Genesis is important

[mrpeebles]

Again, thank you for the very reasonable post. I don't think we will resolve our differences on slashdot :-). Still, one more comment:
You write:
"Genesis is by all rational readings authored in a manner that appears intended to depict history, not fantasy."
and
"we are attempting is the same that any scientist or philosopher attempts - consistency, predictability"

"Ideal" science explicity establishes what it means by "true." I think this is clearest (and perhaps the statement is most true) in physics, the most "mature" of the sciences. A given theory must make a quantitative prediction for a given experiment. If the experiment gives this quantitative result, then the theory isn't true- its just not false. (Of course, practically, scientists are open to a whole host of superstitions and unfounded assumptions.)

If you want to use this as a model for whether the Bible is "true" (and you seem to me to want to do something like this, based on your post), fine. But if we treat the Bible as a scientific theory, it must give us a criterion for its success, or at least lack of failure. I'm sure you know the Bible better than I do, but I've read most of it, and I don't remember where it does this.

The point is, you must establish what is meant by "true". Because as I understand it, science does NOT (note: I am a physicist with something like a minor in philosophy, but I'm not a professional philosopher.) Scientific theories are never TRUE. They are only ever NOT FALSE.

My inclination is to say "Well, something's true if God would describe it that way." And to me, I think God might have described creation according to genesis. I think histories have a tendency to more be a lesson about what was important about what happened, rather than exhaustive description of what events unfolded.

I don't have a child yet. When I do, he will probably ask me how parents have babies, and in particular how my wife and I had him. And I'll tell him its because my wife and I fell in love. And when he's older, I'll give him the mechanics of it, I suppose. But I won't give all the mechanics because my child's existance will basically be an impossible thing that happened. I won't even remember that my wife sneezed one night, and that shifted her belly, which resulted in one sperm getting there before another. I won't tell him that the temperature changed by a few degrees from one day to the next, and that made a difference. I won't tell him all the crazy improbable things that led up to my wife and I meeting, or to our parents meeting. Because I don't understand those things as being important, even though in a sense they are incredibly important, just as important as my wife and I being in love and making love.

I guess my rambling point is that sometimes the lines between truth and allegory blur. I cannot believe that the Truth of the Bible rests on whether God described Genesis as a modern human historian might. (But, I grant you, I'm still young :-))

I believe in ID and evolution

[a1291762]

I believe in both ID *and* evolution. "What?" I hear you ask. "Those things are incompatible!". They're not but you have to have a particular view of time.

Here's how it fits in my mind...

To me God really did create the earth in 7 days. Time started when the earth was created. Think of the universe as a simulation in a computer. There's no real "free will", just a random number generator (to us it *is* free will because we are inside the simulation). The simulation was run for ~16b years (or however old scientists think the universe is) to make it suitable for humans. Yes, I do believe that we are not descended from animals. There were hominids around but they weren't "human" because they lacked a soul.

The 7 days thing? That's how long it took God to "code" the initial conditions of the simulation. You know, code up the universe, run it and go "oh yeah, some animals would be nice, let's just tweak this here and recompile."

To me evolution is just a way of explaining the process used in the simulation. Scientists are reverse-engineering God's thoughts. Of course they get some bits wrong (like "we are descended from animals") but they'll figure it out eventually :)

Evidence to contradict?

[snowwrestler]

All the fossil evidence known to man supports the current theories of genetic inheritance and natural selection. There is no contradictory evidence, only incomplete evidence. Evidence that contradicts would be things like homo sapiens human skeletons mixed in with dinosaurs, modern whale bones found in 200 million year old sediments, etc. AFAIK none of that has been found yet; if you know of any please do point me in the right direction.

This whole idea of "macroevolution" vs. "microevolution" is ludicrous. It's like acting like there's some fundamental difference between "macrogravity" that controls planetary orbits, and "microgravity" that controls a hammer dropped on your foot. Maybe to a layperson or some ancient civilzation it seems like those are two totally different processes. Of course we now know that they are the same.

Likewise the processes of genetic inheritance and natural selection act the same way on viruses that they do on dinosaurs and duck-billed platypuses. And until there's strong evidence that contradicts that model, that's the way it is.

Re:wrong Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[samjam]

Yep much more likely and happens much more often.

But are these copycats based on gods plan or eachothers scams?

99/100 offers being a scam is no consolation if the other 1 was real and you could've known if you didn't keep your eyes closed.
Broad generalizations are fine for 99/100 universes but if you're in the universe that God made it's no consolation is it?

Sure, recognize the scams if thats what they are, but don't close your eyes. What makes you think you are so wise now, to know what to close your eyes to and not miss anything important?

If you don't know, say you don't know, don't pretend you do. If you know it's a scam, tell us how you know! Saying "I heard a liar say the same thing" is hardly evidence to the contrary. But keep your eyes open for classes of truths you didn't know existed.

I know of the existance of God, by the power of God and the Holy Ghost, and their interaction in my life. And that doesn't mean everyone who agrees with me is honest or genuine either. But there is God, and he does exist. And you don't believe me. And you think I'm nuts. But others haven't have the experiences I have (naturally, they are not me) and people are just guessing when they try to dismiss them which, is sooo obvious.

and there we have it...

Sam

Religion and Philosophy

[Pfhorrest]

If you dismiss religion/philosophy...

I object to this grouping of religion and philosophy, and I think your confusion thereof underlies the other problems with your post. Please don't think I'm attacking you - you've got a lot of things right in your post, mostly I'm going off on a bit of a tangent here, but I'll touch on a couple of points you've made along the way. The quoted bit above is just the most relevant.

Religion is an established claim of wisdom, a set of declarations and imperatives that are set out as "right". Philosophy is about the pursuit of wisdom, the quest to discover what is right, including notions of both reality and morality. The core of the philosophical discipline is to always question everything. Every hypothesis is only tentative, but you've got to go with something so you go with the best you have, and keep questioning and refining and coming up with better things.

Most importantly, philosophy is about META-questioning: figuring out how to ask and answer specific questions, either physical or ethical in nature. At some point some natural philosophers (i.e. people asking questions about physics, as opposed to questions about ethics) came up with some axioms about reason and observation that provided a really efficient and reliable way of asking and answering physical questions about reality. These became the scientific method, and what was then called "natural philosophy" we now just call science.

Religion, on the other hand, is not in contrast to science but in contrast to philosophy, because it is about dogma, authority, and NOT questioning things. Religion is about taking some set of specific things on faith, while philosophy is a personal quest for what things must be taken on faith to support everything else, e.g. the axioms underlying the scientific method. In this you are right, that science is a sort of "belief system", but it goes far deeper than religious belief systems, and by "real scientists" (not just scientists by profession, but, those most like the "natural philosophers" from whom their discipline derives), those axioms of the scientific method are still in theory quite questionable, if you can come up with anything to question of them (i.e. if you could show something both being and not-being in the same manner at the same time then you could call into question the Law of Non-Contradiction). These two, religion and philosophy, are not in absolute conflict within any individual: a person may be philosophical and question some things, but be religion and unquestioning about others; witness scientists who doggedly question the nature of reality but turn to religion as a basis for their morality.

Unfortunately, ethical/moral philosophers have yet to come to popular consensus on anything resembling a "scientific method of morality" - which is not to say that science could answer moral questions, but that there may exist some objective method of answering ethical questions akin to how science answers physical questions. Personally I believe in something I call the "normative method" which is quite similar to a democratic court/jury system, coupled with a very small set of universally agreable abstract 'rights' (analogous to the axioms of the scientific method), and arrives at the tentative conclusions we call "ethical norms", which are what "laws" in the political/justice sense of the word (as well as other 'weaker' traditions and customs) are. But importantly, normative laws are just as tentative as scientific laws, and both can and should be questioned however possible! Some laws of both sorts are very well tested and need little qualification, i.e. that people should not kill other people, or that masses tend to attract one another in a certain way, etc... but even those have exceptions and are questionable in extenuating or extreme circumstances, requiring further and more refined scientific or normative laws to capture the actual nuances of nature - a task which is never complete.

Anyway, that was a long sub-tangent, but the poi

Re:Religion and Philosophy

[bhima]

Excellent! A very worthy post, filled with worthy ideas. I must admit it's more eloquent than my usual fare.

Worthy in fact of becoming one of the few theists I have made "Friend"!

I really look forward to future discussions!

Re:Religion and Philosophy

[Pfhorrest]

Excellent! A very worthy post, filled with worthy ideas. I must admit it's more eloquent than my usual fare.

Thanks. I was kinda sad nobody else replied to that, I wanted to see what kind of discussion it would generate, but I can easily see it getting lost in the thousands of messages in that thread.

Worthy in fact of becoming one of the few theists I have made "Friend"!

I'm curious... your post a few messages up implies that you are religious in some way or another ("If parents feel that teaching their children the myths of their religion is important, *as I do*"). But here you call me a theist (which, funny enough, it never occurred to me to call myself - I used to be a hardcore atheist, and by the time I'd adopted any kind of theist beliefs I'd stopped using labels on myself). So what are you, then, if a non-theist religious person... some sort of animist?

I really look forward to future discussions!

Me too. Added you to my friends list too, lets see what goes on :-)

Re:Religion and Philosophy

[csmatyi]

First this:

Most importantly, philosophy is about META-questioning: figuring out how to ask and answer specific questions, either physical or ethical in nature. At some point some natural philosophers (i.e. people asking questions about physics, as opposed to questions about ethics) came up with some axioms about reason and observation that provided a really efficient and reliable way of asking and answering physical questions about reality. These became the scientific method, and what was then called "natural philosophy" we now just call science.

Then this:

Religion, on the other hand, is not in contrast to science but in contrast to philosophy, because it is about dogma, authority, and NOT questioning things. Religion is about taking some set of specific things on faith, while philosophy is a personal quest for what things must be taken on faith to support everything else, e.g. the axioms underlying the scientific method.

Okay, since you're saying that there os no dogmatic way of defining reality (this is what I think you're saying), then why do we have to treat as dogma those axioms that those specific natural philosophers came up with? Why do we have to reat scientific naturalism as THE ONE AND ONLY form of science (don't take this as shouting)?

Another nifty question I would like to get input from you on: Why do we have to tie religion to theism, and the existance of God? Is every religion theistic? Therefore my question implies: just because you're not a Christian doesn't mean you're exempt from any dogma. Therefore everybody has "crutches".

Only by finding the natural ways of questioning and examining themselves, by opening their eyes and seeing the big picture, will the various blind religions of the world see the common elephant they're all striving to grasp,

My good freind, can you tell me how on earth you were capable of knowing that it's an elephant? Methinks it's rather quite like a walrus.

Re:Religion and Philosophy

[bhima]

Very strange... I replied to you at work, came home to check for a reply and couldn't find my post. So forgive me if this is somewhat a duplicate post...

I am Buddhist.

I teach my daughter Buddhist mythology because I feel that mythology is an extremely important, but neglected part of society. In fact I think it's fair to say that the lack of a meaningful mythos is a large part of what's wrong with many societies today. However this is something that I teach at home, or occasionally at temple. I don't expect the local middle school to teach mythology, of any sort, along side of science coursework. What I do expect is that her school teach her something about other cultures & beliefs and that while some beliefs may seem silly, and potentially deluded, they are NOT a reason to persecute another human being.

    It's very, very easy to get caught up in a strongly anti-theist thinking because, particularly in US, those mythos has little or no resonance with most people and the behavior of many of the Abrahamic Fundamentalists can be profoundly negative. I, Myself am fortunate to have stumbled upon the wittings of Mowlana Jalaluddin Rumi as a youth and the struggle to come to terms with and understand the powerful and beautiful writings of a devout Muslim did much neutralized my "All Abrahamics Must DIE" sentiment.

It is a pity that Abrahamic fundamentalists seem unable, or unwilling, to experience their mythos in a meaningful way in the context of modern society. While religion can be a intellectually strenuous exercise, it need not be. Mythology is that which imparts ethics and behavior patterns on the participants in which it has resonance with, without the need for a Ph.D. in logic or ethics. If you think about it though, those particular myths that come into conflict with modern society are those which make claims to the mechanisms of existence... How old is the earth, How long did it take to form, how did the various life forms wind up on earth, how did mankind come into existence? I liken this to having myth about the mechanism of reincarnation, which to my knowledge their are none. It doesn't matter & I don't claim to know the "mind of the gods". When my daughter asks why does reincarnation work the way it does I say "I have no idea, you'd have to ask a Bodhisattva and I doubt you'd understand what he told you, I wouldn't... It's like when you go watch your cousin's football (soccer) game, you have no idea of the true rule set but after a while you can derive a basic understanding of action and consequence".

I can also understand the frustration fundamentalists much have when there children are being taught concepts contrary to their own beliefs. I am not saying that their beliefs are valid, rational, or true because they aren't. What I am saying is that parenting can become an uniquely and esquisitely satisfying experience... For example, recently my brother & I had the kids out looking through his telescope and we were explaining of the formation of stars and atoms heavier than hydrogen, when my daughter says "Wow! it's like they all get reincarnated, over and over and over!" to which I reply "No one can stop us now, 'cause we are made of stars" and suddenly the circle of my daughter's life became vividly obvious. Her school work isn't just some drudgery that only takes place in a class room, Religion isn't just some abstract thing with old guys with shaved heads, and Dad becomes cool for a fraction of a moment because he can hum a tune she's heard on the radio (From an artist that's NOT dead, no less!).

And to think... all of this came about from the telling of tales and bedtime stories.

Re:Religion and Philosophy

[Pfhorrest]

Okay, since you're saying that there os no dogmatic way of defining reality (this is what I think you're saying), then why do we have to treat as dogma those axioms that those specific natural philosophers came up with? Why do we have to reat scientific naturalism as THE ONE AND ONLY form of science (don't take this as shouting)?

I'm not saying we should - in fact I explicitly said that if you can come up with problems with the scientific method, that they should be appropriately addressed and the method revised accordingly if need by. It's simply the best we've got right now, and has stood the test of time as the best we've had for a while.

Another nifty question I would like to get input from you on: Why do we have to tie religion to theism, and the existance of God? Is every religion theistic? Therefore my question implies: just because you're not a Christian doesn't mean you're exempt from any dogma. Therefore everybody has "crutches".

I agree, I'm not saying Christians or other monotheists are the only dogmatic people - someone who religiously follows the teachings of the Buddha or Confucius or believes in the ancient Norse or Roman pantheons is just as religious and dogmatic, and to the extent that that means they don't question things, such dogmas/religions are just as dangerous as any monotheistic religion.

However, it doesn't follow from that that EVERYBODY has crutches. Those who are open to questioning everything are not relying on crutches. However, nobody is a perfect runner, we all stop to rest at times, and sit where we are for a while or lean on something or even, when we are too exhausted or injured, let others carry us a bit... but that doesn't make us habitual crutch-users. It's not black and white, everyone can at least *try* to walk a bit, and nobody is a perfect runner, but those who use crutches all the time or just let others carry them are never going to develop the leg strength to be able to walk on their own. I'm just saying it's better to try to walk if at all possible, rather than just to use the crutches all the time.

My good freind, can you tell me how on earth you were capable of knowing that it's an elephant? Methinks it's rather quite like a walrus.

I'm not sure if it's an elephant or a walrus, or maybe both or neither; but I am sure that we're all feeling things in the same universe, and together we could give a better description than any of us alone. And if we could open our eyes and see our way around, instead of just fumbling in the dark, we still wouldn't see exactly the same thing, or see the whole universe all at once, but at least we'd know when we were both feeling different limbs of the same animal.

Sight is just a better means of exploring the universe than touch. If we had a better sense than sight, that'd be even better and I'd recommend its use. That's the analogy I'm making here: dogmatic religion is like fumbling around in the dark. You're getting some truths but they're all small and disconnected and you must fill in the gaps with your imagination, and given the differences in imagination that leads to wildly different descriptions of the same things. Natural philosophy like science is more like sight: you can take in a much broader picture far more quickly and get a lot more detail and accuracy out of it. It's still not perfect, it's not omniscience, but it seems to be the best sense that we've developed so far.

It's about friggin' time someone figured it out...

[nmaster64]

It amazes me how absolutely stupid people are with the whole Creation versus Evolution debate. There is nothing in the bible that says evolution is wrong. Evolution is common sense if you think about.

Those who think God just poofed all of existence into being in a week are complete morons. "But that's what the Bible said." Well if you haven't figured it out by now, God isn't a very literal guy. And besides, last I checked, a week is like a few billion years to him...

It's really simple. God started the universe. Evolution brought it to where it is today (with possibly a little divine intervention in between). The two theories sit perfectly together, no conflict. God makes the amoeba, evolution turns that amoeba into a human over a few billion years. I don't see the issue.

The fact someone in the Vatican had the balls to come out and say that is wonderful. Maybe there's hope for the Church yet...

(Note: I am a firm Christian believer. I believe completely in the Bible, but feel people take it WAY to literally some times. In addition to that, I like to think of myself as an unprofessional scientist, because I prefer to examine the world from a logical standpoint. God may not be a logical answer to our being, but science doesn't exactly offer up anything better. Combining logic with faith is the only way to achieve a fractional understanding of our existence.)

Perfectly incompatible...

[jwiegley]

Ummm. How can the vatican state that it is "perfectly compatible" when many of the scientists who put forth the theory of evolution did so as a mutually exclusive alternative to the existence of gods?

Me? I don't think it's compatible at all. I'm a naturalist. There are no "supernatural" forces. what you see is what you get. literally.

Re:Evolution isn't...

[Anonymous Coward]

>>This actaully happened in the primordial soup.>This actaully happened in the primordial soup.

and call ourselves scientists!

come on... lay down the evidence and let it guide the reasoning...

if it leads to macro-evolution and a series of improved new genetic information - good! if not, though, let's not deceive ouselves...

imho, the jury is still out - and not in a small way.

having said this... ID belongs in philosophy class...

unfortunately, so does evolution as inaccurately taught...

bring it back into the realm of science.

ID is BS

[sterno]

A couple points on the ID side are: "vestigal" organs are now being discovered to actually be important, and "junk" DNA seems to actually do something. This is not to say that evolution isn't important, and probably will have a place in biology even if something else supplants it, but ID does offer a valid alternative principle to the evolutionary framework.

The logic you are applying here is that since we don't thoroughly understand it, it favors intelligent design. This is the same mistake I was just pointing out, concluding that if we don't get it, it must be a grandiose design beyond our comprehension. That kind of logic is what convinced people that mental illness was demon posession. They didn't understand it, so they ascribed a mythos to the conditions and treated them using religious approaches that were utterly ineffective.

I have yet to see any evidence of any basic scientific rigor that anything, be it vestigal organs, or junk dna, can only be explained through concious design.

Re:ID is BS

[dancpsu]

The logic you are applying here is that since we don't thoroughly understand it, it favors intelligent design.

The logic isn't even on that level. ID assumes a supernatural creator, and is not attempting to prove one exists, or did any particular thing. Just as evolution assumes things evolved and is not interested with proving that things did, just how. The difference is the difference in asking "how has this evolved?", vs. "how was this designed?". Both are perfectly valid scientific questions. The philosophical questions of "Is there a creator?" or "Did life begin through natural processes?" are answered by the individual scientist long before the research begins. Before a study in evolution can begin, the person studying it must first believe in Materialism. Before a study in ID can begin, the person studying it must first believe in a (possibly supernatural) Creator.

I have yet to see any evidence of any basic scientific rigor that anything, be it vestigal organs, or junk dna, can only be explained through concious design.

That statment shows you have assumed Materialism, and are not interested in the science of something, but some underlying philosophical question answered (or disproved). Scientists believed in the past that "vestigal" organs and "junk" DNA were remnants of evolution. Now that these have been shown to not be vestigal or junk, the science moves on, but the philosophical framework behind the science does not. Evolution may be the best explanation for life from a Materialist foundation, but there can be no proof of Materialism itself. It's philosophical.

That's why these debates rage on. It isn't about whether bacteria can over generations develop an immunity to an antibiotic. It's about underlying philosophical frameworks in Biology. And believing in a creator is not the end of discovery or questioning in science. Whether you discover that the planets orbit the sun because the solar system must be governed by natural physical laws, or because God would have made an elegant system that didn't require epicircles in the end doesn't matter. You've made the discovery.

Re:A strange criterium for a theory...predictivity

[raodin]

You don't think people understand why they can't make accurate predictions with evolutionary theory?

Its not that hard. Its too complex for us to model. First, you'd have to model every environmental condition accurately. You can't predict evolution before you can predict the weather, among other things, in a very long term scale.

GG

[Anonymous Coward]

Good Game Slashdot, you phail at religious tolerance, you pricks.

Why...not how

[Anonymous Coward]

Frankly, this whole debate has be scratching my head. Religion answers the question "Why?" that science is not prepared to answer. (I mean "Why?" as in the reason behind something, not "How?" English has its limitations!)

The answer to the "Why?" question from science seems to be "Because!" or "It just happened that way."

So, (go with me here) what if God decided to create a universe with an earth or two and populate them with plants and critters and so forth; and what if He used evolution as the process by which He populated them? Does that detract from the theory of evolution in any way? All it seems to do is give a "Why?" answer to a question that science, by itself, without religion or philosophy, is not equiped to answer. If it does detract, I don't get how it does.

Is there anything in evolution that precludes this from being a possibility? Is there anything about it that lessens the predictive power, or the value of the theory? I'm afraid from my vantage point, it just seems like hostility to religion, not necessarily sound, stand-alone thinking. For example, if this had not some religious backing to it, would scientists still have this apparent hostility to the idea? Feel free to educate me if you wish!

Thanks for listening!

The Vatican Rejects The Bible

[aqfire]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,13509-1811 332,00.html

"THE hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church has published a teaching document instructing the faithful that some parts of the Bible are not actually true."

Probably the part about not needing to confess your sins to a priest to be forgiven?

Re:The Vatican Rejects The Bible

[Anonymous Coward]

John 20:22-23
And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto them, "Receive ye the Holy Ghost: Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained."

1 John 1:9
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Science gives us an approximation of reality

[|/|/|||]

It's funny that you point out a book called "I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist," because it may be a hint as to why you missed my point entirely. I'm not an athiest. As the title says, I don't have enough faith to be an athiest. Being an athiest means saying, "God does not exist," which is a statement that I can't back up using observations of the universe. Of course, "God does exist" is in the same category.

I don't know if you're just trying to confuse the issue for fun, or if you really want to understand my point, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and clarify. When I say "truth" I mean an absolutely true fact about the universe. Say, for the sake of argument, that the statement "electrons are attracted to protons" is an absolutely true fact about the universe. When I say "science does not claim to know the truth, or even to be capable of knowing the truth" I mean that, even if the statement about electrons and protons is true, science can never prove it. Science can't prove that electrons and protons are real, much less how they interact with each other.

Now, if science can't prove anything, what makes it so useful? Science gives us an approximation of reality. Do you understand that? It's a model that represents how the universe works. It's not correct, but we keep making it more accurate as we make new measurements and look at things in different ways.

Think of it like this: you have a box with a set of inputs and outputs, but you have no way of looking inside the box to see how it is made. You can, however, mess around with the inputs, observe the outputs, and draw some conclusions. After a while, you come up with a theory that describes how the box works. If the box is sufficiently complex, then your theory won't be right, and you'll find out by doing more experiments and finding results that contradict your theory. When this happens you refine your theory, and as time goes on you get a pretty good approximation of what the box is. You NEVER KNOW for real what it is or how it works, but you have a really good approximation.

Just for contrast, apply the "universe as a black box" analogy to religion. What do you get? You get people that say they know what the box is and/or how it works, regardless of whether they can support their claims with observations of the box. That is faith, and it is the antithesis of science. Science is about forcing ourselves to be objective... to take the universe at face value. According to what we know right now (I'm basing this on Godel's theory of incompleteness), taking it at face value means never knowing everything about it. I'm fine with that. I'll find out what I can, and give up the rest as unattainable. Isn't that better than pretending to know something that is unknowable?

ID Textbook in Science classroom

[star_aas]

Chapter 1 God created everything. The End

The First Law of Thermodynamics refutes creation

[Pfhorrest]

Then you have to ask by the second law of thermo, if no energy can be created or destroyed, where did the energy in the universe come from? There's no valid explanation for that.

The first law of thermodynamics (which is the one you're thinking of; the second law is the one about entropy) is actually a nice refutation of any sort of creation theory, including Big Bang variants that hold that that event was the "start of time."

According to the first law, energy can neither be created nor destroyed. Projected into the future, this means that no energy WILL ever be destroyed, i.e. it will continue to exist for ever. Projected into the past, this means that no energy HAS ever been created, i.e. it has existed since forever. Time is infinite in both directions. There is no end and there is no beginning; no destruction, and no creation. QED.

same old, same old...

[sribe]

What's pathetic is this is not even the first time this has come from the Vatican. The last pope even went so far as to put this down in writing as the official position of the Catholic church. But you know, funny thing is, fundamentalist wack jobs don't pay much attention to what the pope says ;-)

Re:wrong Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[mrdaveb]

A preacher I know once told me that the Bible doesn't have to be literally true for us to have faith in God. He believed that those who hinge everything on the absolute truth of every word of Scripture are those who really lacked faith. They need something outside themselves to justify what they believe.

This just doesn't make sense to me. Surely your faith is effectively a belief of what is written in the Bible? If not the Bible, then where are you getting it from? From other people who got it from the Bible. To then brush over all the gaps and contradictions, make allowances and pick and choose the parts which are still 'relevant today'... just what is it that people are believing? At what point is there an argument for calling this disregard for rational thought a psychosis?

Re:Theory^WIntro on /. needs work

[shanen]

These guys (/. editors) are supposed to be paid to do this? Really hard to believe, given that kind of dumb introduction.

On the other hand, in scanning the thread I'm unable to find any note of the obvious idiocy. I quote from the /. thread introduction above: "Of course, it'd probably be best if fundmentalists actually talked to, say, the rabbis who wrote the whole thing down." Mighty OLD rabbis they'd be--except for the other detail that I'm pretty sure they didn't even have rabbis in those days.

I think it's another proof of the bogosity of ID that it provokes discussions like this one, even allowing for the involvement of the Pope.

"I don't know who he is, Sarge, but his driver is the Pope!"

So much brain power being used in this discussion

[capicu]

Like many slashdotters, I can easily spend several hours retreading the religion argument. A lot of us spend a lot of our time thinking about fundamental stuff like this, it appears. Lately, I've tried to speed this up by thinking not directly about the subject, but rather about discussions about it. I've noticed that the real insightful ones tend to come at some point to The Big Bang (tm) and then things break down. The only thing this leaves me with is a renewed interest in the progress of quantum physics, since I'm now counting on it to push this debate a bit further within my lifetime (read: stick it to the religious guys, though I have nothing against them).

Re:Evolution isn't a theory about the start of lif

[Skippy_kangaroo]

You may be right but your argument isn't.

Much of science works by divining the presence of an unknown and invisible thing by looking for its effects. ID follows the same line of argument that we can divine the presence of God by looking at his effects - that is, creatures that could not have come into being naturally.

It's the same as with particle colliders or black holes. You can't observe some particles or black holes directly but you look for their effects (e.g. decay products or lensing or what have you)

Thus, you are wrong when you say "Science just can't address things we can't observe" and that on that basis "ID requires something we can't see. It isn't science." The observables in ID are living things and the physical laws just as they are in science.

Re:The First Law of Thermodynamics refutes creatio

[Dangero]

Nice call, yes it is law 1 of thermo I was refering to. I think what you're saying is all a matter of perspective though. How can you say that energy was always there? That's as impossible as anything else. It certainly does not refute the existence of a creator.

You're saying that energy could have always been there, but a creator could not have been. Again, that seems backwards to me because while an infinite God could create a world and even a universe that had laws that govern it, and people that couldn't comprehend infinity, or how a creator could have always been there, there is no logical explanation for how energy was always just sitting in the universe.

Even space itself, how could it exist? How could it not? At some point, somewhere, something had to be put into motion, and something had to exist out of nothingness. Unless of course our minds are not able to comprehend how something could have always existed... This of course would require a higher power or alternate reality or something like that.

Re:wrong Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[mrdaveb]

As a non-Jew, the issue of whether Moses wrote them or not matters about as much to me as the instructions to never eat shellfish, never cut my earlocks, and always wear tassles on the corners of my cloak.

Yes, those beliefs certainly sound ludicrous. You'd best stick to the teachings of this more sensible book you speak of.

Well, maybe

[Anonymous Coward]

Dvorkin may be a troll, but I never heard anyone besides you suggest he was dirty and smelly. Does he enjoy linux?

Pleanty of examples

[sterno]

Well let's look at how cosmology developed. The first explanations were very much tied to spiritualism. You had notions of the sky being a curtain with holes poked in it, etc. Then we discovered planets and that sort of threw off a lot of assumptions. So it was figured that the stars were points of light in a shell surrounding the solar system. That ultimately everything revolved around us.

Of course that fell apart because it became obvious that we were in fact revolving around the sun. Each time, you had religious people trying to defend the old world view, going so far as to kill people on charges of hearacy for pointing out the indisputable truths: that we weren't the only planet, or the center of the solar system, or the center of the universe.

Now we know that there are lots of stars and lots of galaxies and we are beginning to get evidence of their being lots of planets (though it was a rather reasonable logical deduction for some time). Now some religious hold onto this notion that yeah it's a lot of stars and planets, but we're the only life. We'll see how long that lasts.

Ultimately there's always going to be a mystery. It's very unlikely we'll be able to conclusively determine what happened before the big bang (assuming the big bang stands as the best explanation of events). Of course "before" isn't necessarily an applicable concept here, but you get the point.

My sources

[amightywind]

All these studies apply statistical techniques that are based around the theory of evolution. I don't understand what else you are driving at to try and deny this. I also don't understand your criteria for grading theories from A to D. On the face of it it seems absurd.

I refer you to "The Emperor's New Mind" by Roger Penrose, and "Searching for Certainty" by John Casti for similar arguments about judging scientific theories are. I did not invent this idea. Penrose in particular is fairly critical about our understanding of the human brain. Neither author was as critical of evolution as I am. As for governing dynamic theory I refer you to any classical dynamics text and the Principle of Least Action, one of the most amazing ideas in theoretical physics.

Re:My sources

[Sj0]

I could say that Nietzsche believed in the idea of the overman, and the greek gods are over man, therefore belief in the greek gods is supported by Nietzsche. Nothing, however, makes this statement true. Even if he HAD believed in greek gods, however, doesn't mean that it's true. He'd have to present a coherent, logical arguement backed up by empirical facts to make a claim and be taken seriously. Newton, for example, believed strongly in alchemy, and wrote more than a million words on the subject. Modern man understands chemistry and nuclear physics to the point where alchemy can be proven to be wrong.

In this case, you unfortunately seem to miss the nature of this science while trying to create an arguement against it. The reason that dynamics can be used in the case of inert matter is that it is just that -- inert matter. You can reduce inert matter to the forces and counterforces which are situationally as perfect as your instrumentation will allow.

In the case of evolution, you simply cannot reduce the system to such a simple set of dynamics. How do you tell which viral strain will survive the onslaught of drugs and the human immune system? You cannot do this in practice, for the same reason you cannot determine who will become a serial killer in society -- the systems have simply become far too large to model effectively.

In the case of evolutionary systems, it is important to remember that there is no inherent superiority in any given genetic at T0. Unlike energy levels, where you can see that one part of a system has X joules of energy in a certain potential/kinetic configuration, evolutionary traits cannot be effectively reduced to numbers. To do so is like trying to decide a basketball game between two sides of the same team -- there are so many subtle factors, that the decision is goes beyond a simple numerical dynamic of "This virus is superior to this virus by 10%".

A piece of DNA which would be beneficial against all other species in one situation may prove deadly in another situation with the same species. A fish growing lung analogues may survive more effectively near the shore because it can climb onto land and get food there. The same fish far from shore, however, is at a disadvantage beacause it has a large, useless organ increasing it's mass and bulk.

Re:My sources

[TapeCutter]

I read "The Emperor's New Mind", what he is basically saying is that the "magical" quality of the human mind is burried somewhere in quantum physics, he doesn't point out where. The book asks alot of questions but doesn't really answer anything. For an understanding of why the human mind will never understand itself I point you to Godel.

Serious question

[Descalzo]

Have you read the Book of Mormon? I mean cover to cover, not snippets on the Web.

Re:Serious question

[ConceptJunkie]

No, I haven't. No plans to either.

Sorry.

Every experience I have had with Mormons concerning religion has been an exercise in frustration and illogic. I had a good friend who was one and talked to the missionaries as a favor to her. To be honest, I'd stopped going to church in college and talking to Mormons was a big reason why I didn't go back for several more years than I might have otherwise. _That's_ how much they turned me off.

Regardless of what else the BoM has to say, it offers, in great detail, a history which is simply not true. As I understand there is an entire Mormon organization devoted to rationalizing all the specious history.

Re:Serious question

[portforward]

I don't know how many other people will read this, but I feel that I must respond. It seems as if you are using circular reasoning. Mormons are wrong, therefore their Book of Mormon "studies" are wrong - and since their studies are wrong, the Mormons are wrong.

I believe you are talking about farms.byu.edu and you do them a great diservice by simply dismissing them with a wave of your hand. There are a myriad of well-reasoned, logical papers printed on the Book of Mormon available on that web site. However, as someone I have much respect for once wrote, "You cannot prove the genuineness of any document to one who has decided not to accept it. . . When a man asks for proof we can be pretty sure that proof is the last thing in the world he really wants. His request is thrown out as a challenge, and the chances are that he has no intention of being shown up."

I could write about chiasmus, colophones, word prints, methods of war, olive tree cultivation, proper names, place names, organized crime, Semitic grammar, Uto-Aztecan and Hebrew, festivals, journeys through the Arabian peninsula, and witnesses. The Book of Mormon is easily dismissed by those who want to dismiss it because it raises too many difficult questions for themselves. If you actually read the book, the whole book, and not just what someone else told you about it, you would find it difficult to believe a 23 year old hick from the sticks in 1829 could write it.

But hey, do what you want to do. It's not like this means anything.

Re:Serious question

[AhtirTano]

I know I'm not the one you asked this of, but my answer is "Yes." Not only have I read it cover to cover, I knealt down in a quiet room and prayed about it, earnestly wanting to know. At this point in my life, I am absolutely convinced (on spiritual and intellectual grounds), that the Book of Mormon is not true.

There is wisdom in there, and it is worth reading. Just like the Diamond Sutra and Koran and the Tao Te Ching. But it is not an accurate record of anything.

Re:Serious question

[ConceptJunkie]

you would find it difficult to believe a 23 year old hick from the sticks in 1829 could write it

I would indeed. But since he copied a lot of it from other sources, that is to be expected.

Look, I appreciate your earnestness and your belief, I just think you are mistaken. Everything I have seen and read about the Mormon religion, from Mormons themselves, as well as critics, demonstrates to me that it is the biggest piece of doublethink since Orwell coined the term.

The day a Mormon can^h^h^h will answer this question, unequivocably and truthfully (no ifs, ands or buts), to a non-Mormon is the day I will take them seriously.

"How many Gods are there?"

Christianity is a monotheistic religion. No ifs ands or buts.

Re:Serious question

[Alsee]

Mormon is polytheistic? Interesting. I wasn't aware of that tidbit.

hristianity is a monotheistic religion. No ifs ands or buts.

I dunno, sometimes it sounds more like tritheistic, but of course that just provokes some baffle-gab about trinity and 3=1.
Yep, assume a=b.
2*a=2*b
2*a*a=2*b*a
2*a*a-2*b*b=2*b*a-2*b*b
2*(a+b)*(a-b)=2*b*(a-b)
2*(a+b)=2*b
2*a+2*b=2*b
2*a+2*b-b=2*b-b
2*a+b=b
2*b+b=b
3*b=b
3=1
Q.E.D. Trinity=1 and Christianity is monotheistic.

Chuckle.

-

Re:Serious question

[portforward]

I do like to respond with specifics, not vague generalities like "lots of different sources" and "Everything I have seen" and "doublethink".

I do not speak for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and I am only voicing my own opinion. I served a two year mission in Argentina, and I teach 50-60 adults every week in the "advanced" Sunday School.

Now, to respond to specifics,

"How many Gods are there?"

The exact number I do not know, but we are to assume that there are many.

Which of the Gods do we worship?

We worship three of the Gods, God the Father, God the Son (Jesus Christ), and God the Holy Ghost. Any other representation of a Mormon concept of deity is dishonest. I pray to my Heavenly Father, through the redemptive power of Jesus Christ. I listen for answers through the Holy Spirit.

Christianity is a monotheistic religion. No ifs ands or buts.

This is demonstrably false. Both Jews and Muslims would say (and probably have said) that we Christians (notice how I lump us together) are not monotheists.

But a careful reading of the Bible helps reveal other hints. The word "Elohim" is actually a plural Hebrew word meaning "Gods". In psalm 8 the word "angels" could also be translated as "Gods". Saint Irenaeus, Saint Justin Martyr, Saint Clement of Alexandria, Saint Athanasius, Saint Cyril of Alexandria, Saint Maximus the Confessor, and Saint Symeon the New Theologian all believed in the process of "Deification" where man could become like God. In fact the Catholics have also put that in their latest Catechism in article 460. Paul exhorts us to become heirs of God and joint-heirs of Christ, and we will inherit all things just as Christ does. So why do you then complain when LDS believe that there is more than one God? (But yes, we only worship God the Father).

I am puzzled by the comment he copied a lot of it from other sources From where did he learn to write Chiasmus? Where did he learn other Semitic language constructs? Did he learn them at the vast research library at the University of Palmyra? Or the Harmony, Pennsylania Institute of Technology? Of course not. These two little towns were essentially frontier land with mostly uneducated farmers as inhabitants. Where was the money Joseph would have had to buy the books? Reportedly the day after he received the plates he contracted with a woman to dig a well. These were poor people. By "other sources" do you mean "A View of the Hebrews"? The book really has nothing to do with the Book of Mormon. Once you begin to read it, if you are familiar with the Book of Mormon many, many differences appear. In fact, to illustrate that fact BYU actually published the book!! Few people today believe the Spaulding "manusript" influenced the Book of Mormon for the exact reason - they bear too few superficial resemblances and far too many differences to be seriously considered as "sources". So, what are the sources that Joseph copied and pasted from?

I believe the time to post on this topic is rapidly coming to an end. Plus we are really, really off topic. If you want to continue this conversation just send me a message via Slashdot.

Re:Serious question

[ConceptJunkie]

I'm impressed. :-)

I've seen proofs that 1 == 2, 1 == 0, but never 1 == 3.

Just don't remind all the Bible literalists out there that Scripture requires PI to be exactly 3.

Re:Serious question

[ConceptJunkie]

Which of the Gods do we worship?

We worship three of the Gods, ...

(But yes, we only worship God the Father).

Your mythology is so convoluted you can't even be consistent from one paragraph to another. You've answered the question, I'll give you that, and yet you contradict yourself in your very own answer, so it fails the "unequivocal" part I requested.

See what I mean by doublethink. I can't see how you can claim to believe something when you can't even answer a simple question that requires a one word answer without a whole bunch of (wait for it...) ifs, ands and buts.

This is demonstrably false.

Then demonstrate it. I hear is a lot of "would say", "could be translated". Doesn't sound very specific to me. Why would Scripture only "hint" at such a fundamental truth?

I can't address the Catechism citation as I do not have one handy at the moment. Why should I rely on the interpretation of _my_ religion by people who do not practice it? I don't care what Jews or Muslims supposedly "would" (but don't) say about Christianity. They are not Christians.

However, your very words betray the exact kind of confusion, word play and general lack of logic that I have consistently seen on the topic.

Re:Serious question

[ConceptJunkie]

I have a hard time with a religion that basically says "If we can bamboozle you into believing what we say is true, it must be true."

Everything about it is such a maze of illogic... no wonder they have to practice cult tactics to keep their membership in line.

Re:Serious question

[AhtirTano]

I could write about chiasmus, colophones, word prints, methods of war, olive tree cultivation, proper names, place names, organized crime, Semitic grammar, Uto-Aztecan and Hebrew, festivals, journeys through the Arabian peninsula, and witnesses.

In my other message to you, I kept things simple and on the spiritual side. I briefly mentioned intellectual grounds as well, but didn't elaborate. Let me do so here. Some background first: I was born into the church and participated fully (meetings, baptisms for the dead, two week missions, taught Primary classes, etc.) until my third year of college.

My PhD dissertation is on a Uto-Aztecan language. I currently make my living writing educational materials for a Uto-Aztecan language (different from my dissertation). The proposed connections between Uto-Aztecan and Hebrew are incorrect. There is absolutely no reason to connect Uto-Aztecan and Semitic grammar or vocabulary. They aren't very similar at all--there are major, fundamental differences in their cores.

The place and personal names are unconvincing at best. Tip of the iceberg: there is no possible way that the pronunciation guide at the back of the Book of Mormon is an accurate representation of any language descended from Hebrew. The stress pattern alone is straight out of Latin.

I reject the papers out of FARMS for the following reason: I understand linguistics and grammar. I've read their papers on language. They are unconvincing at best. If the accuracy of the papers I cannot professionally evaluate is similar to what is in those that I can evaluate, then I cannot trust any of their conclusions.

The response I got from my payers about the Book of Mormon started my doubts. Brigham Young said something to the effect of "A true religion and a true science cannot disagree." I took that as true; and since the faith approach wasn't helping me, I took the science approach. A couple years later, I left the church. Everything I have learned and seen since then has reinforced my belief that I made the right decision.

Re:Serious question

[Alsee]

If the bible says Pi=3, does that mean e=2 or does e=3 also? Pi=e??? Chuckle.

Once you start with a false assumption you can prove anything. Ever hear the "Im the Pope" proof? I'm one person, the Pope is one person. Together we are two people... and of course 2=1, I'm the Pope :)

It is pretty easy to turn 1=2 into any number pair you like with just multiplication and addition. Lets say we want to proove 4=100. First look at the difference you want to have between the numbers. For the original case 1=2 the difference is your basic 1. For 4=100 the difference is 96. Just multiply both sides of the the 1=2 proof by 96 somewhere and you'll end up with 96=192. We have the right difference, now we just fix the 96 into a 4 using subtraction. To get from 96 to 4 we need to subtract 92, so just subtract 92*a or 92*b from both sized in the 1-2 proof. That subtracts 92 from both sides at the end and you get 4=100.

-

Re:Serious question

[ConceptJunkie]

If the bible says Pi=3, does that mean e=2 or does e=3 also? Pi=e??? Chuckle.

I don't know, but sqrt(2) == 1.5 and the Cosmological Constant is 0.

An amusing scenario

[Descalzo]

Teacher: Okay, kids, you'll notice that the ball gains more force the higher we place the ramp!

Students: Cool!

Teacher: Now if this were a star, or this whole apparatus were travelling at the speed of light, ...

Students: What the crap? When's recess?

Re:An amusing scenario

[ConceptJunkie]

Teacher: As we are approaching the speed of light, our movement through time is slowing down. Unfortunately recess won't be for 7 trillion years.

ID algorithm

[star_aas]

ID should be taught in Computer Science:

It's a perfect example of an infinite loop and a null pointer exception.
staic Creator getCreator()
{
static count = 0;
count++;
if(count == 10000) //Give up
return null;

if(m_creator == null)
return getCreator();//Only the creator can create
}

//Bad programming
void main()
{
Creator.getCreator().prayTo(); //Null pointer exception
}
//Good programming
void main()
{
Creator c = new Creator();
if(c == null)
return;
}

Yeah...this is dumb...just goes to show ID cannot be logically expressed ;-)

Evolution(ists) (are|is)n't perfect either.

[Theovon]

An I don't mean to say the obvious that scientific theories are not the same as mathematical theorems.

What I mean to say is that just because the ID people are crackpots doesn't mean that there aren't evolutionists with an equally nefarious ulterior motive. With peer review, even biased scientist have to do good science to get published, but that doesn't erase the bias or change how the scientific results are used philosophically or politically.

The fact of the matter is that evolution shows how life can be formed through purely natural means. It does not require God because, idealy, it does not assume anything that can't be directly observed or inferred from observation. Nevertheless, people can twist this into being interpreted as evidence against the existence of God.

Many ID proponents (laymen, that is) believe they see an anti-God bias in science and want to balance that with a pro-God bias. This is really the result of poor science education and lazy scientist and science journalists who do not always qualify their hypotheses clearly as something falsifiable. Many people, particularly school children, see science education as a bunch of hard-to-understand things being thrown at them that they are to accept blindly. That is no better than sunday school. Although the scientific method is explained, they do not always understand it or how the scientific method was used in arriving at many of the things they are taught.

For instance, you cannot prove that mutations are random. You can show that some are not (perhaps programmed DNA alterations), but by the definition of being random, you are admitting to not have observed the cause. The converse of this is also being asserted to imply that lacking an observed cause, there is therefore no determinstic cause to be observed. You can't tell if the mutation was caused by cosmic rays, God, aliens, or the devil. Going any further isn't science, because it's not testable, but the the fact that a nondeterminstic cause is what's being taught is not science either.

I'll regret this, BUT...

[Medievalist]

If you look through a microscope, you see cells. They exist, they are real and distinct. If you throw away the microscope, you see larger organisms, although you have blinded yourself to the microscopic. Still, those larger organisms exist, they are not merely illusions cloaking a reality that only contains cells. You can poke them with your finger - surely the ultimate test of reality for the common man.

If you want to look at a still larger level you now need to climb a tower, or look at something far away. The mountain is one item, the city is one item, despite the fact that the mountain is forested and the forests are composed of individual trees, despite the fact that city swarms with smaller things both alive and dead. This is your gift, as a potentially sentient being - you can vary your perspective and see the layers of reality that exist. They all exist all the time, but you can choose to see them at different levels.

Now throw away your eyeball the same way you threw away your microscope (i.e. metaphorically) and take another step out... look at Earth photographs taken from orbit or Hubble shots of distant suns. The planet itself is also a single real thing despite it being composed of many things. Bear with me, I know this is getting repetitive.

Now stop depending on all physical tools and organs other than your mind (brain/soul/anima if you prefer - doesn't matter - whatever you call the you that knows things) and conceive of the universe. The totality of the universe, regardless of whether that is finite or infinite, ageless or just created 10 seconds ago (those details don't matter any more than the individual needles on individual pine trees mattered when you were looking at the mountain). Make sure your conception of the universe includes you - that's critical! We're sneaking up on non-dualistic thought here by way of physics.

Now put your idea of God in there too. I'm not saying your God doesn't exist independent of the rest of the universe; a "super-natural" or "meta-physical" being if that's your idea of God. But even though one rock on the mountain is silicon and one is carbon, you can still conceive of the mountain, so try to conceive of something that includes absolutely everything that ever is, was, will be, without making distinctions between the natural and the supernatural, the concrete and the numinous, or anything else.

Obviously, since this idea we've conceived contains your idea of God, it is more than your idea of God. Get it? Do you see the implications? What is greater than God? If something has more to it than whatever powers of omniscience, omnipresence, and omnipotence you ascribe to God, isn't your idea of God basically wrong? You're worshipping a subset of God, instead of participating fully in divinity.

That's the straight Pantheist enlightenment. God is right here, right now, all the time, you are physically in touch with the divine, you are a part of the ultimate deity. I suspect it's what Jesus believed, but that's a heresy of course (no matter, I am already marked for death by the Phinehas Priesthood).

Now, the reason Christians can't understand this really: because understanding it is experiencing it. Once you do understand, God talks to you. All the time! It's really pretty distracting, which is why so many eastern monks appear to just bliss out and withdraw from the rest of the world.

Within most fundamentalist belief systems you are forced to reject this experience, because it's not God talking, but Satan, and the fact that it's self-evident to the senses is just one more strike against it. The Bible and Quran tell us the physical world is a trap for the wicked, after all; "enlightenment" must be a trick of Iblis, a sad delusion, or dangerous mental illness.

Anyway, the Hindu beetle in the pudding is the idea that many (if not most) people will not benefit from relating directly to the godhead, or else are in

Re:I'll regret this, BUT...

[geoffrobinson]

That's a good explanation of your beliefs. Don't have time to comment on it right now but I appreciate it.

Just to be clear

[snowwrestler]

Punctuated equilibrium is a proposed refinement of natural selection, not a replacement. It still relies on the natural mechanisms of mutation and survival of the fittest to explain changes in life--the difference in mainly in the timing.

Re:Evolution isn't a theory about the start of lif

[Anonymous Coward]

yes, but it can't more strongly infer that life came from death.

as such, it needs to be addressed, as part of a larger package, even if it doesn't apply to the specific issue.

Evolution is a religion

[SHP]

"For the truth about God is known to them instinctively.[g] God has put this knowledge in their hearts. 20From the time the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky and all that God made. They can clearly see his invisible qualities--his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse whatsoever for not knowing God." Romans 1:19-20 NLT

ID is not an attempt to insert God into science, it is an attempt to force honesty about the weaknessess in evolutionary theory. As Behe has shown, Evolution cannot account for the enormous complexities evident in cellular design. As Hoyle has shown, Mathematics shows Darwinism to be incapable of explaining macro-evolution.

A belief in evolution requires as much faith, if not more, than that required for a belief in a literal interpretation of Genesis. It is true that neither can be proven. However, scientific evidence based on what can be observed and measured can be used to lend credence to either. A scientific examination of the world which demonstrates a complexity unexplainable by current theory is valid scientific grounds for challenging that theory.

Evolution becomes a religion when supernatural causes are summarily dismissed. Yes, science must based its theories on observable and measurable data. However, if the only valid "scientific" conclusions on the origin of life are those which credit natural processes, then science becomes nothing more than self-righteous atheism.

Re:Evolution is a religion

[arminw]

....Evolution becomes a religion when supernatural causes are summarily dismissed.....

Things are only "supernatural" when we don't have a rational explanation. Turning water into wine is no problem for One who knows all the ins and outs of atomic bonding and what matter is REALLY made of. Walking on water should be no trouble to someone who knows things about gravity we have not discovered yet. Materializing in the middle of a closed room should be no preoblem for someone who has access to higher dimensions than we do.

The probem with evolution is that it attempts to explain how things came to be by *any* means that exclude the activity of a mind. We don't do that to explain things like airplanes or computers origin. Evolution IS a religion whose basic tenet is atheism. There is no mind behind the complex things that science explores.

Re:The First Law of Thermodynamics refutes creatio

[Pfhorrest]

This is the problem of the "First Mover" so often discussed in philosophy, and what it comes down to - and what other philosophical problems about the limits of the universe, i.e. the extent of space - is that eventually you have to base your explanation on SOMETHING infinite and all-encompassing.

Say for example you've got some finite universe. Ok, what's at the edge, a sign saying "space ends, mind the drop"? And what's past that? It seems, and there is something beyond that. Is that thing infinite then? If not, you can keep repeating this question forever...

Or say you wrap your finite universe into a closed loop, so there's no edge. Except, now you've added dimensions to the finite ones you already had - are they finite or infinite? If you wrap that up into another loop, you've added more dimensions... and so on and so on infinitely. Infinite dimensions.

The same thing works if you use an "information", "simulation" or "dream" model, which is what your notion of God seems to fit into. God is something informationally beyond our universe, inaccessible to us except as He imposes himself into our universe the same way our universe is inaccessible to our computer programs except as we input data into those systems. The problem here is... simulations within our computers are finite. Our computers themselves are finite systems. But is our universe? Yeah? Ok then, is God's universe finite? If so, is the one outside of HIS finite? And so on...

At some point, you either have to say there's an infinite stack of nested "universes", an infinite number of looped dimensions, or just an infinite universe. You could say that the layer just above "ours" is the infinite one in the "stack" view of things, and call that "God", but that's not very useful to our explanation of anything, it doesn't add any new information for us to explain our universe, so by Ockham's razor, why bother postulating that?

Atheistic philosophers have used this to support the notion that God does not exist, or rather, that there's no reason to support any notion of God's existence and so by default we should not believe in God. I, however, side with people like Spinoza, in noting that an infinite universe - just our natural universe, if continued infinitely, nothing supernatural required - has all of the properties we normally attribute to god. Omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, omnibenevolent, un- or self-caused, un- or self-defined, infallible, invulnerable... an infinite universe meets the textbook definition of God (albiet without any specific personal characteristics attributed to it). So why postulate some God beyond the universe? Nature, the Universe, God - all the same thing. Elegant, harmonious, and infinite.

RTFM

[nooearth]

You have probably read lots of books.
If you haven't done so already, read the Bible.
If you already have read it, read it again.
The whole thing.

Re:RTFM

[Derleth]

The Bible may be your manual, but it is not mine.

Re:RTFM

[nooearth]

God loves you anyway...

Re:RTFM

[Legion303]

He sure sucks it like he does, anyway.

The Copenhagen YHWH

[plnrtrvlr]

Damn, the Copenhagen interpretation was right!!!! Nothing can exist unless YHWH is observinbg it!!

Re:wrong Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Anonymous Coward]

One of God's attributes is that He is unchanging (see http://www.bibleviews.com/immutability.html). It is not the morality, sense of justice that is evolving, but rather the covenant under which these operate switches from the covenant of works (old testament) to the covenant of grace (Jesus through present).

What is ID?

[jordandeamattson]

There are a number of expressions of ID out there.

There are those, like myself, who believe in a Creator who made the Creation: the Universe to its visible limits, life to the level of mitochondria, and everything in between. But also believe that the mechanisms we have come to understand from our studies in cosmology and evolutionary biology could and were used by the Creator in creating the Creation.

I will agree that it requires Kierkegaard's leap of faith, but when I look at the complexity of the creation, and see the design patterns which show up again and again (Pi, Fibonacci sequences, etc.), I see the hand of an intelligent creator. This is a matter of faith.

Belief in a Creator and acceptance of the mechanisms described by modern cosmology and evolutionary biology are not mutually exclusive. Unfortunately, there are those on both side of this "debate" who hold that position. I have run into "missionaries of evolution" who with all the fervor of a tent meeting fundamentalist will tell you that if you accept the findings of cosmology and evolutionary biology, you must reject any belief in a Creator. And there are the hardcore Creationists who will tell you that if you accept the existence of a Creator, you have to believe he did it in a literal six days.

Neither cosmology nor evolutionary biology have anything to say about ultimate origins. To say that they preclude a Creator is an act of faith, no different from my belief that I see the hand of a Creator in "the design patterns of creation".

To me, acknowledging ID simply means that when teaching cosmology and evolutionary biology, that you clearly say that they don't speak to ultimate origins. That they are the mechanisms by which we got from point A to point B, but that they don't and can't say anything with respect to ultimate origins.

I do believe that children would be well served by being exposed to a collection of thoughts on ultimate origins. From the "it just happened" school of thought, to the ID thinking, to maybe some of the Hindu and Shinto creation myths.

Yours,

Jordan

What about Romans 5:12 ???

[Kojow777]

Obviously, if you believe the Bible, you cannot believe in Evolution. The two are complete opposites.

To quote Ken Ham and Dr Jonathan Sarfati's article "Why Is There Death and Suffering": "Belief in evolution and/or millions of years of history necessitates that death has been a part of history since life first appeared on this planet. If you believe that the fossil layers (containing billions of dead things) represent the history of life over millions of years, it's a very ugly record--full of death, disease and suffering." http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/qa.asp

Clearly the Bible teaches:

"Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned" http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=romans %205&version=31

This, and many other similar passages, are not those kind of passages where we can wonder if it should or should not be taken literally. This is one of the very strong themes throughout the entire Bible and is meant to be taken literally. If we do not take this literally, then there is absolutely no point in the Gospel or God's redemptive plan.

You've got it backward

[zardo]

I agree, people may be mistakenly giving evolution too much weight, however, I believe it does have predictive power, but doesn't explain the ORIGIN of species at all! It will take a LOT more to prove that life evolved from basic matter, the "primordial goo" hypothesis, is what is full of holes. Life is obviously evolving, it's what CREATED life that interests me, if it created itself, fine, prove it! Come up with a model, hell, come up with any way at all to create artificial life, nanotechnology or whatever, whatever. And then demonstrate that it can happen due to natural processes! We'll see how likely it is to happen "naturally". It would be a perfectly plausible explanation for life existing on earth if it arrived here on a spacecraft 10 million years ago. And then where did it come before that? Uh oh, now we're getting into some serious shit, I think it scares some people. Evolution! That's the answer to everything! Bah.

So I agree with you; the religious fundamentalists and the evolutionists have a lot in common. It's a turf war, an embarassing turf war. They both have something seriously wrong with their brains! I'm glad to know that there are still some sane people that are waiting this one out. I think (hope?) more and more people come to this conclusion, that there is no conclusion to be made yet! I also think its fucking ridiculous that you get modded down, I probably will be also.

Re:You've got it backward

[amightywind]

Thanks. You summarize my point exactly. What is wrong with judging the status of science, an evolving, and never finished body knowledge?

Re:You've got it backward

[zardo]

What is wrong with judging the status of science, an evolving, and never finished body knowledge?

Nothing, under the right circumstances. What we have here are a bunch of people calling the football game right after the kickoff. It's all fun and games until someone breaks a blood vessel in their forehead.

Re:You've got it backward

[timbo234]

And then where did it come before that? Uh oh, now we're getting into some serious shit, I think it scares some people. Evolution! That's the answer to everything! Bah.

You're knocking down straw-men here. Evolution does not say anything about how life originally came about, only how it has evolved since then. No one is saying that evolution is the 'answer to everything'. What your talking about are the theories and hypotheses of abiogenesis, and yes there is still quite a bit of work to do on this area of science and nowhere is that more aparent and readily acknowleged than amongst the scientific community itself.

So I agree with you; the religious fundamentalists and the evolutionists have a lot in common. It's a turf war, an embarassing turf war. They both have something seriously wrong with their brains! I'm glad to know that there are still some sane people that are waiting this one out. I think (hope?) more and more people come to this conclusion, that there is no conclusion to be made yet!

You seriously misunderstand the whole debate. Science does not pretend to know the truth or draw definate conclusions. It can only seek to find the most likely explanation through the available objective evidence. The ID side of this debate is proposing something that can never be tested. So in short there will never be a 'win' or an end to this debate because its not something that can ever be resolved - religion and science are 2 different things.

Re:You've got it backward

[arminw]

....It will take a LOT more to prove that life evolved from basic matter, the "primordial goo" hypothesis, is what is full of holes.....

Exactly. it takes proteins to make the skeleton structure for DNA. But it is the DNA that carries the codes for how to make proteins. So we have the molecular equivalent of the chicken and egg problem. Biomolecules, such as hemoglobin for example, consist of thousands of atoms of various kinds in very precise, specific arrangements, as specified by the DNA codes in living creature. Where did the information codes stored in the DNA come from that direct the construction of complex bimolecules?

I'll believe in evolution when some scientist makes a "simple" living one celled reproducing organism out of anything they want to, as long as none of the components ever came from something that was alive at any time.

Re:You've got it backward

[zardo]

Evolution does not say anything about how life originally came about

Right. You're trying to say that the whole comparison of ID to evolution is moot, but that's what we're comparing here, and as far as origins go, evolution relies on the primordial goo thing, because there is only one other alternative, and it supports ID. If you want to pit ID against evolution, then you have to take origins into account. If you want to say that both can coexist, that is fine, it's probably true, but that's not what I'm talking about here. If I have not gathered your point, then please clarify.

You seriously misunderstand the whole debate...

You are just trying to invalidate my point here. The debate I'm participating in is about the origin of life, our significance in the universe, not the validity of ID or evolution. Furthermore, I think ID can be tested. Your idea of god, the one you're argueing against, may be Jesus Christ, but I have yet to decide that. God could be other humans on another planet. If you prove that DNA exists in other parts of the solar system, you've come a long way to understanding the origin of man. You see, you're participating in a turf war because you've pit yourself against all religious peoples, at least that's what I take from your "The ID side of this debate is proposing something that can never be tested." comment. I wouldn't consider myself a religious person, for the record.

Re:You've got it backward

[timbo234]

If you want to pit ID against evolution, then you have to take origins into account. If you want to say that both can coexist, that is fine, it's probably true, but that's not what I'm talking about here

No you can't pit ID against evolution and abiogenesis theories (ie. science) because they are completely different things. The theories of evolution and abiogenesis are testable, falsifiable scientific theories based on observable evidence and experimentation. ID is a religious belief that is not testable in any scientific way. The conflict comes about because the disingenuous supporters of ID have started a political campaign to wrongly convince people that ID is another form of science, when in reality it is pure religion.

The debate I'm participating in is about the origin of life, our significance in the universe, not the validity of ID or evolution

That's a philosophical debate, but even then you should understand the difference between valid scientific theories such as evolution versus religious faith.

Your idea of god, the one you're argueing against, may be Jesus Christ, but I have yet to decide that. God could be other humans on another planet. If you prove that DNA exists in other parts of the solar system, you've come a long way to understanding the origin of man

'Other humans on another planet' explains nothing and is irrelevant to ID vs science. If that's true then those other humans had to come from somewhere, which brings us back to the same point we started at - if you say they were designed then its still not falsifiable and therefore ID is still totally unscientific.

You see, you're participating in a turf war because you've pit yourself against all religious peoples, at least that's what I take from your "The ID side of this debate is proposing something that can never be tested." comment

I don't see how you come to that conclusion from that comment. Far from being an attack on religious peoples as you seem to want it to be its simply pointing out a fact - theories proposing a supernatural god or gods of any kind are not testable. Therefore they have no place in science. I don't have anything against religion or religious people, I do have something against fundamentalists who try to impose their beliefs on others through promoting their beliefs as literal fact. In short I hate scammers and fraudsters.

Re:You've got it backward

[zardo]

That's a philosophical debate...

No, this is not philosophy. You can discover things about the origin of life through scientific exploration. Philosophy only serves as a basis for arguement for or against religion, in particular.

'Other humans on another planet' explains nothing and is irrelevant to ID vs science. If that's true then those other humans had to come from somewhere, which brings us back to the same point we started at - if you say they were designed then its still not falsifiable and therefore ID is still totally unscientific.

Well shit, I guess we should scrap the NASA Origins program because it will explain nothing. Humans being "designed" IS falsifiable. The religious fundamentalists may skirt that issue also because it conflicts with their genesis theory, taken in the literal. In order to falsify it you have to prove that life CAN happen at random, that's the first step anyways. I'm sorry you feel that area of science is such a waste. If they find something other than DNA evolving on some other planet, that would probably explain how life on earth came about. Finding humans on other planets may not be as groundbreaking. After all, we may have put ourselves here and then forgotten about how we got here in the first place. It's still the most significant part of our history and is definately worth investigating.

I don't have anything against religion or religious people, I do have something against fundamentalists who try to impose their beliefs on others through promoting their beliefs as literal fact. In short I hate scammers and fraudsters.

That's great, but that's not what we're talking about here. I'm trying to show you that ID is a valid theory when presented the right way, not using any supernatural events. But you see, going back to the parent, evolution is presented incorrectly just as often, as an explanation for the origin of man, we came from monkeys, which came from the ocean, where life spontaneously erupted billions of years ago. You can try to say that this debate is not proper, and just ignore the question of where life initially started, but this debate takes place everywhere, all the time, and that is how it goes. You place a wall between abiogenesis and evolution, while the two are directly linked to each other.

If you have something against fundamentalists, then you'd better just be careful who you label a fundamentalist. If someone came up with a biology book for students that instead of dedicating an entire section to "Evolution" they dedicated it to "origins" and sub-sections called evolution, abiogenesis, creationism, it would throw the Atheist political activists into an uproar. They're just as guilty of imposing their beliefs on others, and they fit the description of a fundamentalist.

Re:You've got it backward

[timbo234]

No, this is not philosophy. You can discover things about the origin of life through scientific exploration. Philosophy only serves as a basis for arguement for or against religion, in particular.

I never said you couldn't discover things through scientific exploration - I was pointing out that when you include ID and things like that it is no longer science but philosophy.

Well shit, I guess we should scrap the NASA Origins program because it will explain nothing. Humans being "designed" IS falsifiable. The religious fundamentalists may skirt that issue also because it conflicts with their genesis theory, taken in the literal. In order to falsify it you have to prove that life CAN happen at random, that's the first step anyways. I'm sorry you feel that area of science is such a waste. If they find something other than DNA evolving on some other planet, that would probably explain how life on earth came about. Finding humans on other planets may not be as groundbreaking. After all, we may have put ourselves here and then forgotten about how we got here in the first place. It's still the most significant part of our history and is definately worth investigating.

Again you're trying to twist my words. I was pointing out that the idea that life on earth came from somewhere else in the universe does not prove anything in relation to ID vs evolution/abiogenesis. Personally I'm very interested in anything to do with space research and I'd love to seem them sending more probes to other planets, even trying to send them to other star systems although that may be a little difficult with current technology.

That's great, but that's not what we're talking about here. I'm trying to show you that ID is a valid theory when presented the right way, not using any supernatural events.

And in what way can it be presented without using anything supernatural? Think about it - if you're saying life came from or was designed by people/aliens/whatever from some other planet then how did they come about? Its just a recursive argument - it certainly doesn't prove that ID is falsifiable because at some point your back to how that original life came about and ID can only say it was through something supernatural. Ie. If the designers were aliens who designed the designers?

But you see, going back to the parent, evolution is presented incorrectly just as often, as an explanation for the origin of man, we came from monkeys, which came from the ocean, where life spontaneously erupted billions of years ago. You can try to say that this debate is not proper, and just ignore the question of where life initially started, but this debate takes place everywhere, all the time, and that is how it goes. You place a wall between abiogenesis and evolution, while the two are directly linked to each other.

Evolution does not explain how life 'erupted' out of the oceans billions of years ago, that is abiogenesis. I don't see how this is such a hard concept to grasp - they are 2 seperate groups of scientific theories because they deal with different things, and there is no wall between them, and I have never tried to pretend there is. The only improper part of the debate is creationists trying to pretend their theories are scientific, when they clearly are not.

If you have something against fundamentalists, then you'd better just be careful who you label a fundamentalist. If someone came up with a biology book for students that instead of dedicating an entire section to "Evolution" they dedicated it to "origins" and sub-sections called evolution, abiogenesis, creationism, it would throw the Atheist political activists into an uproar. They're just as guilty of imposing their beliefs on others, and they fit the description of a fundamentalist.

If someone had a 'biology' book with a section dedicated to creationism then it wouldn't be a biology book anymore - it'd be a religious text. That's what normal rational people get so upset about - religious dogma being written i

Re:You've got it backward

[zardo]

Darwin refers to a "warm little pond", I went after the source of this:

Charles Darwin is often credited with having anticipated the modern chemical evolution scenario, based on ideas he expressed privately in a letter to Joseph Hooker in 1871.

`It is often said that all the conditions for the first production of a living organism are now present, which could ever have been present. But if (and oh! what a big if!) we could conceive in some warm little pond, with all sorts of ammonia and phosphoric salts, light, heat, electricity, &c., present, that a proteine (sic) compound was chemically formed ready to undergo still more complex changes, at the present day such matter would be instantly absorbed, which would not have been the case before living creatures were found.'

Of course, this quotation is only from a private letter. In his public writings, Darwin made reference to the activity of the Creator initiating life. The general view seems to be that Darwin was making a public statement which he was not fully committed to. Thus, Orgel wrote:

`Darwin, bending somewhat to the religious biases of his time, posited in the final paragraph of The Origin of Species that "the Creator" originally breathed life "into a few forms or into one." Then evolution took over: "From so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved." In private correspondence, however, he suggested life could have arisen through chemistry, "in some warm little pond, with all sorts of ammonia and phosphoric salts, light, heat, electricity, etc. present".'(Orgel L.E., `The Origin of Life on the Earth', Scientific American, October 1994, p.53).

I suppose that explains the link between evolution and abiogenesis. It's interesting that Darwin used creationism as a foundation for his theory of evolution.

And in what way can it be presented without using anything supernatural? ... how did they come about?

It is not an answer to everything, simply a disproof of the primordial soup theory. Evolution doesn't answer ALL the questions either though. Perhaps the answer to your question would best be solved through astronomy, or astrophysics. We still don't know where the Universe came from. People who tend to believe life happened at random may also be inclined to believe that the Universe came about for the same reason: none at all. Now purpose, that is a philosophical debate.

Evolution does not explain how life 'erupted' out of the oceans billions of years ago, that is abiogenesis. I don't see how this is such a hard concept to grasp

Are you seriously going to keep repeating this? Go read some of the other posts in this thread and see what everyone is talking about. Holy shit, you might as well be saying "relativity and quantum mechanics have nothing to do with each other". Speaking of which, is quantum mechanics falsifiable? Someone comes up with a huge complex set of equations that happen to work with each other, and it is widely accepted (after years of rejection). Some of it doesn't even make sense!

f someone had a 'biology' book with a section dedicated to creationism then it wouldn't be a biology book anymore - it'd be a religious text. That's what normal rational people get so upset about...

I'm glad you'd consider yourself a normal, rational person, but you may very well be an idiot, if you honestly believe that creationism is religious dogma. RTFA, the text is not referring to any literal truth, nor does it mention ANYTHING about religion! Holy shit man. And if you think scientists aren't trying to impose their beliefs on people, then you truly are an idiot, as I suspected. They may as well just throw every science journal together into one massive book and call it the bible, cause you'd just take it as the word of god wouldn't you?

Re:You've got it backward

[timbo234]

It is not an answer to everything, simply a disproof of the primordial soup theory. Evolution doesn't answer ALL the questions either though. Perhaps the answer to your question would best be solved through astronomy, or astrophysics. We still don't know where the Universe came from. People who tend to believe life happened at random may also be inclined to believe that the Universe came about for the same reason: none at all. Now purpose, that is a philosophical debate.

So what does it have to do with the ID/evolution debate? ID claims that it can answer the origin of life. The theory that life came from another part of the universe is a seperate theory that doesn't answer that. As I said before its not relevant to this discussion.

Are you seriously going to keep repeating this? Go read some of the other posts in this thread and see what everyone is talking about. Holy shit, you might as well be saying "relativity and quantum mechanics have nothing to do with each other".

Are you seriously going to keep building straw-men like this? All I pointed out was that evolution and abiogenesis are different things. Abiogenesis concerns life coming about from non-living matter, evolution concerns the process by which life has evolved and changed over time. The theories concerning evolution cannot explain how life came about and the theories concerning abiogenesis cannot explain how life evolved. I never said there was no connection between them - that was a straw man you've built up and knocked down quit successfuly.

Speaking of which, is quantum mechanics falsifiable? Someone comes up with a huge complex set of equations that happen to work with each other, and it is widely accepted (after years of rejection). Some of it doesn't even make sense!

There are many experiments that have tested the theories around QM - see the light-through-a-slit experiments for example which you can do in any high-school science lab. There is still a lot of work surrounding QM because it doesn't fit in with the Einsteinian theory of gravity - ie. there's something missing in our understanding of the universe. Investigating things like this is what science is all about.

I'm glad you'd consider yourself a normal, rational person, but you may very well be an idiot, if you honestly believe that creationism is religious dogma. RTFA, the text is not referring to any literal truth, nor does it mention ANYTHING about religion! Holy shit man. And if you think scientists aren't trying to impose their beliefs on people, then you truly are an idiot, as I suspected. They may as well just throw every science journal together into one massive book and call it the bible, cause you'd just take it as the word of god wouldn't you?

I can see you're getting frustrated because you don't have any real argument, but calling me an 'idiot' doesn't amount to one. Creationism is by defintion religious dogma since it deals with the supernatural. What beliefs exactly is science trying to impose on people? Granted most scientists have their own political/religious/philisophical beliefs but the whole point of the scientific method and processes is that the influence of these beliefs are filtered out. Science is far from perfect but by and large it is successful - otherwise none of the technology you see around you would exist.

The motivations of some people are not as easy to understand as you may think. As some philosopher once said, altruism does not truly exist. Scientists are humans and are self-serving, and will put out a theory only to earn the respect of the rest of the community. "Science doesn't impose beliefs on people", you're personifying science? Science is simply the collaboration of humans, understand this.

Again see the point above - the whole process of science is designed to filter out biases and inaccuracies generated by the subjective beliefs of the scientists. Also I wasn't trying to personify science, but just pointing out that there is no organised movement to interfere with religion by any significant faction of science or scientists. The converse is not true with a politically significant faction of religious people trying to interfere with science by redefining it to be something its not.

Re:You've got it backward

[zardo]

I never said there was no connection between them - that was a straw man you've built up and knocked down quit successfuly.

You said "they have nothing to do with each other". If you can't carry on a cohesive argument, I won't reply further. Quit dancing around and take a shot at me, damn!

ID claims that it can answer the origin of life.

Depending on who you ask, typicall it is only the origin of life on earth. Abiogenesis would be an adequate explanation for life everywhere in the universe. If you want to talk about life in the universe, and a universal creator, then you quit comparing ID to evolution and start comparing it to the big bang theory, because evolution doesn't really explain how the universe got here.

There are many experiments that have tested the theories around QM - see the light-through-a-slit experiments for example which you can do in any high-school science lab. There is still a lot of work surrounding QM because it doesn't fit in with the Einsteinian theory of gravity - ie. there's something missing in our understanding of the universe. Investigating things like this is what science is all about.

According to QM, I could teleport across the universe right now, the chances of that are slim, impossible according to the law of probability, but... that is abiogenesis for you, impossible according to the law of probability. As for the double-slit experiment, it raised more questions than it answered.

I love your matter-of-fact tone, everything you say, even things like "just pointing out that there is no organised movement to interfere with religion by any significant faction of science or scientists", which is completely unfounded. "The converse is not true with a politically significant faction of religious people trying to interfere with science by redefining it to be something its not." I've demonstrated that ID can be falsified using statistics alone, so from my perspective ID proponents are contributing to the realm of science by proposing alternate viewpoints. Interfering with science, that's bullshit, this is a political matchup, as you're well aware. One side uses science as often as it can, the science of being gay, the science of marijuana joints having medical value, whatever, just a bunch of politicians and lawyers trying to get their way if you ask me.

Re:You've got it backward

[timbo234]

You said "they have nothing to do with each other". If you can't carry on a cohesive argument, I won't reply further. Quit dancing around and take a shot at me, damn!

No I didn't say that at all. I said they deal with different things and they are seperate theories - and that is perfectly true. Quit trying to build straw-men in place of a real argument.


Depending on who you ask, typicall it is only the origin of life on earth. Abiogenesis would be an adequate explanation for life everywhere in the universe. If you want to talk about life in the universe, and a universal creator, then you quit comparing ID to evolution and start comparing it to the big bang theory, because evolution doesn't really explain how the universe got here.

ID claims to explain how life evolved and its proponents hold it up as an alternative to evolution, and spend most of their time arguing against evolution. There is no comparison between ID and evolution, abiogenesis and/or big band theory because ID is not a testable scientific theory.


According to QM, I could teleport across the universe right now, the chances of that are slim, impossible according to the law of probability

No! QM doesn't say that at all - you've been reading too much science fiction :) The whole thing is a bit mind-bending but Quantum Teleportation can only be used to transmit information, and even then it still cannot transmit it faster than light (just like with current technologies).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_teleportation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_entanglement

that is abiogenesis for you, impossible according to the law of probability

Huh? How is it impossible? its unlikely according to the laws of probability but not impossible.

As for the double-slit experiment, it raised more questions than it answered

This is probably true of QM in general - that's why there's so much scientific interest and research into unifying QM with relativity, what many people refer to as 'unified physics' or something like that.

even things like "just pointing out that there is no organised movement to interfere with religion by any significant faction of science or scientists", which is completely unfounded

I don't see how its unfounded. Science, by definition, is religion-neutral - science does not confirm or deny the existence of a god or gods of any kind. Religion is simply out of scope of science and its only politicians and lawyers who try to twist things round to make religious beliefs appear 'scientific'.

I've demonstrated that ID can be falsified using statistics alone

Where have you demonstrated that?

Re:wrong Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[TClevenger]

I see that a lot. When it comes time to persecute people for homosexuality or premarital sex, the Bible is an "absolute", and "literally and completely accurate." But when fundies are presented with other lessons, like not eating pork, giving away worldly possessions and wearing beards, suddenly the Bible is figuratively true but not literally true.

Faith Books

[Doc Ruby]

The IRS should be coming for Pope Ratzinger any day.

definitions

[anomaly]

Start with abiogenesis = a-bio-genesis, "non-biological origin".
According to this source, abiogenesisis "The supposed development of living organisms from nonliving matter. Also called autogenesis, spontaneous generation."

It seems to me that the plain ordinary meaning of this term implies more than you suggest in your post above. Now we agree that there was a time when life did not exist, and I hope that we agree that it does now. :)

So, it follows that life came from somewhere. The question is through natural processes, or something other than natural processes. Science is simply unable to speak on the issue of a non-natural cause, because science is constrained to things natural.

That's precisely the question that the theory of evolution addresses.
And ID proponents might suggest that it's the question addressed by ID as well. Frankly we'd be fools to believe that adaptation does not happen. It is observable, and it is repeatable. There is no question that evolution is the explanation of the differences within a species.

Where you and I diverge is in the question of speciation. Evolution is an answer - something like an 80% answer. There are gaps, and the hope is that they will be filled in when more information is available. This was precisely the situation with the epicyclic theory of the solar system some years ago. I'm waiting for a modern-day Kepler to blow the doors off of speciation via evolution. I'm not saying that evolution is bankrupt - I'm just saying that it's a poor explanation of speciation. I believe that scientists have an a priori commitment to naturalism and refuse to consider anything that does not fit their philosophical model.

WRT complexity, I'm not saying that no complexity can arise naturally, I'm saying that it's not the most likely explanation of what we observe. Here are some thoughts:
Why didn't the universe equilibrate an eternity ago? It seems to me that all energy should have been equally dispersed, and it should be a LOT colder than it is.

What about irrreducible complexity?
How can it be that a structure like the eye exists when in order to have been favorable, many of the parts must have appeared at the same time, in the right order. Seems unlikely to me.
How does the calcium in the bones of a bird make it through the process to form the shell of the egg, and then stop doing the process kills the mother bird? Talk about complex!

How hard is it for the body to heal a cut? There are something like seven different processes involved in starting, then stopping the clotting process before the person dies from either bleeding out or lack of blood flow because it's all solid in their veins.

Most mutations are NOT beneficial. Yet, naturalistic speciation depends on this process, pluse time. This simply seems implausible to me.

According to a mathematical expert, Dr. James Coppedge, "giving evolutionists every possible concession, postulating a primordial sea with every single component necessary, and speeding up the rate of bonding a trillion times: The probability of a single protein^34 molecule being arranged by chance is 1 in 10^161, using all atoms on earth and allowing all time since the world began... For a minimum set of the required 239 molecules for the smallest theoretical life, the probability is 1 in 10^119,841 years on the average to get a set of such protiens" (James F. Coppedge, Evolution: Possible or impossible, p218)

According to occam's razor, doesn't it seem likely that something outside natural processes is most likely for the existance of life here?

Re:definitions

[B.D.Mills]

Most mutations are NOT beneficial. Yet, naturalistic speciation depends on this process, pluse time. This simply seems implausible to me.
You answer the question yourself:

"MOST mutations are NOT beneficial" implies that "SOME mutations are beneficial." Even if 99.9% of mutations are harmful, that leaves 0.1% of mutations as being beneficial. Benefit here does not necessarily mean a better ability to fight off predators, or increased resistance to disease. It's the ability to pass more genes on to the next generation. A male Bird of Paradise with a more impressive feather display because of a mutation will mate with more females, and thus pass more of his genes onto his progeny.

As to time, that's not a barrier either. The law of averages sees to that. Evolution is not 4 billion years of history. It's 4 billion years multiplied by the average number of individual organisms that have existed on Earth during its history. Each individual organism experiences events that benefit it or harm it. If an organism has a harmful mutation, on average it is less likely to pass its genes onto its progeny. An organism with a beneficial mutation is more likely to pass its genes on. Evolution is not the effects of individual mutations on individual creatures, it is the sum total of all mutations on all creatures in the biosphere. Roll the evolutionary dice enough times and the creatures with the house edge eventually get all the prizes.

The answer is obvious, really.

Here's a simple example of evolution in action, from the real world.

There is a species of moth in the British Isles that lives in forests. This moth rests during the day on the trunks of certain trees. These tree trunks are pale in colour, so the moths have a similar pale colouration so as to be camouflaged. A rare mutation may create dark moths. This mutation is harmful because the dark moths stand out on the light tree trunks and are easy for the birds to find and eat.

Then something happened during the Industrial Revolution. The burning of coal drove the wheels of industry. All this coal-burning spread black dust over the factories, and the homes. The trees were also blackened by all the smoke.

This had an interesting effect on the moths. The light-coloured moths were suddenly the ones that possessed the harmful mutation, and the rare dark moths possessed the beneficial mutation! In the space of a few years, the birds had eaten most of the light-coloured moths, and the moths were mostly dark with a few light-coloured moths. This, then is natural selection in action. There's no supernatural being sitting on the shoulders of all the birds, whispering in their ears: "Eat the obvious moths". Instead, it's just birds doing what birds do, without being told by anyone.

The moth story also had a sequel when Britain moved away from coal-burning industries. The tree trunks turned light again, the dark-coloured moths now stood out and were preferentially eaten, and pretty quickly all the moths of that species turned light again.

Re:wrong Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Darby]

If you don't know, say you don't know, don't pretend you do. If you know it's a scam, tell us how you know!

I'd say the fact that throughout its history it has always been used as a scam, the fact that what to put in the book was arbitrarily decided by whichever group of bishops was running the Roman empire at the time in order to murder off their competition as heretics, the fact that every group that has ever gotten power through the use of it has been hopelessly corrupt are strong indicators that it's a scam.

Add in the fact that none of this would have been possible had god chosen not to speak in contradictory riddles. Yet apparently he did knowing full well what horror he, with malice aforethought had caused to happen by choosing to do it that way.

Seriously, what's more likely? That scam artists took their people's natural curiousity as to their origins and fear of the unknown and used it against them as people always have and do, or that a perfect being could screw up on such a collosal level? Further, that that same perfect, all-powerful being has as his sole interest in regard to us that we should blindly accept his existence (and the evil asshats he personally chose to rule over us) without proof?!?

One idea takes merely basic knowledge of human nature, the other takes accepting extremely complex, illogical, and contradictory ideas.

But there is God, and he does exist.

No, you have chosen to believe that. That is the only statement you can make and maintain honesty, credibility, or integrity.
Not a dig at your beliefs, but that is exactly what they are. Beliefs.
Were it actually something that could honestly be described as truth, you, or anybody else throughout the entire history of our species would be able to provide some scrap of actual evidence, no matter how small.

But others haven't have the experiences I have (naturally, they are not me) and people are just guessing when they try to dismiss them which, is sooo obvious.

Well, you can certainly claim that god loves you much more than he does everybody else so he came and put on a magic show for you or whatever this magic revelation that you declined to talk about... presumably we're to accept the proof you have on faith ;-).
Yet if he actually wanted what you claim he wants, all he has to do is offer some proof, Yet he refuses.

Seriously, how is an all powerful being with the personality of a petulant child even the least bit reasonable?!?

Response

[snowwrestler]

One of us is confused, and I'm not too arrogrant to admit that it could be me.

Confused is probably not the best word. I would just say that you probably have not followed the ID arguments to their logical conclusions in the scientific context.

But my understanding of ID is as stated above, that they embrace evolution by design (ignoring all the other absurdities for the moment). One other poster below this thread has noted the same distinction. I believe you are confusing "them" with "us", which was the reason for my initial post. Have a look at what they say again... at what the ID official stance is. I will happily admit if I'm wrong, but I think you'll find that's what they say.

Actually what most of them say is that they believe in some natural selection, but irreducibly complex systems show evidence of being designed by an intelligence.

The problem is, what they are saying is meaningless in a scientific context. If a piece of evidence contradicts an existing theory, the entire theory is wrong. For example if there was incontrovertible evidence that an "intelligent designer" had affected the development of life (if, say, we found a ©God symbol imprinted on the optic nerve), it would not just invalidate natural selection with respect to the eye, it would invalidate the theory of natural selection completely.

See, science is based on some ultra-basic theories. One of those is that the natural laws of our universe have not changed over time and don't change from place to place. It says that an electron had a charge of 1.60217646 × 10^19 coulombs 600 million years ago, that it does now both here and 100 million light years away, and that it will 100 million years from now. General relativity, quantum mechanics, the strong and weak forces--these elementary processes and forces are inherent, constant attributes of space time. So far this theory has not been disproven. We continue to refine our understanding of these attributes, and who know, maybe new ones will be discovered. But we haven't see evidence that they shift over time.

Biology is no different. The base principles of genetic heredity and natural selection are held to be the same for a virus and for a human. The only difference is the complexity of the system; obviously the simpler system is easier to study and model, just as it's easier to study the properties of elementary particles by smashing them into each other a few at a time. BUT, the processes are the same when there are 10 trillion atoms as when there are 2.

In other words, scientifically, it's all or nothing. Either a theory explains a fundamental process, or it is wrong. Either life is shaped by natural forces or by supernatural forces; both cannot be true simultaneously. If you believe that supernatural forces over-rode natural force to shape life, then scientifically what you are asserting is that supernatural forces are capable of trumping any natural phenomena...in other words, supernatural omnipotence.

Intelligent design is a Creationist argument because by intelligently designing life structures, the omnipotent intelligent being (whoever he is!) is in effect bringing about its creation in a supernatural way.

I'm not arguing that YOU yourself believe in ID just because you believe in the literal interpretation of Genesis. Rather I'm saying that those who are promoting ID believe the same thing you do--they just hide it. They do not have the courage of their convictions to speak up honestly, and wrap their belief in the blanket of science to try to pass it off among the unwary.

This is not just based on their "theory" too...there is a sizable online paper trail that documents the development of ID...try here to start, if you're interested.

This is a ridiculous, even laughable perversion of the entire Bible. Obviously you've never read it or else you wouldn't reduce yourself to such error. You needn't step beyond th

Re:Response

[DoubleWhopper]

Will try to make a few cohesive points here before turning in for the night.

If a piece of evidence contradicts an existing theory, the entire theory is wrong.

That certainly sounds grand, but it isn't actually practiced. Consider, for example, Newtonian gravity. Evidence points to its failure in reality, for some natural phenomena, that is. Yet it is what we teach our children. Why? Because it is a workable model... somewhat. Einstein gravity works for a bit more (okay, quite a bit). But there are even areas where it doesn't work. Yet we still use it. Why? It's a workable model... somewhat. It's great to think that we always throw away things that don't work, but it's just not true. And often we have held on to models/theories just because of some affinity for a particular worldview rather than what the evidence suggests (geocentric solar system, anyone?).

One of those is that the natural laws of our universe have not changed over time and don't change from place to place.

Unless I misunderstand, according to Big Bang cosmology this (changed laws) is required to have happened for the universe to exist in its present state. First of all, the quantum fluctuation in the void. Sometime in there was the inflation. The clumping of matter after cool down certainly required something different over regions. Ah, and not to mention the handedness problem (CP violation). And, lest we forget, matter/anitmatter asymmetry. The laws had to "break" for the universe to be the way it is. Note, of course, that this is required from the Big Bangers, not creationists.

Either life is shaped by natural forces or by supernatural forces; both cannot be true simultaneously.

Minor point here, but I'm sure you recognize that this does not naturally follow your line of argument. I also think it foolhardy to presume how a supernatural force (to use the generic term) would interact in a natural process. We leave the realm of the issue with that, though.

Rather I'm saying that those who are promoting ID believe the same thing you do--they just hide it. They do not have the courage of their convictions to speak up honestly, and wrap their belief in the blanket of science to try to pass it off among the unwary.

This I agree with. Partly, at least. We can't, of course, make such a sweeping generalization, but I do believe there are some who are trying to advance my cause - a literal creation week, young earth/universe - by hiding it beneath this (dare I call it) "progressive" shroud. I've no patience for these compromisers. And obviously your side doesn't either. But they're not courting us extremists. They're wooing the mainstream, the people who will jump on any new fad that comes around. And it must be admitted that there is something of a religious fervor in the nation these days, and it's a prime environment for something like this to flourish.

Still, let's face it: they, the mainstream, don't want your side because *gasp* "what if there is a god (note small G), then he'd be mad at me!" And they don't want my side because *gasp* "if there is a God and I can't be a lout, but must be a servant. Hey look... let's take this thing where we can say there's a god, just for fire insurance, and we can still not look dumb like those creationists." This is, I think, the greatest shame of the movement. Then again, I'm considered a zealot, so what do I know?

(BTW, I suppose there are still some that could be classified as believers of the ID movement, but I find it to be a weak and untenable position.)

Okay, so I'm nitpicking...

[Anonymous Coward]

Darwin did NOT have a theory of Survival of the Fittest. The term "survival of the fittest" was coined by a man named Herbert Spencer, who applied Darwin's theories loosely to economics and sociology. It has NOTHING to do with biology, but is rather a poor couching of Darwins ideas in terms that are more readily accessible to the minds of men. The idea of survival as a sort of decathlon in which only the medalists continue to thrive is not based in biology at all, and has been used over the years to justify racism, slavery, and genocide against our "less fit" brethren. Please don't attach Darwins name to it.

The biological equivalent of Natural Selection works on the opposite principle - that the members of the species who suffer from severe physical setbacks will die off and their genes will not be transferred to the next generation, over time removing the unworkable genes from the population. It's inappropriate to refer to these as the "least fit" or to the survivors as the "fittest" because the conditions for survival are constantly changing - thanks to weather patterns, geographical conditions and even the changes occurring in other species. Darwin would have put it as "the survival of the survivable". Tautology, I know, but that knocks the legs out from under a lot of ID arguments that say, "since there was not a optimally fit specimen at time A, evolution could not have occurred on its own."

God

[ozTravman]

So.... who created God?

Re:God

[True Grit]

Those who needed Him the most: early humans.

Re:wrong Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly.

I mean, if God is going to write it down for Moses, why stop there? Why not just implant it into everyone's minds, so they automatically know it? Or, better yet, why deal with people being bad and maybe going to Hell as a result? Why not just MAKE them be good, so they WILL go to heaven, whether they like it or not, so EVERYONE can be happy? And if he DID do that, what would be the point of living? There has to be a line somewhere, and IMHO God typically doesn't do things for people when they are perfectly capable of doing it themselves.

Just my $0.02. (I'd post non-AC, but I haven't gotten an account yet, and I'm too lazy to get one right now)

Just a thought...

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's assume the Bible is God's word, or message to humanity or whatever you want to call it. Seems to me an all-powerful God wouldn't let His written message get tainted, He'd take great care to make sure only what He wants ends up in there. Which means it either is Truth or it ain't. Can't be both.

This is also well stated by Wm Canton

[MickLinux]

http://www.mainlesson.com/display.php?author=canto n&book=saints&story=song The Song of the Minster by William Canton, now public domain (yay!) WHEN John of Fulda became Prior of Hethholme, says the old chronicle, he brought with him to the Abbey many rare and costly books--beautiful illuminated missals and psalters and portions of the Old and New Testament. And he presented rich vestments to the Minster; albs of fine linen, and copes embroidered with flowers of gold. In the west front he built two great arched windows filled with marvellous storied glass. The shrine of St. Egwin he repaired at vast outlay, adorning it with garlands in gold and silver, but the colour of the flowers was in coloured gems, and in like fashion the little birds in the nooks of the foliage. Stalls and benches of carved oak he placed in the choir; and many other noble works he had wrought in his zeal for the glory of God's house. In all the western land was there no more fair or stately Minster than this of the Black Monks, with the peaceful township on one side, and on the other the sweet meadows and the acres of wheat and barley sloping down to the slow river, and beyond the river the clearings in the ancient forest. [14] But Thomas the Sub-prior was grieved and troubled in his mind by the richness and the beauty of all he saw about him, and by the Prior's eagerness to be ever adding some new work in stone, or oak, or metal, or jewels. "Surely," he said to himself, "these things are unprofitable--less to the honour of God than to the pleasure of the eye and the pride of life and the luxury of our house! Had so much treasure not been wasted on these vanities of bright colour and carved stone, our dole to the poor of Christ might have been fourfold, and they filled with good things. But now let our almoner do what best he may, I doubt not many a leper sleeps cold, and many a poor man goes lean with hunger." This the Sub-prior said, not because his heart was quick with fellowship for the poor, but because he was of a narrow and gloomy and grudging nature, and he could conceive of no true service of God which was not one of fasting and praying, of fear and trembling, of joylessness and mortification. Now you must know that the greatest of the monks and the hermits and the holy men were not of this kind. In their love of God they were blithe of heart, and filled with a rare sweetness and tranquility of soul, and they looked on the goodly earth with deep joy, and they had a tender care for the wild creatures of wood and water. But Thomas had yet much to learn of the beauty of holiness. Often in the bleak dark hours of the night he would leave his cell and steal into the Minster, to fling himself on the cold stones before the high altar; and there he would remain, shivering and praying, till his strength failed him. It happened one winter night, when the thoughts I [15] have spoken of had grown very bitter in his mind, Thomas guided his steps by the glimmer of the sanctuary lamp to his accustomed place in the choir. Falling on his knees, he laid himself on his face with the palms of his outstretched hands flat on the icy pavement. And as he lay there, taking a cruel joy in the freezing cold and the torture of his body, he became gradually aware of a sound of far-away yet most heavenly music. He raised himself to his knees to listen, and to his amazement he perceived that the whole Minster was pervaded by a faint mysterious light, which was every instant growing brighter and clearer. And as the light increased the music grew louder and sweeter, and he knew that it was within the sacred walls. But it was no mortal minstrelsy. The strains he heard were the minglings of angelic instruments, and the cadences of voices of unearthly loveliness. They seemed to proceed from the choir about him, and from the nave and transept and aisles; from the pictured windows and from the clerestory and from the vaulted roofs. Under his kne

makes sense

[r00t]

If having a wild affair is near-certain to make a kid, you won't do that.

If you have lots of kids, a full-time mom makes economic sense.

If you have lots of kids, you might stay married for their sake.

If there is a full-time mom, the very distinct man/woman roles make husband and wife strongly dependant on each other.

If only one person works outside the home, there will be more family time.

If dinner is ready when the man gets home, evenings are less stressful.

Danged well better be ...

[Melllvar]

... or else there are a whole lotta Christians who are in deep doo-doo with The Almighty.

Considering that the various Protestant denominations have pretty much uniformly yanked out the story of the Maccabees (which is in the Vulgate) ... and that the Syriac Christians added the Acts of Thomas (or maybe the Catholics, et al., subtracted it?) ... and the Ethiopian Orthodox Christians threw in Jubilees, Enoch, and a whole bunch of books that most other Christians never even heard of. Then there's the Copts, Armenians, Eastern Orthodox groups -- I'm too lazy to see what they've got cookin' in their Bibles, but I think you get the point.

There is limited support for abortion

[r00t]

A tubal pregnancy may be aborted. It's better if you don't of course; an Italian lady who managed to birth such a baby (by Caesarean of course) was made a saint.

I believe the limited support for abortion comes from the right to self-defence. You're allowed to shoot back at crooks too, as long as you think they would kill you if you don't.

Re:There is limited support for abortion

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, we must be allowed to defend ourselves against these infantile aggressors!

Re:There is limited support for abortion

[Anonymous Coward]

A tubal pregnancy may be aborted.

Source?

I believe the limited support for abortion comes from the right to self-defence. You're allowed to shoot back at crooks too, as long as you think they would kill you if you don't.

The fundamental difference is that the "crook" is an unjust aggressor. The Catholic Church teaches that it is not morally licit to kill an innocent bystander to save yourself, even if that person is unknowingly endangering you:

"The legitimate defense of persons and societies is not an exception to the prohibition against the murder of the innocent that constitutes intentional killing" (source: CCC 2263).

Church that represented christianity? ? ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Part of faith is seeking truth - and science can provide more understanding into the truths and function of the universe.
Faith can provide a better understanding of the human spirit.

If the history of the Catholic Church is your best representative of Christianity, maybe something got lost in the Latin translations...

Euro-Roman Expansionism, feudal lord - peon servants, self interested gold collectors, the divine right of kings, the conquest of the 'new world' (not new to the Mayans - who calculated the timing and rotation of the milky way galaxy), the suppression of cultures, destruction of knowledge and limitted learning, but Christianity? Was that even really part of the equation?

The so called church destroyed other knowledge and cultures at a surprisingly fast pace. Rejecting anything but their 'Truth' as sin.

Frankly, I don't remember the Son of Man ever slaughtering tribes of people who wouldn't bow down and grovel for him...

SO, Why COULDN'T a universe create itself?

Is there some factual argument to support that theory?

What if the universe pulses in expansions and contractions, endlessly cycling into creation and nullification like a giant wave of energy?

The human life span is too short to really know what is going on, but if we collected data for a few tens of thousands of years, and really analyzed it and studied it - we'd still be making a bit of a guess of what is really going on in the universe.

It's sad to think that one man's quest to find peace, love, healing and equality for all of humanity degenerated into global warfare, race hatred, genocide, and a bloody struggle for world domination while the select few plunder and loot the planet for its wealth and resources.

To paraphrase a Monty Python skit, a good man was killed for making the awful suggestion that people ought to get along and be nice to one another.

I would think that an almighty god of all creation could do better job than that.

I've had the overall feeling that the human race is overdue for a new and improved belief system of some sort, maybe by 2012 ?

The (errrm) ... Gospel of Dan Brown?

[Melllvar]

While I think of it as poorly-written, theologically-stunted crap, there are a number of people who seem to regard The Da Vinci Code as resting just this side of Inspired Word. Give it a couple of centuries or so, and it could make it into some sort of Canon.

Sure ... yeah ... laugh it up, fuzzball; but I'm only half joking. I can remember reading somewhere of a theory that the Old Testament Book of Esther started out as a work of romantic fiction.

Re:wrong Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Scarletdown]

The God of the Bible is often portrayed not as taking action himself, but instead by working through others.

And that would provide him with immunity from prosecution for numerous acts of genocide, rape, murder, looting, and countless other war crimes. It is always best to have your minions do your dirty work for you instead of actually being the one to swing the sword and thrust the spear yourself.

Re:Designed by WHO[m]?

[Anonymous Coward]

Designed by 'whom'.

Heh.

[Ivan Matveitch]

As should be obvious, it is "belief" I disagree with, not existence of God. I think Man should stand firmly on his own feet, and admit that he's out there clawing his way to survival by his own efforts.

That sounds like something Jesus would have said! Radical personal responsibility is a Christian innovation.

Re:Heh.

[Anonymous Coward]

he also said something about religion being a personal affair to be practiced in the privacy of your own home, yet we have huge churches etc. So it seems to me you can take or leave what he said/did and still call yourself a christian, or not. In fact you can call yourself what you like but it doesn't make it true. I am a potato and since most life on earth is vegitation I suspect god is a potato too or maybe a sprout.

Re: Eat the messenger (please)

[lahvak]

Bring me some lions!

Hear, hear! I think it is about time to resurect this unjustly abandoned tradition!

Re:I don't see the big deal behind intelligent des

[naasking]

It's also open to an infinite regression, which, just as in coding, is a sure sign that there is something wrong with your logic.

I really don't understand the problem with infinite regressions. For instance, what is the inherent logical inconcistency with having an infinite regression of causes? Infinity as a concept is perfectly logical (whole numbers are countably infinite).

The above implies that you know, so perhaps you can spell it out for me. I've seen many arguments avoiding infinite regression of causes, but never any explanation as to why it's necessary. Inquiring minds would like to know.

In response to that chick.com cartoon

[J_Omega]

Listen to me. Since so many scientists contradict each other, I found [The Bible] to be the only source I can trust.

Listen to me. Since so many religions contradict each other, I found science to be the only source I can trust!

Re:wrong Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[ezeri]

or that a perfect being could screw up on such a collosal level?

Where do you get the idea that God screwed up?

Which Rabbi's you talkin' to?

[schuttsm]

I'm a fundamentalist, but please hear me out. I haven't talked to any rabbi's, but I something just as good: my Hebrew Professor. From everything he says about his time at grad school, the rabbi's believe that the Creation account is historical narrative, which should be taken in the same manner as the historical accounts of the Babylonian captivity. From a literary standpoint there are three ways to take the Genesis account: 1) The account is an historical narrative that the original writer genuinely believed was true. But the original writer was wrong and it is only a myth. 2) The account is a poetic composition that the original author intended to communicate spiritual truth but is meant to be interpreted figuratively, similar to Revelation and Psalms. 3) The account is an historical narrative that the original writer believed was true and it actually is true. Evolutionists unanimously agree that #1 is correct. The Hebrew Rabbis (who know the original Hebrew Text of the entire Old Testament) agree that #1 is their stance as well. Fundamentalists obviously take stance #3. Notice the point of agreement between those who reject Genesis as false and those who take it literally true: it was meant to be interpreted literally. Those who do not take it literally are attempting to meld two completely incompatible philosophies: Christianity and Atheistic Materialism.

examples of the "rational religious"

[J_Omega]

Einstein, Newton, Galileo, Copernicus... (the list goes on and on)

Yes, shocking.

[QMO]

Yes, shocking. If I'd ever been in a science class that actually assumed the non-existence of an Invisible Pink Unicorn as a basis for any "scientific" theory I would have been shocked.

Of course, then I'd have realized that assuming something that you have no data to support, and makes no difference to your theory anyway, is so ridiculous, that I'd have started looking for the punchline of what was obviously some kind of joke.

I would, of course, be just as shocked (or amused) if the existence of the same Invisible Pink Unicorn was assumed as a basis for theory, without supporting data.

stupid typo

[Reziac]

...that should read "on a PAR with"... geesh.

[insert snide remarks about Intelligent Typing]

Popper is rolling in his grave.

[Ivan Matveitch]

Certain arguments in support of relativism arise from the question, asked in the tone of the assured sceptic who knows for certain that there is no answer: 'What is truth?' But Pilate's question can be answered in a simple and reasonable way--though hardly in a way that would have satisfied him--as follows: an assertion, proposition, statement, or belief, is true if, and only if, it corresponds to the facts.

By this logic, the statement "some magical, unknowable force is at work designing all the creatures on the planet" is true (ie, corresponds to the facts) if and only if some magical, unknowable force is at work designing all the creatures on the planet.

I challenge you to find fault with this reasoning.

One "Spokesman" is not "The Vatican"

[Elf-friend]

I'm so sick of seeing "The Vatican says" stories based on a single, so-called spokesman's non-authoritative statement. "The Vatican," in this sense, used to mean statements of the Pope or authoritative congregations, such as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (formerly known as the Holy Office). A single Cardinal, even if he is the head of a largely meaningless council, such as the Council for Culture, never speaks for "The Vatican."

It's not commonly known, even amongst Catholics, that, aside from the CDF and the Pope himself, none of the various Vatican congregations, councils, and commissions, let alone their individual members, have any authority, whatsoever in matters of doctrine. Even informal statements of the Pope are not binding on Catholics to believe, though they deserve respect, because of the authority of the office.

People on both sides of this issue need to stop listening to sound-bites from nobodies, even Cardinal nobodies, and examine the issue on the basis of the Perpetual Magisterium of the Church. Look at the teachings of Fathers and Doctors of the Church, the decrees of the ecumenical councils, and the bulls and briefs of popes throughout Christian history. One thing is for sure: what the Church has ever taught, She still teaches, and always will; most anything else is open to speculation.

Seeming

[Anonymous Coward]

> Seems to me an all-powerful God wouldn't let His
> written message get tainted

That something "seems to you" doesn't make it true.

One thing the Bible says is that God works in mysterious ways.
One thing we know is that humanity has been gifted with tremendous reasoning capacity.

At least as reasonable a presumption as yours is that God was fully willing to allow the Bible to drift slightly, so as to test which men were eager enough to understand His word that they would apply their God-given reasoning capabilities to the task and, combined with gentle inner guidance, come to understand the Word in a way that no mere rote memorization can ever hope to accomplish.

Re:Seeming

[WiFiBro]

Reread that and imagine it is about a group of totally different people studying a book, say, of another religion, or, say it is about the conservatives and the liberals trying to exegese what the founding fathers really meant to say. Suppose you are a conservative and a liberal tells you that he totally understands what they meant, much better than you...

Re:I thought they already settled their problems..

[Joe the Lesser]

I can readily assure you that the rest of the planets are quite indifferent to Earth's existence as well.

Ah, at least we have the moon serve us!

What would Neo do?

[rolandog]

It is all a matter of choice. The bug chooses to fight.

/.

Your life is the sum of a remainder of an unbalanced equation inherent to the programming of the matrix. You are the eventuality of an anomaly, which despite my sincerest efforts I have been unable to eliminate from what is otherwise a harmony of mathematical precision. While it remains a burden to sedulously avoid it, it is not unexpected, and thus not beyond a measure of control. Which has led you, inexorably, here.

.\

Evidence

[Anonymous Coward]

> The ID argument is infact over whether "God could be directing
> evolution". The idea that this is actually possible and
> examining whether there is evidence w/in biology and
> paleontology that God, indeed "directed" evolution is what the
> ID people would like to bring up in biology classrooms at the
> high school level.

Then once ID has amassed a solid body of EVIDENCE, it will be appropriate to discuss it at the high school level.

Until that point, however, there is no more reason to discuss ID in a science class than there is to discuss crystal healing or alien abductions or any other widely-held belief that is lacking in evidence.

Without the supporting evidence, it's not science, and that's why ID currently has no place in a science classroom.

Re:Evidence

[ebyrob]

Define "macro" and "micro".

Ya, I like speciation, and agree all your points here are good. We've begun to see the edges of it.

Why is macroevolution a priori a bad idea?

For one thing I see no evidence to show how evolution might explain the Cambrian Explosion. Claiming evolution explains the differences between single celled organisms and man seems a bit premature. Also, in reading about evolution and Geology I find some truly odd things that seem swept under the rug at times. Pushing for an older age so that evolution can have more time is one past example.

Some would interpret bad designs like these as evidence of "whatever works first" randomness, rather than careful and intelligent crafting of a pinnacle of creation.

I find your response very refreshing here, and it is well considered, though "pinnacle of creation" may be a straw-man.

Personally I wonder about the notion of a "reasonably intelligent designer" versus this "devinely intelligent designer" that appears to get bandied about. Engineers, scientists, and programmers are not perfect and do make mistakes. Design is an iterative process, in some ways much like evolution. Also there are tradeoffs and hidden reasons for things that are not always apparent on first, or even umpteenth inspection. (According to the Bible, even Jesus let one of his best friends die because he was busy elsewhere...)

Would a "reasonably intelligent human-like designer" actually have no place in any conceivable scientific theory regardless of any factual evidence? (I think you've already given me a "no" on this, but that's not a common answer from what I've seen. Usually it's: "ID cannot be a thoery, and even if it could here's one completely random example taken in isolation that collapses the whole thing." Often with a "So Nyah!" at the end.)

Macroevolution has pretty strong evidence in favour of it; I don't see why that's a challenge to your faith, though.

For one, I'm not exactly sure what I believe and/or have faith in myself. For another it really isn't my faith I worry about. It's more the battling, small-mindedness and ill behavior on both sides of the argument. (Which I've watched my whole life, and yes, sometimes even my own gut-reactions to things are very negative. This is a battle between worldviews, or may become one if we're not careful.)

Note: For someone who believes in a very real and active God, the creation story is very important. For one thing it is a key ingredient in several arguments against evil. I've personally rejected Christianity because of my personal psychology and certain events in my life, but I have many Christian friends who I do not consider "idiots" for their beliefs.

Those who hold doggedly to a literal interpretation of the Bible while glossing over the actual content of Jesus's message would likely get much the same treatment as the Pharisees.

Unfortunately doggedness and ignorance can be found on both sides of the debate. (And any claims for or against the personal virtues of one group or another seem more inflammatory than useful. You don't seem like the type to assume I'm a Pharisee before I've so much as thumped a bible or mentioned 6000 years.)

Re:I don't see the big deal behind intelligent des

[Darby]

Claims that humans descended from apes are *not* scientific, strictly speaking, because they are not reproducible.

Of course, it's generally only creationists who trot out that old argument. Nobody with even a passing understanding of the subject would make such a claim.
It's the fact that all of their arguments rely on such strawmen that make them, quite justifiably, objects of ridicule among decent, sane people with any concept of integrity.

Re:Evolution? I don't think so.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, since everyone else has done a pretty good job ripping you a new one on the basic points, and because there is so much wrong with your statement that it would take a lengthy reply to address them all, I will just reply to your final point that, [you] "find no contradiction between real objective science and the biblical account of creation."
Let me start by saying that I am a PHD chemist, and tell you that if you believe in creationism, that is fine (you may be right for all I know). But there is huge contradiction between creationism (and its biblical account) and "objective science".

Read this quick review of the scientific method that I lifted from the following site:
http://phyun5.ucr.edu/~wudka/Physics7/Notes_www/no de5.html
There is more on this site and many others (as a "PHD scientist" I highly recommend you look into it a little further)

1. Observe some aspect of the universe.
2. Invent a tentative description, called a hypothesis, that is consistent with what you have observed.
3. Use the hypothesis to make predictions.
4. Test those predictions by experiments or further observations and modify the hypothesis in the light of your results.

When a hypothesis passes the test it is adopted as a theory that correctly explains a range of phenomena. It can, at any time, be falsified by new experimental evidence. When exploring a new set or phenomena scientists do use existing theories but, since this is a new area of investigation, it is always kept in mind that the old theories might fail to explain the new experiments and observations. In this case new hypotheses are devised and tested until a new theory emerges.

There are many types of ``pseudo-scientific'' theories which wrap themselves in a mantle of apparent experimental evidence but that, when examined closely, are nothing but statements of faith. The argument , cited by some creationists, that science is just another kind of faith is a philosophic stance which ignores the trans-cultural nature of science. Science's theory of gravity explains why both creationists and scientists don't float off the earth. All you have to do is jump to verify this theory - no leap of faith required.

So, I hope this helps. Creationism is NOT scientific, it is based on belief and the unexplainable. While it may be TRUE, it is a "Fallacious" argument, because it can neither be proved nor disproved. An important part of the scientific method is that theories can only be disproved, but never proved unequivocally. All science is based on theories that may at any time be modified or disproved. It is only an unfortunate convention that any scientific theories are given the name LAW, such as "Newton's Law of gravity". These, as all scientist know are only "well-accepted" theories, not truly LAWS.

(For the fun of it I will digress here for a moment. IF god created man as whole and complete object out of the void, why would god not be creating man in the same way in present times. Why would should men and women need to have intercourse with each other to make more people. This is the very tenant of evolution, that each child is merely an evolved, recombination of genetic material (atoms and molecules) of the two people who conspire to continue a very lengthy, continuous, chemical reaction. If the combining of genetic material fails to produce a fully grown person who then conspires to continue the chemical reaction, then this particular genetic sequence will evolve no further. This is a process that is readily observed (rent some porn, "hee hee."), and that is why it is so generally accepted among scientist today.

The 'theory of evolution' is just that, a THEORY. And as such has the onus of standing up to the scientific method. Further it does not try and explain the origin or nature of the universe, for that you will have to pick an argument with an astrophysicist.
I have a hard time believing after your statements that you are a PHD chemist as well, but that is beside the point. Have fun, believe what you want to believe, but don't call it science.

Re:Evolution? I don't think so.

[Geoff St. Germaine]

Whih university did you do your PhD and postdocs at? Also, lease list some of all of these PhD holders that said this. I have two friends who hold PhD's in organic chemistry that I regularly have coffee with at my University (University of Saskatchewan) and I'd like to see if they've heard of any of these guys' work (or I can just do a literature search from my office computer at the university). Your post sounds like a lot of trolling.

Re:I don't see the big deal behind intelligent des

[shadow_slicer]

It means that your explanation doesn't really explain anything.
If it goes:
A occurred because of B
B occurred because of C
C occurred because of C
C occurred because of C
....


Does it really matter how many C's preceded the first C? Furthermore if you cut it anywhere after the second statement you're left with the same question, "Why did C occur?". So this provides no extra value to the argument. Why are the C's in an infinite sequence? Why did it suddenly (and apparently randomly) break away from repeating C's to cause B? Could it be that all those C's aren't really C's, but actually differ? If so what was the first instance that started it?

So in short infinite tail recursion is fine. Infinite head recursion can't exist without some terminating condition (implying a hidden state, which brings the question of what was the initial state (at time "negative infinity" or 0).

If creation isn't literally true then...

[alcmaeon]

The fall of man isn't literally true,
and if no fall of man, no original sin,
and if no original sin, no need for a redeemer,
and if no need for a redeemer, no Jesus,
and if no Jesus, no salvation,
and if no salvation, no eternal life.

I don't think the Christer-fundies will ever accept this.
Only Catholics, who, by and large don't take their religin seriously anyway, could posit this interpretation.

Re:If creation isn't literally true then...

[SHP]

Which is why many people so vigorously defend evolution. Not because of the weight of the evidence, rather because they cannot accept the consequences of the Bible being true. Believing in evolution soothes the conscience.

Weak / Limited = Anthropomorphization?

[SeanDuggan]

It seems like a lot of ID/Creationist supporters - especially the hardcore - prefer a weak, limited God, whose limitations are not unlike their own.
Personally, I see this as often a matter of anthropomorphization. People want a human God because they can identify with such a being and they feel like they can bargain with it. Witness that most polytheistic religions essentially sport powered-up humans. They eat, they fuck, and sometimes they die. Thing is, to me, it's practically impossible to try to discuss God without limitting him. I don't know that it would be possible to fathom his reasoning. He's God. He's omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent and any attempt we make to fathom his plans is like an ant trying to figure out why humans do income taxes. Many people then go from there to the "world is God's ant farm and he's got a magnifying glass" idea or "disinterested observer God." *wry grin* Except that a Christian tenet is that God loves us. So we have a being being understanding who nonetheless feels an emotion comparable to human love (or incomparable according to some. His love is infinite, much as he is infinite). One could argue Anger and Wrath from the Old Testament too. *shrug* How much of this is God's actual emotions and how much is people anthropomorphizing him to be comfortable, goodness only knows.

Re:wrong Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Soko]

Read the words, but believe in the message.

IOW, think about what it is you're being taught, not the words landing on your retina.

Soko

Evolution

[Dire Bonobo]

> But it's hard to imagine such a laissez-faire creator having
> strong opinions about what we should do; if he cared he'd have
> taken an active role in our design!

Why?

Humans might be a convenient way to test the moral character of souls, with the precise details of what humanity turned out to be being essentially irrelevant.

> would have intervened on this one little planet to make us
> better at it! But evolution says this didn't happen.

No it doesn't.

Evolution simply says that organisms evolve to suit their environment. The changes they undergo by no means need to be optimal (witness the human eye), leaving tremendous scope for subtle direction of evolution.

Moreover, evolution could be indirectly controlled by controlling the environment itself, using anything from wild animal attacks (social cohesion for mutual defense) to natural disasters (altruism for survival of the group) to influence physical, mental, and social development of a species.

You seem to think that evolution says things it does not. At its core, it's really quite a simple theory: living organisms change in response to external forces, and those changes drive separated groups of organisms apart. God, or lack thereof, simply isn't addressed by the theory, and it's a mistake to claim otherwise, regardless which side of that debate you stand on.

Re:Evolution

[FreshFunk510]

You seem to think that evolution says things it does not. At its core, it's really quite a simple theory: living organisms change in response to external forces, and those changes drive separated groups of organisms apart. God, or lack thereof, simply isn't addressed by the theory, and it's a mistake to claim otherwise, regardless which side of that debate you stand on.

Exactly! I guess some people do get it!

Evolution, per se, is not a refutation of God. It is the story of how beings evolved. It's a story of how humans came to be. But it it purely scientific. It does not enter the religious domain.

Now if one were to use some sort of theological argument as far as why evolution is a refutation of God (e.g., it stands in direct contrast to what it says in the Bible and that Bible is the word of God) that would be a bit more plausible. But that's NOT what is goign on here.

And, finally, to address the original question of a "laissez-faire" God. Theoretically speaking, what's to say that God was laissez-faire about things? What's to say that he didn't intervene at each step? What's to say that God did not initiate the progress of evolution?

Missing link discovered!

[Anonymous Coward]

On a related note, the missing link between creationism and intelligent design was discovered by Barbara Forrest during the recent Kitzmiller v. Dover trial. It's name? cdesign proponentsists.

There's a difference.

[Ivan Matveitch]

You seem to want your children to learn and use popular scientific theories. But to understand science and its philosophical claims is something else entirely.

(Likewise, is the aim of history class to memorize the assertions of historians, or to learn to criticize them?)

Proof of Evolution - Religion Is Still Evolving

[Anonymous Coward]

Can someone explain why the Vatican policies keep changing over time? Are they simply a business and it's just marketing adjustments maximize customers/patrons? Or is the Catholic god (yes lowercase) really just a fickle prankster who and keeps changing the rules? I forget, is birth control banned or encouraged this year? Why did they stop that whole, buying forgivness for sins thing. Did too many people figure out the rules were different if you were rich?

Re:Evolution isn't a theory about the start of lif

[Darby]

I thought that was a joke, and it was pretty funny until I realized that it was actually meant to be serious.

Dude, seriously read through the rest of his crap. You will laugh, you will cry..you might even want to gouge your eyes out by the end, but that's not why I'm saying to read it ;-)

Science loves finding errors

[Dire Bonobo]

> Can you name any reputable scientific journals that would
> publish a paper that looked even slightly sympathetic to the
> Intelligent Design viewpoint, regardless of empirical data?

Based on my experience with publishing research, I suspect many of them would.

The thing is, scientists---and science in general---loves proving earlier work wrong. Every time an old theory is found to be inadequate, that (a) opens up a huge new area of research that's fresh and exciting to explore, and (b) means we're one step closer to truly understanding the universe. So science is very keen on disproving flawed theories, regardless of how well-established they might be.

Now, admittedly, many scientists, especially the older ones, aren't too keen on seeing the theory they've based 30 years of work on crumble before their eyes. Fortunately, new scientists are being trained all the time, and come into the discussion with fresh eyes, fresh ideas, less vested interest, and a deep desire to shake the foundations of science ('cuz that's what makes you a rock star in the world of science). So they will fully poke holes in old, cherished theories, regardless of whether the old scientists want them to or not.

And, once a theory has enough holes poked in it, it no longer carries weight among new scientists (and the better old scientists) - it's no longer a cherished theory, just a flawed one that needs to be fixed.

Frankly, if you believe science resists unpopular ideas for decades simply because scientists don't like them, you aren't terribly familiar with science. Even the examples of theories which truly did shake the foundations of science, and which really were strongly resisted by the most influential scientists of their day---such as quantum theory---were quickly adapted by many, and after evidence accumulated (and maybe a few older guys died off...) wholly accepted by the scientific community.

Young scientists love to rock the scientific boat, so if your pet theory hasn't gained any traction in the scientific community, it ain't for lack of people looking for good new theories. That's why anyone who says "the Scientific Establishment is ignoring this brilliant theory!" is almost always a crackpot---if the theory really were that good, some young scientists with little or nothing to lose would have seized on it as their ticket to success, especially considering how tough the competition is for jobs and money in many fields. Groundbreaking new theories are the chart-toppers, best-sellers, and blockbusters of the science world---everybody dreams of having one, and ain't likely to pass up that chance lightly.

If your theory ain't gettin' scientific interest, it ain't science that's the problem. Get evidence for the theory, or get used to being ignored.

Re:Science loves finding errors

[Anonymous Coward]

Based on my experience with publishing research, I suspect many of them would.

I personally don't do natural science; I do computer science, so this isn't a problem I have to deal with. What I hear from creationist/ID scientists, however, is if they want a shot at having their research published, they dress it in the language of evolution, use accepted evolutionary assumptions and frameworks, and so on. If they want to publish the same research with a creationist gloss, they get creationist peers to review it. The empirical data need not differ between the two papers; only the interpretation given to the data.

Or, to put it another way, are your suspicions backed by data? Have you tried to publish a paper with an Intelligent Design slant? Do you know anyone who has tried? I'd suppose not. I think if you put your theory to the test, you'd encounter contrary data.

Jesus actually does address this point.

[Ivan Matveitch]

There was a man who had two sons. The younger of them said to his father, 'Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me.' So he divided his property between them. A few days later the younger son gathered all he had and traveled to a distant country, and there he squandered his property in dissolute living.

When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs. He would gladly have filled himself with the pods that the pigs were eating; and no one gave him anything.

But when he came to himself he said, 'How many of my father's hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger! I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands."' So he set off and went to his father.

But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him. Then the son said to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.'

But the father said to his slaves, 'Quickly, bring out a robe -- the best one -- and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!'

And they began to celebrate.

In other words, a Christian would probably answer that it is we who keep God away at a "safe distance."

(And anyway, is there much moral vagueness in the proposal "love your neighbor?")

Re:Jesus actually does address this point.

[rufty_tufty]

The problem with that argment that we keep god away, is that it contradicts with other concepts.
Taking your example above the child stays away from his father. However There are literally billions on the earth accepting god as their saviour and therefore looking and searching and wanting to be with him, but scant actual evidence of this other than something that could be explained by a feeling they make up to make themselves feel better.
There are people all over the world looking for answers, trying to find "him" (If he is the answer), but he's not giving anything back. Again in the above example that's a child who's lost his way home and is looking and although his father can see the child he just sits back and lets the child wander around lost.
Similarly whether you take the belief that a child is born innocent or not, part of the baptism ritual as I understood it was to be washed away of sin and born again. This would then open you up to receive god. So that ritual is supposed to let you find your way home as per above example. Yet it clearly doesn't because there is no evidence of god having any greater effect on their lives after this ritual other than could be explained by a change in the receiver's attitude.
Yes I know faith isn't supposed to require evidence, but a loving caring parent is supposed to help their children and that to me a strong contradiction in contemporary christian faith.

Er... I was speaking of fundies...

[SeanDuggan]

Perhaps I am confused as to your meaning, but my intention was to comment on how many Christian sects have incorrect beliefs about Catholics like the "saint worship" and their viewing of societies like the Knights of Columbus as "secret societies." *shrug* That said, it seems you've got a serious anger on for any sect of Christianity.

Re:Er... I was speaking of fundies...

[Darby]

but my intention was to comment on how many Christian sects have incorrect beliefs about Catholics like the "saint worship" and their viewing of societies like the Knights of Columbus as "secret societies."

Ahhh. I took you more literally than you intended I guess.

I thought you were...commenting rather than "commenting on" if you get my meaning.

I only have anger for any sect of anything when they try to push it on me and mine.

I'm not a fan of the Catholic Church because they have used their position mainly for murder, oppression and their own power for millenia. I'm not a fan of Fundie churches because they're trying to destroy every principle this country was founded on.. you know that dirty word.. Liberalism.

Sorry if I misinterpreted what you were saying, I just have morals and I don't see any of that in what any churches I see are pushing. Quite the opposite.
Feel free to correct me if you think I'm mistaken.

Science and theology

[Dire Bonobo]

> Exactly. Don't force your atheism on me or my children, please.

Science is not atheism.

Science is "here is how the world appears to work, based on our observations, and here is a method for continuing to expand our knowledge."

Atheism is "there is no god".

Science does not discuss divinity or lack thereof, only our observations of the world around us. That world may have been made by God, or not - science does not address that point, regardless of what theists might fear and fundamentalist atheists might wish.

If that's your sole concern, you're in good shape - theism and atheism are subjects of theology, which is a different field from science.

Where you run into problems, though, is when one field is inappropriately applied to the other, such as an atheist saying "humans evolved from apes, so there is no god" or a theist saying "God created man in His image, so evolution must not happen". The former is a bogus theological argument, and hence has no place (as written) in a well-run theological class. The latter is a bogus scientific argument, and hence has no place in a well-run science class.

The problem that this thread is addressing is that people are trying to use bogus arguments like the latter to push theology into science classes; preventing that from occurring is not extolling atheism, it's simply keeping theology out of science class. Extolling atheism would be putting the former argument ("evolution means no god") in a science class, which would also be pushing theology into a science class, and hence would be bad for exactly the same reason.

So, if that---"evolution means no god"---is what is being taught in your children's science classes, then you do indeed have cause to complain. If their classes are teaching "evolution is the way the world works" without discussing the theological implications of it, though, then they are correctly leaving theology for theology classes instead of science classes, and you have no grounds for complaint.

Some people complain anyway, though, which makes their intentions pretty clear---they want theology (their theology, of course) taught in science class. That's forcing their beliefs, and that's just as bad as forcing "God is dead" on your children.

Is the distinction clear?

Re:wrong Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Darby]

Where do you get the idea that God screwed up?

Well from the people who claim he's all knowing, all powerful, and *benevolent* of course ;-)

"Christian Science" is not "Scientology"

[LaminatorX]

"Scientology" is based on the teachings of L. Ron Hubbard. They claim that their "Dianetic" practices free you from spiritual baggage left over from an alien massacre before the dawn of history, and that psychology is a horrible fraud. They're the ones who sue people all the time, recruit celebrities, and have big ostentatious temples. Find out more at Operation Clambake.

"Christian Science" is based on the teachings of Jesus, as interpreted by Mary Baker Eddy. They're kind of like gnostics, is gnosticism were invented by a Presbyterian woman in the Southeast in the 19th century. They believe in solving worldly problems through spiritual means so as to trancend the illusion of the material world and grow closer to God (that's why they don't go to the doctor). They operate quiet reading rooms and an highly respected news organization

Big difference.

Evidence

[Dire Bonobo]

> supporters of Evolution are unwilling to admit to any kind
> of dichotomy between macro and micro evolution.

Define "macro" and "micro".

Speciation? Evidence is out there.

Gross physiological changes, like many-legs (centipede) to 6-legs (ant)? Found the gene

There's a pretty good transitional fossil record for several species showing many steps of macroevolution, such as horses (gradual change from multi-toed and small to single-external-toed and large) and humans, so there is reasonably strong fossil evidence for macroevolution, as well as the above predictive and experimental evidence.

Hence, since there does exist this reasonably strong evidence that macroevolution can and does occur, it becomes reasonable to ask what evidence suggests that it does not occur. Do you know of any?

> That bad ideas are good ideas if none better can be found

Why is macroevolution a priori a bad idea? If it fits the observed data (it does) and has demonstrated predictive power (it does) and is supported by experimental evidence (it is), then why is it bad? (It may indeed be, but that's a claim you'll need to substantiate.)

> How would data pointing to an intelligent designer differ
> from data pointing to randomness?

Quality of the resulting designs.

Standard examples are the human eye (the retina would not need a blind spot if it were installed the other way around; it's inefficient compared to the reflective-coated eyes of cats and other animals, etc.), the appendix, the prostate gland (prone to infection and dangerously constricts the urinary tract when that happens), and so on.

Some would interpret bad designs like these as evidence of "whatever works first" randomness, rather than careful and intelligent crafting of a pinnacle of creation.

Read the first link I gave - there is strong experimental evidence for speciation in the "reproductive isolation" sense. Macroevolution has pretty strong evidence in favour of it; I don't see why that's a challenge to your faith, though. Does it really matter whether the earth is 6000 or 5 billion years old? Does it really matter if animals were created in a day or an eon? Does it really matter if man was created in an instant or over millenia? Are those the really important questions that faith addresses?

Not if you're Christian, they're not. Christ didn't talk a whole lot about where the earth and animals came from, but he did speak at length about how we should interact with each other, and with God. Those who hold doggedly to a literal interpretation of the Bible while glossing over the actual content of Jesus's message would likely get much the same treatment as the Pharisees---which is to say, quite the surprise in the afterlife. Something to consider.

The Mystery of Male and Female

[Anonymous Coward]

The Mystery of Male and Female

Genesis 5:2

He created them male and female, and blessed them and called them Mankind in the day they were created.

"God created them male and female." That simple phrase heaps a world of problems on those who believe in evolution.

Evolutionists tell us that in the early stages evolution would have produced creatures that reproduce without the need for male and female. They then suppose that some mutation would have produced the gender differences, but what advantage would these differences offer? Quite the contrary, these differences would be a disadvantage and become quickly selected out. An even more serious problem is that, according to evolution's history of life, the male and female sexes must have selected in different kinds of creatures dozens of times.

No one has the slightest idea how one or a dozen mutations could have produced male and female. To change a creature from having no gender into a male or a female requires developing several new organs, changing some others, creating entire new hormone systems, and changing others. New organs and systems would have to be immediately integrated into the workings of the rest of the body. In addition, the independently developed male changes would have to work with the independently developed female changes. Changes would also have to be made in the brains of the new creatures so that they would want to mate with each other. And evolutionists tell us this must have happened dozens of times!

Yes, that simple phrase "God created them male and female" leaves evolution with an imponderable mystery. This mystery is solved easily by God's Word. What a mistake it is to say that the Bible is obsolete in our modern scientific era!

---------------

The message above happened to be from today's (2005.11.08) daily newsletter from Creation Moments http://www.creationmoments.net/

I love this newsletter.
The evidence presented through it, usually in the form of commentaries on scientific journals, present the endless intricacies of God's creative work. The closer you look at the details of His work, the more amazed you will become and the sillier evolution will look to you.

Re:wrong Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[samjam]

I'd say the fact that throughout its history it has always been used as a scam,
It's the word "always" that troubles me here. I'm here to conradict you.

strong indicators that it's a scam
I thought we were talking about multiple occasions, I'm suggesting not all are scams.

Add in the fact that none of this would have been possible had god chosen not to speak in contradictory riddles
Now you are suggesting the riddles are a result of gods malice and not of the scam-mongers of the corrupt church. Is there a need to make this shift?

But yes, knowing what horrors in life free-choice would lead to he went ahead with it. On what terms are you willing to maintain your own freedom?
Read from genesis where the earth groans under the sin of mankind and asks God how long it will have to suffer. What is the reason horrors are permitted to be comitted and sufferred by mankind? A brief answer would suggest that for 100 years out of eternity the benefits outweight the pains; but in case you think God is callous in this realise that his son, by whom he created the earth also lived on it, and before his death on calvary suffered all the pains and ills and sins of mankind, "so that he might know how to succor his people" and in order to bring the "rights of mercy" so that ignorant mankind that wreaks the horrors may receive a change of heart, be forgiven and be new people, not condemned to live under their mistakes.

And the thing is, there is proof of god, and this is testified strongly by people who have received the change of heart.

Wwhy do you think you know what would prove god to you? You would one day say "this will prove it" and then later say "ah, no, I see now how that could be faked, I need something else". If proof were so "readily" availble to would be confused with natural every day occurances so that it would not be easily noticed "it's always been like that" or, on the otherhand if "unusual" proofs were common it would be difficult to learn anything "scientific" in such an unpredicatable world "weird magic stuff is always happening, don't try to understand it."

But there is a proof that will be to your satisfaction, and god will give it to you when you want to know. How badly do you want to know? How much are you willing to change if you find out? Or should god condemn you now with truth that you are not willing to follow. He has said "line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little, there a little", we learn as fast as we are willing to obedient to what we know.

As the purpose of this life is for us to be able to change our hearts and willing choose good over evil it would defeat the purpose to force it on you and lay the evidence too plain.

But the evidence is available, and very satisfactory, when you want it; and there are plenty who have it which is why they are unswayed by your convincing arguments - they and I know something that you do not know. We *would* say what you say, if we didn't know what we did.

I testify strongly that god will reveal himself to you if you want to know.
Why "testify"? Because until you receive the evidence and try the experiment, the testimony of those who have tried it is the best evidence you have that it isn't all fakery. You can imagine that in some way I am deceived, and I know what you are talking about, but I can say of myself that its not that because I tried it and it is good.

Sam

Evolution is just another area in philosophy

[agapits]

Why? because even if you have thousands and millions of evidences, no one can make a sound conclusion that one form evolved into another. We don't have the capacity to recreate/test those "predictions" to see if the evidences are really linked to each other. It's like lining up thousands and millions of faces that have "great similarities" or are "80%/90% similar" to each other and conclude that the people who own those faces belong to one family. So this evolution thing is just another religion or philosophy being taught in a science classroom.

Re:wrong Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[SirPavlova]

This is why people despise the fundamentalists.

I know a fellow who thinks the NIV is not to be trusted - only the original KJV is good enough. It's absolute, & divinely inspired to be perfect. If you went up to him with something from the real originals, he'd take the KJV over it. He's the sort of person raider_red was talking about in your grandparent post, the ones who need to believe it literally to continue believing. His mind doesn't have a robust, flexible architecture, I guess you might say.

But he still has no beard.

It's a pity this sort are the ones who get noticed, but it's understandable.

Plasticene

[Astronomypete]

We all know God was just playing with his pleistocene.

Wow. That's complicated and I'm not a "reader"

[Anonymous Coward]

So I'll just say. Your site must be wrong because it is clearly biased. Besides "It must have been magic" is just so much simpler. That there might be benefits to the heretical "not magic" point of view is irrelevant because it's complicated and all takes place nearly wholly out of sight, and over long periods of time composed almost entirely of failure with only infrequent success. So, as you can see, it's just easier to credit God's magic with the innovations you heathens claim as the hard labors of a great many so-called talented people. I do this not because I'm unreasonable, and long term planning is something that's taken care of for me invisibly on a personal level, to say nothing of a larger community, let alone one who's efforts account for nearly one fifth of all human economic activity. It saves me time. Oh look Lost is on.

Patents as the new fundamentalism?

[Anonymous Coward]

Paraphrasing...

For software and business method patents so much hangs on definitions or, more importantly, the lack thereof. Proponents spend a lot of time pounding the table and making arguments, but here are a few terms they use that are really never properly defined: "Technical", "Novel", "Skilled in the art". You'll note that almost all their arguments hinge on vague, implicit, and imprecise definitions of these terms.

ID is a theory...

[Anonymous Coward]

ID predicts that if one switches off the Inteligent Disigner, evolution would stop. So all we have to do to test ID, is to switch off the Inteligent Disigner, and see what happens to speed of evolution.

Now how we're supposed to switch of the Disigner I don't know, but maybe those that support ID as a theory can explain more about that.

Re:It's about friggin' time someone figured it out

[arminw]

.....And besides, last I checked, a week is like a few billion years to him....

According to the Bible, God's time scale is more like a day to a thousand years. (Psalm90, 2Peter3) The Bible only directly mentions time scales in the thousands of years. Nowhere are numbers in the millions or billions mentioned.

When anyone is skeptical of how complex structures such as the human eye-brain system can come into existence by any means not involving the activity of a mind, the answer is always the same. Time, uninaginably huge periods of time, millions or billions of years.

Measuring time requires a clock. One clock used to date things is radioactivity of certain elements. The assumption is (faith) that the rate of decay has remained constant or at least known over the period of time in question. There is increasing evidence that these decay rates have changed and are still changing. Whatever other clocks might be used also have to be questioned whether they have maintained the tick rate we see today.

Nobody would propose that a complex man created device like a computer or airplane, or even a simple one like a pencil came into being without processes involving the human mind. Yet when it comes to the incredible complexity of the living world or the laws and parameters of physics, it all came into existence by *any* other means except the activity of a mind.

So many basic relationships of physics are interrelated, such that if any one of them were changed, we would not exist. Evolution theory claims that it operates by natural laws, but it never explains where these laws came from.

To me it is much easier to believe that a great mind conceived of and brought into being the laws that govern the universe and then, according to these laws directed the creation, much as outlined in Genesis.

Appropriate morals?

[I am Jack's username]

> The Bible is not a text to tell us what
> we can figure out for ourselves. It is a
> text for the purpose of telling us the
> appropriate morals upon which we can build
> a lasting society.

Can we not figure out what is moral ourselves? Why should we follow the advice of Genesis?:

Bigamy? 4:19...
Treat people the way Hagar was treated? 16:3, 6, 21:10
Treat your daughters like Lot did? 19:8
Incest is sometimes okay? 20:12, 17:16
Sacrifice your oldest son? 22:2
Concubines are okay for some? 25:6
Extermination and genocide is sometimes okay? 7:21...
Slavery 17:12-27...

see what other parts of the Bible have to say

[csmatyi]

Another good idea:

Why don't we look at other parts of the Bible, since every Bible verse must support all other Bible verses. This is a very basic Protestant concept about the Bible. Let's see what other parts of the Bible have to say about the creation account. They mention Biblical people such as Adam, Eve, Cain, Abel, the serpent, Noah, and a few people from the geneologies. If these people weren't real, then the Bible is just talking into thin air. No, the Bible talks about reality, real events which happened in space and time which affect the world we live in. Take a check, everyone!

For example take a look at how chock-full the Psalms and Revelation are with such verses! Until now I had thought that the Psalms were simply just poetry, but now I realize that since they refer back to creation many times, then what really happened when the authors of the Psalms wrote down their message was that they were referring back to the events of creation, and were referring to the glory of God as manifested in them.

1Mos.=Genesis, 2Mos.=Exodus, 4Mos.Numbers, 5Mos.=Deutoronomy

1Mos. 12,1-1Mos. 50,26: 12,1-5; 14,19-22; 20,3-7; 23,3-20; 25,7
2Mos.: 1,1-7; 16,1-36; 31, 14-17; 34,21; 35,2-3
4Mos.: 13,21-29; 33,39
5Mos.: 4,32; 5,12-14; 9,2; 17,2-3; 31,1; 32,4.6.15
Joshua: 14,11; 24,29
Judges: 2,8
1Sam.: 2,8
2Kings.: 19,15
1Chron.: 11,1
Job: 33,4
Psalms.: 8,1-10; 19,2-3; 33,4-9; 35,4-9; 86,8-10; 90,2-10; 93,2; 94,2; 100,3.26-27; 105,23-24; 134,3; 136,5-9; 148,5-6
Prov.: 3,19-20; 14,26.31; 17,5
Eccl.: 7,29; 8,1-15
Is.: 43,1-7; 51,12-13
Jer.: 10, 10-16
Hos.: 6,7
Joel: 2,3
Hab.: 1,12
Zak.: 12,1
Matt: 13,24-30.35; 17,2; 19,4-8; 23,25
Mark.: 10,6-8; 13,19; 16,15
Luke.: 2,9; 11,40.50-51; 17,26-27
John.: 1,1-3.10; 17,5.24
Acts.: 3,21; 4,24; 14,17
Rom.: 1,20-25; 4,17; 8,19-22.39
1Chor.: 8,6; 11,8-9
2Chor.: 4,6; 11,3
Gal.: 6,16
Ef.: 3,9-10
Kol.: 1,15-17
2Tim.: 1,10
Heb.: 1,2-3.10-12; 4,3-4.13; 9,26; 11,3-7; 12,27; 13,25-27
Jak.: 1,18; 3,9
1Pt.: 1,10.20; 3,20; 4,19
2Pt.: 2,4-5; 3,4-7
Judas.: 6.11.14-15
Rev: 2,7; 3,14; 4,11; 5,13; 8,9; 10,6; 13,8; 14,7; 17,8; 21,1-6.23.25; 22,1-3.5

Demonstration of strength.

[CinAlias]

Individuals fiercely defend their religion, be it Christianity or Linux; because their own opinions are so flawed they need to argue and confirm their beliefs. Debates are either started to ultimately improve something, or to satisfy weak fools. Believe it or not, I found the article about Bees using body heat to defend their hives more interesting than the inexhaustible supply of operating system and religion debates.

Re:I don't see the big deal behind intelligent des

[naasking]

Does it really matter how many C's preceded the first C? Furthermore if you cut it anywhere after the second statement you're left with the same question, "Why did C occur?". So this provides no extra value to the argument. Why are the C's in an infinite sequence? Why did it suddenly (and apparently randomly) break away from repeating C's to cause B? Could it be that all those C's aren't really C's, but actually differ? If so what was the first instance that started it?

Right, this makes sense. And yet there are still two problems:

1. What if A and B are in a constant causal loop. There is no logical inconsistency here is there? If so, then a causal loop of arbitrary length is also consistent. A causes B causes C causes ... causes A ... ad infinitum.
2. A cause can have more than one effect, while an effect has only one cause.

This is important, because I have logical "proofs of God" which are predicated on the assumptions that an infinite regression of causes is impossible. Hatcher never explained why in his lecture however, and I can't think of why the universe couldn't logically have existed forever (ignoring physical reasons such as thermodynamics for the moment -- it could simply be a case of ignorance of the mechanism involved in reducing entropy).

Eliminating infinite regressions forces one to acknowledge a moment of creation. A moment of creation implies a creative element of some kind G as described in the proof (which Hatcher calls God). So I'm trying to understand whether the assumption on avoiding infinite regressions is valid.

Re:It's about friggin' time someone figured it out

[nmaster64]

Indeed, I agree. To what degree you believe God played his hand in our creation is a matter of your own faith, but I personally agree with you. I personally find it hard to believe that humans evolved naturally, I think it was done with a bit of divine intervention. I still believe we came about through evolution, but I think it was a sort of guided evolution. God knew what he wanted and set all the conditions so he would get his desired result...man...

Re:Forget it! Zeus did it and is still doing it!

[erroneus]

We have many... some very ancient gods such as Kernigan and Ritchie. Some newer such as the lord of Google. Some to be pittied as in the god of SCO and others to be feared as the god of Microsoft.

Re:wrong Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Scrameustache]

If you know it's a scam, tell us how you know!

Moses was the king's younger brother. Worse, the king's adopted brother (meaning that even if the true heir died, Moses would never get the throne).
So, he ran off with the workforce to start his own country.

Pharaoh said he was the avatar of the greatest god, and he could make the Nile rise and retreat, Moses said HIS god was greater, and he could make the SEA retreat and rise a few hours later!
But, tell me, what do desert slaves know about tides? Didly-squat is what: Never seen the sea, never been to school... easy marks.

And you don't believe me. And you think I'm nuts.

I do believe you, and I don't thikn you'Re nuts. I just think you've been mislead into believing an age old lie, because it's comforting. It would be really nice if there was an immortal Jesus to make everything allright, it really would.

Re:wrong Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Anonymous Coward]

blah blah Free Will blah blah blah

Still don't get it

[snowwrestler]

eg.: Why the heck would a bacteria have a flagellum that is missing the few cells to make it move? It would be a waste of tissue and be discarded by natural selection. And why would it, inversely, have spinning cells unless there was a flagellum to spin?

Natural selection does not select against "wastes of tissue"; it selects against attributes that create a competitive disadvantage against the other organisms within the environment. In other words if a structure is useless but not disadvantageous, it stays.

"Either Newton or Einstein is right about gravity; it can't be both and it can't be piecemeal."
Of course they can....oh wait...I get it...that's why you can't comprehend my argument. My argument is evolution and intelligent design can both be true.

Perhaps in your head they can. But scientifically they cannot. Scientifically, general relativity is the (currently most) correct theory of gravity. It completely replaced Newtonian gravity.

Yes, we still use Newtonian gravity as a good approximation in everyday life. BUT that is not the same as saying "both theories are true." To a physicist, general relavity is accurate, Newtonian gravity is a limited approximation.

Put another way, each new theory replaces and "contains" the old. General relativity doesn't just describe the things that Newtonion gravity doesn't...it ALSO describes everything that Newtonian gravity already did. We use Newtonian gravity for high school physics and for terrestrial engineering because it is "close enough." But ultimately, scientifically, it is wrong.

Likewise genetics/natural selection is currently "true" to a biologist. If you assert that supernatural forces can trump natural forces, it would effect a complete replacement of natural selection. Let's say that natural selection remains a good approximation for 99.9999% of all cases. That doesn't mean it's "correct" for those cases, just that it is a good approximation.

So let's can the "both are right" BS, and acknowledge what ID proponents are truly after--complete replacement of objective science with supernatural belief in school classrooms around the nation. What a great idea! After all, the U.S. is falling behind in science and engineering, which only happen to be the source of our military and economic strength, while all of Asia is rocketing ahead. What better solution than to compromise our science education programs to satisfy a vocal religious minority.

Re:wrong Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[samjam]

I respect you because of this explanation, although I think it falls short of the detail.

Superficially it shows why the interested parties might have perpetrated a fraud (or whatever they would call it) but it does not show that this was indeed the case beyond my understanding of the detail. We will no doubt disagree on this and perhaps some people who have studied it more will say we have both missed out some essential consideration; but you answered my point in an understandable way.

To your final point; some people do hold to things blindly because they are comforting, but this observation provides no information on the truth of the comforting doctrine. A question that remains is: if there was a god, how would we know given that we don't yet know. (I ask these type of questions in general fashion, not just directed to you)

anyway.... how do such conversations end, while still polite?

cheers

Sam

Evolution has 6 distinct definitions!

[Lerxst Pratt]

Taken from Dr. Dino:

1) Cosmic evolution: the origin of time, space and matter. Big Bang.
2) Chemical evolution: the origin of higher elements from hydrogen.
3) Stellar and planetary evolution: Origin of stars and planets.
4) Organic evolution: Origin of life from inanimate matter.
5) Macroevolution: Origin of major kinds.
6) Microevolution Variations within kinds: Only this one has been observed, the first five are religious.

If you think you can prove Evolution with facts, take the $250,000.00 challenge (not a joke).

For those into an enlightening multimedia experience, try watching these seminars.

FYI, I am a Catholic that was taught evolution and creation in school. I am not affiliated with the Dr. Dino site in any way. These videos absolutely blew me away. If you're a Christian, watch them. If not, watch them anyway just to see both sides of the Evolution/Creation issue so that you may intelligently debate with cold, hard facts.

Re:Evolution has 6 distinct definitions!

[WiFiBro]

The DrDino challenge has carefully been crafted so it is impossible to win. "Prove beyond reasonable doubt that the process of evolution (option 3 above, under "known options") is the only possible way the observed phenomena could have come into existence." He will always be able to say 'no i don't buy your proof, II have reasonable doubt, I say GOD is another option".
Meanwhile he will walk around like a peacock believing he makes sense and baffled all scientists.

I think he manages to stash the most logical fallacies in one page I have ever seen. Start looking at what he calls 'Observed Phenomena'. Then he lists a very subjective list of values. Bah.

Re:Evolution has 6 distinct definitions!

[Lerxst Pratt]

I guess you missed the part about having a committee of scientists to review the evidence as opposed to Dr. Hovind (Dr. Dino) himself. Whether Dr. Hovind believes the evidence or not is completely irrelevant. Also, did you watch the free videos? Any scientists worth their salt would behoove themselves to take an honest look at the overwhelming evidence he provides to form a more comprehensive view of the issue.

Re:Evolution has 6 distinct definitions!

[WiFiBro]

You're serious?

"The members of the committee [...] a zoologist, a geologist, an aerospace engineer, a professor of radiology and biophysics, and an expert in radio metric dating to name a few. [...] I will not reveal their names [...]"

Most likely his friends from church.

I consider myself worth my salt and i see a page full of flawed logic, suggestive misleading phrasing and a not so hidden agenda:
"Nearly all responses to my $250,000 offer go something like this: "Of course no one can prove evolution, can you prove creation?" This response is what I expected and wanted. Neither theory of origins can be proven. Both involve a great deal of faith in the unseen."

It is impossible to win that alleged pile of money by the conditions the doctor sets.

Re:Wow. That's complicated and I'm not a "reader"

[Anonymous Coward]

"Oh look Lost is on."

Oh, the irony.

#!#!#

religious right?

[anomaly]

Perhaps you're understanding of the 'religious right' differs from mine. I am certain that I would be described as a member of the religious right, although I don't have a membership card, and am uncertain of the definition of such an 'organization.'

I think that we are in agreement that there should be a hierarchy of ideas. Some ideas have merit, and others are complete tripe. Speaking in philosophical terms, I think that the problem is far more related to relativism than it is to fundamentalist Christianity.

In our current post-modern world, since there's no such thing as absolute truth, no one has the right to claim their ideas as being of more value than anyone else's.

In my world view, all people have equal value (some contribute more than others) but ideas have differing values from an absolute sense.

The core issue (as I mentioned in a post above) is that those with a distinctly non-christian world view have hijacked the courts and the educational system in the US and are using it to indoctrinate the next generation with muck.

One component of that muck is the concept that all life spontaneously appeared from essentially nothing. This is NOT a scientific view. It is a speculative view. It is non falsifiable, and not testable. It is not science. And yet, it is taught in the science classroom. Why? I cannot say. Since the materialistic naturalists demand their philosophy be taught in the classroom, ID proponents want their view taught there as well.

I'm not asking you to agree with me, but am curious to know if you can follow this line of reasoning.

Also, when you rail against the abuses of the religious right, I'd ask you to consider whether any other world view would allow as much freedom as is available to people of all stripes here in the US. I submit to you that any other ideological view would be far worse in terms of freedom. History (and modern-day) is replete with examples.

Respectfully,
Anomaly

Re:religious right?

[terjeber]

In our current post-modern world, since there's no such thing as absolute truth, no one has the right to claim their ideas as being of more value than anyone else's.

This is in fact where you are wrong, and this is also one of the main problems with the US at the moment. For a great article on the subject, I recommend the current Esquire, the article is called "Idiot America".

You are correct that there is no absolute truth, not unless you set up a framework in which this absolute truth is absolute truth by definition. For example, in the framework of mathematics, 2+2 is 4, and that is absolute truth. Within the framework of the world, the fact of Evolution as a process is absolute truth since it has been observed. We could argue that observation doesn't validate and that our world is only a figment of our imagination, but then all discussions become absurd.

The second part of your statement is that no ideas have more value than others is just plain absurd. I can claim that gravity doesn't exist, but I can't claim that my idea about gravity has the same value as the ideas of Newton.

The absurd notion that any idea, as long as enough people believe in it or if the few who do believe in it do so with enough fervor validates that idea or lifts its value to a higher level is simply utter nonsense.

Sadly the christian right have embarked upon yet another crusade against science. This is not the first time, the last time you guys imprisoned and murdered scientists that dared challenge your world view. Today you don't have enough power to do so, but that doesn't faze you, you still try to ban all teachings of science from our schools. Should you succeed you will set social and echonomical development in this country back at least 100 years.

The core issue (as I mentioned in a post above) is that those with a distinctly non-christian world view have hijacked the courts and the educational system in the US and are using it to indoctrinate the next generation with muck.

The horrifying truth is that the exact opposite is in fact true, and this is well documented. Over the past 20 years or so the extreme right, let's call you guys by your right name, the American Taliban, have filled courts across the country with right-wing religious judges, and education boards with right-wing christian nutcases (look at what happened tonight in Kansas). The idea is that, in complete defiance of the ideas of the founding fathers, the American Taliban wishes to create a Christian Fundament to build a new USA on. This fundament is diametrically opposite to the fundament the founding fathers used, and the poor guys must be spinning in their graves each time a religious nut uses the phrase "founding fathers".

One component of that muck is the concept that all life spontaneously appeared from essentially nothing. This is NOT a scientific view.

You are absolutely correct, this is not a scientific idea, it is a complete absurd notion about what science says that exists only in your head. This is called a straw-man attack. You live in a world of astonishing ignorance, you conjure up ideas about what science is, completely independent of what it actually is, and then you attack those ideas. Sadly there is probably nothing that can be done to fix this flaw in you.

Also, when you rail against the abuses of the religious right, I'd ask you to consider whether any other world view would allow as much freedom as is available to people of all stripes here in the US.

The works of the "founding fathers" when they created this great nation is unparallelled in history, both before and essentially after what they did. When creating a nation there were a few things that were extremely important to them, and those views had a significant impact on the country in which you and I live today. These are some of the important notions they had, and what impact it had on our country

• The failure of the Greek society was

Re:religious right?

[anomaly]

Look, there's little point in dialog if we're planning to resort to character assassination and name-calling. We can respectfully disagree, and perhaps even come to some common understanding, but *not* when you make wild accusations and criticize the character of people you do not know, and whose opinions you do not understand.

As a bible-believing Christian, I know many people believe that the Bible reliable, are intelligent and thoughtful people who in fact are good scientists. Christianity is not diametrically opposed to science. Many many many of the major contributions to scientific knowledge have come at the hands of scientists who were (or are) Christians.

When you say You are correct that there is no absolute truth you are making a claim of absolute truth. Talk about absurd ideas!

Respectfully,
Anomaly

Re:wrong Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Scrameustache]

Superficially it shows why the interested parties might have perpetrated a fraud (or whatever they would call it) but it does not show that this was indeed the case beyond my understanding of the detail.

Well, no, it's not proof. I just think it's... obvious.
One guy had some much to gain, and he was offering so much to people who had nothing to loose, that what he said didn't have to be true for them to believe it: They were desperate.

anyway.... how do such conversations end, while still polite?

Er... agree to disagree? : )

Re:I don't see the big deal behind intelligent des

[Dictator For Life]

Nice rip from context, given the fact that I addressed that in the very same paragraph! Here, I'll quote it for you since you seem to be integrity-challenged yourself:

I wrote, concerning laboratory experiments that might provide that reproducibility: And even if they did exist, that would only demonstrate a *possible* explanation of our existence, since none of us was there to see exactly how it actually happened.

How about some facts?

[jccampana]

It seems my last comment got lost amongst the crowd (maybe mob is a better noun). I hope this one will not. It is probably the most important question in this entire article discussion. Please allow me to repeat the question: -------> What was the context of the comments by the Vatican officials? Does anyone know where we can find a transcript of what the Vatican officials said at this press conference? I find it hard to believe that we have so many comments posted here, and there is not a single person that actually knows what is going on. Not one human being that is posting on this slashdot discussion even knows the whole story about what the Vatican officials said? We are ripping each other apart about pieces of comments and half-quotes? A slice of a press conference has about as much fact as a severed finger has quality of life. Anyone here think facts are important? It doesn't seem like it. How sad. Context? Facts? Anyone? Links would be nice. Here's a few relevant facts that makes many of the posts in this discussion irrelevant: Fact #1 - The news conference was about the study of harmony between theology and science in a project called "Science, Theology and the Ontological Question" http://www.stoqnet.org/index_e.html. Fact #2 - A sharp distinction was drawn by one of the cardinals between the scientific theory of evolution and the metaphysical position of "evolutionism" Evolutionism is a naturalistic philosophy referred to by the late Pope John Paul II in paragraph 54 of his document 'Fides et ratio' http://www.vatican.va/edocs/ENG0216/_INDEX.HTM. Evolutionism is an anti-theistic metaphysical view that says only chance and natural forces are the complete explanation for the universe and everything that exists in it. http://www.nationalcatholicreporter.org/word/#four . (Evolutionism seems to be roughly equivalent to the philosophical view of secular modernity.) On the news conference transcript, I've been looking for two days and have come up with nothing. Maybe it's hidden in a digital news vault that costs $500 to access? Anybody with serious 'internet news saavy' here that can help us out? Can someone please shed some light on this discussion with some more facts? So that we can have what has been missing all along: an informed discussion. Anyone in for some quality dialogue here?

Re:How about some facts?

[jccampana]

Sorry about the format above, I'm new here.

It seems my last comment got lost amongst the crowd (maybe mob is a better noun). I hope this one will not.

It is probably the most important question in this entire article discussion.

Please allow me to repeat the question: -------> What was the context of the comments by the Vatican officials?

Does anyone know where we can find a transcript of what the Vatican officials said at this press conference? I find it hard to believe that we have so many comments posted here, and there is not a single person that actually knows what is going on. Not one human being that is posting on this slashdot discussion even knows the whole story about what the Vatican officials said? We are ripping each other apart about pieces of comments and half-quotes? A slice of a press conference has about as much fact as a severed finger has quality of life.

Anyone here think facts are important? It doesn't seem like it. How sad. Context? Facts? Anyone? Links would be nice.

Here's a few relevant facts:

Fact #1 - The news conference was about the study of harmony between theology and science in a project called "Science, Theology and the Ontological Question" http://www.stoqnet.org/index_e.html.

Fact #2 - A sharp distinction was drawn by one of the cardinals between the scientific theory of evolution and the metaphysical position of "evolutionism" Evolutionism is a naturalistic philosophy referred to by the late Pope John Paul II in paragraph 54 of his document 'Fides et ratio' http://www.vatican.va/edocs/ENG0216/_INDEX.HTM. Evolutionism is an anti-theistic metaphysical view that says only chance and natural forces are the complete explanation for the universe and everything that exists in it. http://www.nationalcatholicreporter.org/word/#four . (Evolutionism seems to be roughly equivalent to the philosophical view of secular modernity.)

On the news conference transcript, I've been looking for two days and have come up with nothing. Maybe it's hidden in a digital news vault that costs $500 to access? Anybody with serious 'internet news saavy' here that can help us out?

Can someone please shed some light on this discussion with some more facts? So that we can have what has been missing all along: an informed discussion. Anyone in for some quality dialogue here?

Re:How about some facts?

[nagora]

Anyone here think facts are important?

Facts may be important, the uninformed opinion of ignorant child-buggering self-appointed ju-ju worshippers in fancy dress isn't.

TWW

Re:Evolution isn't a theory about the start of lif

[ArsonSmith]

One of the most convencing arguments I've ever heard from ID. Still if the explination is "Cause God said so." then it isn't sience. Period. The universe is set by rules and finding out what those rules are is science. Saying we don't know how elephants were created so it must be god is not science. Trying to find the random mutations and history of the elephants and how they came to be is science. Saying that god created light isn't science. Observing that the sun functions as a fusion reactor is science. Sure you can follow science all the way back to the original big crunch/big bag. That is established as the only point where there may be room for god.

Re:wrong Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[mink]

I can't buy that David had no skill with a sling (different thing then a slingshot).

Re:wrong Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[mink]

"There has to be a line somewhere, and IMHO God typically doesn't do things for people when they are perfectly capable of doing it themselves."

So this would be a supply side God to go with supply side Jesus?

Re:wrong Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[raider_red]

There are different ways to be right. The Bible can be seperated into several types of writings. There are the histories, many of which started from an oral tradition of a particular tribe in the Middle East about four or five thousand years ago. Some of these may not be exactly the way they happened. There are some stories, such as Job, and possibly Jonah, which are parables about the relationship between God and Man. There are the poetic and the wisdom writings, such as Psalms, Proverbs, and a few others. And there is Prophecy, which does not necessarily mean telling the future. Most of the prophetic books dealt with events which were happening at the time they were written. (Jim Wallis gives an excellent treatment of these in "God's Politics".

As for which part is literally true, and which is a fable or parable, we have to rely on our own reason. As for what I believe, I think every word of the Bible tells us something about God. God doesn't fit in a book though, so even through the most careful reading, I can't get the full picture of what He is like. I think we have to rely on our own insights and experience to be the final arbiter for what is true and what is not.

The Vatican and Science

[enantiodromia]

The Catholic Church doesnt care what Science says, as long as they are talking about events AFER Creation. After all, The Big Bang theory was first formulated by a Vatican Scientist. They dont mind the "HOW" questions; it's the "WHY" questions they get nervous about.

Re:wrong Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Alsee]

At what point is there an argument for calling this disregard for rational thought a psychosis?

That point would be when you no longer require the mutual aid of the 80% who are moderately rational and mostly functional to defend yourselves against the dangerous and violently psychotic 10%.

Let people read their horoscopes and play with their ouija boards so long as they help you lock up the suicide bombers and vote out the Intelligent Design school board members. When you're trapped inside an insane asylum it's not a good idea to torment harmless patients too badly :)

-

Re:The First Law of Thermodynamics refutes creatio

[Scott Carnahan]

Or say you wrap your finite universe into a closed loop, so there's no edge. Except, now you've added dimensions to the finite ones you already had - are they finite or infinite?

Why have I added dimensions? If I have a compact spacetime, there is no mathematical reason for me to embed it into some higher-dimensional space. None of our standard physical theories make use of any such embedding.

If you wrap that up into another loop, you've added more dimensions... and so on and so on infinitely. Infinite dimensions.

This is completely unnecessary.

Evolution in action

[Anonymous Coward]

Survival of the fittest? Indeed not quite the science you expect, but for this creature, it was in a stressful situation and has reacted. We see the results.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051108/ap_on_re_us/sc hool_shooting

Re:And given the Hindus, some agnostics, etc., etc

[Grab]

True; however the main ID proponents are doing so from a Christian belief structure.

Grab.

Evidence

[Dire Bonobo]

> Can evolution be reproduced in a lab?
>
> Has it ever been observed to occur? (Examples?)

Yes it can, yes it has, and here you go (skip to the "Experimental Results" section if you're feeling lazy).

> Does it fit with what can been observed

Quite well.

> (information only comes from intelligence; order decreases over time...)

Your error is in misunderstanding the laws of thermodynamics. Those state that in a closed system, order decreases over time. No part of the earth is a closed system, however, and your "observation" is in fact very simple to debunk:

Plant a seed.

What was once nothing but a tumultuous pile of dirt lashed by wind and rain will soon become a highly-ordered plant. While entropy increases as a whole (i.e., the sun is still fusing), local increases in order are something we observe all the time.

As for information coming only from intelligence, well, I suggest you read up on the optimization of chemical trails ants lay to a food source. Very, very simple rules govern those trails, but they quickly lay out an efficient path for the ants to follow. That's information, and I would argue that ants ain't all that smart.

I would also argue that if your faith is so weak that evolution threatens it, you have bigger problems. How much of Christ's message was about speciation, and how much about interacting with God and your fellow man? You might want to read up on how Jesus treated those who followed the letter of the law and ignored the spirit (Pharisees, mostly) - I think you may be misguided.

Re:The First Law of Thermodynamics refutes creatio

[Pfhorrest]

Or say you wrap your finite universe into a closed loop, so there's no edge. Except, now you've added dimensions to the finite ones you already had - are they finite or infinite?

Why have I added dimensions? If I have a compact spacetime, there is no mathematical reason for me to embed it into some higher-dimensional space. None of our standard physical theories make use of any such embedding.

Because a circle is a two-dimensional figure, even though it has only one dimension or axis along its line; a sphere or taurus is a three-dimensional figure even though it only has two dimensions or axis' along its surface; and so on. In order for a continuum of some sort to be looped, for the two poles of some axis to wrap around on themselves, you have to define it as a figure it in a higher-dimensional space.

Who cares about the rabbis?

[nagora]

Why would talking to the people that wrote the fairy stories make them any more real? They're still fairy stories made up by a primitive people that thought the creator of the entire fucking universe would get upset if they don't cut their foreskin off. Yeah, that's the sort of people I'd go to for reliable information about the origins of space and time. Slaughter me another goat, why don't you? The bottom line is that we are all born with no concept of gods or santa claus. There is no reason to move from that point other than propaganda, and once you get to be an adult you should be able to see through that. I mean, for goodness' sake: they even tell you the santa claus thing is a lie! DUH! TWW

Preconceived notions

[Dire Bonobo]

> And unless a given person can throw off this yoke of belief,
> he will forever be denying his own heritage, his gift as a
> self-aware rational creature.

Why?

Suppose a person believes that God created Man with powerful reasoning abilities precisely in order to develop a deep, nuanced understanding of himself and the universe around him. To this person, the universe is an unfolding wonder on which to hone his reasoning faculties in aid of his ultimate goal - understanding himself, his relationship with God, and the nature of morality and spirituality.

Only by fostering such development of thought, the argument might go, could God truly allow souls to become self-aware, and to make a full and informed choice as to their eternal disposition.

A person with this sort of belief system would probably be at least as self-aware as a typical atheist, and almost certainly much more so - he would see it as his divine duty to tirelessly seek to understand himself, the world around him, and the nature of what it means to be human.

If you find it "hard to believe" that faith in divinity is compatible with self-awareness and self-responsibility, that's little more than a failure of imagination on your part (and perhaps a sad testament to the religious folk you've had run-ins with - that some are irrational doesn't mean all are, any more than it does for atheists).

(As an aside, the belief system I've sketched above actually bears a fair similarity to Islam in its golden age, back when it was the scientific centre of the western world and coming up with things like algebra. It's not such an uncommon belief nowadays, either - a fairly recent Nobel prizewinner in particle physics saw his research as exploring Allah's wondrously complex gift to humanity. That he co-won the prize with a staunch atheist didn't seem to bother either one of them. As it should be.)

Re:ICR

[delus10n0]

The moderation around here is flat out insane. What's trollish about my post?

New Revelation (was talk to those...)

[Anonymous Coward]

New Revelations do occur, and have occurred.

The question is: what is the source of revelation?
very briefly:

If a teacher tells a student that 2+2 is 4, then the teacher is revealing knowledge. This is natural, and should happen every day in shools around the world. While God may want me to understand mathematics, and may be using the teacher to instruct me, few would regard it as a supernatural event that I memorized the formula, "2+2=4" by rote, unless maybe I was an especially unruly child.

If I am secretly given LSD, I may experience visions that (I might think) look like angels or devils. Yet the common diagnosis is not that I was touched by God, but that I was trippin'. So LSD, so wheat rust.

If I obsess over the idea of angels and demons, I may trigger an unhealthy event where what I imagine is what I believe is real. This also is not a divine revelation, but the difference between this and revelation can be very difficult to discern.

According to Catholic tradition, if Angels or Saints, by God's power, reveal some new facet of the truth, it must be tested and examined to see whether the source truly is God. Someone who sincerely believes that he (or she) is experiencing Divine revelations should seek a spiritual director supported by his (her) bishop. Usually, it is his confessor, at least at first, then the confessor may urge her (him) to speak with others in the Church. These members are better equipped than the individual to understand the nature and veracity of the revelation.

Revelations have occurred since Biblical times. One can find a number of reverences in the Catholic Encyclopedia. Specifically, this is worthy of note.

A little fire, Scarecrow?

[markbark]

I see none of these straw men of which you speak.

I'm referring to the very real sort of folk who base their lives on a poorly translated bronze age text.
James Ussher , an Irish/Anglican Bishop of the early-mid 17th century, deduced that the first day of Creation began at nightfall preceding Sunday October 23, 4004 BC in the Julian calendar (so I was off by three days, sue me) He extrapolated this date by counting through all the "begats" in Genesis, tossing in a large fudge factor and calling it a day.
I find it particularly interesting that Creation is stated as beginning at nightfall.... before there allegedly was "day".
I guess the whole "Let There Be Light" thing didn't enter into it, huh?

Other like minded folks say the Universe is 6000 years old based on 2 Peter 3:8 "one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day"
(They divvy up the time as 4000 years before and 2000 years after Christ)

Simply put, the whole thing is a load of fetid dingos kidneys. A bunch of wishful thinking dreamed up by wisened ancients who were terrified of uttering the words "I don't know" to the great unwashed (thus diminishing their power over same)

it's impossible to know any absolute truth ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you certain of that?

If it's "it's impossible to know any absolute truth about the universe." then what of the statement that "it's impossible to know any absolute truth about the universe."
Can that be known or can't it?

Re: it's impossible to know any absolute truth ...

[|/|/|||]

Too bad you're a lousy AC so you'll probably never see this response, but I'll clarify for anybody else's appreciation. My exact quote was:

In fact, according to our current knowledge, it's impossible to know any absolute truth about the universe.

Note that I said, "according to our current knowledge." I suppose it would have been even better to say "MY current knowledge" but that's picking at nits. I'm not so foolish as to think that I can be absolutely sure of anything.

Oh, you certainly have a point.

[Ivan Matveitch]

Dostoevsky wrote The Brothers Karamazov on exactly this topic, and he argues both sides better than you and I ever could.

The problem is that it doesn't actually work

[anomaly]

I believe that you really believe what you wrote and did so in good will. The problem is that the facts belie the assertions that you have made.

First, even if SOME mutations are beneficial, there's not enough time to make up for the very small percentage of favorable mutation. Even if you throw 4 billion years at the problem, it's not enough. Scientists in the last 200 years have resorted to proposing extremely long periods of time because there's little way that mutation and evolution could provide speciation without huge amounts of time. I referred to the time/chance problem in detail in a previous post

Let me be clear. Evolution does exist. The facts show that it does. Look at rabbits that adapt to snowy conditions because the genes that lead to darker colored fur are eliminated by predators. This is adaptation, and it is supported by good science. Let me also be direct in this statement: the facts DO NOT show that evolution is the mechanism of speciation.

Secondly, Here's one reference that shows that the moth story is merely a story which happens to be unsupported by science. There are MANY MANY places where this is documented, and I am confident that the facts are on the side of debunking this story. Many evolutionists use this as an example, and have been misled by bad science and poor teaching.

When you say The answer is obvious, really. You're falling prey to the phenomenon described by HL Mencken "For every complex problem there is a solution that is concise, clear, simple,and wrong." Mencken was wrong about many things, but right about this one. This is a complex issue, and evolution is not a sufficient explanation of speciation.

It's not that you have bad intentions, it's that you've been led down the wrong path by well-meaning but wrong teachers.

Respectfully,
Anomaly

PS - from your UID, it looks like we've both been hanging around slashdot for about the same length of time. :)

What does God need with a starship?

[cat_jesus]

Why does a god deserve worship?

Why would a god desire worship?

Isn't it more than a tad vain to think that a god would be interested in life on this little planet in the middle of nowhere?

Re:I don't see the big deal behind intelligent des

[sickofthisshit]

For some reason Slashdot seems to have lost my original response, so here goes.

"1+1=2" is a symbolic statement. "1+1=2 is True" is another symbolic statement.
"1+1=3" and "1+1=3 is False" and "1+1=3 is True" are other symbolic statements. One establishes the "truth" of these statement by using axioms and higher-order logic, pretty much in a mechanical way. Moving symbols around is something computers can do very well, and seems to have very little to do with whether something is alive or not.

As you point out, with your Eskimo example, living things who are ignorant of symbolic logic, or who don't have language at all, have a very hard time with symbolic reasoning. That shows that "life" and "logical truth" are unrelated concepts, which you seem to have mixed together in a strange way.

After all, you are (to me) just a collection of symbols on a computer screen, and I am the same to you, yet we are apparently able to have a discussion, in the same way that a pair of Perl scripts might.

Your "tornado in a junkyard" example is a common piece of creationist clap-trap. It is a strawman that misrepresents how natural selection works. If you think it is a relevant argument, read different books until you understand why it is bogus, and then you will have learned something.

I can't access the Nature article you link to, but my number was referring to ONLY the neurons involved in flight control, which is substantially smaller than the total number of neurons.

You're welcome!

[Medievalist]

The Hindu parts were explained to me by Hindu friends; I'm more of a Spinoza pantheist (an "essential monist" if you want to get into that level of detail, but I disagree with Spinoza in that he claimed God had no personality).

You may find Panentheism more palatable than Pantheism - Panentheists believe that reality is a subset of the divine, that God is larger than the universe. This belief system is highly compatible with the teachings of Jesus and Moses, and neatly eliminates at least one of the objections to religious dualism that pantheists like myself always bring up. Panentheisists share the love of the physical world that informs pantheism (as do the Judeo-Christian groups who take Genesis 1:26 seriously) because they recognize it as literally divine.

Positive vs. negative theories

[Dire Bonobo]

> What I hear from creationist/ID scientists, however, is if they
> want a shot at having their research published, they dress it
> in the language of evolution

Yes and no.

One of the fundamental problems with trying to publish anything supporting ID is that ID is essentially the null hypothesis. In other words, ID is the theory that no naturalistic theory can explain the organisms we see; any correct theories must necessarily include a guiding intelligence.

That's an extremely strong claim, much stronger than merely "Darwinian evolution is wrong"---the claim is that not only is evolution wrong, but no correct theory is possible which does not rely on a guiding intelligence.

In all of science, such negative theories---"X does not exist"---are much harder to gather convincing evidence for than positive theories---"X exists and has this form". In particular, all such negative theories must have a very strong answer to the criticism "well, maybe you just didn't look hard enough for X".

Due to that negative phrasing of ID, even a researcher with the purest of intentions and solidest of research methodologies will have a very hard time coming up with compelling evidence to support it. Unless ID can be rephrased to be a positive theory---i.e., the organisms we see came about because of X process---it will continue to be almost impossible to collect solid evidence for the theory, and it will continue to be---rightfully---ignored by mainstream science. Without strong evidence, a theory is nothing, and negative theories almost never get strong evidence---this ain't unique to ID.

Re:wrong Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[Baricom]

Yeah, I worded that badly. My apologies. I still think it's telling that the one person willing to face Goliath was not a "professional" soldier but a shepard.

Re:wrong Re:Talk to those that wrote it down?

[mink]

I know this is a bad example to use but I remember when some farm boy said "I used to bullseye womp rats in my T-16 back home. They're not much bigger than two meters."

There have been many times in history (and myth) where the "pro" soldiers were not the most heroic people. I think that's because often potential heroes end up dead, but the times they don't get killed is when they get talked about.

I'm not saying David's defeat of a bigger/stronger/better trained opponent was not significant. Sure he was not a trained soldier, but you would be amazed what some people can hone skill wise from a hobby. The difference between amateur and professional in my opinion is pay scale.

Timecube Shmimecube

[SeanDuggan]

Meh... I've been there before. It's a somewhat bizarre read to be sure.

Philosophy of Education

[Pfhorrest]

I teach my daughter Buddhist mythology because I feel that mythology is an extremely important, but neglected part of society. In fact I think it's fair to say that the lack of a meaningful mythos is a large part of what's wrong with many societies today. However this is something that I teach at home, or occasionally at temple. I don't expect the local middle school to teach mythology, of any sort, along side of science coursework. What I do expect is that her school teach her something about other cultures & beliefs and that while some beliefs may seem silly, and potentially deluded, they are NOT a reason to persecute another human being.

I wasn't aware that Buddhism had a particular mythology associated with it. Most of the Buddhists I know are subscribers to many Buddhist philosophical ideals but do not follow it religiously, or even consider it a religion but rather "a philosophy" (i.e. they don't take it as irrefutable dogma, but rather, as a set of possibly questioned notions which they presently agree with for the most part).

From the rest of your message I get the impression that the mythology you speak of is more a set of parables than the typical western epic mythology of gods and heroes, or Zoroastrian/Abrahamic battles between good and evil. If that is so, or even if that's not entirely so but the parables are the parts that you emphasize to your children when you teach them this mythology, I have to agree with you that that sort of thing is a major lack of our modern culture, though I wouldn't quite say it that mythology in specific is what we lack. I think the missing piece is proper narrative illustration of the dry and abstract facts of reality and morality. Parabolic mythology (I think I just made that term up) is a good means of illustrating those lessons, but what could function just as well, and justifiably be taught in secular classrooms, bringing this kind of illustration to the masses, is a better teaching of history.

Tell the factual stories of our past as the interesting and engaging *stories* that they are, humanize them so the students understand that these things happened to real people, and *as a consequence of* other things happening, rather than just an unconnected series of meaningless dates and names as most history is taught today. Don't oversimplify the chain of cause and effect, and don't tell the stories with any particular moral agenda - try to tell them as completely and neutrally as possible - but make it a point to ask the students, "what do you think we can learn from these events?". Just make the connection that this isn't irrelevant dry stuff that happened and so what who cares, but that these are interesting true stories, and there are important lessons in there that are immediately applicable to today's life. And encourage the students to think about what those lessons might be.

It's very, very easy to get caught up in a strongly anti-theist thinking because, particularly in US, those mythos has little or no resonance with most people and the behavior of many of the Abrahamic Fundamentalists can be profoundly negative. I, Myself am fortunate to have stumbled upon the wittings of Mowlana Jalaluddin Rumi as a youth and the struggle to come to terms with and understand the powerful and beautiful writings of a devout Muslim did much neutralized my "All Abrahamics Must DIE" sentiment.

I'd like to recommend you also look up the Gospel of Thomas online if you can find it. It's one of the early Christian books that didn't make the cut for the Bible. I never really put much thought into examining Christian teachings too seriously once I got fed up with all the B.S., but this book made me realize that Jesus really was quite an astute philosopher, provided you can read through the flowery and hyperbolic language he uses. The site that linked me to that book, which also has a good deal of other interesting original notions on it, was the Reciprocality project.

Re:Philosophy of Education

[bhima]

Buddhism has an extremely large mythos! As with most religions they are adaptations of the existing local myths with a Buddhist twist. I find that ones from the Himalaya resonate with me while my girlfriend identifies with the ones from her home in Cambodia. I also love the Hindu (hence my user name) and Sufi Mythos.
The Buddha (Siddhartha Gautama) is perhaps the ultimate iconoclast, and he is credited with phrase that my older brother uses with all of his new students... "You should not believe anything I say, unless you have experienced it for yourself and know it to be true" or I as tell our kids "question authority, go ahead ask me anything!"

The mythology I teach my daughter (and nieces and nephews) is not the western set but rather the eastern set. I am reminded of a story, that many children enjoy in which a monk in saved by four turtles. This story is a parable which teaches some of the core precepts of the eightfold noble path. On a trip to Cambodia & Thailand a monk took my daughter and showed her that very story carved in the stone temple wall thousands of years ago. The look on her face, as she realized that this wasn't wasn't a construct of her crazy father, was wonderful and this turned out to be an event that she still talks about today. This is exactly what I mean... My family tells our children stories, they see how, in everyday life, they have a voice, are applicable, and are meaningful and most importantly are not in conflict with modern society. Sure I could tell true stories, but reality gets in the way of the message! I don't sit the kids down at temple and lecture them on the finer details of this or that. I don't say "hey look, that "thing" they teach in school that goes around is all wrong" and I certainly don't say this is how you must behave, this is the path you must follow. My 2 1/2 year old niece can finish some of my pronouncements "If you do go things, good things happen... but if you do bad things..."

Here is an interesting exercise: google my user name, or better yet look it up on Wikipedia. Behold I am Bhimasena, the second son of the Pandava clan! I am the strongest among gods, demons, and men!

With the Gospel of Thomas you have hit upon my worst weakness: to own books. I have tens of thousands, they are in every room of the house, sit in safes, lurk under the bed, and languish in glass cases in the living room. I covet, I collect, and I hoard books. And the one thing I really spend money on is the transformation of the theist mythos through time. I have dozens of holy texts which predate the currently accepted illuminated works, I have the ancient apocrypha, I have Coptic, Greek, Hebrew, Latin, German, English, French, Sanskrit, Tibetan-Sanskrit, and Arabic books. I find that it really adds to the "Mad Professor" persona, fascinates my colleagues, and baffles the kid's friends (your Dad/Uncle has books he can't really read!?!).

Anyway have fun with philosophy and with the teacher gig, my brother teaches physics and thinks I'm crazy for doing chemistry "For the Man".

Re:The First Law of Thermodynamics refutes creatio

[sickofthisshit]

You seem to have missed the point. Your "define it as a figure..in a higher-dimensional space" is exactly what the parent poster meant by "embedding."

A circular curve is a ONE-dimensional manifold because your position on the circle can be specified by ONE number, namely the distance travelled around the circle from an arbitrary point. ONE coordinate = ONE dimension.

The surface of the earth (or other sphere) is a TWO-dimensional object, because you need only TWO numbers (latitude & longitude) to tell where you are.

The "looping" or periodic nature of the coordinates on a manifold does *not* increase the dimension of the manifold. Think of the old arcade game of Asteroids, if you remember that far back. Your space ship flies off the right side of the screen, it shows up on the left; fly off the top, end up on the bottom. That is actually isomorphic to the surface of a donut, but it is TWO-dimensional. The screen is flat, and it DOESN'T have to be physically curved for that to work.