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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.
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?
A man with a gun is called a citizen. A man without a gun is called a subject.
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
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".
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
#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.
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.
Post apocalyptic gaming goodness
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.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
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.
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?
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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.
> I don't see why the two theories can't be merged.
No reason astrology can't be merged with astronomy either.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
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.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
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.
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.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
...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.
" 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.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
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.
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.
[javac] 100 errors
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.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
"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.
The idea already has a name, actually. Read about the "God of the gaps".
Steven N. Severinghaus
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.
I think I can see your perspective just fine. Can you see mine?[javac] 100 errors
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.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
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.
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).
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?
Homme petit d'homme petit, s'attend, n'avale
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