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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.
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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 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!"
"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
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.
#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
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
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...
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.
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.
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.
"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!
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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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.
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 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();
}
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I think you are remembering a short story by Isaac Asimov, titled 'How It Happpened'.
Link: http://www.skepticfiles.org/atheist/asimovdo.htm
Men have nipples.
I really hate Dan Patrick.
Some would say "literal intent" is not the same as "literal word of god." Of course, many think parts of the bible are literal, while others are meant to be analogies. The question then is this, "which parts of the bible are literal and which are analogies?" Which interpretation of the "interpreted parts" is the "correct" one?
The point of religion, be it baptist, catholic, islam, hindu, bhuddism are meant to teach people lessons about living in a society. To claim "literal" is really based on ego and political agendas. Havin a creationist day and go read the bible for once and analyze it.
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.
"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'm afraid there is a lot of mixing going on. Many fundamentalists are in fact involved in pushing the ID agenda in the schools, in an effort to help them encourage kids to discredit evolution and be more favorably disposed to a literal reading of Genesis. So while you may not favor ID, it is inaccurate to claim that fundamentalists in general do not support it.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
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...
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.
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
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
There's a difference, which apparently was important enough to behead people over. Just sayin'.
That kind of reminds me of the episode of "Bless Me, Father" when they had a joint eccumenical service with the local Anglicans. Pardon me for forgetting character names:
Minister: It's so wonderful to see Catholics and Protestants praying together.
Priest: Oh, no no no. We were not praying together at all! For us, worshipping with Protestants is forbidden. We were not praying with you - you were praying with us.
Minister: That's a very subtle distinction.
Priest (with a mischievous grin): I'm glad you can appreciate it.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
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.
Just out of curiosity, if the "Orthodox" rabbis consider the first 11 chapters of Genesis to be merely a story about YHWH's power, how do they deal with the rest of the Pentateuch?
I'm only somewhat well read on the subject of judaism and may be off base in what I'm about to say. Pretty much anyone who studies the history of the bible, torah, koran, etc. quickly realizes that they are dealing with something that is based upon collected works, written by different authors at different times, and translated imperfectly. Further, due to the contradictions contained in all these works it is obvious that interpreting them literally means that the work is wrong, in one or more instances. This leads most intelligent people to view the works less as a matter of "chapter 1 is wrong, so why should we believe chapter 4" and more as a matter of, "chapter one has beautiful imagery and is a great parable for understanding, while chapter 4 is very down to earth and provides useful guidelines for everyday life, as well as some outdated dietary advice." I know a lot of people don't view things that way, but I am suspicious of the motives and/or intelligence of anyone who looks at such a work and tries to interpret it literally. Most of the jewish sects I've read about are very into tradition, which helps define them as a culture, but few of them literally interpret those traditions as orders from on high.
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....
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.
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
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"
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
"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.
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.
Someone at the Vatican read some Dan Brown and came up with a new theory.
As to bird wings, there's still a good deal of debate, but many think that wings may have, in fact, first evolved as a form of thermoregulation. Co-opting of features to new functions is certainly a part of evolution as well. Go back to the eye example. Primitive organisms really don't have nervous systems, but once even a primitive one develops, a primitive eye can co-opt it to allow more complex behaviors based upon what is "seen".
Evolution may be blind in the respect that it cannot answer future needs, but there is always variation in any population, and that is the fuel of evolution. Thus a wing might have evolved for one purpose, but as we can see from even semi-flying creatures like the flying squirrel, half a wing, like a half an eye, can indeed be much more useful than no wing or no eye at all.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
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.
Either your post is +1 Funny or +1 Troll if you had proper education; or, if you don't have proper education, there should be a -1 Uneducated moderation. See here for a complete synposis of the Teleological argument and its scientific refutes so we don't have to replay hundreds of years of history on a Slashdot thread. If you're too lazy to read, here's the summary:
Teleological argument (quotted from wiki):
1. X is too complex to have occurred randomly or naturally.
2. Therefore, X must have been created by an intelligent being.
3. Y is that intelligent being.
4. Therefore, Y exists.
The Eye Argument (quotted from wiki)
Many creationists cite the eye as a prime example of this principle; "What use is a partly-developed eye?" they ask. Evolutionists provide an explanation for this and may state that creationists are arguing from ignorance, for scientists have devised working hypotheses on how certain body parts and organs could have evolved.
The explanation by evolution gives major evolutionary steps of:
1. No light sensitivity at all.
2. Cells that can sense the presence of light and send a signal to the brain.
3. Development of multiple, co-ordinated cells.
4. Development of a lens to focus the light.
5. Development of the brain enabling processing of this information, into instructions to muscles which operate the organ to detect light in other places.
Creationists would counter that each step in this process is in reality, a huge leap. However, evolutionists would argue that each step is not completed in one change; rather, these are only the major milestones of development, which itself is going on all the time.
QED
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.
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"
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.
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.
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.
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
Intelligent Design contradicts evolution on the variability between and among species. ID says that at least some of the variability between species arises from the intervention of a designer; evolution says there's no. So the argument isn't really about the origin of life, but the origin of species.
Actually, one of the reasons why ID does not qualify as a theory is that it is vague about what did happen. Basically, ID boils down to "Evolution can't explain everything."
Behe--who's virtually the only real biologist in the ID camp--clearly believes that something like a microorganism was created and everything evolved from there, possibly with some supernatural tweaks along the line. But the ID guys keep this pretty quiet, because if they actually advocated this view as part of their "theory," they'd lose the bulk of their support, which comes from fundamentalist Christians who aren't concerned with how the flagella evolved; they want to be reassured that there isn't an ape in their family tree. Behe was very amusing in the recent trial; the opposition kept quoting him passages from the ID tract "Pandas and People," which he supposedly co-edited, and which makes claims such as "various forms of life began abruptly through an intelligent agency, with their distinctive features already intact," and Behe would have to admit that he didn't agree.
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 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.
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?
The second you insert an omnipotent being into the equation you eliminate the ability of science to deal with it. That's why creationism is not science and is not a theory and should not be taught in school as science. Science is the study of observable phenomena. An omnipotent being is not observable so it cannot exist in anything even remotely resembling science.
Your argument proves this point very well.
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
[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 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.
The actual rabbis that wrote the whole thing down were unavailable for comment.
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.
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)
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.
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
I think, when somebody will be able to create life from dead materials, we will be able to discuss a Theories Of Creation Without The Creator
Um. This was the basis for the beginnings of "organic chemistry": Woehler's synthesis of urea showed that the chemical substances in living things are no different than the chemicals in dead things.
People are very close to synthesizing viruses from scratch, for instance. It is a matter of complexity, not a matter of chemistry. Chemical synthesis is *hard* to do in the lab. That doesn't mean there is anything magical about the chemicals that make up the human body, for instance.
Humans can't build the Himalayas with a bulldozer. That doesn't mean God made them, does it?
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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"
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?
I don't care what you or any other christian believes. I did my time living as a christian and found it to be not right for me. It's what you want to believe? Fine. Good for you.
What does bother me is christians trying to disguise their religion as science and force it into public schools.
Science is not tested in public schools, it's taught there.
Information doesn't want to be anthropomorphized anymore.
Hard to dispute without knowing what criteria use based these rankings on. What exactly do you mean by "predictive ability"?
To me the "predictive ability" of evolution is pretty amazing. On one hand is idea of common decent. We know "Animal A" exists and we believe it evolved from known "animal C". For this to be true, some unknown "Animal B" would be quite likely as a transitional specices. Some of these hypothosis, and later discovery of fossils which match this expectation shows there is cetainly some pretty decent predictabilty. Now I don't think there has ever been a 100% match to "expected" Animal B, but there would be no reason to ever think such an animal could even roughly be predicted without evolution.
Another example would be genetic diagnosis. If you have genetic marker X then you will have disease Y. Some of these "predictions" based on evolution are 100% while others have a VERY strong corrilation and this will only increase as our knowledge of these topics increase.
"reality has a well-known liberal bias" - Steven Colbert
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.
...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.
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.
But the methods used to arrive at the conclusions are empirical in nature... There is no governing dynamic theory that these studies apply beyond basic statistics.
I might be wrong, but isn't that statement meaningless? All scientific theories are empirical - how else are they formulated and tested? What is a "governing dynamic theory"? What is the "governing dynamic theory" of weather prediction?
All these studies apply statistical techniques that are based around the theory of evolution. I don't understand what else you are driving at to try and deny this. I also don't understand your criteria for grading theories from A to D. On the face of it it seems absurd.
I suspect your problem is that Newton can make simple testable predictions for the movement of objects. If this is the case then you problem is not with physics but with the whole of biology, which deals with complex systems and so things are more messy (although in turn, the predictions are arguably more impressive when correct).
A preacher I know once told me that the Bible doesn't have to be literally true for us to have faith in God. He believed that those who hinge everything on the absolute truth of every word of Scripture are those who really lacked faith. They need something outside themselves to justify what they believe.
This just doesn't make sense to me. Surely your faith is effectively a belief of what is written in the Bible? If not the Bible, then where are you getting it from? From other people who got it from the Bible. To then brush over all the gaps and contradictions, make allowances and pick and choose the parts which are still 'relevant today'... just what is it that people are believing? At what point is there an argument for calling this disregard for rational thought a psychosis?
Homme petit d'homme petit, s'attend, n'avale
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;
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
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."
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.
I could say that Nietzsche believed in the idea of the overman, and the greek gods are over man, therefore belief in the greek gods is supported by Nietzsche. Nothing, however, makes this statement true. Even if he HAD believed in greek gods, however, doesn't mean that it's true. He'd have to present a coherent, logical arguement backed up by empirical facts to make a claim and be taken seriously. Newton, for example, believed strongly in alchemy, and wrote more than a million words on the subject. Modern man understands chemistry and nuclear physics to the point where alchemy can be proven to be wrong.
In this case, you unfortunately seem to miss the nature of this science while trying to create an arguement against it. The reason that dynamics can be used in the case of inert matter is that it is just that -- inert matter. You can reduce inert matter to the forces and counterforces which are situationally as perfect as your instrumentation will allow.
In the case of evolution, you simply cannot reduce the system to such a simple set of dynamics. How do you tell which viral strain will survive the onslaught of drugs and the human immune system? You cannot do this in practice, for the same reason you cannot determine who will become a serial killer in society -- the systems have simply become far too large to model effectively.
In the case of evolutionary systems, it is important to remember that there is no inherent superiority in any given genetic at T0. Unlike energy levels, where you can see that one part of a system has X joules of energy in a certain potential/kinetic configuration, evolutionary traits cannot be effectively reduced to numbers. To do so is like trying to decide a basketball game between two sides of the same team -- there are so many subtle factors, that the decision is goes beyond a simple numerical dynamic of "This virus is superior to this virus by 10%".
A piece of DNA which would be beneficial against all other species in one situation may prove deadly in another situation with the same species. A fish growing lung analogues may survive more effectively near the shore because it can climb onto land and get food there. The same fish far from shore, however, is at a disadvantage beacause it has a large, useless organ increasing it's mass and bulk.
It's been a long time.
This is my humble understanding of ID (I'm a "fundy" but please hear me out): The leaders of the movement have nothing to do with "fundamentalism". Darwin's Black Box by Michael Behe is probably the Flagship laymen's book on the whole matter. The whole idea boils down to what Behe calls "irreducible complexity": every part must be present and functioning for the unit to work at all (he cites the bacterial flagellum and the human immune system as two examples). No selective advantage can be provided to an organism unless a number of key parts are available and each part by itself would be a selective disadvantage if not accompanied by every other part. He compares it to a mousetrap-leave out an single piece and the rest of it doesn't function. Its all or nothing. With that said, a lot of fundamentalists have latched onto the ID movement because it does not rule out the possibility of a creator from the start, like materialistic evolution does, (an unscientific assumption I might add). I've read Hume, but its been a while. Can anyone summarize his points? Thanks in advance.
I posted below MightyMartian, but here's why I appreciate ID (as a fundamentalist)...Please don't shoot me until you hear my points. 1) Evolution is a model with a similar monopoly on academia that the Catholic Church had about 500 years ago (remember the opposition Galileo and Copernicus encountered). There are a few who determine what to believe (Dawkins, Gould, etc.) and everyone else must fall in line with a particular set of foundational doctrines or else risk excommunication. 2) Intelligent Design challenges the structure in place. It must be heard and considered like other Scientific conclusions. If it is not an accurate description of the world, then it will be thrown out, if not then it must be given credence. 3) Creationism has attempted to bring open discussion about the theory of evolution to the table, but has been prevented from doing so because it is wrongly regarded as just a "religion". 4) Christian Creationism is a worldview, just like materialistic atheism and must be dealt with as a way to view the entire world. It must be dealt with on a philosophic and foundational level before the various other issues can be confronted (Evolution being one of those). On the philosophic level, Christianity dwarfs all other alternatives (yet this is outside the scope of this post). I hope this explains my perspective better. I welcome feedback.
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
Good comments...As a fundamentalist, I wrestled with these issues until I took Hebrew and really began to see Genesis for what it is. I would like to read that book, seems interesting and if I believe something that isn't true, then I will drop it like a hot rock. Here's my thought on what you said: Genesis is a polemic (attack) against the Egyptian creation myths for several reasons: 1) Note what the author calls the sun and the moon. "Greater Light" and "Lesser Light". He doesn't even use the Hebrew word for Sun and Moon. The reason is because in ancient Near Eastern culture: "Sun" = 'Sun God' and "Moon" = 'Moon God'. He didn't use that name because he wanted to distinguish them. 2) There is no fighting to begin creation. YHWH doesn't fight with any other gods because there are none (Judeo-Christianity is monotheistic by the way; Ancient Egyptian culture was polytheistic). 3) Man is the pinacle of Creation in Genesis, he is an afterthought in the pagan cultures of the day. As for the 2 creation stories, it can easily be reconciled by the fact that one is focusing on the Creation of the entire world, whereas the second focuses on the creation of the Garden of Eden and man. Hope that keeps ya thinking...I would welcome debate.
None of what parent mentions are predictions in the sense of GP's post. Those are all observations from testing an existing scenario. You only know you'll get a particular genetic disease for that marker. You can't predict the results of a change in general. If you change the dna to have a stop at/near the front of a protein ok you don't make that protein... awesome... but if you make a non-trivial set of changes, what disease or benefit or whatever do you get? That is not really something we're able to predict in the same way that newtonian physics can predict the flight of a thrown object.
> 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.