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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
Thank God for rejecting Intelligent Design!
"I reject your reality and substitute my own." -Adam from MythBusters.
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.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
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.
who are involved or receptive to the message of the Intelligent Design movement...that would make this article pertinent how?
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
who read that as "Orthodox rabbits"??
It's hard enough to remember my opinions, never mind the reasons for them..
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!"
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...
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
"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?
How pathetic are you that you follow me from topic to topic and waste all your mod points at once modding me down?
The fundimentalists stopped listening to Jews in A.D 33
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!
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
...It threatens Materialism.
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.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"?
oh wait...you said Rabbi's
nevermind
A goal is a dream with a deadline
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...
***Foucault is watching you..***
[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.
-dave
http://millionnumbers.com/ - own the number of your dreams
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.
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.
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.
Please sign petition to restore sanity to our banking system!!!
http://financialpetition.org/
#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.
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."
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
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.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
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
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.
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.
"It never got weird enough for me." - HST (RIP)
But OF COURSE the theory of evolution is all wrong!
a sp
Proof: http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/5001/5001_01.
(make this post either +5 flamebait or -1 informative please.)
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
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.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
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.
Theories can't be merged because evolution uses slashot forum system and ID uses UBB forum system. Posts are incompatbile with each other.
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
They didn't exactly REJECT intelligent design, they just brought up a few points backing evolution. Geez...
The Vatican has also come out against the idea that thunder is caused by angels bowling.
My other sig is extremely clever...
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.
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.
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.
Everybody's a libertarian 'till their neighbour's becomes a crack house.
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.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
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.
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.
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.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
That wasn't inflamatory at all...
Because one is a *scientific* theory, and one is a fairy tale?
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.
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.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
"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
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.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
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?
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
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.
Anybody got a link? I got a good laugh out of that story.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
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.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
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.
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...
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.
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!
Well, >I thought it was funny!
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Assuming that we did teach ID in schools ... what would be the material?
... opposite of Void (God) do it?
"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
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.
random underscore blankspace at ya know hoo dot comedy.
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.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
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 :)
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.
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.
Artificial intelligence is the study of how to make real computers act like the ones in the movies.
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.
--The universe will not be altered by forum threads, even those which are very wry. --Tycho Brahe (Penny Arcade)
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?
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.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
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?
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Sorry, I misremembered. It's not Wells' theory, it's Ernst Haeckels. His theory was referred to as Recapitualation.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
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.
Cliff Claven
K.E.G. Party Chairman
Founding Leader of: Koncerned for Egalitarin Governance
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?
-- lol pwned
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.
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.
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
"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.
but the lord of the rings is REAL!!!!
i believe in elves!
Is it sad that I am more likely to recognize you and your posts by your sig than your name or UID?
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.
> 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
public final class God {
private God() {}
public static Universe createUniverse() {
Universe uni = new EvolvingUniverseImpl();
return uni;
}
}
public static void main() {
Universe theUniverse = God.createUniverse();
}
random underscore blankspace at ya know hoo dot comedy.
Roman Catholicism is not particularly conservative these days, actually. Eastern Orthodoxy and Protestant fundamentalism are much more so.
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) :).
You actually spoke with the rabbis who wrote the Torah? Did they speak back?
Nerd Rock In Progress
....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?
What does it mean to wake out of a dream
and be wearing someone else's shorts?
BNL, Born on a Pirate Ship (1998)
Men have nipples.
I really hate Dan Patrick.
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.
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.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
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.
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.
[javac] 100 errors
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.
Service guarantees Citizenship! Questions Guarantee GITMO.... Amerika Uber Alles!
"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!'"
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
blog.sam.liddicott.com
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.
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!
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-
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?
How pathetic are you that you follow me from topic to topic and waste all your mod points at once modding me down?
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?
My other sig is extremely clever...
1. The platypus
2. The Chicago Cubs
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.
The global economy is a great thing until you feel it locally.
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.
Now please let women get ordained and priests get married
...to each other, if they're so inclined.
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.
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.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
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.
ID is creationism that has been repackaged to try and be constitutional.
n .htmla l2/
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/evolutio
http://www.nytimes.com/pages/science/sciencespeci
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.
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.
B O R I N G
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).
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.
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...)
---GEC
I'm but the humble pupil, seeking to snatch the scratchbuilt pebble from the master's fully articulated hand
The only difference between micro-evolution and macro-evolution is time.
Similar to the upcoming US election results
"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.
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
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.
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.
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.
If a statement isn't falsifiable, it is impossible for it to be true.
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.
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.
For the love of God, please learn to spell "ridiculous"!!!
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
blog.sam.liddicott.com
They don't worship saints, they venerate them. There's a difference, which apparently was important enough to behead people over. Just sayin'.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Heh... good one...
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.
Stay sentient. Don't drink bad milk.
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.
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
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.
This sig rocks the casbah.
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.
Similar to the upcoming US election results
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.
- Despite popular opinion, I am not perfect.
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.
When you look at it from a power structure model, it becomes crystal clear.
... now. They already have their power base.
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
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.
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
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
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
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.
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?
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.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
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.
For the love of God, please learn to spell "ridiculous"!!!
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.
Last I heard, the rabbi who wrote the whole thing down (Moses) was dead. But hey, it's probably worth a try.
Trust me. This is an inactive account. Regardless of what the
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.
The beatings will continue until Morale Improves!
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
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?
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
...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.
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
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
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 =(
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!)
Life is about being a Phoenix!
Wake up and smell the coffee: there is no God. There is no Santa Claus either.
/. and in the real world) should tell you how much religious blindness and supersition still have a role in today's world.
The simple fact that I have to post this anonymously to avoid being flamed to extinction (both on
I find that scary. Very scary.
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.
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.
In this world nothing is certain but death, taxes and flawed car analogies.
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.
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
A-Bomb
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.
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....
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.
Luke, help me take this mask off
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.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
"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.
sigs are hazardous to your health
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.
/.'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.
/.'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...
/.'rs seeking the truth will take the time to dig through all the rubble for it...
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
I could explain to
Sincerely,
one humble Catholic observing the world's youth from his keyboard, and posting as AC in the hopes that
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.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
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.
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.
sigs are hazardous to your health
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.
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.
I don't know about you, but my servers run on the power of cotton candy and happy thoughts. -Anonymous Coward
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
Good grief, people! You all sound like you need to take a vowel movement!
(/me ducks)
www.wavefront-av.com
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"
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."
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
http://www.besse.at/sms/descent.html
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?
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!
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.
Luke, help me take this mask off
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.
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.
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.
please change me. - sig
Apparently Catholics aren't real Christans anyway... They really aren't.
Best. Comment. Ever. Enjoy!
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.
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.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
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?
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
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.
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.
You can't take the sky from me...
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/ .
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.
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
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.
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
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.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
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)
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.
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!
For the love of God, please learn to spell "ridiculous"!!!
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.
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.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Why does a supposedly benevolent designer hate amputees and love slavery?!
So long, and thanks for all the Phish
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."
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.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
"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.
All that is necessary for the triumph of good is that evil men do nothing.
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.
> 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.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
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.
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.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
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
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.
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.
----------------- Oink. Moo. rarr! -----------------
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.
No one expects the Spammish repetition!
p amspamspamspamspamspamspamspamspamspamspamspam
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ttyl
Farrell
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
Someone at the Vatican read some Dan Brown and came up with a new theory.
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.
On se Internetz nobody noes your German.
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.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
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.
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.
Slashdot is proof that Sturgeon's Law applies to mankind.
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' 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.)While Gen. 1 is congruent with design, design doesn't necessitate Gen. 1.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
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.
No, I will not work for your startup
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.
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.
s'wut i sed.
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.
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.
PENAROL: Seras eterno como el tiempo y floreceras en cada primavera.
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.
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.
(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:
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?
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).
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.
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?
But, I for one welcome our Intelligent Designing overlords!
Wanted: witty unique signature. Must be willing to relocate.
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).
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.
It's not what you know, or even who you know- It's how many people recognize your damn
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.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
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.
DFL
Never send a human to do a machine's job.
> 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.
Evan - needs to hit preview before submitting
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.
...some of them are interesting, and I'll respond to a few.
/. would quickly show that neither evidence, nor logical argument, nor emotional argument is effective at convincing people.
"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
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
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.
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.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
...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.
i am so very tired....
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.
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.
I don't know about you, but my servers run on the power of cotton candy and happy thoughts. -Anonymous Coward
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.
Dude, we're Slashdotting chick.com. This is kind of awesome. :)
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
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? WTF? IINAR, but IIRC YHWH is PITA. RTFM. LOL.
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.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
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.
"Weapons should be hardy rather than decorative" - Miyamoto Musashi
I think that goes for OS's too
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.
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.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
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.
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.
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
Karma? Sorry, i don't believe in superstition. http://talk.thinkingmatters.org.nz
No reason astrology can't be merged with astronomy either.
Don't do it! It's bad mojo.
After you've apologized to everyone for your rudeness and ignorance, we MIGHT let you back in!
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
This is not the place for the flame war you're trying to start.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
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.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
For some reason this reminds me of Spacemoose.
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.)
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
Um...
/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.
In a word, no.
Please read Genesis/Exodus carefully. It does say
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.
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
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.
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
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.
"You never know when some crazed rodent with cold feet might be running loose in your pants."
-Calvin
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.
Hide your files and folders from others!
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.
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.
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.
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.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
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.
It's good to use your head, but not as a battering ram.
"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.
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
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.
"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.
-- 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
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"?
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
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.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
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.
DFL
Never send a human to do a machine's job.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Are you adequate?
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?
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
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.
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.
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.
TANSTAAFL
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.
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.
[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?
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?
You can't take the sky from me...
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).
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
I do not understand what you mean by lacking predictive power. Could you perhaps explain what you mean?
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.
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.
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.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
God writes:
Just wait'll all the Christians find out that God's an enlightened Taoist.
Mind the Gap
The actual rabbis that wrote the whole thing down were unavailable for comment.
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.
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.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
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.
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...
If religous zealots don't believe in Evolution, then why are they so worried about bird flu?
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.
Seastead this.
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.
----
All of whose base are belong to the what-now?
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?
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.
Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.
Edward Everett (1794 - 1865)
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.
You can't take the sky from me...
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.
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
Someone must have forgotten to read the book of Numbers.
Sig: I stole this sig.
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.
/* Rant
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.
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 */
Slashdot: News for nerds. Stuff tha-- MICRO$OFT IS THE DEVIL!!1
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"_ fact
http://www.newyorker.com/printables/fact/050530fa
Marianne
I'm not quite sure why you think evolutionary theories lack rigour, especially when compared to _anything_ the economists say.
What a long, strange trip it's been.
"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.
Ah, yeah... The Pentateuch is the first five books of the Bible (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy). Check here and see for yourself.
How come Slashdot never gets Slashdotted?
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."
Dude, I think I can see my house from here.
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.
It's good to use your head, but not as a battering ram.
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.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
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.
Nearly fifty percent of all graduates come from the bottom half of the class!
The only force in nature more powerful than a slashdotting.
1217 and counting...
Citing Wikipedia:
;) 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...
"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
This embryo to an SF-novel is Creative Common for me to all of you!
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.
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
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
That brings up an interesting question. If Zeus was the god of the Greeks, who would be the god of the Geeks?
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
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
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
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.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Oh, and I'd love to know what you're definition of "religion" is.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
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.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
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
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
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.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
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.
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.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
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'.
http://notanumber.net/
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! >:->
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.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
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.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
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.
{Starts humming "They'll Know We Are Christians By Our Love"}
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
Nowhere does The Theory of Evolution say, "viola life!"
Thank <DEITY> for that... could you imagine the havoc that living stringed instruments would cause?
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
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.
Information doesn't want to be anthropomorphized anymore.
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.
Blar.
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.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
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.
For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love. - Carl Sagan
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. :-)
DFL
Never send a human to do a machine's job.
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 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
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
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.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
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.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
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"...
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
And the fossil record is a figment of our imagination.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
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.
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.
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...
Can you dispute evolution's position on this list?
an ill wind that blows no good
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"
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.
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
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.
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.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
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.
You can't take the sky from me...
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
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?
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
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?
an ill wind that blows no good
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.
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.
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.
Jerm
Oh, you're not a real doctor, are you?
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?
an ill wind that blows no good
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.
In the beginning the earth was without form and void
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.
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.
Didn't want to mess up the papyrus with sauce bolognese?
Free as in mason.
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
blog.sam.liddicott.com
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.
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 !
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
blog.sam.liddicott.com
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.
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.
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.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
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.
Slashdot: News for nerds. Stuff tha-- MICRO$OFT IS THE DEVIL!!1
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.
You can't take the sky from me...
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.
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'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.Think Deeply.
Damn, I so wish I had mod points right now. Go to the front of the class :-)
...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.
The Universe was a core dump from a Lisp machine running a recursive, self-replicatiing operation.
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.
Slashdot: News for nerds. Stuff tha-- MICRO$OFT IS THE DEVIL!!1
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.
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
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
Yes, this leads perfectly into my theory of the Intelligent Ball-Roller!
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?
No, I don't trust in god. He'll have to pay up front, like everybody else.
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
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.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
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.
What could possibly hurt the security of the American people more than giving our own government the ability to hide its
Is how poorly you understand what you're talking about.
/did/ exist, or that one actually took part int he design of the universe.
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
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.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
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."
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!"
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 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
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.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
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?
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
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
blog.sam.liddicott.com
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
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
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.
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.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
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.
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.)
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.
I will never live for sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.
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.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
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.
Yes. Now take that number, and multiply it by the number of trials going on simultaneously...
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?
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?
[javac] 100 errors
Chapter 1 God created everything. The End
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.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
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 ;-)
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
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!"
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
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
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.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
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.
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.
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.
Norman Cook's Ode to Sl
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.
Homme petit d'homme petit, s'attend, n'avale
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.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
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.
an ill wind that blows no good
Have you read the Book of Mormon? I mean cover to cover, not snippets on the Web.
I cried real tears when Li Mu Bai died.
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.
an ill wind that blows no good
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?
I cried real tears when Li Mu Bai died.
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.
Pre-canned Evolution Links for all those Slashdot holy wars.
ID should be taught in Computer Science:
//Give up
//Bad programming
//Null pointer exception
//Good programming
;-)
It's a perfect example of an infinite loop and a null pointer exception.
staic Creator getCreator()
{
static count = 0;
count++;
if(count == 10000)
return null;
if(m_creator == null)
return getCreator();//Only the creator can create
}
void main()
{
Creator.getCreator().prayTo();
}
void main()
{
Creator c = new Creator();
if(c == null)
return;
}
Yeah...this is dumb...just goes to show ID cannot be logically expressed
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.
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
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.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
"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.
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.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
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.
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?)
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
Damn, the Copenhagen interpretation was right!!!! Nothing can exist unless YHWH is observinbg it!!
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.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
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
Obviously, if you believe the Bible, you cannot believe in Evolution. The two are complete opposites.
s %205&version=31
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=roman
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.
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.
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.
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.
The IRS should be coming for Pope Ratzinger any day.
--
make install -not war
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?
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
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?!?
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
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
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?
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.
So.... who created God?
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?
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
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.
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
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
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.
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.
... 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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
So where's the problem?
Yar.
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.
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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).
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
That sounds like something Jesus would have said! Radical personal responsibility is a Christian innovation.
Bring me some lions!
Hear, hear! I think it is about time to resurect this unjustly abandoned tradition!
AccountKiller
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
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.
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
Listen to me. Since so many religions contradict each other, I found science to be the only source I can trust!
or that a perfect being could screw up on such a collosal level?
Where do you get the idea that God screwed up?
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now. - Ed Howd
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.
.....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?
All theory is gray
Einstein, Newton, Galileo, Copernicus... (the list goes on and on)
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.
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
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?
Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.
Edward Everett (1794 - 1865)
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.
Cyde Weys Musings - Scrutinizing the inscrutable
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.
Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.
Edward Everett (1794 - 1865)
...that should read "on a PAR with"... geesh.
[insert snide remarks about Intelligent Typing]
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
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.
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.
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.
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!
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
/. .\
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.
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.
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.htm
http://www.aboutnuclear.org/view.cgi?fC=History,H
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.
Some more general links:
http://science.howstuffworks.com/evolution5.htm
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.ht
Google and ye shall find
Pre-canned Evolution Links for all those Slashdot holy wars.
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.
Yar.
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).
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.
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.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
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.
... 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.
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
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.
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
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
> 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.
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?)
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
> 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.
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?")
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.
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.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
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?
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 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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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
https://signup.leagueoflegends.com/?ref=4c3ed6600b6ea
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
blog.sam.liddicott.com
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.
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.
Yar.
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
Everything in moderation, including moderation itself
.....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.
All theory is gray
> 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...
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?
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
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
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.
Right, this makes sense. And yet there are still two problems:
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.
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
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...
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.
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.
You can't take the sky from me...
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.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
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.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
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."
TANSTAAFL
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.
an ill wind that blows no good
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.
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
blog.sam.liddicott.com
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.
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
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
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? : )
You can't take the sky from me...
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.
DFL
Never send a human to do a machine's job.
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?
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.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
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.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
I'm all for stronger drunk flying laws for cosmic beings.
Well I've wrestled with reality for thirty five years doctor, and I'm happy to say I finally won out over it.
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.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
I can't buy that David had no skill with a sling (different thing then a slingshot).
Well I've wrestled with reality for thirty five years doctor, and I'm happy to say I finally won out over it.
"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?
Well I've wrestled with reality for thirty five years doctor, and I'm happy to say I finally won out over it.
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.
It's good to use your head, but not as a battering ram.
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.
> 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.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
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
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
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.
"Your notation sucks!" -- Serge Lang (1927-2005)
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.)
True; however the main ID proponents are doing so from a Christian belief structure.
Grab.
>
> 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.
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.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
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
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
> 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.)
The moderation around here is flat out insane. What's trollish about my post?
Not All Who Wander Are Lost
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)
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?
Dostoevsky wrote The Brothers Karamazov on exactly this topic, and he argues both sides better than you and I ever could.
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.
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
.....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.
All theory is gray
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?
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
[javac] 100 errors
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?
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
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?
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
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?
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
The importance of amateurs to science: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/284/541 1/55
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:
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.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.
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?
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
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.
Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.
Edward Everett (1794 - 1865)
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:
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.
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.
Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.
Edward Everett (1794 - 1865)
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.
Well I've wrestled with reality for thirty five years doctor, and I'm happy to say I finally won out over it.
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...
Meh... I've been there before. It's a somewhat bizarre read to be sure.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
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.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
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.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
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?
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
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.
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.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
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.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
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?