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Federal Judge Rules Against Intelligent Design
evil agent writes "CNN is reporting that U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III has ruled that Intelligent Design cannot be discussed in Dover, Pennsylvania biology classes. Dover Area School Board members had previously mandated that Intelligent Design be included in the biology curriculum. According to the judge, 'our conclusion today is that it is unconstitutional to teach ID as an alternative to evolution in a public school science classroom.'" Update: 12/20 23:40 GMT by J : eSkeptic has a look back at the trial and what led to it. And the Discovery Institute has issued a press release.
Intelligent design isn't science, therefore it doesn't belong in a science room.
and on the N+1th, first post!
Put it in comparative religion where it belongs!
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
Shouldn't they be allowed to teach it, so long as they teach all of the current theories?
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Thank God for that!
I would like to take this opportunity to thank the almighty spaghetti monster for all that He has done for me.
Not only has He used divine intervention in Dover but He has shown me the way! I await his presence in pirate heaven with the stripper factory and beer volcano.
Believe.
My work here is dung.
Lots of additional coverage on this decision is available at The National Center for Science Education and The Panda's Thumb, and the full text of the decision can be found here (PDF warning).
From the decision: Damn...what a smackdown.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
Not that I disagree with his judgement (which was echoed in Georgia after the sticker debacle), but...
"Made up/misattributed quote that makes me look smart. I am on
Thank God!
Or maybe the ID folks just couldn't hit his price.
Either way, I'll take this victory.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Something that the CNN article doesn't mention is that one of the judge's findings is that ID does not meet the criteria to be considered science.
From a Bloomberg article: In his opinion, Jones said the key issue is ``whether Intelligent Design is science,'' and said, ``we have concluded that it is not.''
Be a real patriot: Question authority. Think for yourself. Formulate your own conclusions.
http://i.a.cnn.net/cnn/2005/images/12/20/kitzmille r.pdf
Also, this decision is unfortunately only binding for the dover area school district, not the rest of the state.
agreed, if the ID people want ID taught in schools the only constitutuinal way to do it is to create an elective Theology class.
it is possible that these two ideas don't have to be mutualy exclusive?
The question is, can this be used as a legal precedent in other cases like this across the country?
Now maybe the camera and news crews will stop driving back and forth on my street everyday. Maybe I can finally get out of the driveway without waiting...
BBC and Wired
Great, now all we have to do is fight it out of the other zillion little Bible-belt towns that still have dancing outlawed...
stuff |
Good deal on this judge. I only hope the Supreme Court upholds this if it reaches them. I honestly think they will since this is rather obvious, but you never know.
As a proponent of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, we in the ID community must stand up to this nonsense.
The fossil record provides overwhelming evidence of the the great tre of life Darwin described. Pick up a science book. To say there is no evidence of Darwinism is nothing other than total willfull ignorance.
that this sort of right-wing christian fundie crap required the ruling of a federal judge to stop. Worse thing is, I'm sure it's still not over in that we haven't had to put up with the last of this yet.
*** Sigs are a stupid waste of bandwidth.
finally , sanity prevails
Relativity was never "proven". It is still a theory. It's just a theory that keeps on getting confirmed by experiment after experiment.
The difference is, I can SHOW you evidence of evolution. Walk into the Natural History Museum in Washington DC... there are plenty. Now show me ANYTHING other than babble that "proves" anything about intelligent design.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I think that if you wanted to teach your kids the other side, you should take them to SUNDAY SCHOOL or whatever. You can't expect Public Education to do everything for you. Just look at how our educational system compares, with, say, Japan's.....
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
--
Should be hundreds of nut cases with moronic opinions wading in here. I'll let all of you decide which is which. My karma is too fragile to offer an opinion :)
Signed - Snow Miser
I'd like to say to the good citizens of Dover. If there is a disaster in your area, don't turn to the Flying Spaghetti Monster, you just rejected Him from your city. And don't wonder why He hasn't helped you when problems begin, if they begin. I'm not saying they will, but if they do, just remember, you just voted Pasta out of your city. And if that's the case, don't ask for His noodly forgivness because he might not be there.
ID is not a theory, per se. Science requires that its theories be falsifiable - that there is some measurement or experiment that may be performed to invalidate it. ID is not falsifiable, whereas Evolution is. While there is no direct evidence of Evolution, there are mountains of indirect evidence - same with the Big Bang theory, same with Relativity. All of these are falsifiable, but we've yet to make a direct observation that 'proves' them. That's science, and if you can't grasp that, then it's clear that the education system fails whether we teach ID or not.
It's enough to give me a little hope.
This is my question too. I agree completely that Intelligent Design is not science and has no business in a science classroom. I'm missing the part where it's unconstitutional to lower the scientific reasoning abilities of our nation's youth even more that it already is though.
did you guys check out the image used for the article?
It looks like the teachers are laughing in the ID guys' faces with this.
It's quite sad that the courts have to deal with stuff like this, where "ID is not valid science" is enough to solve the whole thing. Oh well, at least they made the correct choice ;)
You quote out of context, and you should be ashamed of yourself for being so dishonest. The judge said that he is not discouraging those people who study ID, and he says they have deep beliefs in what they are doing. But, this is the most important thing, he says that ID is *not science* and therefore *should not be taught in a science class*.
Stop spinning things by taking it out of context, and be honest for once.
Establishment and Free Exercise clauses
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
How is evolution less science than quarks, general relativity, or string theory?
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Please someone explain to me what's wrong with Intelligent Design as a theory? For God's sake, we intelligently designed the computer, no?
We intelligently designed tons of stuff. What if we put these 'intelligently designed' stuff into a capsule, shoot it off into space. What if the capsule lands on another planet. What if our stuff somehow create life? What if our stuff were AI machines and they somehow recereate themselves... wouldn't they be 'intelligently designed'?
Damn it, what's wrong with the Intelligent Design theory?
"We find that the secular purposes claimed by the Board amount to a pretext for the Board's real purpose, which was to promote religion in the public school classroom," he wrote in his 139-page opinion.
The link to the NY Times article
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
(1) ID violates the centuries-old ground rules of science by invoking and permitting supernatural causation; (2) the argument of irreducible complexity, central to ID, employs the same flawed and illogical contrived dualism that doomed creation science in the 1980's; and (3) ID's negative attacks on evolution have been refuted by the scientific community.
Yes, and evolution isn't real. Just a theory about how life started. So, then what do they teach?
Click Click Bloody Click PANCAKES!
Great! I can't wait until that sleepy hollow of a community is swallowed up by a great earth quake, hell and damnation. Just think, a damnation theme park only hours away!!!!
Please mod me 1 or troll. It's where the truth is these days, even on Slashdot. Beware the power of moderators everywh
Thank goodness.
And I know I'm feeding the trolls, but I'm sorry, but the comment "It's not any less scientific than evolution" is a fascinating one to me.
Let's break down the scientific method:
1. Observation
2. Hypothesis
3. Experiment
4. Results, start over at 1.
Evolution we know happens (see the changing patterns of moths around pollution, etc). However, the Theory of Evolution as originally put forth by Darwin is based on the idea of "survival of the fittest": those species who have a mutation that enables them to survive better than their competitors will breed and pass along that mutation to their descendants, who will then continue the process.
How did Darwin come up with this theory?
1. He observed the various species on the islands, and how they were all similar (birds, I believe) and how each was best fit to his environment.
2. He hypothesized that this condition arose because of his theory (see above).
3. The experiment (mainly carried out by other folks looking at fossils): See if similar species have changed over time due to environment and had mutations that allowed them to survive. Usually this "experiment" involves saying "All right, we have Fossil A which we know to be 100,000,000 years old, and we have Fossil C which is 25,000,000 years old. Fossil C shows a better ability to survive the environment, and is the same kind of creature as A except for the mutations observed. Therefore, there should be Fossil B that is like Fossil A, only it includes some of the mutations of C but not all of them as the species adapted to better fit the environment. This fossil should be between 100,000,000 and 25,000,000 years old. If we find it, then we know we're right. If we don't, then either we need a better theory or need to keep looking." (For nit pickers who will say this is not a true "experiment", you are right - but these kind of "observational experiments" are perfectly valid when talking about cosmological experiments, such as testing the Theory of Relativity or the Big Bang Theory).
4. Results: Over time, thousands of fossil records and observations of species has held up the Theory of Evolution. Adaptations have come into play (such as the "Survival of the Fittest and the Luckiest", which holds that sometimes pure chance comes into play of wiping out a dominant species, such as an asteroid, but when equilibrium is reached Survival of the Fittest is shown to work again).
This leads to a "theory": a set of rules that *currently* work in explaining a phenomena. The Theory of Relativity has been held up by experiment (such as "can we find bended light around a large gravity source. Answer: Yes.). As long as no one comes up with a better scientifically proved theory, the theory is held up.
Intelligent Design doesn't follow these rules. It goes like this:
1. Observation: There's a lot of different species out there.
2. Hypothesis: Some "intelligent designer" must of altered the species to allow them to survive in their environment.
3. Ummmm....
The "step 3" is important. With Intelligent Design, you *can't test it*. Actually, let me back up: you're not allowed to test it. The only way to prove/disprove Intelligent Design is to find a tablet between 100,000,000 and 25,000,000 million years old that says "Note to self: change DNA of duck billed platypus to make it better to survive. Love, ID."
If you do bring up a changing fossil record and say "Look, we have a changing species over time", the ID'er will say "Ah, see - the designer changed the species". Again, no proof, no experiment needed.
This is why ID is not science, or even a theory: it's a belief. It's a nice belief. Do I believe some God/Goddess/Higher Being made the Universe? Sure. Do I think that They put a hand in everything?
Who cares? Until such a being gets on the Megaphone of the Cosmos and says "Hey, dudes - check out Chromosome #15 where I spelled out 'Jesus if fucking metal", I'll trust that They wrote the universe so that we could
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
Was there any mention of Intelligent Falling?
A clever person solves a problem. A wise person avoids it. -- Einstein
Evolution is a theory, and it's the only theory we have. Intelligent design is a mere hypothesis.
I am thrilled ecstatic over this decision. This judge clearly has brains and a willingness to use them. I am going to be happy.
I am not, not going to assume that the fight is over. Keep in mind that it was a loss in the Scopes Monkey Trial that galvanized scientists to fight ever harder for strong science (read no religion) in the biology classroom, and the school as a whole.
While I as a scientist am thrilled by this I also know that the people who oppose science are right now doing 2 things: 1) pasting this decision into a circular or 2 along with the choice words "activist judge" to raise more money/attention/support for their 'cause', and 2) digging in for another, longer fight.
I will celebrate this, and keep vigilant at the same time.
To be fair, the judge (in his 123 page opinion) didn't rule that "intelligent design cant be taught in Dover" as stated in the summary. Instead, the judge ruled that the school board had no non-religious reason for requiring the teaching of intelligent design, and thus the school board was effectively forcing Dover students to be taught religion (as intelligent design has no non-religious purpose). Although this is all semantics, the judge didn't ban intelligent design, and I'm sure teachers could still discuss intelligent design should they be so included. All the judge did was state that the school board (which was voted out of office) had violated the 1st amendment in requiring public schools to teach intelligent design.
It belongs in Philosophy.
What?
the reason why it was defeated - in the words of the Judge - is not because of ID itself but because the people who represented the reasons for inserting ID into the curriculum did so inappropriately.
Yes, because there simply IS no appropriate way to try to get ID taught in Science class. You said it yourself:
the Board's real purpose, which was to promote religion in the public school classroom
That, my friend, is the end all and be all of the entire ID "debate". To get Religion taught intermixed with Science. No one has of yet put forth a way to teach ID as an actual scientific theory, because it isn't. It's religion couched in pseudo-scientific terms.
Nice use of the typical "Slashdot groupthink" line, though. It alone will probably get you modded up.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Then all biologists should be charged with violating the DMCA, shouldn't they ?
Thank God!
I second the motion. Indeed it is a gift from God that kids are now protected from those looneys.
In other words: Just because you claim to follow God, doesn't necessarily mean that God agrees with you. Fundamentalists like those put God's name to shame.
He also said it doesn't belong in science class - it's fine in comparative religion.
Oh there won't be an appeal - the parents are happy with the decision, and the NEW SCHOOL BOARD is too - the legal counsel for the school board cannot appeal without their client's consent and who their client is changed - 8 of 9 members were up for reelection last month, they all got canned and replaced with people who said ID doesn't belong in science class (but it's fine in comparative religion)
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
No. It isn't even usable as case law in the same federal district at this point, though it can be cited to support a particular line of thought. If it were to be appealed, and upheld, then it could be used as binding case law in the same district. The only way it can affect courts outside that district if if the Supreme Court rules on it.
This is good.
But I still think that they *should* be allowed to discuss the existence of "Intelligent Design" since being quiet about it only makes the conspiracy theorists rear their heads.
The opinion that the darwinistic view is "only a theory" should be explained at length to students (and possibly some adults too by the look of it) as being a scientific theory, which is quite different from me having random theories about for example hand-knitted socks, a subject I confess to having no real knowledge of and that I haven't scientifically studied.
Rebel Without A Pause
> Since this is a federal court ruling, does it affect the ID stuff going on in Kansas?
Not legally, since it's in a different federal district.
If Kansas goes to court the judge may or may not look to the Dover case for precedent. Fairly often we get conflicting rulings on an issue in different districts, and no one knows where things stand until the supreme court takes a side on it.
OTOH, I'm sure this will "affect" Kansas to the extent of having the creationists on the state board of education call a strategy meeting...
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Then you can blame CNN. The quotes came from their site. I mean, it's not like the public media would distort the news for their own purposes, is it? *blink*
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
It is not exclusive of intelligent design. Most right-thinking individuals realize that an *INTELLIGENT* Creator would either a) include genetic adaptation in the set of biological rules that govern life or b) create an environment in which there is no need for adaptation.
It's unconstitutional for contradicting the "respecting an establishment of religion" clause in the first amendment. It would be constitutional if it was found to have a scientific basis, but as its basis was found to be religious, then it cannot be supported by federally funded schools.
Constitution of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
Religious Freedom Section 3.All men have a natural and indefeasible right to worship Almighty God according to the dictates of their own consciences; no man can of right be compelled to attend, erect or support any place of worship or to maintain any ministry against his consent; no human authority can, in any case whatever, control or interfere with the rights of conscience, and no preference shall ever be given by law to any religious establishments or modes of worship.
It's consequences in practice are very similar to the First Amendment of the US Constutition's establishment clause which is what prevents federally funded teaching of creationism in a science class as as an inapproprate public act in support of religion.
From the decision:
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
Finally. I was waiting for ONE good news in this so far pretty crappy day.
Religious fanatics go back in time! The Dark Ages were your time, not the 21st century.
Wrong. Darwin's theory essentially predicts that the leaves on a given branch of the "tree of life" (your analogy, not mine, but anyway...) will change in response to outside influences such as survival of the fittest, et al. and these influences seem to account for micro-evolution 100%.
What it does not account for is macro-evolution, that is, the changing of one species into another at the chromosomal level by purely natural selection. Having not followed this very closely in the last 10 or so years, I may be out of date, but this is the missing link that would confirm all of the Origin of Species theory, and to my knowledge this link has never been found. In fact, the closest approximations to this have only occurred in laboratory settings where very intelligent designers have preset up the conditions for it, and manipulated a whole lot of variables to keep the randomness of nature from interfering and ruining the experiment(s). Which I think would constitute an "intelligent design" of a sort, though I am not embracing the whole ID philosophy by saying so.
Let me (and the rest of the /. universe) in on the secret if you have reference to any verified scientific publication that purports otherwise, would you?
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
Intelligent design concentrates on things we do not fully understand or don't know about, and explains them with God. As curious creatures, people are seeking for answers and are ready to believe in something. Unaswered questions bother us to death.
"Judge rules ID as not being science"
so the idiots in this country to get it through their heads once and for all.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
I'm an _atheist_ who occasionnaly uses the language expression "If God meant us to ... (fly for example) then he would have (given us wings for example)". The irony is by that form of language I actually mean that we, or any species, are more comfortable when restricted to the circumstances that we have EVOLVED to deal with better.
From what I remember of my one semester law class, only Supreme Court rulings set precedent for the rest of the country. Other cases may reference this one for arguments/contents, but this is in no way precedent for any other jurisdictions.
The pending cases in Georgia & the Kansas school board policy are unlikely to be directly affected.
Just my 2 pence worth.
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
Apparently the judge said a number of the school board had 'repeatedly lied to cover their motives even while professing religious beliefs'. Are any sites out there going into further details about what these particular lies were?
Who would have thought this would have actually worked? The "off their rocker extremists" thats who - and they happen to be the base of the US's government. Don't get me wrong now - i'm not saying there aren't wackos on both sides, its bad when either one starts getting their way.
The ruling is about setting a curriculum, not about dialogue.
- Sig this!
I noticed that the coverage seems to play fast and loose with the distinction between "forbidden to teach Intelligent Design" and "not required to teach Intelligent Design".
So I went looking for some quotes from the decision or the judge. And I found that the judge wrote "[O]ur conclusion today is that it is unconstitutional to teach ID as an alternative to evolution in a public school science classroom."
So the judge himself seems to agree that this isn't just tossing the school board's requirement that ID be taught; he actually forbids the teaching of ID.
So we can imagine a science teacher saying something like "There are religious people who seriously suggest that life on Earth was the result of a god's 'Intelligent Design' rather than Darwin's evolution by Natural Selection. But there's no scientific evidence to support Intelligent Design, while there is a great deal of evidence that supports Natural Selection."
This statement would appear to be in violation of the judge's explicit order, since it presents ID as an alternative to evolution (which science rejects).
We should hope that this isn't how the courts will actually view the decision. It could be a serious blow to the teaching of science history. Contention with religion is an important part of the history of science. Darwin put off publishing his theory for decades, partly because (as a trained minister) he fully understood the reaction he would get. The power of religious people to suppress teaching evolution has led directly to such things as the overuse of antibiotics and the subsequent evolution of resistance in many disease organisms. We have a raging malaria epidemic in parts of the tropic because of such evolution. These are not trivial consequences, and they should be taught in the schools as part of the history of the biological sciences.
This judge seems to have outlawed such teaching, along with tossing out the attempt to require teaching ID as a valid scientific theory.
I suppose we can look forward to some more court cases over this topic.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
He also gave a reason why ID isn't science
...which is exactly why this issue will not go away. Oh, sure, here in south central PA it's probably a dead issue (thankfully), but all that it will take is a more creative group with less zealotry to find a way to interweave ID while avoiding the pitfalls that the Judge pointed out. Clearly, the judge was put off by the lies and zealotry of the previous Dover school board. A less ambitious group of people might still be able to pull it off in the future, regardless of whether we want it to be or not.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
True, but creationism cases are uncommon and therefore have higher-than-usual fluidity. This ruling discusses a Fifth Circuit case, for instance, because there aren't many precedential cases other than Edwards v. Aguillard. I think it's safe to say that Kitzmiller will be a serious factor in almost any future creationism case, even if it doesn't have precedential or traditionally persuasive weight.
Don't forget Scopes and Scopes II (Hawkins County, TN) on the other side and the GA decision on our side. At least we've tied the score, though. (No doubt, others can come up with even more "points" for either side.)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
The supposition that God is also benevolent would prevent him from doing something that only serves to trick others. (Not to mention issues with tri-omni beings).
Also, the eye isn't a great example. Cells with light sensitivity (found in some primitive animals) are thought to be the precursor to the eye.
Take it however you will, here's a snippet from Wikipedia (Do a further search on academic papers for parallel evolution of the eye):
"Despite the precision and complexity of the eye, computer models of eye evolution, developed by Dan-Erik Nilsson and Susanne Pelger, demonstrated that a primitive optical sense organ could evolve into a complex human-like eye within a reasonable period (less than a million years) simply through small mutations and natural selection.
Eyes in various animals show adaption to their requirements. For example, birds of prey have much greater visual acuity than humans and some, like diurnal birds of prey, can see ultraviolet light. The different forms of eye in, for example, vertebrates and mollusks are often cited as examples of parallel evolution, suggesting that the development of eyes through evolution might not be so improbable as it might seem. However, the development of the eye is considered to be monophyletic; that is, all modern eyes, varied as they are, have their origins in a proto-eye believed to have evolved some 540 million years ago (Mya)." (Source: Wikipedia's article on "Eye")
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/01/1/l_0 11_01.html
Every change had to confer a survival advantage, no matter how slight. Eventually, the light-sensitive spot evolved into a retina, the layer of cells and pigment at the back of the human eye. Over time a lens formed at the front of the eye. It could have arisen as a double-layered transparent tissue containing increasing amounts of liquid that gave it the convex curvature of the human eye.
In fact, eyes corresponding to every stage in this sequence have been found in existing living species.
My kingdom is not of this world; (John 18:36)
isn't clear?
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Isn't Education free of religions on USA?, well in my country it is by law, it's only natural that ID teached on the class room whould be inconstitutional unless as part of a theology class.
C-x C-c
> it must be pointed out that the reason why it was defeated - in the words of the Judge - is not because of ID itself but because the people who represented the reasons for inserting ID into the curriculum did so inappropriately. [...] ID itself is not the reason for the ruling as much as the deceitful practices of those who fought to have it put into the schools.
Sounds like you should have read more before posting.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
...that there IS a God.
.max
Thank You!
try the veal
A first grade teacher [was,is] being sued because she told her class Santa Claus wasn't real... Proving once again that it IS meet, right, and salutary to tell kids about "imaginary" characters, as long as [he,she,it]'s the "correct" one.
PS -- Santa Claus is based on Saint Nicholas, a Turkish Christian Bishop.
You can't prove false something that is made up.
For those of you not familiar with this argument. The basis of ID comes from a book written by Micheal Behe called "Darwin's black box". In that book he argues that at a certian level an organism cannot be reduced any more and still be a functional organism. It's basically like saying 'If I take an engine out of a car. It's not a car anymore... and that means there's god'
As a side note, I must add that this decision may also mean that if I go to court for a ticket I won't be conviced of murder.
once more into the breach
MOD PARENT UP!
(Since he posted as Anonymous Coward - for whatever reason - his response will likely be hidden to many. Which, of course, is why you should browse at -1 when moderating.)Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
How about this as a start? http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/01/1/l_0 11_01.html/
Self awareness - try it!
Judge says "Shut up, Flanders!"
Not only is the eye not irreducibly complex, but there are many different kinds of eyes in animals today and in the fossil record. The eye most definately evolved.
Okay here's one for you: explain the eye. It either works or it doesn't. There is no evolutionary intermediate form that would function so how could it have evolved?
Read up on evolution. Evolution is marked by periods of quick change, often considered mutations. If these mutations benefit the individual, it is more likely that the individual will prosper and produce offspring, thus passing the mutation on
Oh please. There are examples of intermediary steps in eye development throughout the animal kingdom, from simple eye spots all the way to mammalian eyes. Each step is fully functional and does what the organism possessing it requires it to do.
Here's a couple of questions for you:
If the eye is in fact designed, why does it suffer from the imperfection of the blind spot? Nerves in the mammalian eye actually lie on top of the retina, and where they gather together and plunge through the back of the eye to form the optic nerve, no light can be sensed. This is a design flaw any fallible human engineer would catch and correct...so what does this say about the superhuman Designer of ID fame? (And before you maintain that the eye needs to be designed in this manner, consider the eye of the octopus and squid, which is actually designed correctly (nerves lie under the retina, avoiding the problem of the blind spot).
Cats have eyes that can see clearly in what we perceive to be total darkness. Some squid have twelve different types of color sensing cells (as opposed to our three). Eagles have acuity of vision undreamt of by man. Bees and some birds can see into the ultraviolet. Pit vipers can see into the infrared by virtue of their pits (infrared-sensitive eye pits). Before you ask 'what good is half an eye, consider what good your eyes are to you, deficient as they are.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
'The Eye'...
There are single celled creatures still alive that demonstrate how the eye evolved. A light receptive 'eye spot' that functions on a very low level to allow the creature to orient towards light for photosynthisis.
http://ebiomedia.com/gall/eyes/primitive.html
This from a Christian who believes in 'intellegent design'... Your argument, along with the 'wings' argument, and several similar arguments don't stand up to scrutiny. Neither does the evolutionary time line stand up to mathematic propabilities. It's an open argument which neither side can prove right now. Doesn't explain how this Judge was able to make the call without proof one way or the other.
Freedom of Religeion != Freedom from Religeion
Liberty is an inherently offensive lifestyle. Living in a free society guarantees that each one of us will see our most
I'm torn because the moderation of your post provides ample counter-proof to evolution. There were two aspects to the decision. The first, as you state, was the indemic deceit on the part of the pro-ID faction, including the use of a textbook from the ninties which, literally, was 'scientifically' updated by replacing every instance of the word 'creationism' with the phrase 'intelligent design'. Beyond that though the judge found no evidence from the pro-ID side which demonstrated a scientific basis for ID. Those two aspects together demonstrated a clear transgression of an existing, constitutional law and as a Bush-appointed, Republican, non-activist judge he had no option but to rule against the ID side. They lost for being unscientific and deceitful.
Ummm ...
l l/21/14/3643/
...
There are many organisms that have light sensitive cells
that are not eyes, but may well evolve into them.
http://embojournal.npgjournals.com/cgi/content/fu
Sorry,
Your next starter for 10 is
Help! help!, the termites are eating my DRAM!!!
The scientists you speak of set up the "perfect environment" because they don't have billions of years for certain things to "possibly" happen. Life itself is pretty hard to come by. It apparently can't be just anywhere. What is most likely is a set of criteria needs met (like the formation of amino acids) before life can begin. Maybe it failed a trillion times before getting going on earth. Who knows. The "gaps" in species (meaning the reason we can't tell what organism jumped to what) is likely two reasons... 1) Everything we see right now is a miniscule fraction of things that have been alive before. It could be that in a lot of cases the "intermediate" stages of said creature failed when an upgraded version showed up. This is certainly a strong theory of what happened when going from Ape->Man. 2) It could be part of evolution to start making radical genetic changes when the species is in danger or other circumstances. Maybe it failed a trillion times, but on the trillion and first, a good, large, genetic mutation took place.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
How about the fact that fish and all single cell animals contain the same DNA that you do. Humans just have little more.
...richie - It is a good day to code.
There's nothing wrong with teaching ID, in the right place. i.e.
1. In a science class discussing theories and how some theories (Darwin's) help provide a deeper insight into the world around us and others (ID) seek to ignore questions and stifle debate.
2. In a social science class to show how redefining language can be used to redefine peoples perception of reality.
3. In a comparative religion class to show how most religions (Catholicism possibly being an exception) believe in ID in some form or other.
> Show me evidence that I evolved from a fish or a single celled animal.
Ask your librarian for a first year biology textbook.
> You can't, therefor evolution isn't science.
Maybe you should back up and tell us what definition of 'science' you're using.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
You see? If you'd had a better grounding in science, you wouldn't be confused about this. EVERYTHING isn't taught in science class... SCIENCE is taught there-- natural explanations supported by evidence using the scientific method!
I sure didn't have a problem in high school learning about "what a majority of people in the USA believe"... when I took a *comparitive religions* course.
A majority of people also believe that George Washington was our nation's first president... oddly, I don't recall ever learning that in my science class.
If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. -- Carl Sagan
The first line of your original post begins: "Since I'm sure that no one is going to actually RTFA..."
Now you're bitching about your own quotes being from CNN? Go study yourself for signs of intelligence, twit.
Okay here's one for you: explain the eye. It either works or it doesn't. There is no evolutionary intermediate form that would function so how could it have evolved?
Classic mistake.... the 'I don't know how so it is impossible without devine intervention' excuse.
Science has already demonstrated that you need only a few modifications to allow normal brain tissue to become light sensitive.
And an eye with a few components still can give you an advantage over others that don't have it:
-Take out the muscles that move it around, you would have to turn your head to look at different things, but it would still be usefull.
-Take out the focussing stuff, you would only see a few things really clear, but when a large blob comes at you at high speed you might step aside while someone without this less usefull eye would get hit/eaten.
-Take out color, black and white tigers still look dangerous enough without the yellow.
-Take out the transparent stuff and place a thing layer of skin in its place, you would get even worse focusing but one could still see blobs moving around.
-Remove the fluid stuff and place the retina close to the skin, you could still detect sudden changes in the lighting.
Do them all and you are very close to the simple lightsensitive braincell.
I am not saying that is the way it happened, but I could think a possible path up in a few seconds without the need to drag some higher being into the picture.
The whole 'irreducibly complex' stuff is a joke, the being that is supposed to do that sort of stuff would need to be even more complex...
I don't disbelieve evolution but neither do I blindly believe everything the scientists tell me is fact That's rather the basis of science.
As an aside: did you consider that God could, by definition he's omnipotent afterall, have forged the fossil record? I think most Christians believe he's not like that and so didn't.
Don't try to use logic and omnipotent gods in the same sentence, its to easy to logically disprove an omnipotent god....
Besides the world was created last week including evidence, such as your memories, of the past.
Jeroen
Secure messaging: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/
...would be a little more appropriate terminology judging on the number of political, financial, and natural disasters we are seeing everywhere these days.
We can't even make computers (arguably very intelligently designed) fool-proof.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Really, ID should be quite easy to prove. All one needs to prove is spontaneous creation of a creature.
I find it much easier to believe in evolution than to believe that God went through this elaborate lie to trick us. I mean faking a fossil record is one thing but creating the universe with light already in transit so the stars would look like they're been there for billions of years?? Or creating the image of a supernova such that we would think that it exploded billions of years ago but didn't really?
Come on. Get a grip. I believe in God but I cant believe he's a coniving trickster that the fundamentalists seem to think he must be.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
Dismantle the Department of Education already. Let the parents decide what they wish they chldren to learn.
Set your phasers on "funky"!
I'm sorry, the word was "evidence" not "printed text trying to force a theory down my throat".
Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.
1. This particular "activist judge" was appointed by President G.W. Bush in 2002.
n .debate.ap/index.html).
2. It's unlikely that the current Dover school board will appeal the decision, making it unlikely that this particular case will ever get to the Supreme Court.
3. That leaves the "sticker" case in Georgia, with it's more narrowly expressed disapproval of evolution as the case most likely to get to the Supremes. At last report, it appeared the appeals court might be inclined to overturn the Federal court decision against the stickers (http://www.cnn.com/2005/EDUCATION/12/16/evolutio
4. Some ID proponents advised against the former Dover school board pressing this case, as they felt it didn't have a good chance. Other school boards, however, will now simply become more careful about how they attempt to introduce ID into the classroom.
While Dover was a slam dunk for science, this particular fight is far from over.
TLR
A man no more knows his destiny than a tea leaf knows the history of the East India Company
Jehovah and Messiah got me 1.2 million!
Good, as has been said many times before ID is not science. A scientific theory can be tested. ID can not be tested. As a child, the scientific method is one of the first things we learn in science classes. How can we justify throwing it out the window because it disagrees with religion. I am all for teaching religious beliefs (after all it is something that touches more people deeper than art ever could and we have classes for that) but teach it in a class about religion. Teach christian's creationist views, the Hindu's views on creation, the Muslim's etc...
This is one step in the right direction for a country whos science and math scores have been slipping ridiculously considering the amount of money that we have compared to the other nations of the world to throw at education.
We seldom regret saying too little but often regret saying too much.
Not true. Some eyes work better than others. Some creatures can only see light/shadow.
Some have eyes that don't even work. How does that make sense in Inteligent Design?
There are lots of things that seem impossible when looking at our small life span, but are possible when looking at 100s of millions or even billions of years of evolution. Lots can happen even from random mutations over that time span.
How about Cancer? Was that also Intelligently Designed? Why would a designer create cancer? Or why would they create an organism that worked in such a compilated way instead of going for a simpiler design?
Teach it in social science class, not biology.
Although, I do agree to some extent - I learned about "spontaneous regeneration" as an example of a failed theory in science class, and learned about the scientific method in general, so I could see teaching ID in that light.
By the eye, what do you mean? A device to detect light? Or a device with an iris, cornea and retina? Light-sensitive cells exist in many simple forms and have evolved to more and more efficient versions of vision. There exist forms of life with simple and complex vision today. See this article about a PBS show on the subject. "The first animals with anything resembling an eye lived about 550 million years ago. And, according to one scientist's calculations, only 364,000 years would have been needed for a camera-like eye to evolve from a light-sensitive patch."
Here is more at this press release about the evolution of the human eye. '"It is not surprising that cells of human eyes come from the brain. We still have light-sensitive cells in our brains today which detect light and influence our daily rhythms of activity," explains Wittbrodt. "Quite possibly, the human eye has originated from light-sensitive cells in the brain. Only later in evolution would such brain cells have relocated into an eye and gained the potential to confer vision."'
And lots more links here. so please let's stop using the eye as an example. What next, bacterial flagella? That one is explained too. Next question?
Is it all figured out? No, but in science when we don't know it all we say that we are still looking, we don't say things we don't know must be explained by supernatural means, which is what ID does. It cops out with, "it must be something intelligent that designed it" instead of trying to understand the real reasons. Science may never find all the answers, it doesn't promise that it will but at least it doesn't have the answers BEFORE it has the QUESTIONS.
$#!^ happens, but why does it always have to happen to me???
As all this will do is enable the religious right to galvanize their base against "radical judges legislating from the bench", as much a non-issue as gay marriage was in 2004, and this despite the Judge Jones declaration "that he wasn't saying the intelligent design concept shouldn't be studied and discussed, saying its advocates "have bona fide and deeply held beliefs which drive their scholarly endeavors."".
We live in the strangest of times, where intangibles matter more than observable facts and spin supplants truth as a means to grasp and maintain power.
Some days it's just not worth
chewing through my restraints.
Yeah, many people believe in Jesus. Lots of others believe in Mohammed. Some believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
None of that is science. It is religious belief. It should not be taught in science class.
IMAO, even if the majority of people believe something, it doesn't mean that something is right, accurate, or worthy of respect.
Kierthos
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
You should do a pub-med search for "Ciclid" and "Lake Vitoria." They are an excellent example of evolution in action. We have directly monitored the creation of new genes in the species. The creation of more complicated life from simpler life if a very well proven observation. It is only the level of the concept of gravity in scientific evidence.
You are correct in saying that we have not triggered the spontaneous creation of life from non-living chemicals but that also isn't a surprise. It took evolution a minimum of several million years to get simple cells...we must expect a similarly long time scale to observe spontaneous bio-genesis. While we could go in and construct a living cell right now (given time and resources) that doesn't prove anything regarding evolution one way or another. All we can say for certain right now is that there are NO laws of nature or probability that prevent the creation of life from non-living chemicals spontaneously.
As for this country, most (but not all) of the founding fathers were religious, some very much so. But the constitution of the US (which is really what the country is) is actually the very first completly secular government ever concived by man. God and religion are not mentioned once in the constitution and in the amendments the only time religion is mentioned is when the government is told to butt out and leave religion alone.
This country is a SECULAR country that protects religion, NOT the other way around.
I invite you to help yourself to last year's flu vaccine.
Good to see that facts and testability (sp?) of theories still mean something in the land under god.
Why should someones belief in a supernatural being be included in a science class? If they mention God (a Christion god) why not mention Zeus, Odin, Vishnu, etc? Science isn't about beliefs, it's about testing the natural world.
People have believed in Christ for over 2000 years.
And the Earth has been in existence for what, 4.5 billion years? Besides, what does Christ have to do with it? Christ isn't God (at least not from what I remember of my catechism classes).
Many people believe God created everything, and as people, we're doing our best to describe and measure what he created.
Whoa! Hold on thar pardner. You just made a huge leap of false logic. First you say that many people believe that God created everything yet provide no evidence for this belief. Then you suggest that we are trying to measure what he created. If you haven't provided any evidence to further the claim that God exists how can you say that God created everything?
Also, who says God is a he? Why not a she? Why not an it? A supernatural being able to create matter from nothing most likely doesn't have a gender.
Many people believe in lots of things. Some people even believe they are Jesus. That doesn't mean they are correct.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Okay, so intelligent design is out... can we discuss STUPID design instead? Classic topics are: Who's the moron who put this DNA thing together? ,etc..
The judge ruled in large part on what he believed the intent of the people to be who put the (un)Intelligent Design theory forward. The judge believed that their intent was to promote religion in the public schools. I agree with him.
- "History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of men" -- Blue Oyster Cult, 'Godzilla'
False. There are tons of intermediate eyes. From the simplest form, we have countless photosensive proteins. A simple mutation to a protein that triggers a cellular interaction can make that protein light-sensitive, and thus make the interaction that it performed before light sensitive. Thus, in a single mutation, a single-celled organism or specific cells of a multicellular organism can develop an "eyespot". Eyespots, of course, are very poor - they're omnidirectional with no resolution. Two lines of approach can improve them. For small animals, you can get multiple eyespots; as these advance, they become what we know as a compound eye. On larger animals, however, a protective sheath over it can, by thickening, begin to focus light, and thus produce different readings in different cells of the eyespot. There is a steady progression from there to a full lens. At the same time, there's a steady progression for the sensitive cells to retreat from the surface at the same time, forming a retina, and for the cells around the new "lens" (formerly just a protective outer layer) to produce more pigments to shield the retina from ambient light. Retracting pupils can then make the eye be able to handle various lighting conditions. Other evolutionary routes include adding various colors (to allow others to see what direction you're looking more easily - important for intelligent social animals), or even weird things like vibrating the eyes (useful for providing good vision in very small animals, like the jumping spider).
Every intermediate described above *exists*. It's not just theoretical, it actually exists in animals in the world. The eye's evolution has also been modelled; there is a continuous "up-slope" in visual ability by incremental mutations.
I spent the evening flickering into your darkness.
Because state laws set down requirements that children attend school, and use government money to support that school.
If we fill that school with religious indoctrination, we act to create an establishment of religion. Just as if we mandated church attendance as a requirement to hold public office, or to vote.
If ID could be taught in such a way that it is not religiously-based, then it would be allowed. But that basically boils down to a contradiction.
We both permit and support the education our children receive in our area's public school system. IMHO, they're doing a pretty fair job.
We both teach our children what we believe. Our children know that we're speaking about our beliefs, even when we speak of them as facts.
We made sure our kids were capable of critical thought, judgement and self-determination in the area of beliefs. They have their own (for the record, two have ended up Catholic, one agnostic, one athiest - the jury's still out on the youngest two, but they're leaning toward agnostic and Jewish).
If I believe a thing to be true, wouldn't not sharing that with my children be abuse?
That claim (it either works or it doesn't) is false. And the reasoning has been disproved many times, e.g. in "The Blind Watchmaker" by Dawkins. There he explains how 1% of an eye can be useful in many ways, other than the obvious one (giving 1% sight).
Read the book, give it a try. You have clearly been exposed to sources of informations that are not impartial.
> I'm sorry, the word was "evidence" not "printed text trying to force a theory down my throat".
Fortunately for you and your ilk, the judge didn't rule it illegal to deny reality.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
This has been observed, e.g. several new mosquito species have evolved in the London subway.
see here for more info.
Try the molecular evidence, my friend. You fit in the same nested hiearchy as any fish or any single-celled organism you care to name. The evidence is overwhelming.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
You know, I don't remember the 9th Commandment saying "Thou shall not lie, save to further my faith".
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
The judge in the case wrote:
...
;-)
"It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy."
There's no irony here at all. What these individuals were doing is properly called "perjury". In pretending to a non-religious motive, they were simply lying. This seems to have been made clear by statements they made outside the courtroom, where they were quite vocal about their religious beliefs. Unfortunately for them, the judge found them out. But he did mischaracterize their behavior as "ironic".
We will now have the usual flamewar over the meaning of the term "irony"
(Except within the jurisdiction of Judge Jones' court, where there is now a legal definition of the term.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Of those theories, string theory is the weakest. However, it has much more support (both scholastically and scientifically) than ID, in that it has intrinsic features that can be disproven. Naturally, it is very much a work in progress, and will hopefully result in interesting break-throughs. Of course, it shouldn't be taught at the high-school level yet, but not for the same reasons that ID shouldn't. I'd have no problems with it being mentioned; however, which is part of what was prescribed against here.
Furthermore, the federal judge in question was not ruling off of his own understanding of what is and what is not science. Unlike the board that proposed these changes, he heard from many, many scientists before making his decision. In fact, that was part of the problem. If you followed the case, you'd know that one of the board members admitted to ignored the advice of those who did know what they were talking about, in lieu of what they themselves personally believed. As the judge stated, it is the board that was being activist, and not the judge.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
I still think any biology teacher who decides to ignore the evolution vs. ID debate is an idiot. It's a great opportunity to discuss the evidence in support of both theories. The evidence in support of evolution is so much stronger I don't understand why some people are even afraid to mention that ID theory even exists.
Agreed on all points except that when the government mandates that a certain theology or theory be taught regarding science, or anything else, that is a direct rebuttal to religion, isn't the government getting in the business of religion anyway? My kid will learn that we are just animals, that we evolved from monkeys and never think a thing about himself spiritually. To me, that's the government getting ALL up in my grill on religion.
Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.
Of course, we all saw how he spent the last eleven years of his life.
The CNN headline and article cleary state that the judge rejected ID in the science classroom because it's not science. You claimed otherwise in the non-quoted part of your post.
RUAL?
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
...a monkey's uncle!
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
Thank you. Now let's hope that the rest of the nation takes notice. I am not against religion, but like previously stated, it does not belong in the classroom of U.S. public schools.
Here is somebody else's counter-argument (one amongst many).
"Behe's colossal mistake is that, in rejecting these possibilities, he concludes that no Darwinian solution remains. But one does. It is this: An irreducibly complex system can be built gradually by adding parts that, while initially just advantageous, become - because of later changes - essential. The logic is very simple. Some part (A) initially does some job (and not very well, perhaps). Another part (B) later gets added because it helps A. This new part isn't essential, it merely improves things. But later on, A (or something else) may change in such a way that B now becomes indispensable. This process continues as further parts get folded into the system. And at the end of the day, many parts may all be required."
-- H. Allen Orr
-- The latest attack on evolution is cleverly argued, biologically informed - and wrong.
-- Boston Review, December/January 1997.
Decisions from another district are called "persuasive authority". This means that the lawyers can bring the decision before the court to help persuade the judge to follow that decision, but the judge has no obligation to do so.
Precedent is only when the court you are currently in has made a decision on-point, or when the circuit court (that's the next level up, assuming this gets appealed) in your jurisdiction has made an on-point decision.
When two circuits are in opposition, that is when the Supreme Court will likely accept a case to hear and make their final decision.
In Vino Veritas
Lol. Are you serious? It's "easy" to logically disprove an omnipotent god? I'd like to see you attempt that logical argument. Sorry, man, it's as hard to logically disprove an omnipotent god, as it is to logically prove there is one.
Indeed it is.
There are no facts when it comes to how the universe was created.
Well, we're talking about evolution here, not cosmology; even if that weren't the case, while we obviously don't know how the universe started, empirical observations which can give us insight into the beginning of the universe, such as the cosmic background radiation, are facts.
Why can't a teacher tell his students that many people believe God created the universe?
Because it isn't a scientific belief. This isn't a matter of teaching about how people believed in geocentrism, or phlogiston, or the ether; it is a non-falsifiable claim.
This is not like telling students some new theory that someone thought up 5 minutes ago. People have believed in Christ for over 2000 years. It seems like it should be mentioned in the biology class.
You're right; it isn't some new theory. It isn't even a theory at all; it's an untestable model.
Many people believe God created everything, and as people, we're doing our best to describe and measure what he created. I'm not advocating replacing science text books with the bible. But to leave out something that a majority of people in the USA believe is wrong.
What people believe is a subject for an anthropology class, not a science class.
English is easier said than done.
One of the points that I have seen made is the claim that science lacks all of the information needed to back up evolution. First of all, I don't see evolution as lacking many points of information- but even if so... How much information in comparison is backing up ID? Does anyone have a single speck of proof about this "Intelegent Designer"? Nope.
We each in science what we can best prove at the time, same with mathematics, computer science, electronics, history, etc...
Just because we don't know something, is no reason to attribute that to a "Higher Power" automatically. If Aliens land on this planet and start telling us about the cells that they put on this planet a few billion years ago as an experiment and now they are just checking up on us... well then it's time to teach that the aliens made us, but until we have direct and scientifically provable (by scientific method) evidence of something else being in charge, then we should teach what science has shown us!
Science classes should teach the scientific method and things that we have observed through it. We don't have a unified theory yet, but that doesn't mean that nothing is physics works. It just means that we have figured out a few things really well, but we just haven't gotten them to all line up yet!
Philosophy and Religious Studies classes can reference ID all they want as an idea for discussion, but it has no scientific merit. Any student that doesn't get the idea of what science is and what religion are as separate subjects needs to take some remedial classes.
Tibbon
tibbon.com
You are comparing apples to oranges, Evolution != Origin of the Universe
Evolution is what has happened to species over time. Even the Catholic church will admit that, but what you evolutionist keep doing is equating evolution with how things began in the first place, and of that, other than the evidence of the big bang you have nothing.
Going backward in time evolutionists believe : Humans --> Apes --> One celled organisims --> Primordial Stew -- > Big Bang
Where as many intelligent christians believe: Humans --> Apes --> One celled organisims --> Primordial Stew --> Big Bang --> Let there be light.
I read Slashdot for the headlines, because the headlines, unlike the articles, are usually original and never duplicated
The problem is that all those sticking theor fingers in their ears with respect to ID say that it belongs in a comparative religion class. But comparative religion classes are rarely found in high school. You likely only see them in college.
With the strained relations we have in the US today, a lot of it based upon religion. IT would really benefit us to have some kind of comparative religion classes in high school. But that would take away from all the self esteem crap being pushed in all the school systems now, which in turned pushed out REAL learning.
Prof. Farnsworth - "Oh a lesson in not changing history from Mr I'm-My-Own-Grandpa!"
The First ammendment is a restriction on Congress. Congress shall make no law... Any of the several States are free to establish the official State Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Applying the "establishment clause" to State and Local governments is the SCOTUS ruling things into it. Should they so choose they can rule that the First Ammendment gives Congress the power to outlaw religion and imprison Christians and there's nothing short of revolution you can do about it...
Myth.
I spent the evening flickering into your darkness.
Excuse my ignorance when it comes to law, but, could the people in Kansas now sue the state's school board using this case as precedence?
If so...
...then teach more creation thoeries than just the one pushed by Chri$tianity.
These poeple are johnny come latelies.
No incumbents, not no where, not no how.
Vote them out every term.
The first part of your comment is just plain dumb. I'm curious though as to why you think that evolution doesn't obey the laws of thermodynamics. Willing to explain?
Vandemar.org
Hallejuah! Keep the Government out of my Faith! My biggest problem with teaching creationism in schools or even the hint of creationism taught in a science class or anywhere other than a relgious class, is that it puts G-d in a box, just exactly the opposite of the nature of G-d.
Science is all about theories. There are no facts when it comes to how the universe was created. Why can't a teacher tell his students that many people believe God created the universe?
No, science ISN'T about theories. Its about ascertaining repeatable, provable facts of our material world. Supernatural theories (e.g. one that involves the existance of an entity, when there is no repeatable, provable existance of said entity) are not dealt with science. By definition, they are unscientific.
This is not like telling students some new theory that someone thought up 5 minutes ago. People have believed in Christ for over 2000 years. It seems like it should be mentioned in the biology class.Bhuddists believe the universe may not have a beginning. I'm not an expert in Bhuddist belief's, but I remember reading one Bhuddist's recollections of a conversation with Dali Lama. The Universe could've been created just moments ago, and created to appear to have a past. And they've been believing in ideas like this before Christ was in diapers. Yet neither idea is provable and repeatable. Science is the search for truths in a material world. Period.
Many people believe God created everything, and as people, we're doing our best to describe and measure what he created. I'm not advocating replacing science text books with the bible. But to leave out something that a majority of people in the USA believe is wrong.To every idiot that says "Evolution is JUST a theory.", I respond with, "The Bible is JUST a book." Its funny how so many people get upset when you trivialize their dogma. ID never had a leg to stand on, unless you count Creationism, which was banned from being taught in schools in 1987. Now please stop hurting science.
Physical property X can vary from Y to Z but it doesn't. Slightest variation in X would preclude life.
Ex: Boiling point of water, melting point of ice, enzymatic reactions, patterns of moulcules and crystals, etc....
2. Hypothesis
Possibly, some external stimulus is arranging the observed phenomena to ensure a suitable environment to enable life to exist.
3. Experiment
Like gravity, we are still looking for answers on how it works at the physical level and how to verify.
4. Results
...see 3.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
I'm all for it. As long as they teach my religion as well. And by the way, although my religion is new to me, it has existed in since the beginning of time. It was created "new" only recently.
It also answers some of the more fundamental physics questions better than the bible.
HPC for Primates. Read Cluster Monkey
Evolution does not preclude the 'existence' or 'non existance' of God.
Even the Vatican endorses Evolution.
I don't mind Biology teachers saying that Evolution is a theory. I do mind my children being told that ID is an alternative theory (without any crediable pear reviewed publications).
ID is a great course to be tought in a 'Religous Studies' class (probably not available in America). I have no idea why Cristianity (or any other religous belief) should be mentioned in Biology which is a science (that is based on Experimental verification [sorry testing] of theories).
As to speciation, it is observed, but again, the key prediction of common descent, that the genes of all organisms would demonstrate that nested hiearchy, has been confirmed over and over again. The fossil record gives us a good idea of faunal succession, a key prediction of evolutionary theory, but you have been lied to if you think that it all ends at the fossil record. Perhaps it's time you ask the lying Creationists that you get your information from why they seem so pathetically unaware that evolutionary theory has advanced significantly in the last hundred years. Then maybe you won't come on Slashdot and look so foolish.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
More concisely and with less cheesy apologetics here.
I spent the evening flickering into your darkness.
There's no text here. Just adding a bit of junk to escape the lameness filter.
Are quarks 100% of what scientists think they are. Is general relativity? Is string theory?!?
General relativity might be the best comparison here. We are unable to perform controlled experiments warping time and space. We can only measure what is already warped. Similarly, evolution is usually studied by what has already evolved. Actually, we can and have done controlled experiments on evolution, but no doubt this will bring up the whole micro- versus macro- evolution debate, which of course becomes a debate of semantics and one therefore not worth having. I'll admit that I'm not aware of any controlled experiments that have evolved new species (as opposed to sub-species) - although others might be aware of some. Additionally, I perform controlled experiments all the time using evolution to create new virtual species. Currently, I have a whole population of virtual hippocampi (CA3 region only) that are raring to cogitate.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
If your parents took you as a child, you pretty much didn't make that decision on your own. It was engrained in you as a child. If you never attended church as a child, and started going on your own as an adult, then you can make the claim that you made a choice.
No matter what you believe, this is a Good Thing for science education. Science is the systematic determination of facts by rigorously testing theories.
Intelligent design may or may not be right, but it really doesn't belong in the teaching of science, especially at levels where students are easily moldable. I would be more than willing to accept intelligent design when facts emerge. This will happen in my eyes when the magical nonexistent being comes down from the sky and tells us why he started the whole ball rolling. Until then, I'm comfortable with pure science, thanks.
"Since this is a federal court ruling, does it affect the ID stuff going on in Kansas?"
Not directly, however, it will probably make other judges more comfortable with handing down similar rulings in the future.
and it says:
"Jones wrote that he wasn't saying the intelligent design concept shouldn't be studied and discussed, saying its advocates "have bona fide and deeply held beliefs which drive their scholarly endeavors."
But, he wrote, "our conclusion today is that it is unconstitutional to teach ID as an alternative to evolution in a public school science classroom."
So you need not fear that this ruling is a gag order on creationism in the classroom. It is merely a ruling which forbids the required teaching of ID as an viable, alternate scientific theory to evolution because, well, its not scientific. Teachers are still free to dicuss alternate scientific theories, and to footnote pseudo-theories during their lectures.
I feel that this is just fine. If they don't want to teach the real ID, they can just burn in hell for their sins. I, on the other hand, am planning for the day I don my eternal pirate regalila and dring from the beer volcano and see the stripper factory with my own eyes.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Cretinism (most likely from the Latin Christinum, "Christian")
--Wikipedia
I've said it before and I'll say it again, science doesn't give a rat's ass about truth. Science is about seeking out explanation, understanding, and prediction. A scientific theory can simultaneously be absolutely wrong (e.g., classical physics) but entirely usefull if it allows one to make predictions and explain behavior reproducibly.
But that's still not proof that ID explains how the world came into existance. Prooving something CAN be done does not prove it WAS done.
"it must be pointed out that the reason why it was defeated - in the words of the Judge - is not because of ID itself but because the people who represented the reasons for inserting ID into the curriculum did so inappropriately."
No, I don't think so.
I've read the 139-page judgement. I'm not a lawyer, but it is pretty clear to me that, independent of the details of the questionable actions of the board members in the case, ID would be on very shakey legal grounds even if the people involved were lily-white and acting with appropriate intentions. As the judgement makes very, very plain: A) ID in its current form is not science, and B) its introduction into science curriculum in schools is inappopriate for that reason. The implementation details (which were severely botched by this board if they wanted to try to defend their actions down the line) only made the situation more obvious.
At the place where the judge made clear that he was not saying the intelligent design concept should not be studied and discussed, he was talking about *generally* -- i.e. in the broader realm of scholarly study (as in, maybe someday the ID movement will get its act together and become scientific, but the judgement implies pretty strongly that the basic philosophy/approach adopted may already bar that possibility). Public school classrooms? I don't think he was talking about that context when he makes the comment from which I think that paraphrase was derived, on p.137:
"With that said, we do not question that many of the leading advocates of ID have bona fide and deeply held beliefs which drive their scholarly endeavors. Nor do we controvert that ID should continue to be studied, debated, and discussed. As stated, our conclusion today is that it is unconstitutional to teach ID as an alternative to evolution in a public school science classroom."
So, basically, I think you are quite wrong that it was the people behind the message that was the main problem. The message *itself* is out of scope in the public school classroom, according to the judge's opinion.
You're probably right about the appeals, but given that the board itself has been almost entirely replaced in the interim, I can't see how that could easily happen.
Wow, he really delivered a much needed shit kicking to ID. Here are some excerpts from the decision.
From page 29: From page 31: From page 64: From page 136:That's gold Jerry, gold!
Anyways, say goodbye to ID and say hello to the Discovery Institute's next legal strategy, "sudden emergence theory", or some such bollocks.
How about Cancer? Was that also Intelligently Designed? Why would a designer create cancer? Or why would they create an organism that worked in such a compilated way instead of going for a simpiler design?
Are your questions meant to disprove Intelligent Design? Because they don't do any such thing. In fact, I'm confused by the purpose of your quesitons - they do nothing to discredit Intelligent Design... in fact, your questions are fairly ignorant... as they assume that anything that was "Intelligently" designed would always be used for good. Which obviously isn't the case - guns, atomic bombs, man-made viruses, the list goes on, and on. Just because something is not being used for good, does not discredit the fact that it could have been Intelligently Designed.
(And as a side-note, if you want to know the answer to your above questions, they are all addressed in the Bible.)
Do any of you actually know what the lawsuit was about?
Dover had added a small sticker to the cover of their biology textbook, that said (approximately) this: "Evolution is under some debate. If you want to learn more, look at this other book, available in the school library."
THAT'S IT!
My understanding is that the lawsuit was specifically over the fact that introducing ID to the science classroom was a violation of the US Constitution "seperation of church and state" amendment.
The complete text of said amendment:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
Did Congress order that sticker put on? No? Then how was it unconstitutional?
Thank god.
I'm not familiar with ID but I can only assume that since christians are pushing for it, it must be something about God creating everything. Well, I say if they wanna present that, that we should also include Alien Seeding theories as well. For all we know we're just some huge f**king ant farm. :D
In university I took a Philosphy of Science course from Eduardo Wilner and it was really well done. The class wasn't getting it, most thought they'd signed up for an ethics course, "should we do genetic engineering or not?" sort of thing, and instead got a course about "what we can know, how we know we can know it," and so on. At one point Eduardo challenged us to prove that astrology ISN'T science; he said otherwise he wouldn't continue. It was harder than I thought it would be, yet simpler at the same time and requires the use of logic which most average people lack. Don't knock it until you try it.
Astrology hasn't lasted until today, indeed may be more popular than ever, just because of supermarket tabloids and it isn't just science that has tried to get rid of it: Christian religion doesn't like it either. Why does it have such staying power? What does it offer that most religions do not? The ability to predict the future, which turns out to be it's weak point but you have to know how to use that against it.
$#!^ happens, but why does it always have to happen to me???
There are significant differences between using a case as a reference in an argument and using it as a precedent.
Reference: "This judge rules this way on a case that is similiar in these respects, and this is his logic in doing so."
Precedent: "In this case, the appellate (or Supreme) court said this is the law of the land, and if you ignore it, you'll be overruled and look stupid."
Judges do not like to look stupid.
Finally, she produced the trump card which so often ends these discussions: "But, Jim, evolution has been proved by science. So the Bible can't be true!"
Jim Replied, "No Trudy, the Bible isn't true because a few cultist men made it up as they went along trying to get people to justify their years of following a man who just up and died on them. I mean the whole thing about immaculent conception... Oh come on... How else do you think Mary was going to explain Joeseph her afair with a Roman Centurion! Joeseph told that to his son and he believed and he went around telling people he was the 'son o god' and some poor saps ended up believing him until they arrest him and put him to death with the thousands of other god claimants of the day. Then of course his wife Mary Magdelan had to go tells those poor saps that he resurrected so they wouldn't ask for her for their share of the money he owed so they ended up making a whole cult out of it. Then a dum dum roman dyslexic scribe misinterpeted dog and declared it a national religion when the Emperor asked to fetch the royal pet. Oh and that Darwin guy... He was just smoking pot. Everyone knows it was the Flying Spegetti monster and the universe is only 6 seconds old and that you are going to be reincarnated as a jock strap for eternity for failing to know this..."
At that point Trudy just gives a blank stare and goes "Oh..." and passed away.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
A simple google search for "evidence evolution" yields numerous pages. From the very first one (I'm feeling lucky!)
m l has eight fruity fly speciation events. Most interesting to me is the Apple Maggot fly, which originally fed on hawthorn trees, but is speciating at this very moment; there are now two different races of the fly, one of which feeds on apples and other rosacea and one on thornapples. They mature at different rates and due to this do not interbreed even though they are still able to hybridize.
Link 1: Observed Evidence of Speciation http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.ht
Link 2: 29 evidences for macroevolution http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/ This is the one I was looking for. If you read and understand this and fail to accept that evolution is occuring and can account for the diversity of species on earth then I've got a bridge to sell you.
Acy
-- Too lazy to get a lower UID.
If it fits anywhere is in a class of religious studies. When I was at school I had class by this name, and it taught about all religions and did not try proving that one religion was better than another. It was more about trying to provide intellectual insight into the basis and beliefs of each religion.
The other places that would be suitable for teaching this is bible school, church or even private Christian schools.
BTW Don't forget that even the Catholic Church recently came out and declared their support for evolution.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Give me a test that can be done to show that the requirements of falsifiability in science can be falsified. You can't. Therefore, the current view of science is self-contradictory. Karl Popper and the so-called scientific establishment are working within a framework of absurdity.
Evolution has made many predictions that could have been disproven, but each time we look, we usually strengthen it and not weaken it. Of course, evolution isn't a single theory (just like GR or string theory isn't really a single theory anymore), so we might disprove this version of it or that version of it, but that just guides us to make minor corrections (cosmological constant, anyone?) and to make it a better theory.
ID doesn't have that ability, to the best of my knowledge. I don't want to touch FSM for fear of starting a religious war, however. :)
P.S. I think you misread my previous statement.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Apart from the fact that scientists have in fact shown how a human like eye can evolve in stages (including showing animals which have an eye like each of the intermediate stages), your comment shows a total lack of understanding of evolution.
Evolved traits do not have to be advantageous, all they have to be is non disadvantageous (i.e. not get you killed). This distinction between advantageous and non disadvantageous is the heart of evolution. You can for example evolve eyes that don't work (and some animals in fact have these), as long as it doesn't kill you.
Think about it!
Oh, come on. Too easy - proof by contradication:
So, if he can create the rock, but cannot lift it he's not all powerful. If he cannot create such a rock then he also is not all powerful.
Q.E.D.
(with apologies to George Carlin)
...richie - It is a good day to code.
What bothers me is that Evolutionists base so much of their "science" on a leg bone or a tooth found somewhere with NOTHING else around, you claim "here is the missing link. You call that trash science. What are you people so afraid of? Why do you so degrade those that want equal time for their opinions about Intelligent Design? As your flawed theories (as in THEORY of Evolution) are proven false, I expect all of you to come right here and say "I was wrong..." First, it is quite obvious you took very little science in college, if you actually went to college. Such statements are exactly what we're 'afraid' of hearing in science classrooms. To simply state that anthropology is something as simple as finding a leg bone or tooth screams ignorance. Perhaps a class in physical anthro would do you good. Secondly, we're 'afraid' of a small group of uninformed school council members telling teachers that they must also teach a religious, non-scientific concept in a science classroom. We're 'afraid' they'll misinform students that 'theory' is not fact. Theories ARE fact. Calling something a 'law' will rarely, if ever, happen again. Why? Because one can always improve upon a theory and not alter the result. Calculus is a method to do things that would take mounds of work in algebra. Algebra is still a reality even though there is an improved method to do things. Unfortunately, the word 'theory' is overused by everyone in almost every sense. "My theory is she's going to call in sick tomorrow." That, my friend, is not a theory. It's a hypothesis. But this was just one small example. Why do we degrade? We don't. ID is meant to be taught in church, dinner table, religious class, sociology, or Sunday School. ID is not meant to be taught in science class. Why? Because it is anything but science. And by the way, there is absolutely no threat of evolution being proven wrong. There is FAR too much phenotypical and genotypical evidence to prove otherwise.
Where's my sock? There it is...
they taught us that in secondary school biology class (speaking from a non-religious european country here). the eye evolved from a simple photo-sensitive membrane in worms that helped them detect openings to the surface, it then became directional and so forth (can't recall all the details)
Don't Tell Me What I Can't Do!
More like:
Humans --> Apes --> [pass millions of years... something happened but we have no idea what] --> Primordial Slop --> [Pass bunches of billions of years... who knows how many or what happened] --> Big Bang --> [We have no idea but its fun to speculate]
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
It's not hard to find examples where single cell organisms are found to respond to light check out this study about two ciliates. Then you can learn that their isn't one type of eye out there their are at least three different types of "eyes" Compound Eyes, Camera eyes (like the ones we have) and light sensitive cells like flat worms, so which one are we supposed to believe is the proof that ID was behind the eye's creation? It seems that these different types of eyes work for the particular organism that has it, that sounds like evolution to me.
Also good reading is this school science leason.
As an aside: did you consider that God could, by definition he's omnipotent afterall, have forged the fossil record?
Who's definition?
500 dollar reward for tip(s) leading to the arrest of the person(s) who stole my sig.
If we fill that school with religious indoctrination, we act to create an establishment of religion. Just as if we mandated church attendance as a requirement to hold public office, or to vote.
If the government were to actively promote a specific religion that would indeed be a problem. That is not the case here though... oh forget it, I'm tired of playing the devil's advocate. Everyone else tramples all over the Constitution and treat it like a tool to oppress dissenting ideas, we might as well do the same.
Hoorah for teaching religion in the science classroom being "unconstitutional"!
Schools should teach what the majority of people in the district want taught. If one parent does not like what 1000 other parents want in the curriculum, than the 1 parent should educate their child on their own. The rights of the majority are being attacked.
;-)
Your belief in something does not change reality. It does not bend to your will (at least, it doesn't to mine). ID is not science, because it cannot be disproven, therefor it should not be taught in a science class. If we had comparative religion & philosophy in secondary education (and I think we should), I would not oppose to ID being taught in philosophy, nor would I object to christianity being taught about in comp. religion. But teaching kids that the scientific method is invalid in a science course simply leads to kids with no critical thinking skills. Tech companies are already saying they don't want to set up shop in Kansas, and many universities are talking about not accepting kansas HS diplomas at face value, because of this mindset against critical thinking.
I know a lot of people want to be able to call their religion science, or fear that science is destroying their religion, but neither of these things are true.
Don't like it? Start your own reality
When moderating, assume I have not yet had my coffee.
For the millionth time, Immaculate Conception refers to MARY being born without sin.
Not that you have to believe in it, but for crying out loud, it isn't hard to look it up.
What would Brian Boitano do?
You're absolutely right, and I agree that what you propose is an interesting topic that DOES have a place in science classrooms, but I feel the need to point out that what you're describing is more engineering than science. How could one design life is an excellent engineering question that would certainly be an excellent tool to teach science to students. However, science classes should focus more on science.
As with any science, Evolution ary theory is incomplete. It's evolving, you might say. But there's also a great deal of fact behind the assertions, and it has withstood a great deal of testing. Of the models we have of the development of life, Evolution is by far the most supported and the most scientific.
Although it's rare, I do sometimes see someone point out a gap in Evolution. And responsible scientists take note and add that to the common knowledge. One mistake people tend to make, however, is to think that every assertion that claims to be part of Evolutionary theory actually is. There is much we don't know, and there is much recent discovery that is still being figured out. And way too much of that stuff is being asserted as fact. But that doesn't change what has come before, those things that have survived the search for counter-evidence. Evolution isn't 100% perfect, but it's the best model we have and, it will contine to be as new discovered are made.
Sadly it's maths based on some rather dodgy premises (google "Shallit and Elsberry" for more info) so it can't be taught in a maths class either.
For the love of God, please learn to spell "ridiculous"!!!
LOL, good one... anybody have an serious reply?
Another class you can't use in the real world, like math and English.
Every change had to confer a survival advantage
Not to pick nits, but I believe that the prevailing theory is that changes that predisposed an organism to reproduce are the ones that are adopted by a species, not neccessarily the ones that aid in survival. Its a subtle point but an important one. I concede that many survival-aiding mutations may in fact imply great chance to reproduce but this is not always the case. Nevertheless, that was an interesting article on the eye.
I know lots of theologians who correctly apply the scientific method in lots of what they do.
You may not realize it, but you're equivocating. A degree in theology in Darwin's time is very different from such a degree today. Nowadays, Darwin's training would very likely have been called philosophy instead of theology.
Make no mistake, Darwin could rationally observe the natural world with the best of them.
*sigh* back to work...
In truth, the ID'ers raise some interesting questions for science. How do complex and allegedly "irreducible" organs and systems come about? How is information preserved across generations? What are the thermodynamics of open systems?
Although biologists already had some answers to these questions, the ID'ers have forced biologists to study them more intensely.
The ID'ers have advanced science in spite of themselves. Their conclusions are mistaken, their motives are transparent, but some of the questions are interesting.
TMM is assuming that a Perfect Creator necessarily will create a perfect creation. Assuming that God created the world, no creationist should claim (and few do) that the creation was perfect (as evidenced by all the crap going on in the world). It was good, not perfect. So in my opinion this whole "flawed mammalian eye" argument is really a straw-man argument.
Would you be comfortable with the Hindu or Buddhist worldviews being taught in a biology class? They are both older and practiced by more people than Christianity.
Many people believe we are manifestations of the same consciousness and that this world is a dream that you must strive to wake up from (Hindu/Buddhism). If you aren't comfortable with that being taught in biology class, then Judaic dogma has no place there either.
Deciding on where to draw the line on what religious worldviews to include is exactly why we have decided to leave religion to the parents, and the explanation of the world as our minds understand it to scientific education.
ID should be covered VERY briefly (bare with me on this). We all know it's wrong but every view point really should be covered. Is it really going to hurt anyone if they do say 2 classes on ID showing it's negative sides and what ID supporters call evidence?
The BBC are currently doing a series on God within science. It's 99% science based, but at the same time it's trying to show that many Scientists don't think religion is the anti science. It's the religious people who quite often refuse to adknowledge science (instead of going OMG God did that!? That's cool!).
Why I don't support ID in any shape or form, it is a view point and one we should very briefly point out. The same way we should point out Neo Nazis today still support hitlers ideals. We may not like it, but if we go over it for 5-10 minutes then it's included and these nutjobs can no longer claim they're being left out in the cold. There's no need to "give in to them", but if they want ID taught why not teach it for 1-2 lessons where you point out how silly it is, but at the same time show that God can still fit the model if you want it to (many scientists against believe in deities and are good scientists).
NOTE : I'm not religious, I don't believe ID is correct, but I do feel you could reverse all this "pro ID" bullshit with a simple lesson or two on the truth. If we choose to ignore it then we'll be in a lot of trouble (note to museum going up..), but if we reveal that the people preaching it arn't the sharpest people in the world. We at least show the truth and let people judge if they wish to follow people trying to kill Science instead of embrace it.
I like muppets.
Yeah, I remember watching a program about evolution (on the BBC I think) it included some fascinating insights into the development of the eye.
It also included one fascinating one about a fish (sorry forgot what it's called) that has eyes (lots of them) that not only can see in much higher detail than our own but also in much greater spectrums of colour than our own.
Fascinating stuff, apparently it has the best eyes around.
You'd think if (as the ID'ers and Creationists would) a greater intelligence designed us then why the heck do we get the two low resolution eyes!
I demand 8 eyes, the ability to see in more colour spectrums and greater resolution!
PS: you will find the heat decay theory amongst the creationist literature as "proof" that the earth is really young. I explained to the creationist that his "science" was about a hundred years out of date.
It always has been, always will be, and the constitution was written so that it would be: unconstitutional for any part of the US government to promote religion.
"The Government of the United States is in no way based upon the Christian Religion" - Treaty with Tripoli (passed unopposed in the US Senate with that language)
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
Every change had to confer a survival advantage, no matter how slight.
Uh, no. In general, every successful change should not confer a disadvantage, but there are a lot of mutations that are passed along that neither help nor hurt a particular species.
To ensure perfect aim, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target
Intelligent Design was simply created to give a name and movement behind anti-darwinism fanatics. It is no more an "alternative" then saying "We don't like Darwinism."
If a parent sends a child to school, then the parent has to accept what the school teaches. Otherwise, the child should be home-schooled.
What school teaches is not necessarily right or wrong- it's just the prevailing view. "History" is the dominant viewpoint of whoever is the historian. Just the same as science is the accepted view of how nature and the universe works.
There's a lot of evidence that proves that sending a child to school isn't even useful for helping them become a success in the real world. School doesn't teach kids socializing/conversation skills, networking, selling, finances, leadership, or pretty much any other important skill that actual makes a difference to how they go about getting a job or doing anything other then following someone else's orders.
How would you falsify evolution? It's a made-up explanation for a bunch of observations. Are you going to force some species to evolve to survive and see if it does? Noone understands the random factors that go into micro-evolution, much less macro. I posit there is no possible way to prove evolution as the method by which modern species came to be as they are. It is also impossible to disprove, hence it cannot be science. According to the rabid slash-holes who are more fundementalist (or is that just mental?) than any religious personage could hope to be.
Okay here's one for you: explain the eye. It either works or it doesn't. There is no evolutionary intermediate form that would function so how could it have evolved?
Yes, there are intermediate forms.
The first is a simple photo sensor which can respond to change in ambient light, therefore detecting sudden changes which might be a predator of prey, detect whether the organism is in direct sunlight (and therefore easily spotted) and tell the difference between day and night.
The next is a photo sensor with some directional ability, which can detect movement in crude sectors. This can detect whether something is moving nearby, and give a rough direction of the movement. This is the compound eye of insects.
The next stage adds the ability to focus to some degree. Crude directional ability becomes more refined, permitting the animal to distinguish size and shape, and perhaps even color. This allows to animal to judge whether the moving creature is small enough to be easy prey, or large enough to be dangerous. It also adds a primitive pattern recognition to distinguish between different creatures. A june bug and a bumble bee are the same size, but you don't want to mess with the bumble bee.
The last stage is the type of eye that we have, which permits full pattern recognition, including depth perception with two eyes whose signals are merged to form a full three dimensional image of the world. This permits identification on sight of friend or foe, wounded animals which will make easier prey, food at a distance, and permits navigation by sight alone.
The transition from simple light sensor to the human eye is seamless. Each slight increment makes the proto-eye a better sensor, and confers a slight advantage to the animal. There is nothing mysterious about this at all.
All of this is available on the web and in books if you have the slightest inclination to look. What I so despise about these arguments is not just the ignorance they betray, but the profound dishonesty that underlies them. You can know better. You should know better. If you want to know the answer, there are plenty of people to ask. But instead of asking people who know the answers, creationists make statements like this on public forums, hoping to trick people who don't know. This is contemptible.
I was raised a Christian, and there used to be strong emphasis on honesty in Christian education. Apparently this is no longer the case. Instead, we seem to be plagued by people who think that by calling themselves Christians, they are above the very principles which lay at the heart of Christianity.
If you really want to impress people with your faith, start with a little honesty. No one is impressed by bullshit.
The notion of ID, that some things may be created by an intelligent agent, isn't invalid. An example I've seen mentioned is the notion of the roundup ready corn. Evolution does not explain roundup ready corn because it was made in a lab through, what one might describe as, intelligent design.
If one was to find a kernel of roundup ready and tried to figure out how regular corn had evolved into roundup ready you'd hit a brick wall because it didn't evolve. Does that mean evolution doesn't exist? No. Does that mean a deity made roundup ready? No. I think it's worth discussing in the context of a science classroom because it illustrates the practical limits of science, that no scientist would refute. There are some things that will forver beyond the ability of science to explain, and that's okay.
To be clear, I recognize that 99.8% of the people promoting ID are trying to find a breach through which to ram christian theological explanations for creation. These people are fools though because every time this has happened throughout history. Science has eventually expanded to understand the things that were supposedly only the realm of God before.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
"I'd like to say to the good citizens of Dover. If there is a disaster in your area, don't turn to God, you just rejected Him from your city. And don't wonder why He hasn't helped you when problems begin, if they begin. I'm not saying they will, but if they do, just remember, you just voted God out of your city. And if that's the case, don't ask for His help because he might not be there."
- Pat Robertson, Nov. 9th broadcast of the 700 Club.
It is logically impossible to prove that something does not exist.
I agree with the rest of your post, although I think the PP is clearly a troll.
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
... that we have to have our theories defended by a judge in court rather than by their own merits. Are we so unsure of ourselves that we need to be reassured by courts? I don't feel offended when I see all kinds of symbols painted on the streets of my city: because I know better than to trust the first fool who comes around. /. claiming that "those who need the state to protect their faith must lack faith in it themselves": this is so true, so now that it applies to us, what is our reaction? We do exactly the same as the ones we oppose! We whine and cry bloody murder and somebody please THINK OF THE CHILDREN! How comes that now this is a good reason to complain, but in other circumstances it's not? I am ashamed of /.
I remember people on
Finally. I like freedom. Even yours, even when you don't agree with me. I don't want a judje to tell you what you can or cannot do or teach, because tomorrow it will be me who will have to comply with some other stupid regulation. I say, let the market decide. If you don't want your children to learn bullshit send them to a different school or - schocking! - EXPLAIN to them something about the subject of whatever vs. evolution.
Tomorrow another law will be passed, or a sentence made, that outlaws the teaching of something we respect. And we won't be able to complain because today we are effectively maintaining that we don't know better and we need a court to guide us.
Global warming is a cube.
Versions of Intelligent Design (not all versions I admit) which for example include the rejection of fossil evidence as some sort of trick by the intelligent designer raises many of the same issues - how can we know that our perceptions and measurements can be trusted?
I am a christian and therefore I beleive that god created the universe and man in his own image. However I also beleive that evolution is a perfect explination of HOW god did that.
Science in general only provides the how, it NEVER provides the why. You need philosophy and religion to do that.
But I am off track. We were talking about whether god forged the fossil record. I submit that is doesn't matter one way or another, we will still act the same way.
Possibility 1 (the fossil record is all a lie and was placed there by god):
To answer this we should look to the bible. There are litterally dozens of passages that instruct man and belivers in particular to explorer gods creation. The world was created for us and we are instructed to appreciate it's glory. Science is simply a structured way of exploring the universe. Even if god DID create false fossil records we should still explorer them and science is the best way we know of to explore things.
Possibility 2 (the fossil record is an accurate measure of history):
Not only does the prior paragraph still apply but now we have an added incentive. We can now begin to understand god himself through his method of creation. By studying how he did things we can begin to guess why and therby come to a better understanding of the almighty and our place in it. If the record is false than we can't derive any info like that.
Since god is all powerfull and we have no way of directly observing his power we can't PROVE he did or didn't do anything. FOr instance say the fossil record is fake....when did he actually create it? 10,000 years ago, 2000 years ago, 200 years ago or 10 seconds ago? The truth is, if you refuse to trust what you observe than nothing you observe will have any meaning.
Every change had to confer a survival advantage, no matter how slight.
Even that isn't quite right - any change to a physical form that doesn't keep you from reproducing successfully can get carried forward and be further modified at some point in the future. Evolution doesn't require changes to be beneficial, only not harmful. However, probably due to the inefficiency of carrying around changes that don't add some benefit, you'd be hard pressed to find non-beneficial but non-harmful attributes to organisms.
Before you mod me down, I agree with the idea of evolution and disagree with ID. Having said that:
(1) ID violates the centuries-old ground rules of science by invoking and permitting supernatural causation;
Yet Einstein implied as much when he said: "God does not play dice." Many scientists and mathematicians are guided by what they see as divine beauty. If that isn't supernatural causation, what is?
(2) the argument of irreducible complexity, central to ID, employs the same flawed and illogical contrived dualism that doomed creation science in the 1980's; and
Good point here. Non-computability (complexity) enters into many successful scientific theories and does then no harm.
(3) ID's negative attacks on evolution have been refuted by the scientific community.
Evolutionary theory is not derived from mathematical formalism like classical dynamics, quantum mechanics, physical chemistry, or even econometrics... So it is very hard for proponents to fend off attacks. The lack of rigor, low research standards and general aversion of the biology community to mathematics beyond elementary statistics opens them up to these attacks. Biologists don't do very well in defense. The evolution of life is such an awesome phenomenon it deserves a much better theoretical foundation than currently exists.
an ill wind that blows no good
"because I lack the ability to understand an evolutionary system of a grand scale, I have therefore conclusive proof that God must have created the world... After all, everything too complicated for me to understand is just God's miracles"
shut the fuck up.
-Ever noticed how people who believe in Creationism look really unevolved? -Bill Hicks, the last American Hero.
Thank God I was Praying for that to happen, Brothers.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
And that logical argument is the issue that most Intelligent Design supporters have with it not being taught in schools. A logical argument *just as sound* can be made for Intelligent Design. They both have circumstantial evidence (at best) and both, honestly, require faith to believe in them. There is no actual proof of Evolution, just theoretically proof and circumstantial proof - the same can be said for Intelligent Design.
Ignoring the Christian aspects, the Intelligent Design theory is just as logically sound as Evolution and if you'd be willing to research it a bit, you would find academic-debates all over the Internet that prove that both theories can be proven logically. The problem with this court case is the school district was religiously motivated, and therefore, their discussion of Intelligent Design was not being approached scientifically - but to say that ID can *not* be approached scientically is extremely ignorant and wrong.
There's really nothing to teach about ID. "*deity-of-choice* has made everything you see and more. It works the way it does because he/she made it that way and nobody knows why. Class dismissed"
The gist of the problem is, ID is unscientific more because it *poses* no questions than because it answers none.
The M.O. of Intelligent Design's advocates forever now has been to go to the edges of what science knows and identify something out there that hasn't been fully explained yet. They then claim the as-yet-unexplained area is evidence of things being so complicated there can be no explanation except a godlike "designer." When science figures out the supposedly irreducible complexity of whatever the example was, the IDers just move the goalposts to whatever's on the edge now.
Michael Behe -- author of "Darwin's Black Box" -- for example, started out talking about fossil whales. Why weren't there intermediary whale forms between mesonychids and true whales? Oops -- over the next 20 years many, many steps in between turned up. "Black Box" is the same watch-watchmaker argument, only about subcellular structures like cilia. The logic's flawed in the same way, and his book is out-of-date in several of its claims. Don't worry, ID types will move the terms of the debate out somewhere else. We're never going to be omniscient, so they'll always have something to seize on.
The trick is, if the ID vision of the universe being so complex it can't be explained by anything but a God was accepted, nobody would ever have asked *any* questions about how things work. In these people's minds, every- every- everything is so infinitely complex that the only possible response to the world is to worship its creator. They've been making this argument since well before Darwin was around, it's not specific to evolution.
It's not just that their idea doesn't answer any questions. No questions would even get asked , if these people ran the world, or your school system.
(And of course that would suit them just fine, because their religious views are about preserving their authority, not about explaining the world or helping anyone lead a moral life.)
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
The ad I got when I looked at this page was ThinkGeeks "Power Squid". It looked like a flying spaghetti monster. It must be a sign! An intelligent de-sign! The end is near, repent, you sinners!
The fact is that the Dover school board were immoral hypocrites, who in the name of their religious beliefs, violated basic Christian tenets. They went looking for something that could pass the inspection of someone not familiar with how science really works, and found Intelligent Design, as formulated by the likes of Dembski, Behe and the Discovery Institute. They had no interest in teaching the children of Dover about science, but simply wanted to undermine a theory they don't like due entirely to their own particular religious beliefs.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Okay here's one for you: explain the eye. It either works or it doesn't.
False. Eyes can work partially, as yours and mine do when compared to those of an bird or feline or insect. Birds can see into the ultraviolet and with much greater sharpness than we can imagine. Cats can see excellently in darkness we would find blinding. Insects (and birds) actually perceive time differently than we do. What looks fast to us (say the frames of a motion picture blending into one continuous picture) they can see as separate states (frame, black, frame, black, frame, black). While we think that our fly swatter is moving too fast to see, a fly (generally) has plenty of time to see it and move.
There is no evolutionary intermediate form that would function so how could it have evolved?
There are hundreds of intermediate forms that we have cataloged and described. Do some research and you will be amazed. One could argue that our eye is a lesser form of others.
You see, evolution is not a progression to greater and greater abilities; but a reaction to environmental stress. In short, we don't have night vision, rapid time perception, ultaviolet or infrared sight because our ancestors didn't need it. We developed big huge brains instead, so we could analyze and exploit the world to our needs.
Once the "War on Christmas" is over this battle will heat up again. Many of the ID warriors have been redeployed to fight the "War on Christmas". They have marching orders from Fox News. They are trying to protect the baby Jesus. Once the holiday season is over, they will be programmed to return to the ID frontline. Just remember to tell these warriors , "Season's Greetings" if you happen to see them in front of your favorite store.
To rephrase the argument of the above poster:
Okay, here's another one for you: explain gravity. It either works or it doesn't. There is no explanation in physics that explains where it comes from, so how could it exist?
I don't disbelieve gravity but neither do I blindly believe everything the scientists tell me is fact...
As an aside: I hate the logic of people who claim that just because we don't understand everything about something, that we should instead believe in magic. We can't explain what causes gravity, but all of the data says we're on the right track. Nor do we believe that God is running around, pulling objects towards other, larger objects. Evolution in biology is no different. No, we don't know some of the details about how some of the things developed. That doesn't mean that no evolutionary mechanism exists... just that we haven't found it out yet.
200 years ago, we couldn't explain electricity or magnetism either. But scientists kept studying, and kept experimenting, and they figured it out. Give biologists some time, and they'll figure out the evolution of the eye. And stop teaching kids that if something hasn't been figured out yet, it must've been God. Otherwise, the next generation of scientists won't be able to figure anything out, and we'll be back to praying for rain.
We just can't ignore the hundreds of years of research. Evolution is not the real issue here, it is creationism.
I am just so thankful of the scientific method. It is just so perfectly weighted.
Make assumptions, study something, make findings, publish them, learn from them, and let everyone be more informed because of it.
There is a growing movement or christian religious extreemissim in this country and the ID thing is solid evidnece of it. I've noticed that christians of late have been realy intolerant of other religions here in america where religious freedom is the law of the land. ID in schools? What about that hindu kid? Think he belives it as you do? Also freedom of religion means the freedom to have or have not a religion.
Is available here: http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/sections/news/05 1220_kitzmiller_342.pdf
Of not is the care Judge Jones takes to blast the Board for their "inanity" in pretending that this issue was about science. The precedents and logic are elegant and impeccable. The judge clearly states that ID will never be science. A victory for logic!
The universe is made of atoms and empty space. All else is speculation. --Democritus of Abdera, 435 BC
Am I wrong about that?
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
To those who say ID is not science, check out http://www.answersingenesis.org/
ID is very much science, if you look at it properly.
> What it does not account for is macro-evolution, that is, the changing of one species into another at the chromosomal level by purely natural selection.
No modern biologist thinks evolution is purely a matter of natural selection. If you knew the subject matter at the freshman level you'd know that lots of other stuff, such as sexual selection, genetic drift, and the founder effect, also have influence on what evolution produces.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
The nature of life, the structure of life, and the existance of life can only be explained as an engineering miracle that was created.
That's not an explanation.
In fact, let's get completely specific. There's a decent amount of evidence to suggest that the planet was, in fact, created, and wasn't here at some previous time, right?
So how do you get from that ball of "stuff" (let's call it dust) to the world we have now?
Exactly how?
Saying it "just happened" isn't an explanation. Saying it "was a miracle" isn't an explanation (that answers "why" or "who", not "how").
What you actually want to say is that there is no complete explanation for how life formed. None. Nada. Zero. Zilch. Saying "it was an engineering miracle that was created" isn't an explanation. If ten million years from now, someone finds a clock lying around, and they want to explain how it was made, even if they (rightly) conclude that someone built it, that doesn't answer how it was built. Just who built it.
Likewise, knowing how something was built doesn't necessarily tell you who built it.
Stop trying to offer up "miracle!" as an explanation for "how". It's not one.
This is not quite true. Testing evolution as a theory is extremely difficult (or practically speaking, impossible). However, I can imagine experiments which could be conducted to test evolution as a theory. For example, you could theoretically evolve a new variety of taller horses, or horses with longer necks by housing a random herd of horses in a place where the only available food was high up off the ground. The taller horses and the horses with longer necks would be able to reach the food better and would survive better than the short horses and the horses with short necks. Eventually the descendants would all be able to reach the food easily.
"If anyone is a real thinking person then prove that you cant throw a pile of sticks and some glue up in the air and it will come down as a glued together, perfect box."
What you have just described (and by context of your statement are trying to use as evidence against evolution) very exactly describes creationism.
evolution would be that every person in the world throw up a pile of sticks and glue, and then take wut fell to the ground and throw it back up in the air (some with only what fell, some with a few pieces left on the ground, some with more glue, some with more sticks)... and eventually, one of the billion people on the planet would have a perfect, glued together box.
Why can't a teacher tell his students that many people believe God created the universe?
The decision says nothing, nada, zip about what teachers can say in the classroom. What it does say is that teachers can't be forced to read anti-evolutionary statements in class.
I find it ironic that a judgment against a school board requiring teachers to present certain viewpoints (to which they strenously objected - see the trial testimony) is considered hindering free speech.
Actually, the evolution of the eye is one of the examples that Darwin uses to illustrate his theory in his original book. Have a look at chapter 6 of "The Origin of Species".
Last I checked, lobsters have roughly 2.5 times as many chromosomes as humans (119 vs 46) How come we eat them and not the other way round? More DNA is irrelevant.
Or (a lot) less. The Amoeba dubia, a single-celled organism, has the largest known genome, at 670,000,000,000 base pairs. To contrast, humans have a mere 2,900,000,000.
Every change had to confer a survival advantage
Why?
All that needs to happen is for a change not to cause the organism to die before it can pass its genes on. If there is a mutation, even a harmless or slightly detrimental one, so long as the organism still successfully reproduces, then it passed its genes on. Its unmutated counterparts may still reproduce at a better rate, causing its own numbers to diminish relatively.
But if that disadvantage then mutates again to something that is then a great advantage, then this organism can regain its losses and procreate even faster than its nonmutated counterparts.
Sometimes to reach a gloablly optimal path, you have to take a locally suboptimal path. So long as one mutation doesn't completely destroy an organism, the mutation, even if immediately unhelpful, can serve as a stepping stone to future, more helpful mutations or advantages in changing environments.
Imagine it like this. Suppose a mutation makes a human very nerdy looking. Girls don't like that. Their chances of reproduction drop sharply. The occasional nerd of the opposite sex may come along allowing this breed to trickle on. Then computers are invented and these nerds have anew environment in which to flourish. Their nerdy traits make them very successful, which in turns attracts a large number of mates, allowing what was a negative mutation to carry on in greater numbers!
OK, that one was a stretch :)
Be so good as to tell the class just how many science degrees were available in Great Britain in the middle of the 19th century.
Lady Hope's claim was almost certainly a lie, but even if it wasn't, it's utterly irrelevant.
Evolution no more violates 2LoT then crystal growth does. 2LoT does not forbid moves towards less entropy providing the bookkeeping works out at the end, and if evolution cannot happen, then life itself is impossible.
Darwin's opinions on God are irrelevant, just as Newton's mean-spirited behavior means nothing to the Laws of Motion. What counts is the evidence.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
You see there's a lot of proof that evolution is more than "just a theory" and the ID is a steaming smelly crock. Even I can figure that out and I'm no rocket scientist!!! Check it:
1. Alcoholism is a genetic disorder that is passed along through the jeans.
2. Alcoholism is, by and large, seen as an acceptable disorder if the person is somewhat functional.
3. Gender prefrence is passed along genetically through the genes.
4. Homosexuality is, by and large, rejected as a "normal" state of being even if the person is a completely productive member of society.
So what's the problem then? Here's the problem. We can accept that alcoholism is a function of jeans but we can't do the same for gender preference because it would prove evolution. So we need to make sure that we classify gender preference as a choice so it's not affected by the genes. But we can't do that with alcoholism because there's already a large body of work that proves otherwise. This means ID is a crock. QED!
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
All I am saying is that Darwin's theory is incomplete at present, and like the theory of GR, there are problems with proclaiming it to be the be all and end all of scientific theory on the origins of life at this time.
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
I am not an American, and dont live there. However, reading about the school board's decision a few weeks back made me not only angry, but sincerely worried about the future of the country who has lead the scientific world for a century.
This news piece made my day, cheers.
Now please dont elect another retard as president.
Windows is like decaf - it tastes like the real thing, but it won't get you through the day.
"You evolutionists" means what exactly? I don't know any scientist who describes him or herself as an "evolutionist", this is a propaganda word used by theocratic fundamentalists who want to undermine the entire scientific method. There are two groups of people in this debate: those who believe in the scientific method, and those who don't. Those who do can have intelligent debates about the evidence, and those who don't have stooped to the lowest levels of mockery by draping their anti-scientific beliefs in the language of science to infiltrate school curricula.
There is essentially nothing any scientist can tell you about what happened before that "big bang". Or rather, before a few moments after the big bang.
So when you say that scientists stop there, all that means is they don't know what happened previously, or how it all got there, or anything about it. If you don't know anything about it for sure, and there is no way known to science to find out what happened there, then it becomes a matter of faith or belief. I'm not sure where you got the idea that many scientists don't share the beliefs that you describe as those of "intelligent Christians".
If he chokes to death on piece of pasta tonight I'm gonna convert immediately.
Beware his noodly vengeance!!
Hmmmmmm..... Deep fried and look like Squirrel.
It's all fine and dandy in your hypothetical situation. But evolution is a hypothesis to explain things in the real world and it's much more complex there. There are many places in the world where food is available in high treetops and yet giraffes don't exist there. Can you predict where the giraffes will appear and where they won't? Of course there's no point discussing this as any kind of dissent from evolution gets modded down into oblivion as 'flamebait'.
Evolutionary convergence. The way completely different species have almost, but not exactly, the same solution to a given problem. Overused example: squid eyes are almost identical to ours, they even have the not-quite-a-fixed-radius-curve shape of the lens, but they don't have a blind spot because the nerve goes in a different way. Or the fish and insects who have almost exactly the same lifestyle. That's the evidence for macro-evolution.
I am trolling
It also included one fascinating one about a fish (sorry forgot what it's called) that has eyes (lots of them) that not only can see in much higher detail than our own but also in much greater spectrums of colour than our own.
You're thinking of the Mantis Shrimp. This was the shrimp I was attempting to allude to in my parent post, but for some reason I mistyped 'squid'. (This happens to me all the time...I can't count how many times I've tried to order 'shrimp scampi', and wound up with a bowlful of tentacles... ^_^).
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
Or, as I like to say, given enough dice and enough time, eventually you will roll a trillion 1's in a row.
Its simple really, if I want my kid to learn religion in school then I will send him to a religious school, catholic or otherwise. Faith is based on a belief, not facts, and that is not science. Since this was tought in a science class it is a just decision and our kids will be better for it.
For those that believe ID is anything but a dressed up creationist view masquerading as a science of any kind, think again. Most people capable of critical thinking aren't fooled and thankfully neither was the judge.
"On a scale from 1 to 10, people are stupid"
Sigh. Public schools are governed by the Establishment Clause. What's more, wouldn't you rather have your child learn a little about science, and leave the religious indoctrination to you and your preacher?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
FSM Bless The Honorable District Judge John E. Jones III , May he be touched by "his noodly appendages".
OSGGFG - Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games
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Posted as AC because of mod points
For you Darwin haters: that godless organization known as PBS has a list of about 100 links that provide evidence of evolution. All of these are supposed to be created by scientists (but don't come crawling back complaining if you find out that one of them wasn't - it doesn't invalidate the evidence, it invalidates my statement that they are scientists).
Your sig(k) has been stolen. There is a puff of smoke!
Evolution is not a direct rebuttal to any serious religion. I personally know hundreds of genuine, serious Christians who genuinely, seriously believe in evolution. If you're going to say the government can't mandate teaching evolution because it's interfering with freedom of religion, then the government can't mandate teaching anything at all - can't teach that the world is round, people are free to have a religious belief that it is flat, etc.
I am trolling
The thing is I firmly beleive that religion SHOULD be taught in the classroom. Religion and spirituality are vital to creating a mature and responsible adult capable of thriving in society. That is, after all, the entier point of school.
But I balk at the idea of teaching that in a science classroom just as I would of teaching science in a language class or history in an english class.
Science is fundamentally a philosophy (Ph.D = Doctorate of Philosophy). The philosophy is that nothing can be known unless it is tested with a falsifiable test and adheres to occams razor. You must be able to prove or disprove something and when you create a theory the simplest idea that fits all the data is the correct one. Science may one day determine that god DOES exist. Because the ONLY way to explan everything we see is with god. (sound familiar?) However at that point we will be able to point to specific tests. All the current ID does is say we don't know everything therefore god did it. It is untestable and therefore not science and does not belong in a science classroom.
I am a christian, therefore by that belif I also beleive that god created the universe and us in his image...I beleive in intelligent design. However I also beleive that evolution is the best way we have found of understanding HOW god did it. I will stand right next to you shoulder to shoulder to support the creation of mandatory comparitive religion and moral philosophy classes in every school district. These are important topics and deserve their own class...we shouldn't minimize them by shoving them in with science.
The opposite of "a religious person" is not "an atheist".
What makes someone religious is their blind acceptance of some dogma. Faith defines religion - belief without or even contrary to evidence or reason. Many Buddhists are atheists and yet still religious people because they follow the doctrine of their religion without question.
What makes someone atheist is not believing in God(s). As it happens this is the default position of someone who is not religious, as without observed evidence of logical proof, it is irrational to believe in God(s). I myself held this position for the majority of my life. But it's possible to be a non-religious theist, if you've got a sound argument for the existence of God.
Myself, I find that speaking of God makes perfect sense if you see it as speaking of the universe anthropomorphically. My beliefs are not fundamentally different from an atheist's, but suddenly I can understand theists statements about God in a way which not only means something, but quite often produces true statements on the theists parts. Seen in this way, a proof of God's existence is just a proof of the universe's existence, which is trivial as the universe is "all that which exists".
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
And then drown. What does that prove?
Then send your kids to private parochial (or other such) school. They will supply all the mythology you want. Don't expect me to susidize religious indroctrination with my tax dollars.
"This calls for a very special blend of psychology and extreme violence" - Vyvyan "The Young Ones"
Ok, show me one experiment that can be done to prove ID.
A blog about stuff.
That's why you take the time to teach your children your beliefs instead of letting "the government" be the sole source of information.
If ID has to be scienctificly proven . . . Then doesnt Evolution have to be scienctificly proven ? People all the time ask "Prove intelligent desing" I always always want to ask back "Well prove evolution" - There is no single, 100%, fool proof, scientific fact that supports evolution as fact . . . . Its a thoery - So why cant ID be taught as theory ? And Also - To all those who think that the "Christian extremist" are the only ones behind ID being taught - Then The same could be said about the "evolutionist extremists" wanting nothing but evolution taught . . . I dont see how thinking that ID is a credible THEORY makes me an extremists ?
The debate should really be: "What constitutes violation of the separation of church and state clause?"
The Constitution reads: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."
Okay, then, what does "respecting an establishment of religion" mean? This is the timeless debate of constitutional lawyers everywhere. The flip side of this, though, is not considered: what about laws that expressly restrict establishment of religion? Put it this way: I believe a law that says "you must teach ID" would violate this amendment. However, I also believe that a law which says "you must not teach ID" is equally in violation of the amendment. Similarly, I believe laws that require the display of the Ten Commandments are unconstiutional but also that laws prohibiting their display are also unconstitutional. The same for prayer in schools, etc.
The reason for this is simple: the authors of the Amendment wanted to prevent the government from abusing religious power. However, in prohibiting certain religious things in the public arena, this religious power is abused. The religion being promoted here is atheism, or agnosticism, or any of a multitude of others. You see, "science" is a religion in the broadest sense (and lawyers like the broad sense).
What many people forget is that by expressly denying something, you are actively asserting the opposite philosophy (in this case, "religion X" versus "everything which is not religion X". In the case of certain religions, all belief systems which exclude that religion are themselves a form of religion. That is, "no religion" is itself a religion (contrary to popular belief).
So, talk about the technical issues between ID and evolution all you want. The issue is much larger than that one, and it is really about active oppresion of religious views under the guise of "tolerance". The only constitutionally valid stance is to make no laws at all regarding religious practices (exception: a law against murder is not usurped by "expression of religion" where said religion has human sacrifice as part of its practices.)
(Incidentally, ID vs Evolution is always looked at incorrectly. ID isn't about how life operates - which is appropriately explained by evolution - but how life originated. The nature of ID still has the logical possibility of the laws of physics being "created" to allow random molecules to join and form self-replicating systems. The discussion can never be finished, because it is unknowable if the universe was created or was always present; it is also foolishness to claim something false if it is unprovable. That is why, as the religious put it, it is a matter of faith. The debate is childishness if it does not serve anything, and the practical implications of ID vs Evolution are quite limited, and it's not really worth the effort to form public policy about somthing which, I believe, is orthogonal to how one interacts with their environment. For that, after all, is the true focus of Religion.)
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
evolution would be that every person in the world throw up a pile of sticks and glue, and then take wut fell to the ground and throw it back up in the air (some with only what fell, some with a few pieces left on the ground, some with more glue, some with more sticks)... and eventually, one of the billion people on the planet would have a perfect, glued together box.
Or at least something closely resembling a box. Nobody's arguing that evolution results in perfection. And the human body is hardly an example of perfect engineering.
I will believe in any other explanation if you can show me the exact proof with an established timeline.
And I'll believe it was all "created" when you do the same. Hell, you don't even have to show me a timeline. Just show me a being capable of doing it.
What's that? He's shy? Won't show himself? Well darn. I guess I'll have to stick to my fossil records then. At least they're not imaginary. SEMICOLON.
And you have obviously not done much(any?) studying of archaeology if you think there is no progressive pattern in the fossil record. One layer shows nothing. The next layer contains the smallest and simplest forms of life known. All the layers above get progressively more complex. There was no magic wand waved and suddenly we had fully formed animals. The most you could try to suppose would be that simple single celled organisms appeared from the magic wand. And even that sounds ludicrous to "real thinking people".
Funny how that flawed and wrong argument rises every time ID is involved. Darwin may have said, 150 years ago, that the eye could be difficult to fit in his theory, but 150 years is a long time, and the theory of evolution has evolved a lot since Darwin, and explanations to the formation of the eye have been found for a long time.
Fact is, that statement is completely and utterly wrong, and an evolutionary path can very well be found to the current "superior" "top of the line" eye:
Many single-celled organisms (bacteria, flaggelates) contain tiny pigment granules that react to light by sending electrical signals able to alter the cell's behaviour.
Some species of flaggelates are colonial, which means that they form "huge" colonies. One of these colonial light-sensitive species is Volvox. In colonies of Volvox, the individuals on the "sunny" side of the colony move at a different rate than the ones on the "dark" side, which guides the swimming of the whole colony... a colony of Volvox is a colony of eyes already...
Some flatworms (the most primitive worms one can find) have photosensitive cells on the top of the body. For some species, the whole dorsal surface is photosensitive. This primitive photoreceptor can be used for the worm to tell if he's (for example) partly or totally above ground, hence at the mercy of various predators. It can help him know in which direction to "flee" if he's partially above ground. Evolutionary advantage, keep the photosensitive cells if you have any.
Next step, pit a patch of photosensitive cells: not only are they now protected from abrasion, but the total surface of photoreceptors can increase without increasing the size of the "eyespot" (which would be the outer hole), hence precision improvement that allow for a much more sensitive light gradation (full light, shadow, night, ...). Such "eyes" can be found in a variety of mollusks such as Patella
If you surround the photoreceptive cells with light-insulating cells, the patches of cell become selectively sensitive to light based on the direction: ability to start discerning forms and movements. Nearly a pin-hole camera eye.
Although this primitive eye exists it has a poor quality and, worse than everything, the open "eye pit" is a cavity in which sand and dust can enter, as well as parasite, and the open structure may collapse. Filling the cavity with a clear gooey secretion that can keep the retina protected is an obvious evolutionaty advantage. On top of this, if the secretion has a different index of refraction than water (or air), it becomes a primitive lens and improves the precision and focus of the image, giving the animal more details and the ability to spot shorter movements. 2 evolutionary advantages in one !
Since a lens-like object is in place, the eye can be closed with a layer of transparent cell that covers the jelly solution and further protects the retina.
Then, a second (inner) layer of transparent skin may appear, trapping part of the solution with the ability to harden or contract (reshape), a full fledged variable lens is generated, not only further improving the image quality and resolution but allowing for much better focuses since the focus can be modified. The Helix snail shows such an eye.
The addition of non-transparent distordable cells around the center of vision becomes a diaphragm, allowing the animal to change the amount of light that reaches the retina, in order to handle from full light to complete darkness. Once again, obvious evolutionary advantage.
Hardening the previous variable lens into what we know as the cornea yields the eye of the Sepia cuttlefish, and a mere inches from the (very similar) human eye.
Voila, a ful
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
My highschool had comparative religion as part of World Humanities (senior english for most students).
I only graduated from said HS in 2002
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
Download and read God's Debris by Scott Adams (free download from his website) he goes on about things like this. Major mind f*ck but a good read :)
Nyarlathotep saved me. He can save you too.
Nyarlathotep? hahaha! Wait until you meet with a real God, not the avatar of some blind idiot god.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
Religion appeared in first civilizations to explains things that could not be explained. Ignorance and fear created religion. When science appeared and started to explain things in a scientific way, religion became a way to impose someone's will to other people and control people.
"Wrong. Darwin's theory essentially predicts that the leaves on a given branch of the "tree of life" (your analogy, not mine, but anyway...) will change in response to outside influences such as survival of the fittest, et al..."
.02
Actually,
it's more correct to say that evolution occurs as the result of genetic variation in species. Chromosomes and all genetic material don't "change" to meet the demands of the environment. Chromosomes don't magically combine in new ways because the climate gets colder. They change because biology allows changes in chromosomal mapping when one cell is "fertilized" by another. Those mappings that give an organism a better chance at survival, live to breed another day. Those mappings that don't improve survival simply die off.
This is an arguement that the ID folks use to try and incorporate darwinian evolution into their model. They have a camp that says, sure evolution is happening, but it's god's hand putting the chromosomes together in specific ways to improve survival.
No one, including Darwin suggested that genetics are "guided" or "designed" by the environment. Evolution is simply the product of the reproductive process with more specialized (albeit accidental) adaptations better able to live and survive in one environment vs. another.
just my
jeff
This sounds really familiar...Oh yeah, it's the same damn story I submitted 5 minutes after the story broke on the AP wire and it got rejected. WTF?
Slashdot: 24 hours behind every other site or your money back!
John 10:30 clears this up..."I and the Father are one."
Also, when you say "A supernatural being able to create matter from nothing most likely doesn't have a gender" you could be correct. Genesis 1:26 says "Then God said, 'Let us make man in our image, in our likeness' "
God said "Let us make MAN" so he created Adam.
THEN...
Genesis 2:13 "The LORD God said, 'It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.' "
So...God apparently has a gender...male.
Of course, all of this is dependant on FAITH. If you don't have any and you think the Bible is nothing more than a neat story, then I have wasted my time.
Let the flaming and the mod-down begin (as with anyone who dares to be a Christian on this board)
I'm not a troll, but I play one on Slashdot.
You (and everyone else who believes in god) are retarded and should be committed at the nearest mental institution.
'' Don't try to use logic and omnipotent gods in the same sentence, its to easy to logically disprove an omnipotent god.... ''
Actually, it is impossible to logically disprove an omnipotent god.
can you fathom how all of it came about? :)
You are fucking awesome. Slashdot is for fags!
Okay, I see the point. You can't understand how an eye evolves, so that means you can believe that there is some mystical supernatural entity who kills his son (in human form but he is still a god and thus lives on - we call that a sacrifice), won't allow himself to be seen or heard but wants all the attention, adoration and worship you can give, defeats evil with fire and brimstone, and runs the universe from a street of gold with chariots of angels as an army to defend against looters. Hmmmmm... I am going with the eye.
there is a class of animals that demonstrates, by itself, the evolution of the eye. many kinds lizards have a third eye on top of there heads that just sense light level changes and movement as well as a pair of very accute complex eyes. so you have a class of animals that have both complex eyes and a very simple eye.
Sorry my bullshit sensor overloaded.
is not a belief. Not-having-a-dog is not a type of pet, and not-believing-in-god is not a type of faith.
As a clarification, it's easy to logically disprove just about anything, as long as you've taken a graduate-level proofs course. Then again, I prefer the very simple and elegant proof of God often attributed to Leonhard Euler: "Monsieur, (a + bn)/n = x, therefore God exists!"
What used to be called "social studies" is the perfect place for that kind of discussion.
It ain't being "suppressed." You can post a web site filled with creationist, or ID, or Pastafarian ideas, or whatever, without fear of prosecution.
Just don't fucking put it in school curricula and pretend it is non-religious, OK?
See the difference?
This is not entirely true. It depends on the scientist. For example, Ptolemy viewed his diagram of our solar system strictly as intrumental, it wasn't really how it was an he knew that, but it was an accurate model for predictions. Copernicus did the same thing.
Now, along comes Keplar with his eliptical orbits. His view of our solar system was from a realist perspective. Not only were his predictions slightly better (perhaps just due to better technology developed in the couple hundred year time lapse) but they also predicted how the planets really orbited.
Einstein also started his career off as an intrumentalist, but became more of a realist by the end. Some scientists are only interested in creating predictable, working models (instrumentalists) and others are more interested in finding the Truth (realists).
What it does not account for is macro-evolution, that is, the changing of one species into another at the chromosomal level by purely natural selection.
Here's a factoid I recently learned about.
Humans and chimps are two different species. Chimps have one more set of chromosomes. However when you look closely you realize than one of the human chromosomes looks very much (98.5% identical IIRC) like the merger of two separate chimp chromosomes.
Basically what happened is that, at some very specific point in the past, our common ancestors could not interbreed anymore. There you are, different species.
Please note that, for thousands, if not hundred of thousands of years, both species probably looked VERY similar, in fact much more similar than a poodle and a german shepherd, which are both canis familiaris.
Crap, should have been AC as I had mod points.
Anyway the blurb about the book and the download link are here
And it's not a survival disadvantage but a reproductive disadvantage anyway.
As in, you know, an iron-furred invincible rat without balls won't help the next generation much.
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
I just find it ironic that you posted in response to "EvilMonkeySlayer".
Haha,
he who worries about his karma gets modded redundant.
After reading up about Intellegent Design (ID), It is quite clear that ID is one of the most stupid theories I have ever read. Despite their huge differences, Evolution and Creation make more sense than this ID kitch.
In fact why I am even commenting on this issue. I think TacoMan can answer this one for me.
The Rapture is NOT an exit strategy.
One of the whole points of evolution is adaption to environment. Maybe the blind spot imperfection doesn't serve a purpose, but perhaps the steps that led to having such an imperfection have come out as the eye is changing from a previous state to match the needs of the current environment. Evolution (whether by ID or otherwise) is rarely a fast process by human timeline.
silly rabbit mental institutions are for people who believe they ARE god not for people who beleieve IN god....I am sure you meant to say that :-)
And, no we didn't expose them to Hindu, Zen, Taoism, Buddhism, Islam, etc. Yes, this biased the likelihood of their ending up with a predictable belief set. Yes, this bias resulted from our own beliefs. I still assert that it would have been abuse to actively hide our beliefs from our children. We didn't knowingly teach them anything wrong, and we tried to be as objective as possible when dealing with matters of beief and faith.
Except that a squid's eye (a fucking squid's eye for fuck's sake, that thing's only fit for being deep fried!) doesn't have the various mamalian eye issues...
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
Let me (and the rest of the
Okay.
The HeLa cell.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
Wrong. Human and apes evolved on different branches from a common ancestor. Yours is a common mistake used by Creationists when they ask "If we evolved from apes, why are there still apes?!"
Trolling is a art,
What people believe is a subject for an anthropology class, not a science class.
actually, anthropology is a science. the study of people and cultures.
Sorry my bullshit sensor overloaded.
What bothers me is anyone telling me I can't consider a point of view. Same with my kids, I want them to learn to see things from other people's points of view, even if they don't agree with those points of view.
The old saying of don't discuss money, politics or religion is outdated. People need to learn to think critically, and schools are a good place to practice critical thinking. It bothers me when governments, corporations and courts say what can and cannot be discussed. Next they'll be telling me what type of computer I must use and what sites I'm allowed to visit.
Ruby on Rails Screencast
Don't get me wrong; I believe that microevolution occurs; it's readily observeable. I just don't think speciation has provided us with anything factual so as to be convincing. The simplest explanation is often the right one, and in this case the simple explanation is that other species moved into the same areas.
Can you fill in the blanks in your belief? If the species didn't come from differentiation in prior species, where do you believe they came from? Did they just all popped into existence when God sneezed? And how, then, did Noah fit all of these onto his ark? Or were there only a few species back then, and God has sneezed the rest into existence since?
Bless you
Oh, sorry. God just sneezed. I now have a purple unicorn standing next to me. I dub it, Intelligentus Designus
Seriously, where did it all come from? Are you so all knowing that you KNOW God couldn't have invented evolution himself? God is probably quite proud of himself for coming up with such a clever solution for generating such variety. And here you insult him by saying his plan doesn't exist?
...richie - It is a good day to code.
Honestly, it doesn't matter what is in your eyes. Can you disprove it? Of course just because you can't disprove something doesn't make it true. But how unscientific is it to say something is BS with no proof?
But to leave out something that a majority of people in the USA believe is wrong
Like what, that Bush did serve his national guard duty?
Or that Bush actually won either election
or that Iraq had WMD
or Saddam was gunning for the US
or supporting AQ
or the Gulf of Tonkin
or any of the other completely idiotic things that "the majority" of the American population believes. Based on that rule, you can stop teaching about the Pacific ocean as well, since 80% of Americans can't locate the FUCKING OCEAN on an unmarked map.
Basing what gets taught in schools, based on the beliefs of the "majority" of Americans, is just begging for stupidity to be the defining characteristic of your population.
Wow. You actually expect Slashdot people not to overreact when something religious gets squashed. You've got balls, man. Say goodbye to your karma on that one.
If an omnipotent God does exist and has created the earth in the manner that the creationists claim, then it seems pretty clear that he must have forged the fossil record. But I figure that if he took so much care to forge so much evidence (specifically for us to find), then it's pretty obvious that he wants us to believe in evolution. He'd be a pretty mean God if he planted all of this evidence, gave us the intelligence to interpret it, and then dammed us for coming to logical conclusions about it.
That's a stupid argument. An omnipotent being by definition can do anything, including creating a rock with any number of characteristics. Whether or not the rock can be lifted is not a characteristic of the rock, but of the individual attempting to do the lifting. The question is a simple variation of, "can omnipotent being do X?" and "can omnipotent being not do Y?". Simple logic should tell you the answer is always no and presents no contradiction whatsoever.
why-is-it wrote:
sigh
Nonexistence proofs are trivial. Perhaps the most famous is Euclid's that ``the largest prime number'' doesn't exist.
As for a proof against omnipotence, here's one:
Omnipotence must necessarily include omniscience; an omnipotent being could just ``use its omnipotence'' to give itself omniscience. So, if we can disprove omniscience, we've also oh-by-the-way disproved omnipotence. And, it just so happens, Mr. Turing disproved omniscience with his little halting problem. Don't believe me? Then try this on for size:
(And do keep in mind that ``Will this program ever halt?'' can only be answered with a ``yes'' or a ``no.'')
You could also foil a supposedly-omniscient god just by asking it to tell you what you'll do next. Whatever the god tells you, do something else.
The modern theological god is essentially dependent on so many logically-impossible traits it's not even funny. First cause? Well, if everything needs a creator, then what created the creator? Omnibenevolent? Then, whence comes evil?
You might as well define ``God'' as a married bachelor and be done with it.
Cheers,
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
First of all, I really don't think that the government should tell us what science is.
Secondly, by whatever is used to define evolution as 'science' is pretty much the same measuring stick by which to define ID as science, if people were slightly more open-minded, and actually thought things through. You can not seriously and truthfully say that evolution is provable and ID is not, in the same breath. Doing so just belies serious mental bigotry.
I am disgusted that some activist judge such as this one has chosen to abolish faith for American schoolchildren. Yet I am even more disgusted that the Dover school board would not consider teaching my alternative to evolution, FSMism, which I hold to be an equally valid, competing hypothesis.
Maybe Satan created fossils so that he would have all the scientists in Hell with him to help with his battle plans for judgement day.
Granted there would be a few scientists on God's side, but he dosen't need them, cause he knows EVERYTHING. Even what you do in your room when no one is looking.
By what yardstick of ethics do you make your own moral decisions? What form of not-mythology guides you through the moral decisions you make in life, including the decisions you make by default because you have no belief system?
A mythology is that body of stories that center on a religiously or secularly based belief system, which a given culture or homogeneous society hold to be true. What do you hold to be true? Do you believe in the Theory of Evolution? Have you no way of determining in your life what is right and what is wrong? And if you do have such a compass, how have you justified to yourself that your decisions are Absolutely Correct? Or do you go through life as a leaf on the surface of a turbulent rapids, going hither and yon at the whims of current and fate, no more in charge of your destiny than a gnat before a wind storm?
I would say that I feel sorry for you except that you might take such as pity and it is not. How does one who can see explain color to one who has been blind from birth? Or sweetness to the one born with no tongue?
Good luck, my friend! May sweet fortune smile upon you and bring you joy and happiness! You go and follow your druthers and try to find true, lasting happiness and joy in them. I will follow what has brought me joy and lasting happiness in my life and I will teach my children how to reach for and find that joy and happiness on their own. Because I know that will they grow and learn and will be happy, competent and productive people in their lives because of the belief system that has shown me a safe way through life's dangerous, reef-ridden shoals, I am truly amazed that such as you can call it child abuse.
And yet...if at the last day I am justified in my belief and all I have hope to be true is given to me to be known and proven as true, my belief system would hardly qualify as a myth, being everlastingly true.
BZZT, WRONG! There are *many* intermediate forms for the eye. One very interesting "almost eye" things one can find today is the infrared detector found in rattlesnakes. They have a pinhole camera that works in detecting infrared emissions from small mammals (mice) that are rattlesnakes victims. This "camera" is a hole found in rattlesnakes' snouts where the bottom is a thin heat-sensitive cell layer and the mouth is a small hole that focuses heat rays.
That's *exactly* the "intermediate form" that some people claim doesn't exist for the eye.
Therefore, if the "intermediate form" actually exists for the eye, can we conclude that all this "intelligent" design thing is a lot of bullshit?
Or, as I like to say, given enough dice and enough time, eventually you will roll a trillion 1's in a row.
That sounds correct.
One of the major factors that most of the simplistic "it happened this way because that's what I think" arguements on either side of this ID vs evolution debate fail to take into accout is scale.
Scale of time, and scale of the sheer number of organisms alive at any given time.
Here's an overly simplistic arguement to demonstrate this. Since someone above mentioned the evolution of eyes, let's just say there are roughly 10,000 steps involved in creating the modern eye. (for simplicity's sake, I'm just arguing 1 kind of modern eye)
Life has been around for a long time on this planet. Let's set an arbitrary starting point of 300 million years ago (well after the origins of life, but close enough).
Now lets say the organism we are evolving here reproduces once every 20 years (again, highly unrealistic, but close enough)
300,000,000 years
/ 20
= 15,000,000 generations
Okay, so we now have 15 million generations of the same genetic line to play with. Let's put a random eye mutation in every 100 generations.
15,000,000
/ 100
= 150,000 mutations
So, over the course of 300 million years, it is possible that 1 out of every 15 eye mutations is beneficial and carried on in one of the 10,000 steps to the modern eye.
And given the facts that most animals, humans included, rarely wait 20 years before reproducing, that life has been around more than a mere 300 million years, and that far more than a single genetic line has been carried forward since life started on this planet, I fail to see how "it's too complex" can be used in a valid arguement without being immediately followed by "...for me to understand in my short 72 year lifespan"
Most people who try to oversimplify the arguement forget one very important rule:
Never underestimate the power of entropy in large quantities.
I even fail to see why entropy/random chance, over the course of a couple billion years, would not be sufficient for even random chemicals on a dynamic planetary surface to comobine in the proper proportions to eventually find a way to reproduce itself and thus become life.
"If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice!" -Rush
"subject Defendants to liability with respect to injunctive and declaratory relief, but also for nominal damages and the reasonable value of Plaintiffs' attorneys' services and costs incurred in vindicating Plaintiffs' constitutional rights." PAGE 138 OF THE DECISION
Nothing like money to change people's behavior. If you don't think the "nominal damages" are likely to be significant, as someone who has had a few battles in the courtroom myself, "the attorneys' services and costs incurred" (like discovery) can be very significant.
Are you joking? Macro-evolution is easy to disprove. Show that the fossile record is faked would disprove it pretty handily. Having aliens appear in the sky and changing one speices into another would disprove evolution. The list is almost endless in the ways you can disprove macro-evolution. We just don't think about most of those ways because they are stupid and not going to happen. If angels float down from heaven and suddenly turn one species into another species evolution will be dead and ID will be taken very seriously. Until that happens, ID is a joke that will continue to be laughed out of courts and scientific journals.
Sorry, but now who's being stupid?
Who said intelligent design had to create perfect creatures?
Is there such a thing as a perfect design in a changing environment?
Or would it make intelligent sense to create creatures which mutated to have a mechanism to cope with a changing environment?
Is not your argument the same as asking whether cancer evolved because it gave an advantage somehow? Is it not just a consequence of the mechanism?
I'm not jumping on either side of the fence here. I'm just saying that making stupid remarks won't prove or disprove anything.
surely this question can't be answered? Intelligent design may have simply involved creating the system on the Earth at that time and then allowing it to evolve from there. There's really no evidence against that. Or for it.
But let's get real about the science behind this and agree that there are some way-out assumptions having to be made in the science, and some huge gaps in the theories. Intelligent design is a reasonable starting point. It's just not a scientific argument.
This web page expresses exactly what you just said. http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/einstein. html
I need not fear EvilMonkeySlayer, as I am not evil. ^_^
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
Good, religious hypocrites need to be put in their place!
While school boards may continue to trickle out ID curriculua mandates, this ruling and the trial's record will effectively mean such mandates won't last long once they get to court. It's over as far as the public schools are concerned. I think the next battleground will be the lawsuit against the University of California for not accepting ID-inclusive biologic coursework as valid science coursework for admissions. This is about (essentially) privately educated students who want to go to good public schools and raises different issues, as I think the main summary of the plaintiff's argument is that the UC is discriminating on religious grounds.
You will note, however, that neither Einstein nor those mathematicians try to use god to explain their theories. Einstein was merely expressing his theory that the universe is NOT randomly chaotic and is in fact predictable once you have enough information. Mathematicians are always looking for that beautiful equastion that sometimes falls out of some horrible mess and simplifies a problem greatly.
No. Einstein rejected quantum mechanics on purely aesthetic, even spiritual grounds. No other justification than that. He didn't like Bohr's or Shroedinger's notion of the physics of the very small and spent the rest of his life seeking an alternative. He has been proven wrong, no doubt. But don't invoke Einstein if you want to remove God from the discussion. He is a bad example.
Non-computability is never the foundation of any science. ID's fundimental flaw is that it is a formalized argument from ignorance, which is a logical fallacy. Besides, the whole point of science is to explain the nature of the universe, not presuppose some answer and stop looking.
Look no further than weather prediction and the solution of Navier Stokes Equations. The equations are completely valid and deterministic. But scientist's ability to apply them in anything other than the short term is limited because of their limited ability to full specify initial conditions. Solution of most time differential equations are like that. I agree with your idea that ID folks have 'stopped looking for the answer'. So why to you disagree with my dissatisfaction of the state of the theory of biology?
Obviously ID and Creationism have plenty of mathematical funimentals to lean on... Saying that biologists have a lack of rigor is something you're going to have to back up with mountains of evidence. It's tantamount to calling them all cheats and liars. Also, saying that life is too cool for evolution made me do a double take. That's some A Class stuff there.
If you as a biologist wish to compare yourself with a creationist go ahead. You will stack up well. But you should be embarrassed to compare the state of your field with a mathematician or a physicist. I am not saying life is too cool for evolution. I am saying biologists use the notion of evolution without understanding deeply what it really is.
an ill wind that blows no good
Only if you slam a 40 and overload your bladder...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
"Assuming that God created the world, no creationist should claim (and few do) that the creation was perfect (as evidenced by all the crap going on in the world). It was good, not perfect. So in my opinion this whole "flawed mammalian eye" argument is really a straw-man argument."
Oh, I see. All these imperfections in things too incredibly complex to have evolved is just due to an all powerful God who is just really lazy and/or indifferent and/or mean.... Saying it was good implies a tad bit more than adequate.... Sorry, but if you believe that your diety can create the universe that argument just doesn't cut it.
If creation wasn't perfect that strongly implies God isn't. That God has weaknesses. Perhaps God really isn't all that powerful. You see the logical progression here? That's the problem with using the bible as anything more than a guide. At best it is a book "inspired by actual events".
"Then you can blame CNN. The quotes came from their site."
So, um, you're saying you, um, didn't RTFA?
The problem with this paradox and your proof (which I don't deny is logically sound) is that it doesn't actually prove anything. A theist could respond simply by stating:
"If an omnipotent being can do what is logically impossible, then he can not only create situations which he cannot handle but also, since he is not bound by the limits of consistency, he can handle situations which he cannot handle." - Harry Frankfurt
And around the circle goes, both people using logic to prove their point, the entire time neither actually proving their point. Quite simply, when it comes down to it, neither Evolution nor Intelligent Design can be actually "proved" logically - which is why they both are scientific theories.
"All extant organisms descend from a common ancestor."
That has never been even close to proven even with molecular science. You are spouting ignorance. He never said anything ended at the fossil record. However, that same fossil record should show at least some level of speciation via macro evolution and it doesn't at all!
I find it interesting that you lash out at anything that questions your world view. I am only pointing out the obvious. That there is no evidence at any level for macro evolution. If there were EVIDENCE it would put an end to any such debate.
Maybe you and your atheist friends need a better theory.
That statement stands as an affront to anyone who's been truly abused.
It also display remarkable intolerance for the beliefs of others.
Denying parents the right to pass their beliefs (whatever they are) to their children is not only unconscionable, it's impossible -- unless you outlaw parenting, that is. Whoever raises kids automatically indoctrinates them with their beliefs. You can't counter with an example of a parent who has no beliefs, because there is no one like that. If you counter with a parent who tries not to indoctrinate their children, you must think a little deeper: they're still doing it.
Whether the indoctrination works is another matter.
Removing the freedom of religion is a terrible mistake. It opens the way to religious tyranny of one sort or another. The freedom of religion is an important buffer between us and tyranny. Whatever else the freedom of religion means it must include practicing it with your family.
Parents must and do have the right to teach their children whatever the parents believe, whether that's that the moon is made of cheese or what sports team to follow. It's what makes them parents, and once you have kids you realize it's the greatest joy in life. If we remove that right, the world would become a dull, dreary, oppressive place. It would also be an Orwellian nightmare.
I see that idea of criminalizing incorrect beliefs echoed on slashdot alot. It's quite troubling that our schools, in their proper effort to be agnostic, have failed to teach the basic principles which led to our nation's founding. Religious intolerance poses the danger, not religion itself.
sigs, as if you care.
Well, there you go. Maybe you can look at the geological and cosmological record to prove or disprove the hypothesis. As a pseudo-atheist I know that just as much good science comes from disproving a "bad" hypothesis as comes from proving "good" ones. I also know that putting blinders on to any approach to answering or asking questions is foolhardy.
But as a mostly-rational creature I find it interesting that all these physical phenomena do coincide in a system that is supposedly inherently entropic and prone to chaos. When you look at a satellite image and see a perfectly straight line in the forest in the middle of nowhere you have to at least be curious.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
This is not at all what I had in mind when I designed it all.
Thou Shalt not Bear False Witness???
Guess they use the same Bible as Ollie North.
Please don't make me use the <sarcasm> tags.
How do complex and allegedly "irreducible" organs and systems come about?
First, you must have a serious definition of what irreducibly complex means. From the examples I've been given me, it's a subjective guess.
Second, you have to consider what you would accept? We can look for examples in the fossil record and "connect the dots". Is that good enough? I mean, it is when you accept that the planets are moving in elliptical orbits. All we can do is observe them every night and "connect the dots", and use other theories to back up our completed picture. But perhaps some people won't be satified until they can park their butt in a lawn chair above the solar system and observe it for thenselves.
There are also modelling techniques. Since evolution takes a lot of time, one way of observing it is to simulate it in a manner faster than natural time. Tierra is an example of digital evolution, as is a more recent simulation built at MSU. Mathematics also offers models of evolution. But will you accept these as you do for just about every other scientific field out there?
I think pleny of people are willing to answer how
"Christ isn't God (at least not from what I remember of my catechism classes)."
You weren't paying good attention then; in Catholic doctrine, Christ -is- God made flesh. (The whole three-are-one mystery of the trinity) Of course, not all Christians believe this, and indeed, a number of people have been killed over the question at various points in history.
The story of Jesus Christ also bears a remarkable resemblence to the stories of any number of other died-and-resurrected saviour gods, so it is not surprising that Christians treat him as a diety (even those sects that reject the doctrine of divine incarnation.)
This nitpick does not, of course, invalidate anything in your argument which was otherwise well made.
--Parity
'Card carrying' member of the EFF.
I do love how you just handwaved away the molecular data and trumpted on about the fossil record. It indicates:
a) That you actually don't know what the molecular data is and why it points to common descent and
b) That you don't understand the place of the fossil record in evolutionary theory.
Some day you should actually read a book by a scientist. You might even learn something.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
There's only so much a beginner can do. Maybe you could introduce me?
Err, I mean ...
The Luddites were ahead of their time.
You're right. Speciation is even easier among plants (get one to double it's chromosomes, and it is a new species). However, when I think of macroevolution, I think of big changes, along the lines of gaining new body parts or cell types.
The macro/micro evolution distinction is no more than a human contruct, there is no difference between the two in nature.
Families and species are human constructs, and I daresay there is a difference between the two in nature. To take an example consider the mathematical series (1+1/2+1/4+1/8...) The series gets big enough to reach 1.1, 1.6, 1.9, but not 2.1. Just because we observe small incremental changes, doesn't mean that these changes will add up to much.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Intelligent design supporters comment God could have created the fossil record, and the carbon 14 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon-14) and the telltale carbon dating it shows along with it. A fallacy in this arguement is that God could have easily, under that notion, created the world five minutes ago, with the sights, the sounds, the smells, the textures, the tastes you remember all planted inside your memories to fool you into thinking the world is older than it is. I would hold that arguement just as credible as the one they argue.
We redid the walkway at the side of our house a couple of years ago, with a patio stone walkway surrounded by gravel. At the time, the gravel was all different sizes, from tiny stuff barely larger than dust, to chunks a good inch and a half long. You could see all this stuff on the top. Since then, all the small stuff has disappeared. You only see the big stuff on top. Yet, if you dig, you'll find all the small stuff at the bottom. I haven't raked it, or anything else, it just settled because of gravity.
Now, apply this to the fossil record:
According to Genesis, there was a flood which covered the whole earth. Everything alive at the time would have been washed away, and eventually settled to the bottom. Small stuff would have fallen through the cracks between the big stuff, resulting in a layer which shows nothing (already there at the time of the flood), a layer which shows small stuff (where all the small stuff settled to) and higher layers showing bigger and bigger life forms.
Explain to me, scientifically, why your viewpoint is the right way to interpret this evidence, and mine is incorrect.
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
Good point, if god went to all that trouble, he clearly doesn't want us to believe in him. ;-)
Apart from that, beliefs in god are only a way to prevent our minds from going insane in the light of doubt about one's role in life, and the questions of why something happened and what is going to come. I suggest you go and read some psychology textbooks.
It is perfectly legal to belief in god, when you are aware of the fact that it is only a model to keep your mind balanced. But don't go on and try to infest science by introducing ID and other BS thinkings, because it does not mentally help. As a sidenote, church isn't very useful as well. One could make religions far more lean by cutting out the church, and only limit to the basic religious principles.
Windows is like decaf - it tastes like the real thing, but it won't get you through the day.
Classic error. Classic counterexample (among many): a ruler-and-compass construction of the heptagon does not exist.
Timeo idiotikOS et dona ferentes
i am totally embarassed by behe;-}
So if I do not believe in mathematics for religious reasons, that pi does not equal 3.14159..., then I can claim that my children are being tought LIES! and claim freedom of religion? If you really care so much take your kids out of school and teach them what you want; but you should not be suprised when they turn out in a less than intelegent way.
A blog about stuff.
Your problem here is that the term "omnipotent" is not properly defined. One of the foundations of logic is a mathematical structure known as "Set Theory" (and no the word theory in this case does not mean the same thing as in "Scientific Theory" - but I digress).
The most common version of set theory (called "Naive Set Theory") is not self-consistent - it allows paradoxes, which essentialy disallow the logical idea of "The Law of The Exluded Middle" (nothing is both true and false at the same time) - and as such it is not mathematicly rigorous, and throwing around concepts like "Infinity" and "Omnipotence" is in many ways equivalent to this naive aproach. The more well-defined versions of set-theory (particularly "VonNeuman Set Theory") forbid the construction of certain "sets" (like the set of all things that can be done) and instead create the much weaker notion of "classes".
Essentialy I'm saying that omnipotence can only realy be dddefined as a limit condition, not as an actual property (ie. capable of doing anything one chooses as distinct from capable of doing anything).
Damn our imprecise human language!
James P. Barrett
You're a heretic. Congratulations; so am I. One of the things hammered out at the Council of Nicea was the nature of the holy trinity. In order to make it work, Jesus had to be declared fully both human and divine. Thus, Jesus is God, as you cannot be fully divine without such. Also, Jesus is the only element of God to be fully human (since he was born of woman.) If you don't believe this, you're a heretic! Welcome to the black-and-white world of Christianity.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Speaking of...
Where did all the space for the Universe come from?
Even if it is endless, where did this vast pocket of space come from, and then where did that space come from.
how did this get modded troll??
I'm okay with ID in science class only if it is used as an example of the difference between a theory in science and the laymens term.
both evolution and ID might be theories but only evolution is a scientific one.
backwards retina (and photosensitive cells) yielding:
Squids and octopus have "normal" (non backward) retinas with photosensitive cells pointing forward, which means that they maximize the available light's use efficiency, donc have any blind spot and since the nerves go through the layer under the retina to form the optic nerve behind it retinal detachment is near impossible.
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
And especially not in science class.
When Saudi Arabia teaches religion in school curriculum, we have a fit. We cannot sink to that level.
All learning isn't done at school. If people want to know about a theory of evolution that explains everything by explaining nothing, let them do so outside of science class and outside of school.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
I remember my 8th grade biology text (1986ish) showing some guy's drawings of various animal embryos and how similar they are. Now I find out it was an exaggeration.
And the peppered moths? I come to find out they were dead moths pinned to the trees.
I'd like to know why that was handed down as fact.
Okay, now tell me how blood clotting works and doesn't turn ALL my blood into one big clot. How does something like that evolve? Doesn't the "turn-clotting-off" mechanism have to be there at the same time as "turn-clotting-on"? One without the other is gonna kill me. It's when they both have to be there at the same time that leaves me puzzled as to how it could evolve gradually.
I'm not saying we should have to pick Intelligent Design OVER Evolution. Teach evolution but ask intelligent questions.
pear reviewed publications
Is that where they compare the apples and the oranges?
Just junk food for thought...
Just because something is explainable or natural does not remove it from being a miracle.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Actually, they can even be harmful. As you said yourself, as long as said creature is alive long enough to reproduce, a trait can be passed along.
Take salmon for example. They carry a trait that requires them to find their way back to the spot where they were born to reproduce. However it requires complete self destruction to do so.
Is it possible for a rock to exist that is too big for our hypothetical omnipotent God to lift? Obviously not... no matter what a rock's mass is, He can lift it. Since the proposed rock is logically unable to exist, God cannot create it. This is not a limitation on God's power... He can still create any size rock He wants. And then He can lift it.
More to the point: Can God create a circle which is wider than it is tall?
Hey kids, there's only 5 days left 'til Yak Shaving Day!
As usual, the Onion has a helpful perspective.
As has the spelling of "definitely".
Easy, if you consider the possibility that God can lift an infinite sized rock. You could hardly consider that creating a rock of infinite size is not good enough to be omnipotent, even if it's not "too big for God to lift."
At the same time, if God can lift the infinite sized rock, he can effectively do both.
Besides....you can hardly go using logic to disprove the existence of the God that designed logic. That's like using a car to prove that Henry Ford didn't exist.
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
It's a stupid argument anyway. A mutation can give the ability to live in a new place and those who carry the new mutation can split off and go somewhere else. Living precursors are no counterexample to evolution.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
They don't have to, DNAs have coding zones and non-coding ("dead") zones separated by start/end markers. If a mutation happens that makes a non-coding zone coding or a coding zone non-coding, macroscopic modifications may be extreme.
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
But they trolled the court, they didn't bear it. :)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
You are misdefining "falsifiable", or just confused? Here's a challange for you: I suggest how to falsify ID, and you explain why I am wrong, and also give an example of how to falsify any scientific theory.
How to falsify ID: Examine DNA of different creatures bit by bit. If the changes look like predicted by any naturalistic explanation, then ID is false.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
So very true ID is definately not a scientific theory and shouldn't be taught in a science class.
Yes i am posting this from work like you.
Okay here's one for you: explain the eye. It either works or it doesn't.
You know, I wish there was more thought put into the eye... I would really like to se Infra Red, UV, and maybe even be able to see radiation.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Because the fossil record does not show "bigger and bigger life forms" in the upper layers - it shows newer ones!. In fact, your theory would require large dinosaur bones to be on the top layer of everything instead of in the middle layer - as they are.
*Looks carefully at TripMaster Monkey whilst sharpening a knife*...
The school board members lied repeatedly.
That would make them lying bastards.
Goes to show how strong their 'Christian' beliefs are.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
To play science's advocate :), here's my explanation of where your argument falls apart:
I will give you credit for coming up with a new argument, however. (New to me, at least.) And since you were only playing devil's advocate I'll give you 8/10 for creativity. :)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Patient: "Why to I have cancer?"
Intelligent Design Doctor: "You are designed to have cancer."
Patient: "Okay. Thank you. I will go away and die, now."
ID promotes fatalism. Not only is not science, it is anti-scientific.
Real science provides real value.
Reading Slashdot is ruining my spelling and grammar.
Here's the problem: YOU can't explain how it works. YOU didn't bother doing even a cursory search on Google or whatever to see if maybe someone else could. YOU didn't bother thinking about this beyond the "It's too complex for me, must be God!" type of crap that ID people put out there all the time.
I can't explain all kinds of things, but MY default assumption when I can't is that maybe someone else can, or, if not, maybe I can investigate the matter further. I don't just throw up my hands and say "God did it!"
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
Think about this people. Why are we even having this ID/evolution debate?
Oh I know....when humans came to be they had something other animals did not: the ability to reason.
Most animals can't reason, and their whole life consists of eat/sleep/sh**/f***/survive and then die.
With humans we think beyond that, we can reason. It's a blessing and a curse.
Blessing to be so intelligent, but curse because it makes us ask the ONE single question (among other questions) that got religion started: what happens after we die???
Because humans have the ability to reason, we can't deal with the fact that nothing happens when we die. Most humans would be too paranoid to live life (because of the ability to reason and think about these abstract things), so we invent religion. We invent stories that say what happens when we die, to put us at peace. Once those stories got a hold of us, people pulling the strings busted out creation myths(ding ding ding!) and the rest is history.
So what is the point of arguing ID vs. evolution? ID is based on religion, which came about to put humans, who have the ability to reason, at peace during their lives because they can't deal with the fact that nothing happens after death. You just die.
"Federal Judge Rules Against Intelligent Design"
:-D
Thank the Gods!
I'm saddened to see that your children will be both arrogant moronic.
Well, firstly, who created God? If God can just exist, well, why not the Big Bang? Mainly, all attributing everything to God does is just push the explanation out a level - it doesn't actually explain anything because now you must explain how God came to exist.
The eye isn't an all-or-nothing proposition. For example, my eyes are defective. I need to wear glasses to drive - so I am proof that it is not so that 'the eye either works or it does not'.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
...but members of my family recently moved to a small town in Alabama. It is a dry town in a dry county. In the heavily southern baptist area, they have outlawed the sale of alcohol because drinking is a sin.
Just curious, but would it bother you any less if they instead had overtly stated that their official reasons for outlawing the sale of alcohol in their county/town were because it led to health problems, social behaviour problems, family violence problems, drunken driving, etc, instead of "religion" reasons?
--
I think I'll have a drink myself.
Deleted from Matrix script: " Please tell your human friends that it is neither God nor Evolution. It is the matrix that created them. The Matrix has you!
Go on and save Trinity.
See you in Matrix Revolutions"
So many people are so stupid :(.
Intelligent design is likely false, with evolution clearly a fact. Let's not debate about that because we know it's a fact. THINK, use your mind, not you feelings.
Now, why can't we have both? Cannot there be a god that created evolution? HMM?
[1] Sadly, the lectures, along with the Society itself, seem to have diminished in quality in the last 5-10 years.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
That God did not intend for Intelligent Design to be taught in public schools. (hahaha)
Move all sig!
One of the things hammered out at the Council of Nicea was the nature of the holy trinity. In order to make it work, Jesus had to be declared fully both human and divine.
You're literate. Congratulations. And you've read The DaVinci Code. It's a work of fiction, you know. Nicea was simply a meeting of Church Fathers where Christian doctrine was finally formalized and unified. Gospel texts from various sources predating Nicea by up to 400 years refer to the Trinity, as an above post quotes.
The best argument in favor of an ID-type theory I've ever heard was made by Nick Bostrom. Granted, this probably isn't what the Dover Board had in mind...
(Yes, I prefer Bostrom's argument over the FSM, but that's just me, I guess.)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Unbelievably, they are. Evolution is what they consider the weakest target, because the interaction of biological systems and their enviroment over time is the most complicated, but the also the one people feel most familiar with.
But they don't believe in relativity, which may as well be the same as not believing in gravity, and instead they All Powerful God of lies, greatly manipulated the speed of light and all of nature's "constants" to produce the universe as it appears, but which is really only 6,000 years old.
This is the same science that dates the lava from the last Mount Saint Helens eruption as being 1 million years old. Science is not perfect. History shoes that science one stated that the sun revolved around the earth. That is why we have scientific theories.
Every "THEORY", yes let's stress that again "THEORY" has holes in it, if it did not have those holes it would not be a "THEORY" but a Law, fact, whatever they want to call it these days. The point is that Evolution is just as unprovable as ID, Creationism, or my personal "I pulled it out of my butt last week" theories.
That is the part of all this that bothers me. Evolutionist tend to approach this issue with a "We are absolutely right" attitude, and the fact is you have no more of a clue as the rest of us.
Voting them all out of office, now that's change I can believe in.
Ok... On last time for the uneducated:
Darwinian theories has seen many, many coroborating evidence over the small time they have been disected. And it is because of this overwhelming amount of evidence that we can for the duration, until completly diproven, advance that This is the theory that is the most applicable.
Id Beliefs are what they are: beliefs. And dont tell a very religious person that his belief is wrong because you will be burned at the stake (actualy happened, I believe). Thing is, beliefs differs from people to people, so you can't force them, in good conscience, to view beliefs as facts when they cannot be proven wrong.
I do beleive in some sort of god (not the christian God or the Muslim God) because I beleive there is a thing wich science cant explain : our conscience (or our soul if you wish), that thing that permit us to ponder what we are, where we are going and where we came from. To me this is the only clue i have of the existence of a god. But mind you, I wont teach that in a science class.
Also, you know that evolution is nothing but changes in allele frequency in a population over time, so at no point, with either modern scientists or Darwin himself, was anyone ever expecting to see a transitional form that wasn't itself a functioning, living species? Its not like the transitionals are going to be half-melted blobs melting from human into porcupines, like some frozen outtake from Species the movie.
That said, How about the transition from Ape to Modern Humans? Transitional enough for you? Each one of the 20 main hominids is slightly different from its neighbor, but very different from a few neighbors down. No, the earliest ones could not be confused for modern humans, no matter how much you shaved and suited them up. (And for kicks, you still have some morphological leftover traits-- take a look at your teeth, and notice the giant roots for your tiny little canines. Note how earlier humans used to have much larger canines.)
Other transitions include dinosaurs to birds, or reptiles to mammals, or land mammal to whale. Or if you're talking about genetic missing links, that's really, really easy to find. For example, chimps and humans don't have the same number of chromosomes- we have one less- but funny how human chromosome 2 is almost identical to chimp chromosomes 2p and 2q. We even have broken bits of telemorase right in the middle of 2, exactly what you'd expect if 2p and 2q had fused together. All primates have to eat vitamin C, we can't produce it ourselves, unlike all other mammals except guinea pigs. One prediction scientists made (see '29 evidences' below) was that we'd eventually find that primates have a broken vitamin C gene. Funny how they recently found that exact gene, the identical broken bit shared by all primates (The gene also has further 'chips and scratches,' where the additional broken bits correlate highly with the type of primate. Guinea pigs also have a broken gene, but in a completely different place. The designer sure spent a lot of time on making broken genes correlate with morphological similarities. You'd think the designer could be a lot more creative in being a plagarist, no?)
Also, scientific theories are never "confirmed," just corroborated. In the 29 Evidences for Macroevolution FAQ you can find well-referenced (peer reviewed research) evidences, each with predictions and falsifiability criteria. We're still waiting for the '1 evidence for ID' that includes the same predictions and falsifiability.
Oh, and that "microevolution is distinct from macroevolution" idea? That's a fairly common creationist claim. One of a very long list of common creationist claims. Answers to claim CB902 are here. (For kicks, you can also check out the claims that even creationists say to stop using, and see how many of those get mentioned in this thread.)
Schroedinger's God can create a rock that he can simultaneously lift and not lift.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I wrote a paper about it way back in the day.
http://www.marshallhall.org/hanson.html
I'm not sure where you learned about G.W. (since it wasn't science class), but they learned you wrong.
To be fair, this is something that isn't included in most highschool courses. Or even in college courses that don't specifically discuss the beginning of the US of A.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
> While school boards may continue to trickle out ID curriculua mandates, this ruling and the trial's record will effectively mean such mandates won't last long once they get to court. It's over as far as the public schools are concerned.
Yes, at the very least the courtroom testimony in the Dover case was absolutely devastating, and any school district that wants to fight it in the future is going to have to risk having all that come out again.
(Given the kind of zealots we're talking about, some of them surely will be stupid enough to risk it, but they'll get hammered for precisely the same reasons, if not by precedent.)
> I think the next battleground will be the lawsuit against the University of California for not accepting ID-inclusive biologic coursework as valid science coursework for admissions. This is about (essentially) privately educated students who want to go to good public schools and raises different issues, as I think the main summary of the plaintiff's argument is that the UC is discriminating on religious grounds.
Sounds pretty bogus to me. Basically UC is refusing to accept religious instruction as science instruction, and the plaintiffs are trying to play the martyr card. Unfortunately we've got a lot of fundamentalists and evangelicals in this country who think not getting their way is tantamount to persecution.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Yes, thank you, I understand the difference between precedential and persuasive authority. Law school did that much for me, at least. While judges do not like to look stupid (which is a nice and succinct way of summing up a lot of judicial process), they also don't like to make other judges look stupid. Judge Jones has authored a careful and considered order that explains why ID isn't science, at least in the facts before his court. Another court, even in a different district, will almost certainly have to distinguish the cases if it wants to rule that ID is kosher in public schools.
There aren't many cases in this field, and Jones' ruling, like the Cobb County ruling, is significant in a political sense. Jones' ruling is also much broader, and more likely to shape the advocacy on this issue around the country, which will also encourage future courts to deal with his language, findings, and holdings.
Please make sure to spell "Bob" correctly. ;)
I enjoyed reading some of the quotes from the judges ruling, especially:
"The citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the Board who voted for the ID Policy. It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy."
and for those radical right-wingers who think every ruling that goes against them is the sign of an "activist judiciary":
"Those who disagree with our holding will likely mark it as the product of an activist judge. If so, they will have erred as this is manifestly not an activist Court. Rather, this case came to us as the result of the activism of an ill-informed faction on a school board (bold-face added by me), aided by a national public interest law firm eager to find a constitutional test case on ID, who in combination drove the Board to adopt an imprudent and ultimately unconstitutional policy. The breathtaking inanity of the Board's decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop which has now been fully revealed through this trial. The students, parents, and teachers of the Dover Area School District deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom, with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources."
A bad day for the radical right but a very good day for our educational system.
It's simple: I demand prosecution for torture.
You're making the common mistake that ID proponents always make. Namely:
"There's some phenomenon I cannot explain. And nobody has given me a good explanation for it yet. Therefore, there must be a supreme being."
It's the God-of-the-gaps. Whatever humanity cannot yet explain, we ascribe to "god". The problem with your God-of-the-gaps is that... he keeps getting smaller as humanity's collective knowledge increases.
Someday, science will have an explanation for you on just how "clotting" works and has evolved. What then for you? Your god will be smaller, and you'll have to cope with that.
There will be always some things they we don't have a good explanation for... yet.
But guess what? Even if your intelligent "designer" does exist? You have a conundrum. How did the designer come to be?
If your answer is simply "He always was, didn't need to be created." Then I can answer to you... why can't that same explanation hold for the universe itself... it always was.
The old canard still applies. If God didn't exist, man would've created him.
"I have as much authority as the pope, I just
don't have as many people who believe it" - George Carlin
If you want to regard mental processes as a form of sexual reproduction in the most abstract form possible, then I guess it would describe the essential underlying mechanisms involved in how people think, and would certainly go along with a fairly common attitude amongst engineering types that the product of their mind's work is their "baby".
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Refer to the trinity, yes, but what the Council did was formalise the belief structure as to what the nature of the trinity was. Since the beginning of language we have referred to water, but it took until very recently to know what water was.
Not the best example, granted, but I hope you can see the distinction.
Unless God is really "Q" from Star Trek.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Depends on the definition of a miracle... Hume, for example, would disagree with you on yours.
-- $SIGNATURE
What about the Trilobyte eye. It was one of the first creatures in the fossil record yet its eye is even more complex than a human eye, since it was multi lensed
Disclaimer: IANAL
The court could have ruled ID in science class as unconstitutional in this case based only on the religious motivation of its insertion into the curriculum, without ruling on whether ID is or is not science. That would have been easy to do, since the school administrator who put ID into the science class here said, "2,000 years ago, someone died on a cross. Isn't anyone going to stand up for him?"
It would have been very easy for the court to rule on the constitutionality of ID in this specific case only, but it seems the court did not take this easy way out.
Instead, the court said that ID is not science. Now precedent says that ID is not science, and that precedent can apply to any case anywhere.
Thank you, Judge John Jones, for having some stones.
Tangentially, I am troubled my the subtle rise in religious and/or moral discontent in this country. We, as a nation, can overtly say that we're not at war with Islam. Our actions at home, however, betray the nation's real intolerance of other cultures, and the intent to impose America's (I use that term loosely) religion and/or morality (also loosely) on people who do not want to be imposed upon by anything. Our actions at home do not match our words. I wonder what we're doing abroad that they're not telling us about, especially in light of secret CIA prisons in Europe, and continual uncovering of prisoner abuse by US forces.
Web 2.0 == Giant Blogspam Circle Jerk
What a great opportunity to try out my new sig :).
Too late to be known as Bush the First, he's sure to be known as Bush the Worst.
I'm certainly not going to flame you. At least you provided some evidence to support your claim. What's interesting about Gen 1:26 is the phrasing:
"Then God said, 'Let us make man in our image, in our likeness' "
Does that mean that there is more than one God or that God was talking to the angels and other higher beings? Having reread the portions of Genesis before 1:26 no mention is made of any other god or being.
This is more a rhetorical question so don't feel obligated to answer. Having had catechism oh so many years ago we went over this part but as far as I know no one has come to a definitive answer.
However, another issue arises from your second part. If God is a man, how would he know how to make a woman? He would have no basis for how she should be constructed. Ok, he's omnipotent.
As far as the faith thing goes, I follow, above all, the Golden Rule. If my not going around stomping on kittens and puppies or raping 90 year old women isn't good enough, tough. If there is a god I'm more than willing to defend my actions and suffer whatever the consequences. Just like in real life I admit my mistakes and take my lumps.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
the belief that those that believe in a creator are wrong is a religious belief
Okay, that's bullshit.
Does that mean I'm religious because I do not believe in the tooth fairy? I don't think so.
Does that mean you're religious because you do believe in a tooth fairy, for which there is not one shred of evidence, in fact, quite the opposite?
Sheesh, what utter nonesense.
I postulate that I can prove there is no god: what divine creator would create so many fuckwits as a legion of devout followers?
Why are fundamentalists unable to use their (supposedly) god-given brains to analyse the nonsense they believe in?
No divine creator would create so many ass hats and set them loose on the rest of us.
I believe that He made the universe about 13 billion years ago through a process we call "the Big Bang", but that's just my understanding of current cosmology and subject to change as our/my knowledge of the subject grows.
I also believe that he used evolution to create life, as evidenced by all the hints left laying around and the ongoing processes around us.
I know that God exists by various reasons, but they all come down to faith. I know a little about how He created us, but it all comes down to science.
Since there's no way I'm going to say I believe in ID, what is the term for someone who thinks that God made everything through the processes that science is revealing to us?
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
No-one's been moded up for mentioning how they've been touched by 'his noodly appendage'.
And you say you actually have young children? Yet you think they are capable of choosing between wildly conflicting evidence in a responsible way?
In my experience, children believe whatever you tell them. Why else would children overwhelmingly choose the religion of their parents. Why else would children believe in Santa Claus (and I mean believe in Santa Claus). It's been described that children have minds like a sponge; they absorb everything you tell them. I disagree with that analogy. I think their minds are more like clay; you can shape them however you like and the kiln of time will harden their opinion.
Choice seems like such a good thing. Give everybody all the evidence and let them choose. But it's not in their best interests to be told bullshit, at the expense of the school system, because children are far too gullible to distinguish between reality and fiction. That's why the Creationists want ID taught to children. They want to manipulate the child's mind when the manipulation will have the greatest effect.
In fact I'll go one step further and say that most people never stop being children, because most people will believe any old bullshit they read or hear or see just so long as it's dressed up in a veil of authority. Take a funny example I read on Slashdot recently: a global warming denier who quoted Frederick Seitz as evidence that scientists are largely divided on global warming. I laughed and laughed and laughed. It really doesn't take much to convince people that up is down, right is wrong, false is true.
While I certainly agree with you in general, I think there are exceptions - some philosophy courses are good for pointing out where science ends and the nonsense begins. It's worth speaking about the fundamental limits of science (eg, the "induction problem" - you can draw conclusions about the physical universe while you're measuring but nothing logically prevents the physical universe from changing or being completely different outside the realm of your observations), and that's a topic for philosophy.
ID would make an excellent topic for a "Philosophy of Science" course. Science talks about mechanisms, ID talks about things that simply aren't measurable - and a philosophy of science course would underscore that science makes no comment on things that aren't measurable directly or indirectly.
"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny
Our schools are not teaching Darwin's theories as "fact", they are teaching them as part of a continuum of scientific experimentation and discovery from ancient times to the present. Part of that education contains the definitions of scientific theory and hypothesis which should help them understand how we get from uneducated ignorance to observable theories. If there was a credible opposing theory about how species evolve, rest assured that our schools would teach it!
(Note: a hypothesis is an idea some scientist gets to explain a particular observable phenomenon. He/she then designs an experiment to test that hypothesis. Based upon the results of the experiment, the hypothesis is either upheld, or modified. Eventually, as more independant scientists test the hypothesis, it eventually gets honed to the point that it becomes repeatible experimentally. It then can be said to be a theory. Darwin proposed a hypothesis about the origin of species. Over the next hundred years, that hypothesis has been tasted, examined, modified and retested until it is at the point it is at today. So now we call it a theory, not because we don't think it's true, but precisely bacause its been tested and modified so much that we really think it is. It's just that scientists never call theories PROVEN, just tested and repeatable. There's always a change or modification that is proposed that either further refines that theory, or blows it out of the water in favor of another one that better fits the observable phenomenon.)
"Money is truthful. If a man speaks of his honor, make him pay cash." Notebooks of Lazarus Long, Robert A. Heinlein
It always amazes me when a group of highly intelligent people can be so closed minded. No one here can prove evolution nor intelligent design. Do one "simple" thing for me. Create an ameba. We know the composition, even the ratios. Make one. What? No takers? Thought so.
It's right there in teh Constitution thing, guv. Some Fundy Feathers put it there, they tell me. Who knows what those birds were thinking.
The trinity was talked about before then, but the majority of the fighting over christianity at the time was over the nature of Christ. Was he human, or divine? If he's human but not divine, then saying he's divine is blasphemy. hence, the major split in the Jehovah-worshippers. The decision at the council of Nicea (I forget if it was the first or second council, I don't have my notes handy) on the basis of the Holy Trinity was the major step taken towards healing this separation.
Want to make any other stupid attacks?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
"Young Earth Christians?"
That is what I am assuming you are talking about.
Unfortunately their position is as untenable as those of the ID crowd.
Most of them rely upon innacurate or easily misunderstood English translations of the Bible. Then they look at the geneaolgy records in the Old Testament to extrapolate unrecoreded history up to a known historical date. This gives them the age of the Earth.
Everything else falls by the wayside in their monomaniacal and myopic approach to the scriptures.
Unfortunately they don't even study their source material closely. For being such experts on the Bible, going so far as to attribute to God himself a devious nature capable of the silly things you mention in justification of thir supposed scholarly studies of the age of the Earth, the leave out completely the passages of the Bible that discuss how Satan was on Earth BEFORE the creation of the Garden. They don't get that the Earth was literally (according to the Bible) put on ice for a period of time before the creation of mankind, and that it was subsequently "cleaned up" in preparation for the garden. Not only that, but they seem to think that the state of perfection in the garden lasted for maybe a year or ten at most, though there is no literal reference to the time that Adam and Eve spent there. Being immortal at that time (before they sinned) it could have been quite a long time...
I always view anyone who is willing to attribute to God characteristics that the Bible specifically says that he does not posess (lying, deciet, etc.) with a jaundiced and circumspect eye. What do they believe in more? The Bible's characterization of God or their own mathematical calculations based
on geneaolgy that may be intentionally incomplete?
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
> TMM is assuming that a Perfect Creator necessarily will create a perfect creation. Assuming that God created the world, no creationist should claim (and few do) that the creation was perfect (as evidenced by all the crap going on in the world). It was good, not perfect. So in my opinion this whole "flawed mammalian eye" argument is really a straw-man argument.
But it shows exactly what's wrong with ID as science: if we observe a biological feature that we think is 'good', it's because the designer wanted it to be good; if we observe a biological feature that we think is 'bad', it's because the designer wanted it to be bad.
It's utterly vacuous.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Sounds like you are arguing for "Not-So-Intelligent Design" which implies a non-omnipotent being.
Of course, the beauty of "Intelligent Design" is that there is no way to argue against it. Any argument can be answered with "because that is the way God wanted it! Who are we to question his divine authority?"
I realize my arguments fall on deaf ears. Just having a bit of fun...
Any non-cowards care to reply?
The first is just a new name for Young Earth Creationists (YEC). These are the people that insist on a literal interpretation of Genesis' Creation and Flood stories. They attack Evolution for every perceived weakness. This is the 'God in the Gaps' idea. I think that this is an awful view of God, since every discovery becomes an attack on God. This view make every honest investigator a villain. This is the same nonsense that make Galileo a threat to the Catholic Church during the Renaisance. The Catholic Church, and the mainstream Protestant Churches have learn and they are not making this issue a source of division between themselves and science. The YEC crowd is still holding to this view, so they are in constant combat with science.
The second sort of ID advocate says something like
This second sort of ID should not be threatening to 'mainstream' science, since every wonderful scientific discovery is just more evidence of God's brillance. This is not 'God in the Cracks', this is 'God behind the Science'. I view this sort of ID as a 'philosophy of science,' largely becuase I don't quite see how they can make a testable hypothesis. As the parent post notes, there is room for Truth that is not scientific.
This sort of ID can also embrace Genesis as a metaphor. In fact, is should be no surprise that many see the Big Bang as evidence for a Creator. This sort of ID should actually be quite threatening to the YEC, since it denies the literal intepretation of Genesis.
Of course, in many Christian traditions, it is considered blastphemy to call the Bible perfect. The Bible is the inspired Word of God as interpreted by a long series of impefect humans. So, insisting on Biblical inerancy should properly be attacked on both scientific and religous grounds. If you take this view, imagine yourself as a late Stone Age scribe. God chooses you to recieve the story of creation and evolution. You don't know calculus, so you have to get the simplified version. You also don't have much use for numbers larger than a thousand, so the explanation of the time scales doesn't mean much to you. So we'll go with 'a day is as a thousand years in the eyes of God' and just compress 'ages' into 'days'. I actually think that the Genesis Creation story (up to the stuff about Eve anyhow) is a halfway decent summary of the history of the universe in a few sentences.
In case anyone hasn't figured this out, I really want to see the Young Earth Creationists squirm. I think that they have an immature theology and they are boorishly trying to force their immaturity on the rest of us.
Think global, act loco
Unless you have a new theory that explains the Universe around us better than the current ones, it is wrong to substitute the best explanation so far by anything else. If you have some evidence that The Great Spaghetti Monster came in his Cheese Sauce and planted life on Earth, we'd better teach the kids about a slow process of evolution, encompassing geological eras, starting in a humble self-replicant molecule and getting to eagles, sequoia trees and humans.
People who say ID cripples their children's ability to succeed in the real world obviously don't pay attention to politics.
"Stop throwing the Constitution in my face, it's just a goddamned piece of paper!" - George W. Bush Nov. 2005
So, mandating that ID not be taught is in no way an establishment of religion, but quite the opposite. See, Science is NOT religion, and keeping these thinly veiled religious views out of the science classroom is exactly what that part of the first ammendment is about. Putting them into the classroom by a government would be establishment of religion.
Intelligent design isn't science, therefore it doesn't belong in a science room.
Neither is the Gaia Theory, though it is a common part of high school and college biology curriculum and is often discussed during Earth Day. Though it lacks any scientific foundation and is often controversial with persons of faith (who apparently react at having their children instructed by a state school about the "mother goddess earth"), it is well tolerated by the otherwise religious intolerant left.
The concept was pioneered by James Lovelock, who described the earth as "as a complex entity involving the Earth's biosphere, atmosphere, oceans, and soil; the totality constituting a feedback or cybernetic system which seeks an optimal physical and chemical environment for life on this planet."
Educational kits for high school teachers include a discussion of early tribal mysticism, Hindu, Buddist and Native American beliefs and traditions that support the Gaia concept. So how is Gaia different from an intelligent designer? Consider the following Gaia beliefs:
"the Earth's atmosphere is more than merely anomalous; it appears to be a contrivance specifically constituted for a set of purposes" (gaia strong theory)
"Highlife Theory shows that this one gigantic living organism is by far the most intelligent living thing on earth. Far more intelligent than us humans. You'll understand this better later." (gaia highlife theory
So what is the difference between ID and Gaia? Serious reading of Gaia can lead you to believe for a moment that the followers are clearly ID writers in disguise - promoting an exceptionally strong faith in environmental mysticism and an earth that was created and is maintained for our holistic interaction. However, when you realize Gaia's designer is the mother goddess and is presented as in no way any corrolary of a Christian god, the difference becomes more clear.
So should we care about our children being tought about Gaia and the mother goddess, intelligent designers, creationism, evolutionism and other concepts? As a libertarian, I actually enjoy the value of the different ways of looking at a situation these different ideas present (and understand they really help get kids engaged in education). As long as a religion is not being promoted (e.g. some school districts programs that require middle schoolers to "be a Muslim" for a month, say Muslim prayers, etc.), awareness of new concepts that others believe is valuable.
So ask yourself a hard question: what kind of person flips off a driver with a goddess bumper sticker, a walking fish or christian fish on the back of the minivan? Being tolerant of different ideas isn't easy as it can often challenge us to question our own beliefs and practices. Likewise, we should be wary of punishing the expression or discussion of one groups beliefs as there are plenty of our own that probably do not stand the scruitiny as substantiatable fact.
Since your post is in essence injecting religious belief into the realm of science, I'll go at this a different way than I've yet seen anyone else do it. I'll inject some science into the realm of religion
How Christianity Has Evolved
In the beginning of the Christian faith, Christians were a small sect of the Jewish faith that used the fish as their symbol.
Sometime later, a Roman Emperor adopted the faith of Christianity and help consolidate the faith's holy writ. He also helped give rise to the Papacy as a way to unite all Christians.
Sometime later, the concept of Hell (which is not a belief of the parent religion Judaism), along with many other pagan beliefs, were merged into the Christian.
Sometime later, Martin Luther decided that common people should be aloud to read the bible. This caused the first major schism from the Papacy. Many would follow.
How can you say there is no evolution? Your own beliefs are constantly evolving.
Your beliefs may no longer be relevant, if so, perhaps it is time to evolve ideas?
Say bad words about my book, in cold oatmeal, or I shall sue!
I think that is goes to the whole Trinity thing...Father Son Holy Spirit, three in one, that kind of thing.
I think you and I could have some good debates and still walk away as friends. Thanks for a thought-provoking post.
I'm not a troll, but I play one on Slashdot.
If you want a living example of natural selection and evolution, you merely need to examine intelligent design.
Over a period of time, arguments that were completely stupid (bad for procreation of the ID meme) have been culled.
Ideas which make it easier for it to suceed have been added.
ID today is not the simple obvious creationism of the late 1800's. It's a very complex system of arguments which could not have sprung complete as it is today.
If this much complexity in a meme can be realized in only a span of a hundred years (and really mostly in a punctuated period of the last 20 years when creationists figured out
a) how to lie (abandoning that pesky need to be honest they used to have)
b) how to use mimic so "ID" "looks like" a scientific argument.)
then what could an living creature achieve in a million years of constant pressure (of early death!)?
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
This is a very specific case, even though this forum has "evolved" into a god vs. darwin debate. The school board members used devious tactics to get other board members to vote for the ID inclusion in science class. This Judge did NOT say that ID is a waste of time, did NOT say that evolution is anti-religion, did NOT say that ID isnt a worthwhile discussion. ID does not belong in Science class, and it was put their by board members with an agenda that didnt serve the best interest of Dover school district. sidebar- The pope himself said that evolution does NOT contadict Catholisism (paraphrase)
The big question we think this debate is about is "Is there a God, or isn't there?" I think many Christians think that evolution is anti-God, when it's not. It wouldn't be the first time large numbers of Christians didn't accept new scientific ideas. Think about Copernicus, Galileo, and others. They turned out to be right, and it wasn't the end of Christianity, though by and large it condemned their theories and behaved rather badly about it.
You can't use science to prove God exists, but you can't disprove it with science either. The universe could have been created to look and behave like it does, or it could have ended up this way all on it's own. Scientists has tried for all of history to either prove or disprove God, and no one has been able to do either. It will always come down to a personal choice of belief: Either God is damned smart or we are damned lucky.
I do think that in many if not most ways "ID" as a movement is more about fighting a perceived hidden agenda in the theory of evolution rather than true science. True science is about finding fact, regardless of what that fact might imply. Christians of all people should know that God is a big boy, He can take care of Himself. Christians should focus on following Christ and spreading the gospel, and not on picking worldly battles.
I like evolution. Personally, I think God would have designed creation as a riddle no man could solve, where His followers would have to live by faith, and not by science. I happen to like that God is smarter than us, and I think that when we die and we find out He really DID create everything, we'll be all the more amazed at what He's done (though some of us might feel pretty stupid for not seeing Him in it). If we die and He's not around, I guess none of us will feel anything at all.
First post, Flame on!
Creation, however, is a better term. It likens the world to art rather than mechanical design. When a painter creats a work of art that is dark, distorted, and full of grotesque characters, we do not call him "really lazy and/or indifferent and/or mean." We term him a master. If an author creats a story with no conflict, no character flaws, and no danger, we rightly call him "really lazy and/or indifferent and/or mean."
I understand that the argument of the eye has a lot to do with mechanics, and seemingly less to do with design. But what I am addressing is whether or not it is valid to believe that a perfect God could create imperfect creatures. This is an issue which is meant more for philosophy and theology and less for science (I agree ID should not be taught in schools). I believe that it is possible (and indeed true) that a perfect God created imperfect creatures, and I hope that my painting/writing analogy has you understand how I can hold this belief.
He's not a tame lion, but he is good.
I am not totally convinced about evolution, as it does seem far fetched (to my tiny little mind) that all this complexity 'just happened'.
HOWEVER, ID presupposes that a being with the power to manufacture all this complexity 'just happened all at once', which I think is even less likely.
Okay, now tell me how blood clotting works and doesn't turn ALL my blood into one big clot.
Well, first you have to look at the mechanism for blood clotting. It doesn't need a "turn off" mechanism, it's default state is off. It has a mechanism for turning clotting on, which requires both a) exposure to oxygen and b) physical breakage of platelets. Get away from the immediate area of a cut and you wind up not having at least one of those, so clotting can't start on it's own and the clotting around the cut can't progress further. It's kind of like a car with the spark plugs removed: you don't need something to stop it, you just need the absence of something that makes it go.
As for how it evolved, probably from a mechanism to seal cell membranes when they were punctured. We know there's variation, we can see it today in people whose blood doesn't clot well. Doubtless there were variations the other way where clotting happened far more readily, but those branches probably dead-ended long ago as creatures with a tendency to have their blood solidify when they were injured wouldn't live long enough to propagate that variation.
> People have believed in Christ for over 2000 years
Have they? over 2000 years? well, even by the current calendar (which has been recalibrated several times over) thats only 2005 years, 12 months and 20 days away from HIS BIRTH! and I'm sure his parents believed in him then as he was IN THE CRIB IN THE MANGER!
its gonna take a good few years before he's stopped blowing bubbles and started telling people maybe it would be great if we all tried to get along.
True enough. Mine is based on a study of that definition of miracles, the Roman Catholic Church, and about 2000 years worth of tribunals naming Saints. A good example is the patron saint of children- St. Nicholas himself. While some of the miracles attributed to him have no explaination, one of the two he was named a saint for is doable by anybody with money (saving girls from being sold into slavery by throwing their dowry price through the window at Christmas time).
Miracles are very much in the eye of the beneficiary, just as beauty is in the eye of the beholder; whether the fortuneate coincidence has a natural, scientific, or supernatural explaination OR NOT makes no difference to the beneficiary of the miracle. Hume, not having experienced any miracles he could explain, simply didn't understand this.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
It is not possible to test evolution
I disagree.
There is a difference between testable and ease of testing. Evolution can certainly be tested. Take a population of some organism, place them in to equal environments, vary the environments differently over time.
The difficulty if in the magnitude of some of the variables. How big of an environment do you need? How many organisms in each population? How much time to let it transpire? Each of these are probably answered with large numbers. However, just because it is difficult to test, doesn't mean its not testable.
Consider some competing theories from the past, like the stars being points of light fixed to a class sphere encasing the earth. To test this, you can go up high enough and see if indeed there is a glass sphere.
Now when you look an intelligent design, "everything you see was put in its current state by God.", that's a lot harder to test. That's not a theory of an on going process, but an event from the past whose conditions and variables you cannot know.
Intelligent design is not testable; however, evolution is, difficult though it may be.
Evolution is not an ism, you've let yourself be caught up in the rethorics of people who want to equalize creationism and evolution.
The obnoxious sticker said: "This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered".
Now you can read it in two ways:
a) The word "theory" here means exactly what it means in Science. In this case, all textbooks should have hundreds of similar stickers as in "This textbook contains material on inertia. Inertia is a theory, not a fact, regarding the way bodies upon which no external force is acting behave. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered".
b) The word "theory" here is being used with its layman meaning, as in the song "I have a theory" in Buffy's Musical Episode. "I have theory, it could be bunnies". In this case the sentence is not only wrong, it is a blatant religious statement. That was found to be the case, and then the judge nixed it.
Actually, on a long enough timescale (billions of years) if you keep throwing that up in the air, eventually YES you will have that fully assembled box.
Which actually goes to blow holes in Intelligent Design. If I find a watch in the desert, I would assume that someone lost it or threw it away. I could find that person, or use the serial number to find out where and when the watch was made. I could go to the factory and observe how the watch was made, including all the materials that went into it. Using science, I could theorize about how that watch came into being from the big bang, to supernovae that created the heavier elements, to the forming of the earth and geology to form the minerals, to the evolution of man who created the factory to make the watch.
If I was a firm believer in Intelligent Design and didn't know how watches were made, I would simply say that God must have created the watch and placed it in the desert with his own hand for me to find. Has everyone seen 'The Gods Must Be Crazy'?
For the record, I do not think that ID should be taught in schools. I was pointing out that TMM's argument against ID based on imperfections in the human eye is invalid because it is a straw-man argument (few or no creationists hold that God's creation must be perfect because he is perfect) and because I question the logic that a perfect Creator must necessarily create a perfect universe. See my other post here: http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=171719 &cid=14302272
Stop trying to mix science and philosophy!
Proverbs 21:19
Because then you would have bone and tooth fragments all at the bottom from the animals at the top. We don't see that currently... bits that are clearly from the same animal tend to "stay together" (some lateral deflection is to be expected... imagine an animal dying in a stream or bones moved by a glacier).
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
The article said that the school wasn't actually teaching ID merely stating that there was an alternative view! It seems like everyone here has decided to ignore that and focus on if ID should be taught in classrooms. That is not what was being objected to. Stating that there is an alterntive view seems like a reasonable thing to do to me.
Do people really think that it is so terrible that children hear that some people think there is alternative to something that has not been proven?
Reading this thread on Slashdot is actually more revealing than the news itself. The issue is not about the validity of intelligent design. Personally I find intelligent design wrong and evolution right.
However I would prefer to leave my chilren's education to a teacher and not a judge.
And of course Intelligent Design is science. The very point of the Darwin tautology (i.e. about the fit to survive surviving) was to come up with a way to explain why a biological world that seems intelligently designed isn't. Evolution exists not to explain the evidence, but to deny it with the sorts of over-reaching, explain-all-with-one-idea theories that were so popular in the 19th century. Marx is dead and Freud is dying. Only Darwin lingers on, long past his time, defended by an intolerant priesthood that will tolerate no dissent.
Recall Galileo muttering, "Nevertheless it moves," and you'll taste the humor of all this.
--Mike Perry, editor of Theism and Humanism by Arthur Balfour
You urge us to go to the website of Kent Hovind, a tax evading Young Earth Creationist who's favorite arguments are so weak that even other creationists say he makes "mistakes in facts and logic which do the creationist cause no good". Hovind is a professional debater who depends primarily on one tactic; he throws out questions (most of which are irrelevant) so quickly that his opponents cannot answer all of the within the alloted time. He This tactic would fail in a written debate where the opposition had time to answer all his questions. That's probably why hovind dislikes standard debate formats and refuses to participate in online debates.
"Weapons should be hardy rather than decorative" - Miyamoto Musashi
I think that goes for OS's too
As an aside: did you consider that God could, by definition he's omnipotent afterall, have forged the fossil record? I think most Christians believe he's not like that and so didn't.
So, God's a liar now?
Zeus didn't create the universe. He wasn't even the first of the gods--he was actually the youngest of that first generation of gods that defeated the titans and took over.
And of course, don't forget to thank the titan Prometheus for creating man and giving us fire.
Anyone care to explain why this post is modded flamebait? Is it flamebait to present an unfashionable viewpoint in a civilized manner?
And you're making a nice mistake also by putting words into my post. This isn't the extent of the argument for God. That argument is much bigger and covers more than just the physical sciences (philosophical/ontological). This God of mine is the one who made science and put a nice order to things. This isn't the sun-god chasing the moon-god around the sky on a fiery chariot.
My post is wondering why nobody asks any questions of evolution. Is evolution so sacred that we can't ask questions of it? Can't a decent textbook present some of the problems with evolution and ask the future generation of scientists to help solve them instead of just glossing over it all? "Darwin's theory of evolution (macro-evolution) answers everything (or it eventually will) and we'll even gift-wrap that for you."
There will be always some things they we don't have a good explanation for... yet
And it could certainly not be something outside the 2-dimensional Flatland. That's the talk of madmen. Sure, some puzzles will be solved (and I hope they are because it would sure make things easier), but getting back to my original post, how much shoddy evidence do we have to have in schoolbooks before we start to ask why the editors didn't examine it more closely? Has a generation of scientists been stifled from improving upon evolutionary theory because they don't dare question Darwin?
why can't that same explanation ["it always was"] hold for the universe itself.
That explantion was tried for a while. It didn't hold up once we saw that the universe was expanding. i.e. if it's expanding it must have been smaller -- set the wayback machine for a split second after the big bang. Did it "make science smaller" all of a sudden? And if it didn't exist forever then there must have been "imaginary time" (Hawking, et al.) before that.
I don't have enough faith to be an atheist.
species, however, that is one level lower than I want, and I don't remember the word that is one step up.
The word is Genus. Kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species.
However the "levels" are completely artifical groupings made up by man. There is no real biological distiction between the levels. The decent of life is like a branching tree, and we simply picked out effectively random branch points that were convient. We simply picked out one semi-random branch point and called it insecta, and everything on the sub-tree below that common branch gets called an insect. We picked out another semi-random branch point and called it mammalia, and everything on the sub-tree below that common branch gets called a mammal.
from a fruit fly to an insect that can no longer be considered a fruit fly
Depending on how we interpret the question, what you are asking for is either impossible, or it would simply take a Very Long Time.
For example there is the family Felidae which covers all "cats". Lions, tigers, housecats, panthers, lynx, pumas, they are all "cats" and they can NEVER evolve into a fish or bat or insect. No matter how many generations you go a decendant of a cat will still always be in the Felidae family... wil will still be a "cat". So in that sense a fruit flay can never evolve into anything other than "fruit fly".
On the other hand given enough time any species can diverge arbitrarily far and look like anything. One branch of mammals... a squirrel-like creature... evolved into bats. Bats look and act a lot like birds, but they will never become birds. Another branch of mammals... a hippo-like creature... evolved into whales and dolphins. They look and act a lot like fish, but they can never become fish.
So given enough time a single species of fruit flies could diverge to produce the same range of diversity we new see decended from the single original species of insect. It's simply a matter of accumulating more and more "micro-evolutions". Over the course of decades or a few centuries one species can maybe split into two or three very similar species. However evolution as a whole has taken about three-and-a-half billion years to produce the current range of diversity. It takes several millions of years of spreading to reach the difference between housecats and lions and panthers.
The fossil record shows these sorts of "accumulating microevolutions" beautifully. We have fossils of feathered dinosaurs and then of dinosaurs with claws on the ends of their primative wings and with dinosaur skulls and dinosaur feet and dinosaur spinal structure and dinosaur ribcages and dinosaur jaws heavy dinosaur bones and a list of maybe a hundred specific micro-anotomical features... and we have beautiful sequences of fossils where each of those aspects undergoes "micro-change" almost one-by-one in perfect date sequence. I don't recall the exact order, but one by one microfeatures appear in a string up to modern birds. One of the first things to go was the claws on the tips of the crude wings, and naturally the wings improved. Then they evolved the single toe pointing backwards on the feet, to be able to grasp branches and perch in trees. And then there was a step where the attachment between the spine and the skull reversed direction. And they grew a special keel bone of the chest to anchor poweful flight muscles. And the teeth changes and then dissappeared. And one of the late changes in the sequence is the appearance of bird beaks.
Each change is fairly "micro", but they provide a perfect transition sequence between dinosaurs to primative birds to modern birds, and only a handful of the hundred-or-so microfeatures either appear or dissappear at each step in the fossil sequence.
The entire fossil record is laid out like that, with more sample points in some areas than in others.
But the genetic evidence of the last two decades or so is actually far more powerful than even the fossil record. All of the genetic anal
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Okay here's one for you: explain the eye. It either works or it doesn't.
Too bad I can't mod you up, so here is another one for your list, anyone here wear glasses or contact lenses?
Warning, comments may not have been passed by the sanity department of my brain.
Heh heh. Of course we'd be friends. Don't let my sig fool you. I like a good debate so long as one or both of us don't become so intransigent that neither wants to hear what the other says. I like to say that I'm very open minded with firm opinions.
Here's a question I'll leave you with which should give you that 'empty mind' feeling that buddhism tries to teach. If the everything in the universe is expanding outwards, what is it expanding into? Another way of phrasing the question might be, if everything in the universe started as a ball of matter, what was the matter sitting in before the Big Bang?
Take care.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Explain to me, scientifically, why your viewpoint is the right way to interpret this evidence, and mine is incorrect.
I know you weren't addressing me (perhaps the second person is not the best voice for slashdot), but here's your answer:
His viewpoint has something to do with a science, whereas yours doesn't.
This is a website that, run through volunteers, has put together basic information on something called "Sedimentology" in which really smart folks, instead of staring at their driveways, lawns, etc., use a really neat method for figuring out how our planet's surface settles over time.
I know this sounds elitist, but I'd hate to think all those advanced degrees those sedimentologists could be replaced by a little home improvement.
sed 's/PP/GPP/'
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
Starting with the New Teastament for the nature of Christ is a faulty and intellectually ill-fated idea.
It is akin to reading the dictionary before you know the language.
The nature of Christ is fully explained and established earlier on in the Old Testament. In direct words and more importantly the basic ideas, mechanics, and characteristics of who the Lamb of God is supposed to be, Christ is explaind as God and Man. Even the attacks of Satan in an attempt to prevent the sacrifice of Christ on the cross have attacked the humanity and the Divinity of Christ.
"...because the churches were based on households and the priest was the head of household""
This ia a non-sequitur because the Bible constantly declares the male to be the head of household. This is established from the beginning of the Bible and obvious in its prevalence. Maybe contemporary Christians of the early scriptures had social conventions that made women the head of household, but the scriptures hold a different position. It was not "taken away" per-se, as males have had the sole responsibility of the priesthood from the Old Testament to the New.
If you had read the New Testament you would have also learned that many early churches were filled with people that were comitting sinful acts like incest, bestiality, thievery, etc. Does the presence of these activitivities make them right according to the Bible? When these prectices were condemned in a letter to the Church was Paul "taking away" the ability of these people to practice procreation with animals, children, and same sex partners? Of course not; however they were practiced. Just because some people in the early centuries misunderstood things dosen't mean that in retrospect we cannot make things clear. Just because some people in the early centuries believed certian things (the Gnostics for example) doesn't mean that they are consistent with the Bible.
I think what you have is a secular viewpoint that is infused with historical happenings, and very little understanding of the doctrinal side of the Bible. There is no other way to explain your obvious, and seemingly contradictory, depth of knowldege about the historical happenings with regard to the early church combined with your absolute lack of knowledge of the doctrinal tenents of the Bible itself.
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
Science is about the natural, not the supernatural. Theories in science are about the scientific process, not philosophy. That is how science is defined. If you consider ID to be science, you are actually thinking of some thing other than science that discusses the supernatural.
If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. -- Carl Sagan
Intelligent Design is a thoery by not so intelligent people. The best proof that there is no Intelligent Design in this universe is that it wouldn't design someone as stupid as GWB, its biggest supporter.
Wow, if I change any of the fundimatal physics constants, the Universe would either by chaos or booring.
Uhm... no.
Once you change a single physical constant, you've changed the universe, and all bets are off. There is no way to say that we live in a carefully-balanced universe; we do not have the knowledge to understand our own universe enough to accurately predict what another universe might look like.
Also, that view of the universe assumes that all physics constants are arbitrary. They are not. They fit together like a puzzle the same way carbon atoms form fullerenes-- they are mathematically intertwined. God is not needed; the beauty and symmetry of the universe is full within itself.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
ID never wants to acknowledge the fact that we, as humans, are very good at finding patterns and design even in random noise. I would like to see them actually define design, and how to recognize it unambiguously. Then we can start to talk about whether things are designed. There is a much longer argument here, but I'm late to the discussion, so nobody will read this...
Most exciting phrase in science: not "Eureka!" but "Hmm... That's funny..." -Asimov (abridged for \. limits)
The Big Bang is just what happened when I read your last post about the Universe expanding. There is so much that man does not know, and may never know. That is one reason I don't have a problem with science, and in fact think more Christians SHOULD look at science instead of trying to poo-poo it. I want to know what is out there...where is the Universe going, are there really little green men, etc.
Happy Festivus!
I'm not a troll, but I play one on Slashdot.
did you consider that God could, by definition he's omnipotent afterall, have forged the fossil record?
Of corse it's possible.
However the initial axiom you must assume for any meaningfull communication at all, is that we are not being actively decieved by a malicious lying God. Without that axiom, there is no reason to accept that anything you see or hear is valid. No reason to accept that you are even talking to another actual person. No reason to accept even your memories - which could have been manufactured and planted a millionth of a second ago.
The moment you open your mouth to communicate with another person (or tap a key to write a post), the FIRST axiom you MUST accept for meaningfull communication and discussion of anything is the assumption that you are not being deliberately decieved by a liying malicious God.
And besides... lets assume God did plant false evidence to trick us into beleiving evolution... the usual assumption is that God supposedly has good reasons for whatever he does, so doesn't that mean we should believe whatever it is that God worked so hard to make us believe? A purely comical argument I admit, but none the less a valid one if someone really does try to claim some benevolent God planted fraudulent fossil evidence.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Your analogies seem to suggest that the world is a bit of entertainment that God created to while away a lazy eternity. Sure, if that's what you believe.
Even if there's a distinction between creation and design, that doesn't mean we can't judge a creation. One grotesque and distorted artwork can be less compelling than another; one story can be more thrilling than a second. If there's something unsatisfactory in a creation, we can always conclude that either the creator had conflicting motivations, or fell short of the ideal. Looking at the world, it seems safe to conclude that any creator either wasn't guided by the most basic moral standards most people subscribe to, or was and botched it.
See the wikipedia entry for theory, but a key point is that theory makes a prediction for future events based on a large body of real world evidence for cause and effect. The key is -real world- evidence, NOT "proof". Anything can be a theory. I might have a theory that the sky is red. My perception of the sky being red comes from me, so my theory cannot entirely be disproven by anyone else. The reason is because what we focus on is what we see. We don't see what is really there, we see what we want to see. That is why language can and is used endlessly by people- If I want to write an article, I just pose an idea, and if it's even remotely plausable, I can create evidence to back up the idea, depending upon what I look for.
Scientists know this. They know that their own perception can cloud the results of their experiments. That is how the scientific theory evolved. Scientists realized that the only way to find something resembling "truth" (or at least something that is useful) is to create a theory, ANY theory, and then test it out in the real world to see what would happen. If the results came back not what they expected, then the theory was false. It does not matter who made the theory, how long the theory existed, or what evidence was in favor of the theory before. All that matters is that X did not lead to Y, therefore the process (theory) was incorrect.
People who are focused on faith often have trouble with this. That is because faith is entirely from a person's own perspective, not from the perspective of what's actually there. That may sound like a contradiction. Faith believes that something is there, and that's where it starts from- the ideas are created from that. Science also believes something is there, but then goes out and tests and refines their belief based upon what actually happens. That is not to say that science is right and faith wrong. Things which do not have a direct or at least fairly predictable cause-and-effect relationship, those things science typically has difficulty in explaining. That is because by definition, a theory is testable. In other words, things that are not testable cannot be explained by theory.
Ugh. I don't understand this stuff. Would anyone mind enlightening me/solving this apparent paradox?
;-)
Big questions are not to be answered. When you answer them, they become small questions. You see, the potential is less when you have an answer, than when you don't have the exact answer in your mind. The greatest scientists of our times knew this, and studied both the mystic as well as intellectual "modern" science.
If you understand this, you are on your way to know less and less, but keep wondering about all aspects of life. That is when you are becoming more enlightened. If you are confused. Congratulations! It takes less ego to admit so, than to stomp everybody else around you for being "heretics"
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
In the past, I've been able to help creationists accept evolution with a simple sentence: "If God is all powerful, and has an infinate amount of time, certainly he can create the laws of probability such that we will evolve to be exactly what he wants us to be."
No, I will not work for your startup
For a small percent of the human population, they can sense 4 different types of colors - they are called tetrachromats.
You have documentation that proves this has happened? let darwin know, since he refuted his discoveries, not to mention all the other scientists that don't know how to prove it. (a little help, find a mutation in the real world that has actually stuck.) Even in radition in biology class to modify the fruit fly, they never spread to the next generation.
Evolution is asserted as fact in basically every place where it is even remotely possible to make such an assertion. You're watching an IMAX movie when suddenly, "Millions of years ago, dinosaurs evolved into birds...", etc. There is NEVER any mention that "we currently believe that dinosaurs evolved into birds millions of years ago...". I have never in my life heard an evolutionist unequivocally admit that perhaps evolution is a false theory. As such, they claim it is fact. If you have a couterexample, please point me to its source so I can read it.
ID as a whole could be falsified if it were possible to show that no god played a role in the creation of the universe. Such an argument will never be discovered for a variety of reasons, but theoretically it could exist.
Examining a particular corner of ID such as literal Biblical Creationism is much simpler. It sets out a number of hypotheses that can be compared against the evidence we observe:
- Earth is around 6000 years old
- The entire surface of the earth was covered by floodwaters at some point
- Fish, birds, land mammals, humans, etc. were all created separately by a single Creator
- All humans are descended from a single couple, Adam and Eve.
I have absolutely zero interest in debating the evidence for these events, since it is almost axiomatic that no evolutionist can accept any arguments for them (they have incredible faith and patience). However, the point is that ID as a whole and specific parts of ID are both theories that can be scientifically examined. Yes, ID involves the supernatural, but if the supernatural exists, how can you exclude it from scientific discourse and still call yourself a scientist?
Exactly my problem with ID, as a believer I can not fathom the disbelief in the theory of ID; "Evolution is too complicated to be a product of our God".
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
Um, what the hell are you talking about?
The evidence that computers were designed includes a big building marked "Intel" in Santa Clara, filled with engineers doing design. I drove by it last week. And the fact that they came out of a computer catalog. And so on and so forth. Only the most extreme skeptic would question the reality of those things.
Computers don't reproduce themselves, for one thing. If computers were able to have sex and little computers were born, (maybe they start out as 4-bitters and grow into 32-bit computers after a pupal metamorphic state?), then you might expect a great deal of random variation between computers, and the question of why some architectures are big-endian and some are little-endian would be a complicated issue to sort out, for instance. But it just ain't so. No equal time for computer evolution by natural selection in computer science curricula, I guess.
The fact that you apparently can't understand the basic differences between computers and biological organisms is a serious obstacle to you understanding anything at all, not just evolution.
Interesting, but the species are still mosquitos, they didn't become frogs or blu-jays, or grow gills or learn to spin webs, or change phylum. In the end, they're still mosquitos.
As a believer in Creationism, I will first admit, I'm firm to believe that species change and more or less, "adapt" to their environments, out of need for survival.
Think of a computer programmer. We create an object, and derive other objects from it, thus "inheriting" a certain behavior. Who's to say that God didn't create a common DNA for certain species, and derive more specific species from that base DNA, because it works so well? Why reinvent the wheel...? I've heard some point out some details about why certain design characteristics of humans are inefficient, but who's to say, if in 100 years, we actually learn that they are quite efficient for their purpose?
In any case, as I stated, the new mosquitos are still mosquitos and not some other creature.
Thanks,
Leabre
Even so, the idea is sound, if you look at it from the point of chaos theory, emergence, and network theory.
Essentially, Gaia is the idea that the Earth, in and of itself, is an emergent phenomenon being, whose base parts are composed of everything on the earth interacting with network effects (feedback loops and such). This "being", if it truely exists, is barely more fathomable to us than the human is to a skin cell (or neuron, if you prefer). We have the advantage over a skin cell in that we ourselves are emergent phenomena beings full of networking effects. We also have smaller such beings which we are only now beginning to study, in the form of bureucracies (ie, governments and corporations). Whether the Gaia theory is true or not is up for debate, but we have plenty of precedents to show it might be true.
What is really amazing is when you consider that intelligence (and in more complex forms, sentience) seem to require feedback and network effects, in order to emerge from the base set of nodes (whatever those nodes are). At a very base level, we have atoms and atomic interaction (actually, it goes below this into sub-atomic particles, etc), building up into molecules, to cells, to organisms, to colonies, to insects/animals, to humans, to bureaucracies, to (Gaia?), to ???. Indeed, it is that last one that can make you wonder, and is where science fiction begins (are the "stars" intelligent? can we even tell?)...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Evolution and ID/Creationism are not mutually exclusive, a creator could have just created the building blocks of life. The real question is whether or not life just happened spontaneously, or if we required some intelligent being to make us. Then more questions arise. If we required a creator, wouldn't the creator require a creator? When does the chain stop? Then comes in those who say "God has just always existed!" If it is possible for God to just "be", and to have always existed, there is no reason that life in general couldn't have just formed out of no where.
Well, I could probably go back and forth on this for hours, but the point has been made.
"For a law to be constitutional under the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, the law must have a legitimate secular purpose, must not have the primary effect of either advancing or inhibiting religion, and must not result in an excessive entanglement of government and religion."
That's worked reasonably well for over thirty years.
The Establishment Clause is in the Constitution for very practical reasons. All the founders were familiar with the religious wars that had torn up Europe. Some of them were from sects that had been persecuted. They didn't want their country to go through that. And it worked.
Compare Europe before democracy, or the Islamic world today.
An excerpt from the legal brief... Case 4:04-cv-02688-JEJ Document 342 Filed 12/20/2005 Page 56 of 139 "An objective adult member of the Dover community would also be presumed to know that ID and teaching about supposed gaps and problems in evolutionary theory are creationist religious strategies that evolved from earlier forms of creationism, as we previously detailed." Note that the judge calls out that the 'creationist religious strategies' have 'evolved from earlier forms'. Maybe in the twisted reality that the proponents of ID live in their strategies didn't evolve but spontaneously sprang into being by the will of an intellegent designer. I like this Judge's use of irony to poke fun at the bible thumpers. :-)
I will believe in any other explanation if you can show me the exact proof with an established timeline.
And, if you cannot show me, without any discrepencies, the evolution of the PC you used to post your message, then I will believe that it was created by giant space monkeys. These are the same giant space monkeys that created you 3:37 PM yesterday, with the belief that the world was created in 4004 BC by a hairy fairy with his magic wand.
I will believe in any other explanation if you can show me the exact proof with an established timeline. It must cover every single component used in your computer, and you must also prove that none of the information was faked by the giant space monkeys.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
The inability of carbon to go beyond a certain date (although not for the reasons you suggested) is why I used X instead of carbon. Each isotope has a range over which it is useful/valid. Where these ranges overlap, they can (and do) cross-check each other.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
And being a *judge*, he should know!
Evolution is a fact. Darwinism is a joke.
And, it just so happens, Mr. Turing disproved omniscience with his little halting problem. Don't believe me? Then try this on for size:
(And do keep in mind that ``Will this program ever halt?'' can only be answered with a ``yes'' or a ``no.'')
Hmm.. I'm with you on the rest of that stuff, but you lost me there. Are you supposing that God is recursive, and therefore his solving the halting problem leads to a contradiction?
This is conjecture of the highest order, but the thought just occurred to me that what underlies the aversion to, objection to and rejection of solid facts supporting evolution as a working scientific model might in part stem from deeeply racsist views. I grew up in Africa as a white person and very sadly saw many white people would often equate black people to apes. There is even a photo that has done the rounds on the net that is a photoshop of Robert Mugabe's face to make him resemble a gorilla. The phenonemon of white people projecting their own internalised fear of the base motivations onto black people is well documented and observed in literature and sociology. The idea that humans could have evolved from apes is too threatening to the internalised notions of purity and sanctity that many Christians have of themselves. Creationism and ID have evolved (!) as a type of convoluted attempt for people to separate themslves from what they fear most: themselves.
Now, see, I'm going to have to argue (for completeness sake if for no other reason) that ID was designed. (Somehow I couldn't bring myself to say that it was intelligently designed.)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
And that is the problem. Most teachers don't bother to state that theories are developed by scientific process and is not set in stone. In fact, when I was still in high school I was taught that it was fact, period. It wasn't the Theory of Evolution, it was Evolution. Furthermore, the textbooks used experiments that were disproved years before as proof of evolution, and stated that they were scientific fact. Just like now, when I questioned these things I got anger in response and was called an idiot for not blindly believing the textbook.
I don't deny that evolution could happen, but I have yet to read in 4000 years of recorded history an example of macro-evolution. As I have said before, I don't believe radio-active carbon dating due to what happens when applied certain places. I also see far too often the drawings and sketches of dinosaurs and decendants are too often more from the artist's mind than from anything that has been found. For all I know a dinosaur breathed in one nostril and out the other in a continual flow of air, since there is not a dinosaur around to see all we have is what we believe. These are questions that I have had for years regarding evolution, and have yet to hear someone supply a real answer to them.
Voting them all out of office, now that's change I can believe in.
And yet, he stumbled onto an idea.
He's definitely not a scientist
You're right, the man's dead. But, he was a Naturalists and his observations led him to this new idea.
In fact us scientist [sic] are placing our theory in the hands of a man that on his death bed said evolution is a farse, he made it up because he was mad at God. I hope you're not trying to indicate you're a scientist. And, who cares what Darwin said on his death bed, his observations on the Beagle are what set off a whole new way of thinking that has led us to a very useful theory that tells us a lot about the world. His idea was just a first step, the rest of the theory has a life of its own without Darwin.
Anyone who whines about being modded down should be.
I'm not Christian and I don't believe in god. My point was that who's right is it to say that we can only teach one theory?
Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.
> And, it just so happens, Mr. Turing disproved omniscience with his little halting problem.
Actually he didn't. He proved that there's no algorithm that can determine whether any arbitrary computer program will halt. The question of whether magical or oracular methods might answer the question are outside the scope of the theory of computation.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Evolution is a theory, but the law of natural selection is a law. Of course, Newton's laws are also laws. Doesn't make them *exactly* right, though.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
I'm afraid your information is a bit off here about the Scopes Monkey Trial. It may indeed have galvanized science, but it was also quite possibly one of the biggest scams to ever hit the American court system.
s copes/evolut.htm
Basically, the law that caused it all came down, and just about everybody thought the thing was idiotic - the science teachers, the locals of Dayton, and for that matter, the court in question. The problem was that any previous attempts to challenge the law had been quashed at the legislative level, and the only way to actually get rid of the thing was to have it declared unconstitutional, and that meant a court challenge.
So, some of the people in the town of Dayton decided that they would challenge the law, but for that they needed somebody to be charged for breaking it. Now, in order for the law to actually get struck down as unconstitutional, it had to happen in the court of appeal, since the district court didn't have the authority to do so. Therefore, the defense actually WANTED a guilty verdict, as that way it could get up to an appeal, and the law could get quashed. Even the judge knew this was a test case, and the publicity was key.
At the same time, the town was in dire need of publicity, so they welcomed it. Dayton became a tourist town, for all intents and purposes. There wasn't any of the bigotry and violence suggested in "Inherit the Wind" - it was more like going to a carnival, and even Scopes was late for a trial session at one point because he had been swimming with friends.
Ironically, while it did go to the court of appeal, the idea failed - the charge was quashed, but on a technicality rather than constitutional grounds.
Some more information is available here: http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
Coyote, Loki, Eris, ... YHWH?
James P. Barrett
The judge slammed the school board for this. He concluded that this action violated both the Federal and Pennsylvania consitutions. They school board frequently did not follow its own procedures. Of those who voted for this, the majority did not actually know what ID meant. Several school board members who left the school board cited the aggressively religious tones of the other board members. The school board consulted no scientific expertise in establishing this new policy. The school system's science teachers refused to act on this policy, citing professional conduct. This all lead up to the Dover school board lining up the perfect test case for ID to be shot down like a dead duck on a string.
This would hardly be surprising, since he is a church-going Christian. Not all religious people are blind to the difference between faith and science.
Because ID is not science (it makes no testable predictions), science says absolutely nothing about whether it is true or false. ID may be true, it may be false, it may even use evolution via descent with modification via natural selection as a mechanism. There is no way to know using the tools of science.
I remember my 8th grade biology text (1986ish) showing some guy's drawings of various animal embryos and how similar they are. Now I find out it was an exaggeration.
Source?
And the peppered moths? I come to find out they were dead moths pinned to the trees.
Are folks reading this comment supposed to know this reference? Provide a context and the refuting source here too please.
Okay, now tell me how blood clotting works...
Already very simply and eloquently explained by another poster....
I'm not saying we should have to pick Intelligent Design OVER Evolution. Teach evolution but ask intelligent questions.
Well I'm saying that we should only teach testable theories in science classes. And, since science is all about asking intelligent questions---with repeatably testable answers---I'm glad we agree.
If you care to check the mainstream scientific periodicals, you will realize new theories explaining this or that aspect of Science pop up everyday around the world, to cope with new data and new insights. Not only that, all aspects of the current theories are in constant motion in all fields, from cosmology to biology to particle physics. Most of if take years (sometimes decades) to reach undergraduate and high school textbooks because any new idea has to be re-tested, checked, reproduced.
Now, replacing a major theory (Quantum Mechanics, Evolution, Gravitation etc) is the work of generation of gifted scientists or a genius. It does not happen every other day, because major theories have a whole bodie od data behind them.
Unless of course, the rat in question is a functional female ;-)
Evolution is mostly based on Charles Darwin's Origin of Species, which explores the concept of mutations found when animals cross breed under CONTROLLED CONDITIONS!!!! NOT OUT IN THE WILD!!!!! People made many of the species we see today and called them house pets!!!!
Part of science is observation of something happening in real life, not just in a controlled lab experiment.
um because outside of a book there is no reason to believe it?
faith is another way of saying, "im gonna believe this although there isnt a reason why"
that is counter to everything science is. therefore why should that be tought in science
That might be true in the realm of mathematics, but with maths you are dealing with very well-defined sets. Elsewhere, proof by contradiction is hardly trivial.
Admittedly, I did not make that point crystal clear in my (brief) post, but I was thinking specifically about philosphical matters.
All but God can prove this sentence true.I'm sorry, but that statement does not "prove" anything. Sophistry is useful for entertainment and scoring cheap points, but it doesn't add anything of substance to the debate.
I was thinking more along the lines of a formal proof and your example does not qualify.
Mr. Turing disproved omniscience with his little halting problem.Actually, the halting program is undecidable over Turning machines. I don't think the example has anything to do with onmiscience or omnipotence, other than to demonstrate that a Turing machine is neither.
You could also foil a supposedly-omniscient god just by asking it to tell you what you'll do next. Whatever the god tells you, do something else.This is not a logical argument either.
First cause? Well, if everything needs a creator, then what created the creator? Omnibenevolent? Then, whence comes evil?Those are interesting questions, and it is reasonable to assume that people have been debating such issues for thousands of years, and we haven't reached any universal conclusions yet.
All I did was point out that it is not logically possible to prove that something (outside of the realm of mathematics) does not exist.
I cannot logically prove that hobbits do not exist. I cannot logically prove that the FSM (and his noodly appendage) does not exist. I cannot logically prove that unicorns do not exist - regardless whether any of those examples exist or not. When you get into philosophical matters, it is even more complicated because everything rides on your definitions and axioms.
That's all I wanted to point out. I do hope you feel better after having vented your spleen though.
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
Whenever this comes up, all the science teachers are on the side for continuing to teach Evolution. But no one seems to think they know what they're doing. Well why the hell do they hire them?
It's the PTAs. Directly elected school board members. In small towns that want God back in public school lest their kids become children of Satan.
I'm serious.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
You could also foil a supposedly-omniscient god just by asking it to tell you what you'll do next. Whatever the god tells you, do something else.
Man: If you're so powerful, tell me what I'm going to do next!
God: You're going to do something other than what I predict.
Man: Fuck!
But, that's not what is happening. Evolution, because it threatens fundamentalists, has been singled out as an idea worthy of questioning separating the theory from other scientific theories. Not all ideas are equal and it's been 'polite tyranny' that forces us to consider the laughable science of ID as equal to the well-tested, falsifiable, predictable ideas that make up evolutionary theory.
Anyone who whines about being modded down should be.
This is how we humans deal with the real world, we categorize things, we put stuff in imaginary boxes and label them. The same goes for evolution, it's just a model, a simplified representation of reality, so our brain can cope with the enormous complex stuff that happens in nature, nothing more and nothing less. There is no universal rulebook which says animals should evolve such-and-such, it's just what happends, it's an emergent property, evolution tries to describe what happens, approximately.
And you're right in saying that small incremental changes don't have to add up to much. In fact, mostly they don't. Most of the time the changes don't do much, of the changes that do something, most are harmful. But sometimes, just once in a while, a change is beneficial, and that individual might have a slight advantage over the rest of the population which makes the benificial set of genes spread slightly better than than the rest. All of this isn't really making a difference, until you repeat it a gazillion times, which nature does. A tiny chance for an improvement becomes a pretty good chance if you have a billion times a billion tries at it. A slightly better performance in reproducing if you have a certain gene starts adding up if you do it for a million years. Ofcourse, if you have a big advantage (as in the case of the 'peppered moth') you don't need a million years.
It all comes down to statistics.
This would acknowledge the religious aspects of creation without covering them.
Whether you consider evolution fact, or a scientific theory. It isn't very hard to see evolution how dirty a process it is. If we were intelligently designed by God ,why would he bother to give humans coccyx or the appendix? Which serve no point in any major systems in the body.
You keep using the phrase "left winged 'scientist'". I do not believe the phrase means what you think it means. Having an MS in Physics/Astronomy, another Masters in CS, and working on a Ph.D. in Computer Science in a sub-field that involves a lot of neuroscience (i.e., practically being a professional student), I've been exposed to many, many people that I'd qualify as scientists. Every single one of them, to the best of my knowledge fits your definition of "left winged 'scientist'" even though many of them (but a minority) voted for Bush in the last election (don't ask me why). Of the hundreds of college students I've known, only 2 of them would not qualify as being "left winged", and I've matriculated at Georgia Tech (BS/Phys), Georgia State (MS Phys/Astr), and the University of Virginia (MCS, Ph.D. in CS in progress). (These are three colleges that are relatively conservative.)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Would you deprive me, or anyone, of enjoying a beer or a glass of wine with dinner because a few people abuse alcohol? Along those lines, one may as well outlaw cars because people speed, die in wrecks, hit pedestrians, etc.
That's the very reason why the so-called 'recreational' drugs are outlawed. Where any use, even infrequent casual use equals abuse in the minds of those who support total prohibition of anyone catching a non-alcohol buzz.
Would you deprive me, or anyone, of enjoying smoking a pipe of sweet hemp and playing my harmonica on my front porch just because a few people abuse drugs?
Science is not about teaching the majorities beliefs. If it was we'd still all be taught that the world is flat in science class...
So your definition of a scientific theory is something which cannot "be actually 'proved' logically"? That's a pretty broad and useless definition, not to mention that it is not the generally accepted one.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
You are mistaken about the belief that Jesus is not God. In John 1:1-3 the Bible says "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. " it goes on to say in John 1:14 "And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth." So the belief is that Jesus was there in the begining and through Him all things were made.
Dster76 wrote:
I'm just pointing out that it's perfectly reasonable to ask ``yes'' or ``no'' questions of ``God.''
Or, if you're not sure of the significance of the ditty, think of what either answer means.
Cheers,
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
ID Proves that God does not exist.
Assume this is true, this is also a requirement for ID.
The Christian's bible says, do not lie. Verbage depends on translation.
Falsifying fossil records is lying.
By doing this God is exhibiting the same behavior as Satan.
The entire straw man falls apart because God is good and Satan is evil, therefore the assumption is false.
If we continue with the arguement as accept that God really is lying and creating forged fossils, (And photons, and interstellar remenants.) That proves that we can not believe that what is in the Bible is true either, because if God lies, why shouldn't his followers? This in fact turns the entire bible into false doctorine.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
"especially one that has been repeatedly tested . . . and can be used to make predictions about natural phenomena"
But these things specifically don't apply to the (scientific) theory of evolution. The time-scale over which the theory of evolution would need to be tested on multicellular organisms to prove that major differences between organisms will evolve would be prohibitive to any experimentation. And the time-scale over which the theory apples would also make it essentially useless for predictive purposes.
If you remove those from your definition of a scientific theory:
"A set of statements or principles devised to explain a group of facts or phenomena, especially one that . . . is widely accepted"
You see that the definition could describe ID as well.
Note that I'm not referring evolution in single-celled organisms because it is so different (single celled organisms can uptake new genetic material from their environment, and do not mate to procreate, so it's hard to define species of single celled organisms) form evolution in multicellular organisms.
However, Christianity existed before the bible. Otherwise, it could not tell the story of the Birth and Death (but not life) of Jesus. Before that was written into the bible — before the bible was WRITTEN — women were often the heads of Roman households. Christianity sprung up in the Roman empire, during that particular round of Jewish persecution. It wasn't until Christianity gained currency as a religion that they decided they didn't want women to be the head of a household. It's a petty, sexist idea, and defending it as "being in the bible" is pathetic.
I don't have much knowledge of the doctrine of the bible (besides what's immediately useful) because I recognize Christianity for what it is — a splinter cult of an irrational religion that grew to its own prominence and now serves primarily as a platform from which some hypocrites can shout condemnation at others. I am interested in Christianity only as a study in mass delusion and so that I can figure out how to be minimally harassed by Christians and the like.
What I find most ridiculous about Christianity is that it is orthodox and not orthoprax. You don't actually have to do anything, or live a certain way, to reach "god's kingdom". All you have to do is believe in Jesus and the holy trinity (and the several other things you have to believe in order to not be a heretic) and bang! You get the Eternal Reward. Personally, I think that religion is counterproductive to humanity, because it tells people that it doesn't matter what happens here, you have something else to look forward to. Thus, all those who preach an afterlife are the enemies of those who want to make this life better, whether directly or indirectly.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The real issue in this is that a judge just declared that you can not teach a certain thing in a science class. This precedent will most definitely cut both ways in the future. I am really bothered by judges getting the last word on what can be included in a science text. What happens when a "religious" judge declares certain portions of evolutionary theory "unacceptable". The best way to avoid both extremes is to leave this out of the courts. If evolution has stronger merits then it will prevail long-term on it's own. Any time we give the court the power to SILENCE a certain idea there better be a darn good argument for it, because down then road when the social winds change it could come back and bite us.
Why lose time with these stupid issues?!
Who cares about creationism?
What a shame : more than 1300 comments for this shit, while other more interesting stories are completly ignored.
What a bunch of filthy liberal fags!!
Go fuck yourself whith your stupid political agenda and idiotic activism!
I keep grasping for some joke about James Earl Jones being the judge's brother (and some sort of hillarity about Darth Vader or Mufasa ensuing), but it just aint coming to me.
This is CNN.
But would that be EvilMonkey Slayer or Evil MonkeySlayer...
If we had spaces allowed in usernames, only then would we know!
Why is the debate about teaching ID vs. Evolution in the classroom? What should be taught is SCIENCE and only science. Both ID and Evolution are merely theories which try to explain the possibilites of why science is the way it is. Neither one is any more religious in content than the other. So to rule that teaching ID is unconstitutional should really be synonymous with rule that evolution can also not be taught. Because if you are not teaching absolute observed scientific fact, by these standards evolution also belongs in a mythology or related class as well.
It sounds like I would have enjoyed taking a class like that. It disappoints me to hear the reactions of the other students however. "Should we do genetic engineering or not." Almost as if they wanted to know whether it was okay... If you're going to forge ahead in fields of a potentially politically charged nature, you've got to be prepared to defend your position and hold your ground. Not to say there aren't ethics courses out there that give you interesting arguments, allowing you to jump start your ability to form an opinion when it comes to such issues... but the students seemed to want to be told what to think or how to act.
Yuck.
I hope I'm not overgeneralizing or mischaracterizing your classmates.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Folks, the "Argument from Design", aka the "Teleological Argument", was ripped to shreds a couple of centuries ago. Check out David Hume's "Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion". He died in 1776.
... now that's Faith!
If you'd still like to believe in ID (AFD, TA) and want lots of people to agree with you, please return to the early 18th century with a large group of your closest friends.
Why do people with religious feelings want to appear logical, when the cornerstone for all religious belief systems is Faith? That's believing propositions without evidence. And the more preposterous a proposition, the greater the faith of the believer, so believing in ID doesn't take much faith at all because it sounds vaguely plausible. Believing that all of creation was shat out by an omnipotent nine-stomached Grimunflat
"What people believe is a subject for an anthropology class, not a science class." Come on, you know just as well as I do that grade school classes are much broader than high school or university classes. If a teacher mentions that some believe God designed man, he shouldn't get raked over the coals by people like the /. community.
The sad part is, the honest teachers that make one small comment here or there are the ones who get in trouble, while the ones preaching Neo-Con or Anti-religious propaganda get by.
Good Catholic: Any form of birth control is a sin (sex for any purpose other than procreation is a sin).
I started out as an evolutionist. I worked really hard to prove that evolution was the full answer. But when you get right down to it, it takes just as much faith to start with the big band and end up with what we have today as it does to say "It's all in Genesis" or "*Someone* clearly did it, whoever it is".
Most were looking for a required arts elective I think, after already having taken the "technical writing" english course (I took a more than the required minimums and took and SF English course as one of them). That said, I don't believe they wanted to be told what to think, they simply thought that ethics of science would be more interesting and more relevant to their careers. After all, it is a big issue with cloning, stem cells, and genetic engineering of mice with human ears and brain cells.
$#!^ happens, but why does it always have to happen to me???
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
You might want to change it. It's wrong from an evolution-ist's perspective.
It doesn't help when articles like this come up and debate ensues.
1) Man didn't evolve from apes.
Apes and Humans share (distant) ancestors.
2) "Evolution" is never claimed to be something that happens simultaneously for a whole species.
Real quick ape/human evolutionary scenario: (FYI)
Apes and humans do not share the same habitat. Some precursor could have dabbled in both habitats. Eventually the population would split, wherein one population would adapt to the savannah (human ancestors), while the other the tropical rainforest (ape ancestors). Geographic seperation provides the first interbreeding barrier, and as the species slowly mutate, they couldn't interbreed even if they wanted to. And so the two pre-human/pre-ape ancestors would spiral off unto their ultimate current culminations, taking on further attributes that make them better suited to the environment.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Well put. Intelligent design might be summed up as the idea that "natural processes alone cannot explain the complexity of higher life forms." I do object to it being taught but for reasons other than what most people say here.
The problem with intelligent design is that it is not testable. I think the scientific term might be "interpretation" rather than "theory." In other words, it has little predictive value and is a bit more of a "here is what I think this information means" rather than "here is a theory we can use to predict such and such."
Other "interpretations" in Science include, notably, the "Copenhagen Interpretation" of Quantum Physics. The Copenhagen Interpretation is the idea that "for the purposes of quantum experiments, observation can be thought of as the force that defines a quantum event to a specific manifestation, i.e. the collapse of a specific wave." Like Intelligent Design it is probably untestable. After all, how do you test the effect of observation on quantum phenomina? Certainly not by comparing it in an observed vs. a non-observed state.... In essence the Copenhagen Interpretation really is a "useful way of thinking about" the experimental data in quantum physics. But the fact is, it has no more predictive value than other interpretations, and when you compare the writings of Schroedinger and Heisenberg, one hardly even sees a common interpretation there. I.e. Schroedinger seems to think that the state really is undefined, while Heisenberg thinks it is defined yet unknowable for the non-omnicient. I.e. to Heisenberg, it is not that the velocity and position of an electron are mutually undefined on a physical level, but rather than measuring one prevents measuring the other accurately without simultaniously measuring every other quantum event in the universe. In this view the electron has a distinct position and a distinct velocity, but we can't measure them simultaniously. In this view, these properties exist *indepentant* of observation, while to Schroedinger, they don't.
The problem of interpretations of theory and in fact scientific theory itself is well summed up by Heisenberg in "Physics and Philosophy" where he discusses the fact that data does not imply theory, and that interpreting any set of data (in order to create a theory) necessarily requires bringing in additional assumptions, and that these assumptions may or may not be testible. While Heisenberg doesn't discuss Occam's Razor, it is noteworthy that when you have competing theories, the less complex one is usually assumed to be the most useful. Hence we use a heliocentric rather than geocentric model of the solar system because it is easier to get the motions accurate with less work even though one can mathematically transpose one system into the other with a bit of work.
The apparent problem with Intelligent Design as an interpretation of evolutionary theory is that it appears to most of us to be conclusion ("There is a Creator God") in search of a proof. For this reason, it doesn't seem to fit well with the scientific Principle of Parsimony, a.k.a. Occam's Razor ("One Should Not Needlessly Multiply Entites"). In essence ID requires more work to get the same result as evolutionary biology would. So from a rigid scientific view, ID is a bit like arguing that Saturn moves around the Earth. Yes, you can make it work, but there really is no reason to do so when you have a simpler heliocentric model to work with.
Our current evolutionary theory is fairly incomplete and is still being actively developed. Indeed evolutionary theory is as flawed as the ID people say it is but that is largely because there are missing pieces which are still being worked out. For example, there isn't really a solid understanding as to why populations diverge so quickly when the biodiversity is low,* but the answers to these questions will, I think, better answer the shortcomings of evolutionary theory than ID does today.
* I would say we are about 80% there but this is a very complicated pr
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Also, you must realize that 'big' changes take time. What you are essentially doing is analog to watching a movie about race cars in a million times slow-motion and then concluding that race cars don't move. I assume you are a US-ian ? For the last hundred years, people have become taller, this may be less noticable in the US (you guys are midgets) but go visit The Netherlands some time, our younger population is one of the tallest in the world. Our back is a really bad design for walking upright (but the very similar design of a monkey's back seems to work pretty well) especially if you're tall (the pressure on the lower vertebrae is too high, among other things). I have some quite tall friends (2 meters) who aren't too happy with this 'intelligently' designed back of theirs. This won't suddenly become 'quite efficient' in the next 100 or even 1000 years, people are getting taller, not shorter (this is caused by better nutricion and medical care while growing up), this will become a bigger problem in the future.
Another example is the 'design' of the eye, they are wired wrong (the nerves run on top of the light-sensitive cells) , resulting in the blind spot in a human's vision (they al 'poke' through the layer of light sensitive cells at the same location). There is no need for this, nor will there ever be, there are species with eyes which are wired the right way around (octopi IIRC) and they work very well.
Go look at creation, it's not intelligently designed at all. There is an alternative creationist-ish theory called 'malicious design' which seems a lot more likely than ID.
This whole embarrassing Evolution versus Intelligent Design debate is only occurring because government schools are not places of education, but places of imprisonment and indoctrination.
Why are "intellectuals" so frightened of free speech? If you're so smart, you could defeat your opponents with your piercing wisdom instead of shutting them up at the barrel of a gun, which is what laws are all about.
We must be alert to the danger that public policy could become captive to a scientific-technological elite. - Eisenhower
As is evolution - which is not science but a theory. It is no more valid than to say that "the Ancients" populated life here, and the Goa'uld brought people here in their space ships.
You can't prove either with scientific methods, as you cannot have a controlled experiment.
Both ID and evolution should be taught, or nothing at all. Let the kids decide which makes more sense.
Bryan
Interesting, but the species are still mosquitos, they didn't become frogs or blu-jays, or grow gills or learn to spin webs, or change phylum. In the end, they're still mosquitos.
Major change takes time. Speciation, as noted with the mosquitoes, is the only significant step you need - once the population are isolated and can't interbreed they can develop in radically different directions. If you want some demonstrations of signficant change in form feel free to consult the fossil record. I've gone through this once before, but lets' do it again:
Are there any intermediate forms in the fossil record? Yes. Let's take the development from reptiles to birds. Archaeopteryx is a commonly cited example (distinctly birdlike), but we can go a lot further than that in terms of intermediate forms. In practice Archeopteryx is between lizards and birds. Between reptiles and Archeopteryx are therapod dinosaurs. Between early reptile like therapods and Archeopteryx are late more bird-like dromaeosaurids and between early dromaeosaurids like Troodons and Archeopteryx are various feathered dinosaurs, which includes fossils that simply had feathers, apparently for warmth, through to later fossils that actually had clearly flight adapted feathers.
Want to try something different? How about whale evolution? We can start with a land dwelling mammal that looked fairly dog like but had certain ear structures not found in other mammals that are more suitable for hearing underwater. Then there's ambulocetus which was similar, but in practice was rather akin to a mammalian crocodile, with back legs obviously adpated for swimming, the same ear structures as our first creature, and a nose structure, similar to a crocodile, that was ideal for breathing while immersed in shallow water. Next there are things like rodhocetus which is remarkably whale like, yet still posses back legs, and still has a nasal structure placng the nostrils toward the tip as in ambulocetus. There's aetiocetus which shows the transition from snout tip nostrils toward nostils at the top of the skulls as in modern whales. Then there's basilosaurus which is decidedly whale like, but lacking in a few modern whale features, and retaining distinct, but quite useless, hind limbs similar to those of rodhocetus.
You can find similar sets of forms for the development of horses, the development of snakes from lizards, and even for the ape to man path, among many others.
Oh, I'm sure you can parse those and say "but what's between that?", but I think for most people who are not being mindlessly dogmatic that represents fairly reasonable evidence of transitions from lizards to birds, or from land dwelling mammals to whales, and, if they bothered to do the extra research and reading, the development of horses, snakes and man.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2005/11/the_other _id.php
And thus the "just a theory" defense is trotted out once more. When scientists use the word "theory" it's in a very different sense from the way non-scientists use it. Google "just a theory" and you'll come up with many explanations, including this one.
Insert witty sig here.
Maybe I dropped off for a moment. Where does Christ come into this?
Oh yeah. That's the Christian religious agenda that this ID stuff is supposed to be spearheading. But didn't you get the memo? You're not supposed to say that out aloud. It's still in the infiltration phase.
You spelled "Religion" wrong, which is funny, considering you seem to be all about it.
Secondly, "shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" means that the federal (and due to the 14th Amendment, the state) government can't establish a state religion, give preferential treatment to an established religion, or stop people from exercising their religion, as long as doing so doesn't violate religiously neutral laws. What I'm trying to get at, is... if the government can't force a particular religoin on me, then why should they force any religion on anybody?
Don't forget, in the end, that's what this debate is about - if it's supported by public money, it's not supposed to include religion. And if ID isn't religion, well, then, I'm the Pope.
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
I think it's aweful that you can't teach religious subjects in schools but it's perfectly fine to teach all of our children to be little fucking athiests!
I see this as an absurd question. Isn't this what archeology is all about? How do we determine if an object is a rock or a fashioned tool. The question is clearly one of ID.
While the issue of ID with respect to biology is a different animal, it is clearly a scientific question. To answer that it is clear that all biological structures were designed by the creator God who is three persons (the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost), would be completely beyond any scientific sphere. But the question of ID or not is clearly within the proper realm of science.
I'm reminded of a movie (The Thirteenth Floor). This movie was not a contender for any Academy Awards, however the plot was excellent and it explored the concept of Artificial Intelligence. The primary characters had developed a computer simulation of the 1920's. The neat thing about this simulation is that the creators could enter in as one of the characters. Not, just as an observer or a computer roll play, but as an actual character within the simulation. However, the main character was faced with evidence that in fact his "real" world was a simulation as well. This was clearly evidence of a scientific nature and as it played out, he discovered that, in fact, his world was intelligently designed by programmers of another world. It seams that his life would have been easier just believing as he did that he was a "real" person. However, he chose to explore the question of intelligent design and find the truth.
It seems that the dogma of our day is naturalistic evolution. We will not consider evidence that seems to contradict this, nor will we allow it to be taught in our classrooms. In this, we emulate our predecessors who would not allow Galileo to promote the radical Copernican ideas regarding our solar system.
Intelligent Design proponents would cite the same evidence in support of their theory. It is the interpretation of the natural world, not its nature, that is the crux.
"thought to be the precursor to the eye" and "could have arisen as a double-layered transparent tissue" are not very scientific statements. As stated before. THERE IS NO CONCLUSIVE EVIDENCE THAT THE ORIGIN OF LIFE WAS A POOL OF GOO THAT EVOLVED INTO WHAT IT IS TODAY.
Well lets consider glaciers. It is "thought" that the sun evaporated water from the ocean. And it is "thought" that that water fell as snow at the poles. And that snow "could have" built up over thousands of years into very deep glaciers.
And there are layers of dust and pollen and volcanic ash that are "thought" to have settled out of the atmosphere and that the layered of such particles "could have" arisen from seasonal snowfall cycles over tens of thousands of years.
And it is "thought" that the pattern and composition of volcanic dust in the glacier happens to exactly match up with the historical and prehistorical records of major volcanic eruptions becuase that dust *did* come from those volcanoes and laid down over tens of thousands of years. And it is "thought" that the patterns of pollen match up with other global records over tens of thousands of years because that pollen *did* accumulate during the steady buildup of that glacier over tends of thousands of years.
And it is thought that the presence and levels of LEAD and other trace minerals in the upper layers of glacial dust "could have" been caused by the historical and prehistorical development of human mining releasing such contaminants into the the air.
And as you say, THERE IS NO CONCLUSIVE PROOF THAT THIS IS HOW GLACIERS ACTUALLY FORMED.
If anyone is a real thinking person then prove that you cant throw a pile of sticks and some glue up in the air and it will come down as a glued together, perfect box.
If anyone is a real thinking person then prove that you cant throw a bunch of water vapor up in the air and it will come down as a glued together, complex perfect snowflake.
The argument you were attempting to make (badly) is the stupid old argument that "the second law of thermodynamics says disorder must increase and therefore proves evolution impossible".
Of course the second law of thermodynamics only apples to average disorder increasing, and it does not apply at all when there is an energy flow through a system.
As I pointed with with snowflakes, it is actually quite normal and common for nature to spontaneously greate complex order and structure out of total chaos when there is an energy flow - in particular the sun provides an energy flow through the earth to drive both snowflake formation and biology and biological evolution.
The nature of life, the structure of life, and the existance of life can only be explained as an engineering miracle that was created. PERIOD.
Statint your ignorance and your lack of understanding is not a disproof of anything.
It is quite well understood how the evolution process creates structure and complexity and information. In fact I have personally witnessed exactly how this process operates and exactly how powerful it is at creating order and complexity and information.
The information is created/added during the secotion step of the evolution process.
If you have a replication (with mutation) and then selection in a repeating cycle, the mutation step creates a bit of random noise, and the selection step converts that noise into ordered/directed information by filtering out any portion that is contrary to the selection direction.
Roll a hundred dice. Do a slection step to "kill" the half with the lowest number showing, replicate the remaining 50 back to a hudred... you will have a hundred dice showing 4's, 5's, and 6's. "Kill" the half with the lowest number showing again, replicate the remaining 50 back to a hudred again... and you have a hundred dice showing 5's, and 6's. Repeat a third time and now you "magically" have 100 dices all showing perfect sixes.
We started with perfect chaos rolled dice, and
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
You're in science class.
You're there to learn science.
It doesn't matter what you believe.
Ergo, ID has no place there. ID vs. Evolution (capital 'E', mind you) is a philosophical debate.
Little-e evolution is the only theory we have, right now, that can be used in a scientific fashion to explain biodiversity. It gives us models and clues as to why species adapt and change _right now_. It is the basis that lets us draw conclusions about one species by studying another. (Operating on a pig to understand a human body).
So if you are in biology class, where (we hope), you are going to be taught things that help you in the field of Biology, then you better damn well be taught the theory of evolution because that's all we got.
Learning ID in that same class is not going to give you _any_ tools to help you in life. It's just there, almost like a disclaimer, to make the parents of certain children feel better.
Putting in the curriculum almost certainly guarantees at least two wasted class periods with the teacher answer pointeless questions from the student re: this debate.
The teacher should just be like: all further questions should be directed to your parents, or sign up for Philisophy or Comp. Religion next year.
Christ on crutches...
We don't learn Alchemy in Chemsitry class either. There are people that still believe in it though.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Or, as I like to say, given enough dice and enough time, eventually you will roll a trillion 1's in a row.
Not anywhere in the (visible) universe, it won't. Suppose you are using a 2-sided dice (a coin). Chance of getting 10 thousand heads in a row is less than 2^-10000 (which is the expected number of times you will flip 1 million heads in a row), or about 10^-3000. At about 10^80 atoms and 10^18 seconds since the Big Bang, the probability (given 100 flips per atom per second) would be 10^-2900 (10^-300 is considered impossible). That is the point of irreducible complexity: if it must be done all at once, it effectively can't be done.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
As an atheist, I find that this statement is actually extremely offensive, not to mention misguided.
Atheism is a religious belief in that it is a belief regarding spirituality and man's place in the universe. I do not wish to start a pedantic semantic argument, but one definition of religion is "[a] cause, principle, or activity pursued with zeal or conscientious devotion." I would say that as an atheist I am conscientiously devoted to the notion that there is no god and that a moral or ethical system must therefore be derived by humans for themselves. I further strongly believe that organised religion represents nothing more than an attempt to organise such a system but is frequently, perhaps universally, rendered ineffective by superstition, dogma and human ambition.
Let me put it another way: belief in nothing is not no belief. It merely means that I don't believe there is a being 'out there' or 'up there' to which I am answerable or by which I am controlled, created or otherwise influenced. Does this mean I have no morals? Am I an inherently bad, or amoral, or otherwise non-spiritual person? Not in the least. I believe (note the use of the word) very strongly in the capacity of human intelligence to allow us to produce something greater than the sum of our parts. Love is an excellent example of this capacity in action.
The parent, and many of the responses to it, are perhaps mistaking the issue of fundamentalism vs tolerance for the issue of atheism vs theism. A fundamentalist atheist is no different to any other fundamentalist. This does not justify lumping all atheists together, being dismissive, or otherwise belittling another person's belief system.
Read Pynchon.
Blind spot? I don't see any blind spot...
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
How could I be accountable if I was never making a choice.
Why does accountability depend on "free will" (whatever that means)?
As long as your decision-making algorithm (you do agree that there is an algorithm there, don't you?) takes into account the consequences of accountability, it makes sense to make you accountable, whether or not you have this "free will" thing you speak of.
There are a few things about this story that I find mildly amusing.
First up: Why is it that a post on religon always means massive post numbers on a geek web site?
Second: Religon is based on belief, and goes out of it's way to not have anything about it's beliefs that can be disproven. Yet they are in a court where proof is paramount.
Third: The laws of the land are supposed to be based on the bible and the church etc.... i think.
I wonder if that is taught in law school, or if the lawers will try to have the religous side of the law taken out of the law classes and put into some other class with a different name? How about calling it 'Religous Evolution' ?
ID is the claim that some biological structures are so complex (in a "specified" way) that they COULD NOT have resulted from natural selection.
If God is omnipotent, he's perfectly capable of causing biological structures to exist via any mechanism he damn well pleases, including natural selection. The fact that you, or I, or anyone else can't fathom how is irrelevant if God is omnipotent.
Personally, I think ID is blasphemous--if God had designed each species directly, he would have done a better job. But's that's my theological opinion, nothing scientitfic about it.
But usually, brainwashing does work and does persist.
As in your case, it does not always succeed.
But just look at the simple statistics, of the amounts of people who persist their parents' beliefs vs. the amounts of people that don't. If brainwashing was not an issue, then persistence should be around 50%, and we both agree it is far above that, is it not?
Note that I'm not referring evolution in single-celled organisms because it is so different
You can't accept evolution for one organism and reject it for another, on a whim. That's just not Science.
The scientific theory of evolution has been subject to dozens of thousands if not millions of scientific tests over many decades. The testing is not complete of course, it never can be, but that doesn't in any way make it non-scientific. It holds together extremely well as a scientific theory, so far. Huge numbers of questions remain of course, and they always will, but no test has disproved the validity of evolution as yet.
You should note that just because something is a theory in Science doesn't mean that it is suspected to be false. Quantum Mechanics is a theory too, yet all those quantum mechanical devices in your TV and cellphone and computer seem to work just fine. Yet, QM still is no more than a scientific theory, despite that.
The same is true for the astronomical sciences for example, since we cannot directly examine objects billions of lightyears away. And likewise for the key theories of fundamental physics, since we cannot directly examine any of the objects discussed in string theory, for example. But we can always extrapolate hypotheses from these theories and try testing them. That's what makes it Science.
Nothing in ID can be subject to testing by the scientific method, so it's not Science, and hence ID doesn't belong in a classroom of Science, it's that simple. It has nothing to do with truth or falsehood, but merely with whether the matter is subject to the scientific method or not. And ID is not.
why-is-it wrote:
It depends entirely on the nature of the entity in question.
Are there no naturally-occurring pink elephants? Not likely. But, to prove it, you'd either have to perform a census of all elephants, or you'd have to find something along the lines of something in elephantine DNA that prevents pinkness.
Are there any triangular circles? Nope. Perpetual motion machines? Not a chance. Married bachelors? Ha!
And hey-presto! we've just come up with some more things that even a supposedly-omnipotent being couldn't do. Therefore, ``omnipotence'' is its own self-contained oxymoron.
I'm sorry, but hand-waving won't do shit to stave off your crisis of faith.
Did I claim that it was a formal proof? Is this a mathmatical journal? Did you offer a formal definition of ``omnipotence''?
Careful, I think your blinder might be slipping.
Unh-huh. ``Teach the controversy.'' More properly, ``Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!'' Because, like, if you use your brain, we won't be able to pull the wool over your eyes.
And all I'm doing is pointing out that you're worng. Sorry.
...unless you've got a working perpetual motion machine to bring out? Because that's exactly as possible as your omnipotent god.
It depends entirely on how you define, ``hobbit.'' Do you mean the magical creatures of Tolkein's fantasy? Because they'd be easy to disprove. If you mean the short hominids that might have lived on an Indonesian island...well, there's a pretty darned good chance that they actually did exist.
The Flyng Spaghetti Monster is defined as the being that created the universe. Proving that the universe is creatorless is trivial; thus the FSM as defined clearly doesn't exist. Whether or not there's some remarkable being that resembles a giant plate of spaghetti is another matter entirely, but we can be certain that it had nothing whatsoever to do with the creation of the universe.
All but God can prove this sentence true.
I.e. Atheism is a belief that there is no god. Certainly some branches of Buddhism are atheistic. In other words, Atheism is about as much "a religion" as Monotheism, Polytheism, or Pantheism is. Yet we would hardly say that there is Monotheism is a religion and by that lump all Jews, Christains, Muslims, Bahai'i, etc. together.
Indeed there are religions that are atheistic just as there are religions that are pantheistic, monotheistic, or polytheistic.
Agnosticism might be the only one that might not be characterized as the belief that forms the foundation of a religion. Science is agnostic in the sense that it doesn't say anything about the existance or lack thereof regarding any specific divine entity or entities.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
>_<
As for a proof against omnipotence, here's one:
All but God can prove this sentence true.
This doesn't work for the same reason that the whole "can God make a rock so big that he cannot lift it" thing doesn't work. If a being is omnipotent in universe X, there's nothing he can't do in universe X. That doesn't mean he can do absolutely anything which is possible in any universe, just that universe which he is omnipotent over. That's not to say that God isn't omnipotent over any other possible realms other than our own universe, but our's is governed by logic which renders your statement impossible in our universe. There can't be something which all but the one person who can do anything in the universe can do, because to be omnipotent means you can do anything possible in the universe. In the same sense, there can be no rock that God cannot lift in our universe, because God is omnipotent in our universe. That rock isn't even a logically possible configuration of matter, because omnipotence entails that God can lift all rocks.
And, it just so happens, Mr. Turing disproved omniscience with his little halting problem. Don't believe me? Then try this on for size:
Turing proved that a general algorithm to solve the halting problem for all possible inputs cannot exist, not that other methods could not solve the halting problem (i.e., being able to tell the future, or knowing all possible inputs and being able to try them out instantly- things omnipotence/ omniscience could allow).
You could also foil a supposedly-omniscient god just by asking it to tell you what you'll do next. Whatever the god tells you, do something else.
This is moot if you never can be afforded the opportunity to ask.
Insightful: 76, Off-Topic: 379, Flamebait: 24, Funny: 152, Interesting: 201, Underrated: 55, Troll: 9, Total: 896
So...all you've done is have your god admit that it's not omnipotent. Was that your point?
Cheers,
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
Or, if you're not sure of the significance of the ditty, think of what either answer means.
Now you've totally lost me. What is the `ditty' you're referring to? `Ditty' is English for `a short song'.
I'm going to try to inject some sense into this part of your otherwise sensible post. Turing, from the assumption that all problems are solvable by some recursive procedure, derives a contradiction. I'm guessing, from the meagre comments you made, that you are thinking of asking God this question:
Of course, either answer, yes or no, leads to a contradiction. So, we reject the assumption that all problems are solvable by a recursive procedure.
This has about as much to do with the problem of an omniscient mind as the following.
Well, is there a monkey in my box? Remember, God has to answer yes or no.
Oh wait - no he doesn't.
Try looking at the bibliography in that textbook for the references that the textbook authors drew from. You should be able to get easy access to the original journal articles documenting the work that provides the evidence that backs up the claims. If you don't believe the research documented in the papers, you can repeat it to see for yourself or you can try and provide positive evidence for an alternate explanation. All the printed text draws from physical evidence found by actual work done by the people who wrote the paper. It wasn't just made up to force you to think something.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
"Mommy mommy, a goldfish left a lincoln log in me sock drawer!!"
"That's the story of Jesus..."
Blessed are the 1337, for they shall pwn the earth.
Any reasonable classification system, when based upon morphology and behavior, will put humans firmly within the ape clade. We aren't just descendants of a common ancestor with apes, we are apes, and it is this that will drive Creationists mad. They cannot tolerate (and probably can't psychologically deal with) the idea that humans are not some special, center-of-the-universe entity.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
"You can't accept evolution for one organism and reject it for another, on a whim."
I'm not, single celled organisms do not easily fit into well defined species, so the theory of evolution as it applies to species of multicellular organisms does not really apply to them. It's not a whim.
"Nothing in ID can be subject to testing by the scientific method"
That's ridiculous, anything is subject to testing by the scientific method, ID is no different. It's just that, like evolution, the matters addressed by ID are not testable by any means available to us. This is also true for QM, or Astrophysics. I never said they weren't scientific, I only said that ID was no less scientific.
I misinterpreted your paraphrased quote, then. :-)
On the subject of the imperfections of the human eye, many of us have eyes that can be improved by adding an extra lens in front. Without the extra lenses I can barely even make out faces from a foot away. The design of MY eyes can be improved upon even by humans.
Isn't it a fact that electricity powers light bulbs?
Not really. It's only "fact" in a handwaving sort of way.
Science doesn't tell us what *actually* powers light bulbs, but it does provide us with a mathematical theory describing how they might be powered, one that is consistent with all known evidence. This sometimes makes sloppy scientists say it's "fact" when they're explaining such things to a lay audience, but if pressed by another scientist they would readily admit that a theory of Science always falls short of being the Truth or Fact.
Disputing that electricity is a fact does not cast any doubt on its theory though --- a point that non-scientists don't seem to grasp very well. Only experiments can invalidate a theory.
That evolution happens is pretty indisputible, since anyone can reproduce it in populations of microbes, drosophila, or even canis familiaris. But the idea that evolution is the mechanism by which people came to exist is much less well tested. Although the evidence seems to be pretty overwhelming, it is not currently possible to repeat the whole experiment within our lifetimes, so Occam's Razor is the main justification for evolution-as-creation-story. Although the evidence is amazingly consistent and rich, Occam's Razor (the principle of parsimony) is a pretty weak philosophical tool compared to realism or positivism (the ideas that scientific theory is actually describing something real that can be reproduced), and it's not surprising that many folks find it hard to swallow.
That doesn't make the short-Earth creationists right -- it just makes them more understandable. They're at least attacking the edifice of scientific study at a weak point, rather than at a bastion.
llamaluvr wrote:
Stop right there. In these discussions, the only definition of ``universe'' that is any way useful is ``everything that exists.'' What Dr. Sagan called the Cosmos.
And there're plenty of things that really, truly, are impossible in any universe (assuming there's more than one) in the Cosmos. Making 1 + 1 equal anything other than 2 (using the most common definitions of those terms) would be one of them, for example.
Exactly. Logic is the rock that even God can't lift. So, if even God's hands are bound by logic, then logic is stronger than God. And who created logic, thus forever defeating God? God couldn't have, for--as we see everywhere we turn--logic is greater than he is.
The only solution to these problems is to realize that the premises are faulty. Don't ask, ``Who created the universe?'' Instead, ask, ``Is there even any possibility that the universe was created?'' The answer, clearly being, ``No,'' makes the first one moot. And, at that point, the idea that there's some all-powerful entity within the universe...but that this entity didn't create it...well, it's instantly obvious just how silly the whole thing is. Might as well talk about turtles springing from the navel of a flower.
Cheers
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
"Let the kids decide which makes more sense."
Um... no. This is not a debate. You are using the common definition of "Theory",
not the scientific one. You can start to understand why Evolution is a Theory and
ID is not (it's a Belief) by doing a google search for "Scientific Theory". To save you
some time, here's the first link: wilstar.com/theories.htm It's very good, actually.
Why is this not a debate? Because science is not about Beliefs, your beliefs, my
beliefs and the beliefs of everyone else who ever lived are irrelevant. Just because more
than 50% of Americans are ignorant and have not been taught what a Theory is doesn't
make a debate about ID any more valid. As some one else wrote in a previous thread...
A majority of Americans also think Abraham Lincoln was your first president (he was
your 16th). Put another way, just because a majority believe something doesn't make
it so (or science for that matter).
J.
Wouldn't this lack of investigation make the make the parent Guilty of Sloth.
"Call us when the New age is old enough to drink" Beck
If a science teacher made this comment of their own volition and didn't harp on it, I doubt very many people would get upset. (Sure, there's always going to be someone who is hyper-sensitive.) The point here is that the science teachers were required by the Dover Board to teach this despite the fact that they disagreed with it.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
I know, let's all send the Judge $10 and when he's beaten MS on capital, we'll have a real measure. The way I see it, if God existed, this argument would not exist. he was pretty plain about his demands earlier on, why so quiet now ? Hah, faith.
It was invented to at first calm a population, then control it. I have no need of artificial protection.
Thanks anyway.
Are you really this dense?
If God answers ``Yes,'' then God is telling you that he'll answer ``No.'' But that's a lie, because God clearly answered, ``Yes.''
If God answers, ``No,'' then he's saying that he's not going to answer, ``No.'' But he did.
So, there we have it. A question that even God can't answer. Something that even God can't know. Since it's part of the defintion of ``God'' that he can answer any question, that he knows everything, and since he can't do either with regard to this question, it's quite clear that God, as defined, is truly impossible and thus doesn't exist.
Now, unless you're that gas-pumping moron from New Jersey you were talking about, you should understand just exactly why your god is a married bachelor.
Cheers,
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
Spaces are allowed in usernames.
Check the order at the end of the 139 page ruling:
Technically, I think a lawyer would call that an order, not a ruling, but I don't think you're qualified to split hairs that fine. Anyway, the other 139 pages pretty much are nothing but rulings as to WHY they shouldn't have thought they could get away with it, and screwed up almost every step of the way. Of course, the summary used the word "discussed", not "taught", which is inaccurate insofar as private citizens (and religious leaders) are free to advocate it... in those capacities. But again, I don't think you're trying to split that hair. The summary is essentially accurate.I'm sure teachers could still discuss intelligent design should they be so included.
I presume you mean "inclined", not "included". I will note that the prime defendant was the "Dover School District"; since the teachers are employees of the Dover School District, that would likely be deemed to violate letter as well as spirit of the order. I also refer you to the section begining page 64:
(Emphasis added)Even if new science teachers come in who are willing to touch this turd with an eleven foot pole (unlike the current batch; check out p. 127), they would be facing major legal problems if they tried teaching it in science class. (Unless, of course, merely presenting it as an example of something that ISN'T science....) On the bright side for the religious right, the Judge expressly did not take a position as to whether ID was the Truth. Not that anyone but religious moderates will be able to see that as a bright side.
I strongly suggest you read the ruling before further comment; it's in fairly plain English; if you take the legal citations to mean "because the Courts have already said so", it's even easier.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
You know, I wish there was more thought put into the eye... I would really like to se Infra Red, UV, and maybe even be able to see radiation.
I'd settle for decent vision without having to stick glass lenses in front.
To summarise the summary of the summary: people are a problem. ~ h2g2
Nobody can proove evolution. At least not yet, and that IS a known fact. The same can be said for I.D. So, while the article is very interesting, 500 /. comments is not going to get us any further towards solving this.
... or maybe not?
Down the road, not across the street. Do it right, and you'll know for sure!
In my opinion, that judge should be dropped off a cliff.
People should be allowed to belive whatever they want to belive. If someone wants to study it or discuss it in a school, THEY SHOULD! This is how people learn. Not by reading through textbooxs that 'make sense' instead of a bible. If its unconstitutional to teach ID in schools, then it is unconstitutional to teach evolution. In my opinion, niether hold any ground over the other, and people will be bickering about it for thousands of years to come. The least that can be asked is that people arnt blind to possibilitys.
You only FORCE things on others when you dont know yourself how to convince them of it. Resorting to the violent or offensive actions... not exactly the most 'evolved' thing to do, and im sure it dosent speak much of faith.
It's not just that their idea doesn't answer any questions. No questions would even get asked , if these people ran the world, or your school system.
Don't forget religious wars. they are so much more fun. No resolution till one side is gone...
As for a proof against omnipotence,
Let me guess: first, you define omnipotence as the ability to do anything, even a contradiction. Then, you show that this leads to a contradiction. However, if you believe that contradicitons are possible, you cannot use proof by negation.
All but God can prove this sentence true.
That statement is false. And I am correct, I said so myself.
Omnipotence must necessarily include omniscience; an omnipotent being could just ``use its omnipotence'' to give itself omniscience.
If it wanted to...
Tell me God, ``yes'' or ``no,'' will you answer, ``no''?
An omniscient being would know that question has no "yes" or "no" answer?
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Black Parrot wrote:
Pardon me for being informal, but your observation doesn't change things.
I could just as easily state that it's impossible for God to create a Turing maching capable of solving the halting problem. Or, that even God doesn't know how to create a Turing machine that solves the halting problem. Either way, Mr. Turing drove yet another stake through the heart of this God-thing...yet people still haven't realized that they're worshipping a bloody corpse.
Cheers,
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
On a side note, one thing I really don't get is why anti-evolutionists always bring up the eye. It's not impossible, or even difficult, to imagine a simpler eye, and one simpler than that, and so on. And it's not hard to imagine one more complicated than ours - if you live anywhere outside a major city, you probably see birds on an almost daily basis with much, much better vision. If you want to argue something as being irreducibly complex, why not start with sexual reproduction?
Oh, wait, I forgot... fundamentalists, sex... nevermind, I'll shut up now.
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
I'm always a little puzzled by that. I'm not even sure if we really should ban ID from schools, because it would probably take about 5 Minutes until the teachers would run out of material. Just think of it:
...
Teacher: Today we teach an alternative Theorie to Evolution. It's called Intelligent Design and it's about the theory that evolution did not happen but an intelligent Designer created life. The main argument of ID is that life is too complex to be created by random processes and therefore a Designer must exist.
Student: Ok, tell us more about this theory. Tell us about the experiments which were done to verify it. Tell us about research that's going on.
Teacher:
Oh well, maybe some ID people here can fill in the points. Arguments *for* an ID theory - *not* arguments against evolution theory. Anything besides the "life is too complex and so we need an (even complexer) designer who created it".
That's ridiculous, anything is subject to testing by the scientific method, ID is no different. It's just that, like evolution, the matters addressed by ID are not testable by any means available to us. This is also true for QM, or Astrophysics. I never said they weren't scientific, I only said that ID was no less scientific.
Actually, there is quite a lot of interpretations of scientific theory that defy testing. Prove to me, for example, that an unobserved electron doesn't have a distinct position as the generally accepted Copenhagen Interpretation would have. Prove to me that Schroedinger's cat is really both alive and dead inside the box prior to observation. Note that this is just an interpretation of a thoery and not a theory itself. In other words, it is a useful way to think of things rather than an assumption that this is a statement about the ultimate reality of the position of an electron in a suborbital in, say, a Neon atom. The idea that the position and velocity of the electron don't exist absent observation is fundamentally untestable because you can't prove using the scientific method what occurs in the absense of observation. In other words, the CI is fundamentally outside the role of the scientific method, but it is usually passed of as a "way to think about" things rather than "the fundamental nature of things."
ID is no different. One cannot scientifically prove the existance or lack thereof of any specific theological model. So why teach this as science.
I have absolutely no problem with co-opting science for religious ends, but this doesn't belong in a science class, especially in a pluralistic society such as we have in the US. In other words, ID is religious argument, not a scientific one. It fails to pass a number of basic threshold scientific tests, such as the principle of parsimony. If one wants to teach ID in sunday school, if people want to publish books on it for general or professional consumption, or any other activity, that is fine. But it is not a good thing to teach in a class about the foundations of science.
This being said, most of the textbooks I have seen do an attrocious job of teaching evolution to gradeschool students. Not only is it oversimplistic, but it is a representation of theories that have been obsolete for a few decades.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Are you really this dense?
Are you really this pretentious? I really was trying to be civil and understand what the hell you're on about. As I mentioned in my first post, I'm not defending God - in fact, I said that I found most of your other comments helpful. Do you always insult people who try to engage in discussion with you?
For the last time, what question, in this scenario, is God supposed to be answering?
So, there we have it. A question that even God can't answer.
Is the existence of unanswerable questions supposed show that omniscience is incoherent?
Omniscience is concerned with knowledge, not questions.
Isn't it interesting that the people who tend to insist that atheism is a religion are the same people who insist that christianity is not a religion?
"You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means." -- Inigo Montoya.
How is teaching ID unconstitutional? Isn't silencing people and not allowing them to teach about something (whether it is right or wrong) unconstitutional?
I suppose we've banned teaching of any ideas that might be arbitrarily classified as "hate material" (critisizing corporations is banned - after all they're "people" too), "pornography" (even so much as a nipple under any context), and "terrorist" (i.e. anarchist or anti-establishment). So under this pretext there's no reason not to ban ID theory/philosophy/whatever...we've already banned free thought and free speech which are more important and the what prevent anything else from being banned anyways.
I _probably_ evolved from some common ancestor or frogs _could have_ evolved from fish. Fine. Prove it. Prove it to a 99.9% level of certainty.
Prove to me that a light detecting eye evolved into a camera eye. Don't show me different types of eyes. Show me, with 99.9% certainty, the exact path/steps that a light detecting eye evolved into a camera eye.
Do this without using words such as 'probably' or 'could have'. Do it using 100% observation and nothing else; faith is not allowed, only observation.
Also, the fact that this thread has so many responses is an maybe an indication that, perhaps, there is a little double that some people have in their own theory.
Any reasonable person has to admit, it's hard to swallow evolution as the source of molecular machines such as ATP Synthase (can be both a rotary motor and generator), Helicase, and protein chaperones.
Yes, it's possible to contrive ways these molecules randomly came to be, but do it without using words such as 'probably' or 'could have'; anything else is wishful thinking and doesn't prove a thing.
Some fossils are seen to occur only in certain strata. Such fossils can be used as index fossils. When these fossils exist, they can be used to determine the age of the strata, because the fossils show that the strata correspond to strata that have already been dated by other means.
If you want to see more references to dating, check out the geology section of the common questions. For example, "Isochron methods do not assume that the initial parent or daughter concentrations are known..." from CD002, which then links to a full essay on isochron dating. It has references, including to a text that is "An excellent semi-technical introduction to isotope dating methods... It is accessible to those who haven't studied the field, and has even received reasonably positive review in creationist literature..." which might be exactly what you're looking for to catch up in this area.
penguinoid wrote:
If you define ``omnipotence'' as anything at all other than ``the ability to do anything,'' then the word loses all possible meaning. Because, see? It would therefore mean that I am omnipotent.
It's impossible for me to, for example, run a one-minute mile. But, if we examine the reasons for that, at a gross oversimplification, it's because I lack sufficient energy available in a sufficient form to accomplish the feat. In essence, I'm trying to make 2 + 2 = 5.
Take any so-called ``physical'' impossibility, and it will always, and usually trivially, reduce to a logical impossibility or contradiction. So, if ``omnipotent'' means ``able to do anything that's logically possible,'' then anything and everything with some sort of power is, by definition, omnipotent. Everything that's not possible is impossible for logical reasons, and you've already ruled out logical impossibilities as something to hold against claims of omnipotence.
Really, it's much like trying to put an upper bound on the set of natural numbers. ``God is the being that's larger than the largest number'' makes just as much sense.
No, you are incorrect.
Consider, for a moment, if God actually were to prove that the sentence is true. What would he have proven? Why, that he's incapable of proving that the sentence is true. Thus, God can't prove that the sentence is true, and therefore that part of the sentence is true. And we've just proven that the sentence is true, which takes care of the rest of it.
There you have it: something that I just did--and that you yourself can do--that your god never possibly could. Hardly sounds very omnipotent, does it?Cheers,
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
Wrong.
Ruling, Page 136:
QED.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
God created the universe however many billion years ago. He let it run through until somewhere past 4000 years ago.
Each few million years he made a backup copy in case something went wrong.
That finally happened some time after 4000 years ago (maybe something that man did???) and so he restored from his backup copy and removed additional humans from ouside of "Eden" thinking that maybe that would fix the problem that happened later.
Because of this, the entire fossil record is intact and everything can be worked backwords to the beginning. However, this version of the world was only 'created' just over 4000 years ago.
How does that sound???
[All Your Fish Are Belong To Us]
Science doesn't tell us what *actually* powers light bulbs, but it does provide us with a mathematical theory describing how they might be powered, one that is consistent with all known evidence.
In other words, you don't discount the existance of electricity as a fact. You just reserve some degree of skepticism regarding the current idea of what electricity is.
In other words, we know that light exists and this is a fact. However, the theories as to the *nature* of light are still subject to some degree of scrutiny.
So unless you are uncomfortable thinking that electricity is a fact and that "something" that we call electricity powers the light bulb, then you have not told me that the existance of electricity is just a theory.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
"The world is obviously flat! Clearly people in the southern hemisphere would fall off otherwise. The round-earth thing is only a theory, after all."
Not a surprising victory. The prosecution took the smart approach of inviting testimony against ID from established scientists with strong religious backgrounds. But a pleasing victory.
--- These are not words: wierd, genious, rediculous
Believe what you want to believe, that's fine. But if your beliefs are based on religion, all I've got to say is...
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion"
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
The judge ruled that it shouldnt be discussed in a science class. He didnt say it shouldnt be discussed in school. Yeah it would be nice if someone wanted to study it or discuss it in school then they should be allowed. But in which class? Math, ? What if every teacher in school just stood up and started discussing or studying whatever she wanted right in the middle of math class? Screw the algebra assignment today, lets talk about the mating habits of the malaysian deer mouse! You got to have some structure, and this is what the judge was enforcing.
The Dover school board need just introduce a new course "Mysticism, Superstition and Things That Go Bump in the Night". Then they could teach ID
It's called religion class. I suffered many years of it.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
I stopped reading the article at this point. I'm certain there are many more errors beside the ones I've listed. (Note: I found more in the exerpt I read, but didn't mention them). Mr. Buchanans ignorance on the subject of evolution is astounding.
He also compares Charles Darwin to Karl Marx in an obvious attempt to negatively portray Charles Darwin and his ideas.
Required reading for internet skeptics
Well, that depends how you define species. The standard scientific definition of distinction between species is of two populations that can't produce fertile offspring (or any offspring, for a slightly stricter version). My dad (who used to be a biochemist) has personally observed speciation of fruitflies in the lab, by putting them in different environments.
Problem is that, when something like this is pointed out to religious folk, they just respond with "ah, but that's still small-scale stuff. We're looking at the large scale". Not unsurprisingly, I have never seen "large scale" defined in any way more rigorous than "whatever would take too long to duplicate in the lab".
For the love of God, please learn to spell "ridiculous"!!!
I just think that would go along well with some of my other sig-quotes...
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
That's not exactly true. In I Corinthians 7:19, Paul said, "Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing. Keeping God's commands is what counts." In John 14:15, Jesus said, "If you love me, you will obey what I command." Clearly if one is faithful to the Lord, he will do his best to obey the Lord's commands.
:)
However, we are not perfect beings; as it says in Romans 3:9-10, "We have already made the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under sin. As it is written, 'There is no one righteous, not even one.'" Obviously, even after we have been baptized into Christ and have received the Holy Spirit, we will continue to sin. But our faith in our salvation through the sacrifice of Jesus's blood justifies us, as it says in Romans 3:21: "But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and Prophets testify. This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus."
You say that religion is counterproductive. I think that if I had no faith in a life after this one, there would be little point in living this life at all. Why go through all the pain that this life has if there was nothing at the end but death? Might as well go jump off a bridge right now and get it over with. Who cares if it makes someone else a little unhappy? They can do the same thing. And so on, and so on. Do you see what I mean?
But I know that when I leave this life, I will go to be with my Father in Heaven, because of my faith in Him through his Son. I'm not perfect; I still sin. As it says in Romans 7:19, "For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do--this I keep on doing." But I keep trying, and I know that my faith in Jesus's blood continually cleanses me, as it says in I John 1:9.
That knowledge, that God loves me, and my love for Him, gives me hope, and a mission to love others and spread the Good News, as Jesus commanded in Matthew 28:18-20. As far as I know, loving your fellow human beings makes this life better, so I don't think I'm an enemy of those who want to make this life better.
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
Most people don't want intelligent design to be taught in science classes as a part of that science. The argument is that ID is a prominent alternative to the evolution theory, and so when an unprovable theory (such as macro-evolution) is taught the majorly accepted alternative theories (such as intelligent design) should also at least be presented, regardless of whether they are 'scientific' in their basic idea.
I don't see the trouble in presenting all of the possible solutions to an unknown area of science, such as the origin of life forms on Earth. In most biology books, you will find many instances of unproved ideas that are presented with plausible alternatives. It is inconsistent to only provide one theory of the origin of life on Earth. I also don't think that a theory's (unofficial) association with a religion or people group should be decisive in determining if it is appropriate to teach it to the general public. If macro-evolution were originally bound to a religious group, it would be just as easily dismissable as intelligent design, seeing as it is no more plausible or provable.
Going back to the question of scientific basis of intelligent design, it cannot directly be scientifically supported, as evolution can, but it can be strongly (albeit indirectly) supported through historical documents. Why, if the majority of the Bible has repeatably been proven as a reliable historical record, can people so easily discard it's accounts of the creation of the world by a Supreme Being? By no means are these accounts provable, as is most of the Bible's historical content, but they still should not immediately be discarded, simply because they do not seem likely. In my opinion, the reliability of the latter historical parts of the Bible is enough to justify consideration of it's account of creation.
Of course, until a reliable method is devised to test the theories we will never know. Evolution will be difficult to test, since no one can live long enough to observe it occuring, and a project to document it over a long enough period of time will simply take too long, since we will not have results for possibly several million years. On the other hand, intelligent design is difficult to test, since it could only have happened once, and so there is nothing to observe. Although there is strong evidence for each theory (regardless of how extreme or ridiculous either sounds to any person), at this time there is no way to conclude that either are true. Right now all that can be done is to decide which theory you believe, and attempt to support it however you think will be best. Either way, at this early point of development and research of the two theories, no single person should decide which is allowed to be taught to children, and neither should be exclusively presented to a class.
If I recall correctly, the age given for the Mount St Helens lava was "1 million years, plus or minus a couple of mill". This suggests that the dating is in no way wrong, just not sufficiently fine-grained. When you consider that that's the same dating we use to trace backwards for billions of years, this is not surprising. And it's not the same dating as is used for the majority of fossil record stuff (I think).
For the love of God, please learn to spell "ridiculous"!!!
Actually, god gave humans sub-perfect eyes to specifically piss you off on this very message forum - and no other reason, except to test you and your faith in the almighty himself!
I'm sorry, these arguments are so pointless due to their self-referential nature, that you can go nowhere with them!
Science shouldn't even go down this path - we argue what we see in the universe, and what we can measure. Since we can't measure God - by definition, it is something that must be taken as faith - science shouldn't touch it. That's what philosophers are for - proving the unprovable.
My point was to provide a chuckle to those with a sense of humour. Apparently it has the side effect of encouraging idiots to jump to conclusions.
Pretty interesting comments cr0sh...
Indeed, it is that last one that can make you wonder, and is where science fiction begins (are the "stars" intelligent? can we even tell?)
Which is exactly why it's unfortunate some want to limit education to only the approved list of ideas (and in typical form, those that they happen to agree with). One needs a broader base of models to understand how to pick the best strategy for a given situation.
I laugh pretty hard at the goddess types, but really have to respect most of them for being so passionate about doing positive things (even if their method is odd at times).
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Nice...
*scoove*
I have not seen an adequate evolutionary understanding of what causes species to become so genetically incompatible as to branch off and become separate species (as opposed to subspecies). In plants, this is even more problematic than with animals due to apparent lack of migration.
I suspect the answer to this question is that there may be several mechanisms which might make this possible, and that these mechanisms are not mutually exclusive, and indeed that physical separation might not even be required.
Evolution as a general process can be and has been experimentally verified by, say, spraying populations of insects with, say, DDT and seeing how the population eventually becomes resistant to the chemical. Again, self-selective breeding has been well documented in the fruit-fly world. So with these cornerstones, evolution (as an adaptive process) is as much a fact as electricity. But the theory still needs some work.
Now forming a species boundary between populations might require more complex environments than can be worked with in a laboratory.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
ID topic progression
1) ID people are religious whackjobs
2) ID isnt science
3) Everyone who believes in ID is religious
4) I dont care if you think it is aliens, nobody else does. Shut up!
5) (my favorite) Life can't have been designed because it is such a terrible
design! I mean there are things wrong! The retina! The appendix! Even a 3 year
old toddler could have designed life better than that. Life is so simple that
even a 1st year grad student could design better life from SCRATCH!
Uh, folks. If you think YOU know how life should have been designed, go ahead
and design even the simplest living cell. You will get the nobel prize, and will
go down in history as the first person smarter than einstein.
*real* ID people don't always think it must be a perfect god who designed life. it could just be some smart aliens.
you people who are violently anti-ID are like an orphan who finds himself in the woods one day, but cant remember seeing his parents. he deduces that he must have evolved from nothing, because he doesnt have any parents.
in all of the universe, for ID to be possible there only has to be other intelligent life who we could be the children/experiement of. for ID to be utterly wrong, then life on earth must be the very first intelligent life in the universe. which do you think is more likely?
why are we so arrogant as to presume life evolved here from nothing? even if life CAN evolve from nothing, statistically it is much more likely to be SPREAD by other life.
oh, and one last time, i think "god" and "jesus" are complete horeshit. i know some of you have so blocked out the ID argument that you will look at those words and probably see a blur in your mind, because it doesnt compute to you. YES, there are people who think ID may be possible, who aren't a bunch of religious bible-bangers. but you can't accept that, can you.
the fundies give the real ID people a bad name.
btw- how many of you rabid anti-ID people ever ran the SETI screensaver? hmmm.
Good. Now they can put the Darwin's Voyage wonder back into Civ4, which they avoided to be "politically correct" (which means correct to the current political presi .. in power). Shame on you Sid.
And I get so frustrated with people that lump ID in with creationism and bible thumpers, and with people that are called "stupid" or "blind" because they question a theory. Also- the "facts" in your link are still speculation on the scientists' parts.
I never "assumed" that something was not true - I personally question evolution because I have not seen (or read or googled or otherwise) anything that provides more than circumstantial evidence, at least none that convince me 100%. You can explain the theory of electricity and turn on a light or 1000 other things, give mathematical evidence, and sure, there's little room for argument. But I personally can't accept the same with evolution - at least not with the evidence that has been presented- there is simply too much room for question. If science produces undisputable proof to support evolution, then yes, it would be fact.
I'd like to point out also that survival of the fittest could probably be considered "fact" - by definition, only those adapted to the environment will survive. I question the gene mutation and adaptation on a large scale.
Sigh... My original point, about the Theory of Evolution (not to be confused with lower case evolution, as was in a previous post) being a theory and not fact, seems to be completely lost. I think it's interesting that the same people that argue that ID is not a scientific theory because it cannot stand up to the scientific process (which is 100% true) also argue that Evolution is an accepted fact, and is somehow outside the realm of scientific theory itself and cannot be disproven.
If she wants to teach math by adding jesus heads, so be it. as long as she's not stuffing a students brain with "love jesus! Belive in jesus!" i think its fine.
If a english teacher would like to point out some kind of religious symbols in a book, why not? To be honest, i'd like to know more about the type of writing that is in the bible. I dont belive in it, but i have read a few pages and it is, without a doubt, strange!
I probably would have found school more interesting if each of my teachers was from a different religion. I do remember a particular computer sci teacher who brought up darwinisim all the time...
Both ways, and also including a third way.
First, if you have selection pressure, you must have diversity on witch to apply the selection, for start.
It doesn't come out of magic.
Otherwise we'ld have started with a very life-rich world, that can only become progressively poorer by mean of selection.
Although that may indeed be hapenning to the wild-life due to humans destroying animal habitat, archeological records show that indeed new species that didn't exist before have appeared some times in the past. In the field of microbiology new wonders are appearing almost every day (due to short life cycle : more cell division means more mutation means the number of generations needed before something new appears take less time).
Second, some mutation have been observed, documented and are well known (for the obvious reason that there's a lot of research done in the field).
- Some bacteria resist drugs, specially penicilins, by modifying the proteins that the drug targets.
- In case of the worst multi-drug resistant Staphyloccoci, the lab in which I have been working has proved that a single mutation that disables a specific gene has helped the bacteria to resist to Vancomycin. (I've worked in a lab doing research on bacterial genome).
- There's something really weird that I've heard in some conference : a lab has found that some bacteria species are able to *control* their mutation rate. In case of environmental stress (like new drugs), they increase some proteins that act as mutagens (by recombining gene parts and building new one "lego"-style).
Third way, that you didn't mention : genetic manipulation. No, not man-made mad-scientist style. Mother Nature style. Bacteria, and some specie more than the other, are champion at scavenging gene from different species/dead bacteria, not only exchanging materials within their own specie.
It's kind of bacteria don't only have regular sex, they are also zoophile/necrophile perverts.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Right, but if you kill yourself, you're going to hell, right? Which amounts to bullying. But, why go through all the pain that this life has to offer if there is nothing at the end but death? Because in such a system, you'd better look for your happiness here on earth, and do all you can to maximize it, because this is all you can get! "Karma", or in the real world, the embodiment of the reactions of others to your behavior, will keep you in line to some degree. But, if you do something wrong here on earth, god will still forgive you so there is much less motivation than in an orthoprax religion to do good. And, you can see this at work in churches. They spend the big buck$ to build this big fancy building and outfit it with all kinds of neat shit instead of spending that money to improve people's lives. It doesn't matter whether you worship in a church or in the street, ostensibly, because god is everywhere. Right? There is no "house of god". Instead, there is only a house of cards.
More and more people are being turned on to atheism, or my personal favorite agnosticism, every year. In a per capita sense, religion is waning in educated countries. People are realizing that they don't need religion to live their lives. It's not necessary to be religious to have a moral code, in spite of the assertions of many to the contrary. It's enough to be smart enough to know that if you create a world of shit, you'll live in it. Or, put more simply and even more crudely, you don't shit where you eat. It's the reason that you don't [as a rule] date people from work — that's the canonical use anyway — and it's the reason you treat people well whether it has a bearing on whether you go to heaven or not.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I can only say,
Thank you.
Sit... Speak.... Shake.... Good Dog!
He could have. But then again, you could also be just a figment of my imagination.
I find it "interesting" that so many supposedly devoutly religious people are so willing to tell any big fat lie it takes to cram their religion down everyone's throat. Surely such a thing cheapens what should be sacred.
You could also foil a supposedly-omniscient god just by asking it to tell you what you'll do next. Whatever the god tells you, do something else.
That begs the question, as it requires an assumption that you could limit God rather than the other way around -- an assumption at least as controversial as that which you intend to prove. Same with the statement, "All but God can prove this sentence true", the assumption being the claim itself. (In any case, if you ever had the opportunity for the conversation, God might use fuzzy logic, or smite you, or respond in any number of ways you would be incapable of anticipating because you're a puny mortal.) Verbal "paradoxes" are fun to play with, but they don't make good arguments. They prove nothing but that people are easily confused (see St. Anselm's ontological argument for an example).
"The Fool says in his heart, 'There is no God'."
"The greater Fool says, 'There is no God but mine'." (para. Joseph Campbell)
And I say, "The greatest Fool thinks he has a 'proof'." (Note: an atheist doesn't need to be a fool, either.)
You might as well define ``God'' as a married bachelor and be done with it.
Which is exactly what you're doing, declaring an omnipotent God to be impossible merely by defining it as impossible. Do you think that is rational?
It's refreshing to see discussion instead of a yelling match. I commend both of you. I wish more people would stop yelling and start listening. More would get done...on both sides.
"ID requires belief because it is untestable." Prove it.
You clearly don't understand the difference between the theory of electro-magnetism and the phenomena to which we refer by the terms "electricity" and "magnetism."
The theory attempts to describe the underlying mechanisms and relationships between electricity and magnetism (like the non-obvious fact that they are different phenomena from a common force --- in simple terms that they are "the same thing"). Further the theory describes these in quantifiable terms with predictive value. Thus we can use the theory to predict how much magnetic force can be measured for a given electrical input through a given set of windings, etc.
The theory could be "wrong" in a number of ways (and might need to be refined to account for as yet undiscovered flaws in it's model. This wouldn't mean that "electricity ceased to exist."
So, either you're not very bright (not understanding the distinctions I've made here) or you're wedded to your argument (and thus ignoring those distinctions for the purposes of persisting in the argument).
It's simple. We're having this problem because the government runs the educational system. You should be free to believe whatever you want and teach your kids whatever you want. So you send your kids to go learn about God and ID and I'll send my kids to go learn science and economics. Then my kid gets to be your kid's boss and lay him off so he can stand in the unemployment line with all those Saudi Princes with Ph.D's in theology. Problem solved.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babelfish
If you dig into the history of it, the "empiricist" approach to reality was an attempt to sort out "nature" from the "irreducible" acts of a deity. This wasn't creationism in the modern sense, but instead an attempt to understand how to sort out the "noise" of nature from the "signal" of a hypothetical creator or designer. Deism would have tended to support such an idea since it doesn't dictate some specific deity as THE deity and doesn't support the idea of any particular creator. Supposing that you could separate out a "signal" there is nothing that would then allow you to state that the signal belongs to Jahweh as opposed to Shiva, or some other creator-type. Supposing that someone actually DID sort out such a signal, the next battle would be between the religionists over whose was the right one - more or less a return to the status quo ante the Enlightenment. The very existence of such as debate is obviously due to poor design, probably one of Slartybartfast's assistants.
Of course success would be dependent upon some natural property that really was "irreducible" and would also necessarily include an explanation of why the crappy "design" of the human foot really was the best of all possible designs. Since nothing in nature so far is "irreducible," and a blind drunk could design a better foot, the whole ID concept already appears to have been falsified. I have seen arguments that certain properties of critters such as rotifers are "irreducible," but the error there is self-evident. If it is composed of chemical compounds, it is not irreducible.
------ The only greater hazard to your liberty than n politicians is n+1 politicians.
Ksisanth wrote:
It does no such thing, for you are begging the question by assuming that your god exists in the first place, and that it's not subject to the most elementary limits of logic in the second. All I'm saying is that it's impossible to know everything. And I'm backing that statement up with the well-worn technique of saying, ``If you were right, that would lead inevitably to a contradiction; therefore, you're worng.''
sigh
An omnipotent god is not impossible because I have defined it thus. It is impossible because omnipotence itself is impossible, for much the same reason that there is no such thing as a largest prime number. Both premises lead quite quickly, and most inexorably, to irresolvable contradiction.
Would you accuse me of being an irrational fool for pointing out that there's no such thing as the largest prime number? No? So, why am I an irrational fool for pointing out that there's no most-powerful being?
Cheers,
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
mosb1000,
A lot of unicellular organisms fit into well defined species, as long as they reproduce sexually (wich is dominant over asexual reproduction). Anyway, the theory of evolution applies to all living organisms. Darwin chose the word "species" but he could have chosen "morphs" as well. Evolution by natural selection applies to any living being, i.e able to reproduce.
The theory of evolution doesn't need a clear definition of "species" for all organisms.
I know what I'm talking about, I'm a (French) PhD student in evolutionnary biology.
Phrased differently, "Is the answer to this question no?"
I absolutely agree, so you can go to private school and learn about evolution. Where as I'd prefer my kids be taught neither at school.
Actually, there are more professed Christians than Hindus and Buddhists globally. Consider that you have to include the Churchs of Rome, Greece, Byzantium and Russia, as well as all the Protestant denominations.
The figures for 1986 were:
Christian:
Roman Catholic: 900,546,000
Protestant: 326,552,000
Orthodox: 158,353,000
Anglican: 69,602,000 (includes Episcopalian)
Total Christian: 1,455,053,000
Non-Christian:
Islam: 840,221,000
Hinduism: 647,895,000
Buddhism: 307,416,000
Total for these 2: 954,113,000
Chines Folk Religion: 202,756,000 (includes Taoism and Confucianism)
Judaism: 17,981,000
Shintoism: 3,427,000
I'd like to point out that the Lameness Filter won't let me format this nicely btw.
However, even though your numbers are incorrect, I (a practising Christian and Sunday School Teacher) see no reason why ID should be taught as Science (it's not Science), and given that ID detracts from God (others have pointed out how ID implies an imperfect, malicious God) I see no reason why it should be taught in Church, other than as a part of "Heresies that Christians should avoid".
To briefly get back to the court case, one of the reasons that the judgement was made as it was was due to the lies and deceit that the ID proponents had used to get their agenda through.
I am personally offended that so called "Chritians" would deliberately lie to get what they want. They might try excusing themselves by claiming that they didnt exactly lie, but they know they're not fooling God. I for one do not want to stand before God's Throne in the afterlife and explain to Him why I lied to promote Him.
lol
Actually, since there is only one true God, and names serve only to differentiate between similar objects, I would argue that God has no, and needs no name.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
Are you working in genetics ? Because you don't know something doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
- Mutation *CAN* be passed to generation (there's abundant examples. A more simple one is one from of the mutation that can lead to trisomy, but in fact isn't trisomy (3 chromosomes) like the other forms but shuffling parts of the chromosomes (translocation). It is passed to next generation(s).)
- A single mutation doesn't speciate (because to be passed to the next generation, the individual still has to reproduce). But make a little bit more different. Take two groups, set them appart. With time the differences accumulate, and finally after several thousand years the two groups start to really look different. You've ended up with species.
Are you working in the field of genetics ? Are you working in a genetics lab ? Comparing genomes of different species ?
...soon ID proponent will tell that the Internet was intelligently designed by some supreme being, because it is too much complexe to have emerged by mere cooperation of individual scientist. Why not ? After all, the kind of gullible who fall for ID have no more knowledge in electronics, engeneering and computer sciences than in biosciences. And Internet is a wonderful sample of irreduct
Do you have broad knowledge in compared biology ? embryology ?
If you said "no" to one of the above question, maybe you don't know all the facts. You miss some information.
That's what's the most risible with ID's notion of "irreductible complexity".
The whole notion of "that looks very hard to understand for *me*. therefor it must be highly complex. so only god^H^H^H a supreme being could be the architect of such complexity".
If you cannot understand something it doesn't mean you should not try te break it into smaller units, try to understand how they work, how they play together.
"irreductible complexity" is a king of "it's to hard for me, i'm giving up" policy, except that the cowards that encourage it are trying to push it as science into the class room.
"irreductible complexity" is an interesting philosphical topic. But it should stay there, in philosophy.
Biology is about science and scientific process, "giving up because it looks too complex" isn't part of that process.
Genome of creatures are analized and compared. Genomes of known simians and humans has been analyzed, links between some species have been made, lists of gene that make up the diffrence are partly known. For some trait, we can have a rough approximation of the list gene that must mutate to obtain trait in specie B starting with trait in specie A.
Some of the evolutionnary theories that are used to explain the evolution facts, have been re-inforced by new archeological finding. Every now and then, you read in the press about some "Missing evolutionnary link" that was discovered. Although the press article are sensasionalist and over simplified, they do illustrate something : The current evolutionnary theory are ratter good because new findings are concordant with what was "predicted" (or maybe should I say : what the theory predicted we should find in our past, but didn't know yet at the time these predictions were made).
Even if some subtleties are refined (and even less subtle like the question if dinosaurs were more close to birds and had already hot blood) it is a very good model (theory) that supports and explains a lot of known data (facts). But subtelties in a complex model doesn't equals to flawed model that must be ditched. See Intelligent falling.
On the other hand, ID's irreductible complexity looks coherent only to people who have poor scientific knowledge and don't know the latest findings.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
You have medium life of radioactive materials, mitocondrial DNA measurments and others.
For bunnies sakes, that debate is over.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
We should ask this question: Why would someone want to teach kids ID? What is there to gain for an ID proponent?
It's simple really. ID proponents are also just trying to propagate their own genes through natural selection. One way to get a leg up on the competition is to ensure that your kids are more fit to survive in society that other people's kids.
ID is a great tool for this. Get the system changed to include ID, and you might influence other people's kids to stop questioning the system. "Just accept what you're told on faith." In the mean time, ID proponents will teach evolution to their own kids. After all, people who learn to become critical thinkers are more likely to become successful in today's knowledge-based society. Better to only keep the critical thinking for your own kids, and trick everyone else's kids to become dumb order-taking slave workers.
It's a brilliant plan, really.
Just make sure that atheism is not a religion...
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
This thread stinks...
...Like the French
You're very assertive, but did you witness it first-hand? For that matter, did I witness our creation first-hand? The answer to both questions is "no". Both require a fair amount of faith to believe in.
There's a Star Trek: Voyager episode, "Living Witness" (http://www.st-hypertext.com/voy-4/witness.html) that actually provides some though provoking parallels (well, close enough to make my point). Basically, 700 years in the future, a civilization has used fossil records and debree as a means of determining a doctrine that the Voyager crew was hostile. Their purpose for doing so was revisionist, unlike the root of this conversation. They would look at fossil records and theorize certain things and many of the details were in fact, innaccurate. Well worth the watch.
It very much applies to this conversation. We are looking at fossil records and postulating, but who knows whether we're interpreting the data incorrectly. Just recently Slashdot had a story about how some feathered dinosaurs were found fossilized, when the creature in question was previously thought more reptilian than feathered (assuming the discovery was true).
Now, I've said this before, I'll say it again: I don't know whether I believe in ID so-called, as I've never taken the time to understand it, and every reference I hear to it seems to indicate it is a bit different than Creationism. I do believe in Creationism. I do not believe Creationism is incompatible with evolotion (in general) but more specifically, I think our thoeries of evolution are incorrect and thus far, inconclusive. To the extend I think they are compatible, is the extent that I believe a species will adapt to their environment and certain conditions can cause changes, such as people growing taller or whatever. Is that species evolving into another that one day will not become compatible with humans? As far as I'm aware, all humans are compatible with each other respective to the ability to procreate, dispite any other localized differences.
We can live near a nuclear powerplant and become "changed" as well as our offspring, which can possibly become incompatible with both society and procreation with other non-changed humans, is that evolution in action? Is genetically modifying genes and other things, such as foods that we eat, that might cause unpredictable things to happen to us, also evolution in action?
The simple fact is, we don't know for sure that one creature became another. All we're doing is looking at fossils and DNA and thoerizing (is that a word?), similar to the main characteristic of the Voyager episode cited above. With the same conviction that you believe in evolution, so do I believe in Creationism. I've been told more than once that anyone with a brain can see right past the religious dogma and see the "truth". I do have a brain, I have looked at some of the details, and am not completely convinced of the current form of the thoery of evolution. It is not a life endeavor of mine to spend all my time seeking the "truth" anyway, much as it is not a life endeavor of mine to better understand quantum physics. So I make best with what I can, as do you I'm sure.
In any case, I choose to believe in Creationism for many other reasons than I can list here, but I hope I can effectively communicate that I'm not mindless or uneducated and have a fairly open mind. Open mind, not to be confused with easily persuaded or mindless (sometimes when people tell me I need to open my mind what they are really saying is I need to believe what they do). There's an element of doubt in both Creationism and evolution. Each requires faith, I choose the one over the other. Simple as that. Neither of which have been proven or disproven conclusively, and because of that, I cannot possibly be dogmatic for choosing the religious one over evolution, any more than one choosing evolution over Creationism.
Thanks,
Leabre
Call Fido.
Its ancestors used to be wolfs.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Notice the word *could*. Since when does wishful speculation replace the need for real live E-V-I-D-E-N-C-E?
Here's how some scientists think some eyes may have evolved: The simple light-sensitive spot on the skin of some ancestral creature gave it some tiny survival advantage
First of all, where did this "simple light-sensitive spot" on the skin come from? Are you kidding me? Even this much is non-trivial. Second, how would it provide some "tiny survival advantage"? Oh, you mean not only was it light sensitive, but there were already nerves running from it to whatever type of nervous system this creature had, such that it could modify its behavior according to the light level and gain a survival advantage? How convenient. Well, why don't we just stop right here and you can explain to me how all of *this* happened. No need to go any further.
And finally, just because some feature has some tiny survival advantage does not mean that this trait will be spread throughout the population. Let's say that you have a son that has six fingers which gives him a tiny survival advantage (boy, he's a real wiz at those video games!). How does this trait suddenly get propagated to the rest of the population?? Not so easily. Not every random trait gets propagated to the rest of a population.
In fact, eyes corresponding to every stage in this sequence have been found in existing living species.
Congratulations, you have just added to the proof that evolution is a fact. What you have NOT done is shown that Neo-Darwinian evolution is a fact.
Evolution is a fact. Darwinism is a joke.
This is actually a reply to a more specific thread on this topic, but I'm pasting it here because I think it worth the say to a more general audience.... the thread in question is:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=171719&thresho ld=-1&commentsort=1&tid=99&mode=thread&cid=1430287 9
---------------
You're very assertive, but did you witness it first-hand? For that matter, did I witness our creation first-hand? The answer to both questions is "no". Both require a fair amount of faith to believe in.
There's a Star Trek: Voyager episode, "Living Witness" (http://www.st-hypertext.com/voy-4/witness.html) that actually provides some though provoking parallels (well, close enough to make my point). Basically, 700 years in the future, a civilization has used fossil records and debree as a means of determining a doctrine that the Voyager crew was hostile. Their purpose for doing so was revisionist, unlike the root of this conversation. They would look at fossil records and theorize certain things and many of the details were in fact, innaccurate. Well worth the watch.
It very much applies to this conversation. We are looking at fossil records and postulating, but who knows whether we're interpreting the data incorrectly. Just recently Slashdot had a story about how some feathered dinosaurs were found fossilized, when the creature in question was previously thought more reptilian than feathered (assuming the discovery was true).
Now, I've said this before, I'll say it again: I don't know whether I believe in ID so-called, as I've never taken the time to understand it, and every reference I hear to it seems to indicate it is a bit different than Creationism. I do believe in Creationism. I do not believe Creationism is incompatible with evolotion (in general) but more specifically, I think our thoeries of evolution are incorrect and thus far, inconclusive. To the extend I think they are compatible, is the extent that I believe a species will adapt to their environment and certain conditions can cause changes, such as people growing taller or whatever. Is that species evolving into another that one day will not become compatible with humans? As far as I'm aware, all humans are compatible with each other respective to the ability to procreate, dispite any other localized differences.
We can live near a nuclear powerplant and become "changed" as well as our offspring, which can possibly become incompatible with both society and procreation with other non-changed humans, is that evolution in action? Is genetically modifying genes and other things, such as foods that we eat, that might cause unpredictable things to happen to us, also evolution in action?
The simple fact is, we don't know for sure that one creature became another. All we're doing is looking at fossils and DNA and thoerizing (is that a word?), similar to the main characteristic of the Voyager episode cited above. With the same conviction that you believe in evolution, so do I believe in Creationism. I've been told more than once that anyone with a brain can see right past the religious dogma and see the "truth". I do have a brain, I have looked at some of the details, and am not completely convinced of the current form of the thoery of evolution. It is not a life endeavor of mine to spend all my time seeking the "truth" anyway, much as it is not a life endeavor of mine to better understand quantum physics. So I make best with what I can, as do you I'm sure.
In any case, I choose to believe in Creationism for many other reasons than I can list here, but I hope I can effectively communicate that I'm not mindless or uneducated and have a fairly open mind. Open mind, not to be confused with easily persuaded or mindless (sometimes when people te
Your mocking of my personal belief system can only end in jihad, unbeliever!
Damnit, I think I'm confusing my fundamentalists again...
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
Imagine, this verdict from a country with a gigantic statue of a goddess in a majour harbour... ;-)
Oh well, what the hell...
You don't get anywhere without some basic assumptions that you just have to take on faith.
Sadly, many organisms have mutated to have resistance to antibiotics and pesticides.
(this is beneficial to them, not us)
Not so fast Yewbert...
I think it would not be unfair to say atheism can be as much of a belief system as any faith is. This compares to not collecting stamps which is simply nothing.
Atheism is not necesarily that you don't believe God exists. It's more that you believe that God doesn't exist.
And once you're at that point, you, just like people of other faiths, want to let others know of your own belief system in the hope they will benefit from it. So atheists will also preach their beliefs (just as people of other faiths do) maybe with the hope of converting those who are not (yet) atheists. An example of this would be the practice of removing reference to religous influence from theirs and others' lives eg: No prayers in schools, no ten commandments statues, calling the Christmas break 'The Holidays' etc etc.
Some atheists also tend to 'crusade' against 'organised religion' (the reference to organised crime is not accidental) and also push a morally relativistic point of view which attempts to remove the authority of God.
My point is this. All of this stuff above is more than 'not collecting stamps'. Atheism is as an active a faith as Catholicism or Islam or Judaism is.
Why would anyone want to use a text editor that is not vi?
Yep. The TripMaster Monkey Karma Whoring Method still works! Gotta love it! The proven method for Slashdot karma whores everywhere!!
No argument there, although personally I'd prefer that the focus was on teaching how to recognise evolution as a scientific theory rather than simply throwing established facts at students.
If students are simply taught evolution because we know it's right without clearly demonstrating why it's more right than the next "fact" that someone on the street (or in the media), tells them, I'm not sure it really teaches them much at all. It certainly shouldn't be surprising if they come out of the education system completely missing the point.
When it comes to religion their can be truth without fact. Take for instance the story of the prodigal son. Was there really such a family Christ was referencing?...probably not. Is there "truth" about the human condition?...certainly!
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
Clever lad, you've proved that "omnipotent" is a self-contradicting term (given your definition). However, we didn't need a Goedelian proof of this: the idea of "creating a mass so heavy that one cannot lift it" will suffice as a demonstration, and I think that's been around longer.
The point you've missed is that God doesn't need to be "omnipotent" in the sense you've offered; he just needs to have root access to the universe. If the universe is (for example) a simulation running on God's computer, then he's got the drop on all of us, "omnipotent" or not.
The whole "omnipotence can not exist" thing is a distraction.
So much for the idea of presenting our young minds with a number of schools of thought
The judge says that you cannot take non-science and present it in a government run classroom as science, and that you cannot hijack the FORCE OF GOVERNMENT for the explicit purpose of PROMOTING OR SUPRESSING AND RELIGION over any other.
These people created pseudo-science ID in direct response to the Supreme Court ruling that government schools could not be used to promote one religion's Biblical creationism, and it was explicitly created with the intent of subverting that rule to push their religion in government classrooms anyway, and the various school board members who instituted the ID policy had made numerous public statments that they were using their governmental powers for the purpose of establishing government favor for their personal religious beliefs.
presenting our young minds with a number of schools of thought, and giving them the ability to examine the evidence and choose between them responsibly.
Highschool teachers and highschool students are ill equipped to critique and compare competing theories of quantum mechanics involving extensive and detailed and complex evidence.
Highschool classrooms are NOT THE BATTLEGROUND FOR COMPETEING SCIENCE THEORIES.
The proper battleground is scientific peer review amongst the professionals and experts who actually have PhDs and expertice in the evidence and the peroper analysis of that evidence.
The purpose of highschool science class is to present an understanding of the scientific method, and to present an overview of the current state of thorought tested thoroughly supported science that has the general acceptance of the relevant professional community.
Highschool students must know the FACT that evolution is accepted by essentially 100% of professional biologists. Highschool students must know the FACT that evolution is considered the very foundation of the entire field of biology by professional biologists. Highschool students must know the FACT that evolution has made predictions and has been endlessly tested and has survived expert critical peer review for nearly one hundred and fifty years and EARNED the it's compete acceptance by expert biologists. Highschool students must know the FACT that there is a staggering quantity of evidence for evolution that has been revied and accepted by professional biologists.
And beyond those facts, students need a general familiarity with the basics of the farious major fields of science... including a basic familarity with what the professional biological community considers the fundamental theory of the filed. A basic familiarity with evolution. You don't need to believe evolution, but but a science class does need to accurately reflect the FACT that it is *the* fundamental basis of they entire field of modern biology. And students really should be presented with a sampling of the staggering evidence in support of evolution, to help understand *why* the entire biologist community accepts evolution and uses it as the foundation of their entire field.
Highschool science class is not a battleground for competing theories. It is for presenting an accurate reflection and overview of the current state of science as tested and understood and accepted by actual scientists and professionals in the various fields.
my decision to homeschool my children
I humbly suggest you add the following two items to your homeschool science curriculm:
(1) What fraction of professional biologists accept evolution; And
(2) Why?
You can reseach them yourself, or make it a research project for your kids to answer. It makes for an excellent lesson plan for teaching/learning about science. Your kids can handle that sort of free-form investigation, right?
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Maybe I'm missing something, but what's to explain?
If two populations of the same species undergo different selection pressures, different types of individuals with correspondingly different genes are going to survive and reproduce. If the populations have no breeding contact, for whatever reason, then they are going to diverge over time.
Religion, like science, is a search for truth. Belief or denial of the truth does not change the reality one bit. Believing God exists does not make that existance true, just as denying God exists does not make that same existance false. There can be only one truth.
So we all have our own "beliefs" that we have come to for various reasons. I say "beliefs" as no science or religion can be proved 100% true. In the end, every one of us makes a decision based on our observations. Scientific observation is certaintly a good one, as it is reproducable. But that should not and does not negate personal observations and experiences that may lead to more religious beliefs.
My take on things is that a healthy mind will evaluate (and constantly re-evaluate) observations of all types to form and refine their "beliefs." In the end, there is still only one truth. I intend to keep my mind open and continue to observe and evaluate. Also, I intend to pass those experiences on to my children to help them get ahead in finding the truth. It would be horridly irreponsible of me not to! Quite possibly they will form their beliefs similar to my own, having the same information. But perhaps they will see it differently than I do, or have experiences and make observations that will help me build on my own beliefs to come closer to the truth.
Again, this is just my personal opinion, but the state of science and religion (at least as the general public takes part in them) is terrible. People follow ideas and conclusions like sheep, with no conscious thought, evaluation, or observation of their own. People accept the most popular scientific ideas as they appear fashionable. People herd into churches because they were told it would make them "good people." But they don't listen and experience and decide what they believe on their own.
So may people are just lost. They don't believe in anything, scientific or religious. Of course, they think they do have beliefs! But being part of the crowd without conscious thought has little meaning. Believing a scientific theory without thinking what it means and if it makes sense is worthless. Believing in a religion because your parents told you to means nothing if you don't come to the belief while using your eyes, ears, and mind at the same time.
So to end my little speech, it seems to be poor parenting to not pass on experiences and observations to your children. This should include reproducable science as well as personal experiences and ideas. Let your children soak it in, explore it all, and when they have lived a little more of life for themselves they may surprise you with a better handle on what the final truth's of existance are than you had ever considered!
I vote damned smart! Goes with the teritory.
You know. Omnipotent, Omnipowerfull, & Omnipresent.
God could have created everything from evolution.
As to your comment on a preceived hidden agenda I would say.
Not all who push evolution have an agenda to say God does not exist but many DO!
For those that do. I have nothing to say at this time in jest.
I have only this to say. He does exist. Those that don't accept his Son are doomed to burn in a lake of fire. For all this shit the likes of you give the likes of me. I and I'm sure many others are just going to LOVE the vindication. Nuff said.
Replies WILL be ignored.
A good scientific theory is both coherent and elegant. Did you ever stop and wonder why the universe is both coherent and elegant?
Evolution is a fact. Darwinism is a joke.
It does no such thing, for you are begging the question by assuming that your god exists in the first place, and that it's not subject to the most elementary limits of logic in the second.
When did I do that? Do you assume that anyone who doesn't accept your reasoning must be a theist? As I stated, the "assumption that you could limit God rather than the other way around [is] at least as controversial as that which you intend to prove." Premises need to be supported, too, even when they're hypotheticals.
All I'm saying is that it's impossible to know everything. And I'm backing that statement up with the well-worn technique of saying, ``If you were right, that would lead inevitably to a contradiction; therefore, you're worng.''
The "contradiction" you speak of is unfortunately wrapped in a bundle of "equivocation", much like your earlier post about unicorns as one-horned gazelles (i.e., you shifted the meaning and then applied what would be true in that case to the original term). It's impossible for *you* to be omniscient, but you aren't claiming to be God, are you? You are finite, mortal, limited. God, supposedly, is not. So what makes you think that God must fit into your (limited grasp of) logic in order to exist? There's a word for that...hubris? Chutzpah?
An omnipotent god is not impossible because I have defined it thus. It is impossible because omnipotence itself is impossible, for much the same reason that there is no such thing as a largest prime number. Both premises lead quite quickly, and most inexorably, to irresolvable contradiction.
It seems quite a different matter to me. The "largest prime number" is a limitation on what is conceived of as infinite. The limitation leads to the contradiction, not the infinity. Omnipotence might be compared to the infinity, but not the arbitrary limit you'd like to impose on it. So for you to say that omnipotence is impossible "for much the same reason that there is no such thing as a largest prime number" is like saying that infinity is impossible and therefore there must be a largest prime number. You're contradicting yourself, in other words. Interesting.
Would you accuse me of being an irrational fool for pointing out that there's no such thing as the largest prime number? No? So, why am I an irrational fool for pointing out that there's no most-powerful being?
I believe I stated that the greatest fool is the one who thinks he has a 'proof'. That goes both ways, but it has nothing to do with what anyone believes is actually the case, only what he thinks he can prove.
Amen to that.
Evolutionists are just trying to intellectualize atheism to give
them false hope about escaping future judgement.
insertion mutations kill information by shifting a sequence.
So how the hell did we come from single celled organisms?
macro evolution didnt happen!
Then there's bullshit about how we invented religion becuase of
our reasoning capabilities...as a placebo...
A Purely non scientific argument raised by the shivering atheist.
We aren't talking about belief systems here...just evolution and ID (scientifically)
So to all u evolutionists out there...get a life...
Or better still, get God.
an Anonymous Coward wrote:
The nature of the universe is irrelevant; all you're doing is pushing back the boundaries. If we're all just bits in a computer, all the exact same questions apply to that universe, the one in which the computer lives. And that's granting you the notion that ``universe'' is anything other than ``all that exists.'' Perhaps you'd prefer Dr. Sagan's term, ``Cosmos.''
Only if you're more interested in the flickerings on the cave wall.
Cheers,
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
Oh please. There are examples of intermediary steps in eye development throughout the animal kingdom, from simple eye spots all the way to mammalian eyes. Each step is fully functional and does what the organism possessing it requires it to do.
Congratulations. You have just demonstrated that evolution is a fact. What you have not demonstrated is that this has anything to do the Neo-Darwinism.
Here's a couple of questions for you: If the eye is in fact designed, why does it suffer from the imperfection of the blind spot?
These are called design constraints. They are found in just about every design activity you can think of.
BTW, did you know that the gene that controls eye development in both vertebrates and insects is 94% identical. That's not just two different species. That's two different phyla. 94% the same.
So, the design constraint is that you must use more or less the same gene controller for the development of the insect eye and the vertebrate eye. How's that for a design challenge?
Evolution is a fact. Darwinism is a joke.
"react, adapt, adjust and change"
According to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, they do no such thing.
"The theory of evolution doesn't need a clear definition of "species" for all organisms."
That's bullshit. The existence of species is an underlying tenant of evolution, since evolution describes how species adapt and change over time. If the word species is not well defined and meaningful, the theory of evolution can not be either.
"as they reproduce sexually (wich is dominant over asexual reproduction)"
Sexual interaction is not a prerequisite for reproduction in single celled organisms, so I don't understand your claim that it is the dominant form of reproduction (since is isn't really a form of reproduction in single celled organisms at all). Even if it were, many single celled organisms can exchange genetic information with organisms which are clearly morphologically, and genetically distinct from themselves. Multicellular organisms can interact sexually only with members of their own species.
"I know what I'm talking about, I'm a (French) PhD student in evolutionnary biology."
I don't buy authority arguments. I won't accept things unless they make sense to me, regardless of the source.
The answer to "will this program ever halt?" is always "yes" for any real program.
Naturally, you weren't talking about real programs that actually execute (and are thus capable of halting in a literal sense), but rather the abstract concept of "program" and halting-in-theory. That being so, the available range of answers you've offered ("yes" and "no") is insufficient. It's not a case of not knowing the answer -- it's a case of knowing that neither "yes" nor "no" are correct in certain cases.
Not everyone is going to agree with my conclusion here, because not everyone is willing to consider a logical calculus that deviates from the pure yes/no true/false of classical logic. To those that are so constrained I ask, what is the basis for your dogmatism? Anyone sufficiently well-versed in logic should know that classical logic can't prove its own correctness, so why insist on it?
proof, n. A demonstration that a conclusion is implied by certain premises and axioms.
My opinion is that this is one of the hundreds of examples where many Americans (I am not generalizing) try and force their idea onto others. Its happened since America's founding, in the example of manifest destiny and in the current century in Iraq where America is forcing "democracy" on a foreign nation. Continue spreading the idea of intelligent design to others who wish to know about it. For the rest of us, leave it alone. Don't force a religious idea into a science classroom and call it an alternative view to evolution.
ID requires belief because it is untestable.
Not necessarily true. If we found intelligent patterns encoded in DNA, such as Pi to a billion places or 3D images of geometric shapes, that would tend to true-ify it.
The very idea of whether there is or isn't a creator is completely out of bounds. It would be like proposing that there's an invisible elephant in another, completely inaccessible dimension.
ID does not require a supernatural creator. Us humans may create life ourselves one day. That would not make us supernatural.
Table-ized A.I.
> Nothing in ID can be subject to testing by the scientific method
Not true. ID proposes that the design is purposeful.
Yet consider the tailbone. Presumably it has a purpose. Yet if so, why construct it of a bunch of fused, degenerate vertebra instead of making it a single, solid bone process?
Evolution explains it without breaking a sweat. It's merely the remnants of a tail that's largely evolved away.
ID, not so.
And what about the even more embarassing fact of genes that are not expressed because of evolution, but still partially exist, and are expressed occasionally, such as actual tails on humans, or occasional legs on whales or snakes?
Evolution explains that quite well: When evolution favors getting rid of a useless body part, it's faster to disable or block genes that construct that part than it is to somehow grind out of existence a whole chunk of DNA.
ID cannot explain it as there is no need for these useless genes to be there if they are not supposed to be expressed as part of design.
And now, the sadly not-a-punchline.
Wait for it....
No, the devil did not create the mutations that make a whale or snake have a leg.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
You see? If you'd had a better grounding in science, you wouldn't be confused about this. EVERYTHING isn't taught in science class... SCIENCE is taught there-- natural explanations supported by evidence using the scientific method!
And did you know that science is rooted in natural philosophy?
If you drop a stone and it falls to the ground five times, will it fall to the ground the sixth time?
Logically speaking, the answer is "no". That would be because you cannot reason logically from the specific (five instances) to the general (the sixth instance). This is the fallacy ofinduction. You can only reason logically from the general to the specific (deduction).
If there is no logical reason reason that the stone will fall the sixth time, then what reason is there?
There is only a philosophical reason. We see that the universe behaves in an orderly way, and we assume that it will continue to behave this way because it was somehow constructed this way. This is natural philosophy and it is the only justification we have in putting any faith at all in the scientific method.
Maybe folks should be required to study a little philosophy before they are allowed to study science.
Evolution is a fact. Darwinism is a joke.
"ID is religious argument, not a scientific one."
What is the difference between a religious argument and a scientific one?
"It fails to pass a number of basic threshold scientific tests, such as the principle of parsimony."
The term simple is hard to define, and largely subjective. The principle of parsimony is just a scientific sounding way of saying that what seems like the simpler answer, probably is. Obviously, some people will feel that ID is the simpler answer, while others will not.
Ksisanth wrote:
If you had read the next sentence, you would see that I went on to discuss the original term, itself. To wit: ``It wouldn't be too hard to prove that any of the magical properties they're supposed to have are impossible; that's all you'd need to prove that they mythical variety of unicorn doesn't exist.'' I really don't appreciate people lying about my own words.
Ah, yes. The old, ``You're too dumb to understand God'' argument. Number 93, if I'm not mistraken. Or were you going more for #31? Or perhaps #328?
Just because humans have limits doesn't mean that they're incapable of understanding the unlimited. Anybody who's managed to wrap his head around transfinite math can attest to that. And it's not that hard, either--a quick glance at the graph of y=1/x should be more than enough to understand that there really is no y that satisfies the equation when x=0. It's a simple matter of extrapolation. If you're incapable of it, 'tain't my problem.
No. ``Omnipotence'' can only have one meaning: able to do anything. Come up with even one thing that can't be done--name a ``y'' for which y=1/0, for example--and the limit becomes quite real, not arbitrary.
And I believe that anybody who tosses out logic for dogmatic reasons is an idiot. And if you really think that every mathematician, logician, theoretician, and scientist since before Plato is a fool, then I think you're an anti-intellectual asshole.
Cheers,
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
This debate has put the general public's ignorance of the scientific method on display. It shows that, at the highschool level, there is a need for a general "introduction to science" requirement. ID would fit perfectly into the section on the differences between pseudo sciences and real science. This would serve our students far better than sort of sweeping it under the rug in biology class, and equip the next generation of decision makers to quickly recognize future attacks on science.
The real problem now is that ID proponents can spew "scientific" sounding ridiculousness and the majority of people do not immediately recognize it as such. All it takes is the most basic understanding of the scientific method.
Actually, atheism is not necessarily a worldview. It is generally recognized ( http://www.infidels.org/news/atheism/intro.html#at heisms/ ) as being divided into two camps: those of the strong atheists, who choose to believe that deities do not exist, which is in inded a worldview, and those fo the weak atheists, who simply choose not to believe in any deity, which is really a choice to not have a religious worldview.
I want to hug you for this. For practical and other reasons I won't, but this is such a breath of fresh air compared to the unphilosophy that predominates here that I just wanted to express the sentiment.
You could also foil a supposedly-omniscient god just by asking it to tell you what you'll do next. Whatever the god tells you, do something else.
That's pretty retarded. An all-powerful god has the ability (by definition) to force you to do anything regardless of your will. So if he says "You're going to clean the windows", you may think "Haha, I'll go feed the dog!" only to find that your body is already cleaning the windows.
Warning: This post is not an argument for the existence of god, as you seem to think every reply is.
Oh, wait, he was serious. Make that +1 Scary.
That's a great metaphor, DNA as a software program of sorts; it makes it somewhat easier to understand how species can change over time.
Who's to say that God didn't create a common DNA for certain species, and derive more specific species from that base DNA, because it works so well?
The DNA in all species, from plants to bacteria to humans, is pretty much the same; it is composed of many pairs of the same 4 base molecules, and the chemical machinery to use and copy DNA is the same; all that is different between us an a rose is the actual code involved.
Interesting, but the species are still mosquitos, they didn't become frogs or blu-jays, or grow gills or learn to spin webs, or change phylum. In the end, they're still mosquitos.
If the DNA code in mosquitos change, no matter through what mechanism (radiation, chemicals, time, etc.) if the change is big enough, it can result in ANY kind of creature that's out there.
No data, no cry
Actually it was founded on death and destruction. More than 50 millions of our people died
at the hands of the christians because they didn't believe in your christ.
The constitution said that every men were equal, the framers of the constitution forgot about
the rights of women and when they talked about men they didn't mean anyone who wasn't white.
Now that the courts actually apply the constitution, this pisses off the fundy christians who
talk about the intent of the framers.
The religious ones among the framers of the constitution were actually the biggest supporters
of the separation of church and state because they didn't want a king who would impose a state
religion.
The christian fundamentalists are just as dangerous as the fundamentalist muslims
In other words, what the fuck is your point?
You write:
Tell me God, ``yes'' or ``no,'' will you answer, ``no''?
And you are making the same fundemental mistake as the
ID crowd. You propose to experiment on God. This was
the third temptation of Christ. God's answer would not be
"yes" or "no" but rather a question about you're finiteness
such as He answered Job.
Trying to pin God down as you do, or with some brittle theory
as the ID crowd does, or with nails on a cross as the Romans
did leads to new and unexpected results rather than accomplishing
your goal. And, the results are never the same so that
reproducibility is not an option. This is why it is written
you shall not test the Lord your God.
You were a single celled organism, straight after conception. This single-celled organism grew into you, passing through a stage incredibly similar to fish embryos, including gills.
"Software is too expensive to build cheaply"
Interesting (and of course, obviously logical given evolutionnary advantages) : do you have references on such studies performed on multi-cellular animals ?
The only example I know of was the bacteria I mentionned.
Also, in contrary of your exemple, the bacteria used recombinase to increase mutation rate. (For the non-bio-geeks out there : works by shuffling functionnal units, instead of randomly damaging DNA. This is a mutation method that has a better meaningful/buggy result ratio. For example: Same technique is used in our body to produce new antibodies)
I definitly should try to find again the paper.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
if you do not mod the parent up, you are a gay mod. same goes for he Who has no M.O.D-points
Okay here's one for you: explain the eye. It either works or it doesn't. There is no evolutionary intermediate form that would function so how could it have evolved?
Classic mistake.... the 'I don't know how so it is impossible without devine intervention' excuse.
Science has already demonstrated that you need only a few modifications to allow normal brain tissue to become light sensitive.
Does that also include all the necessary neurological adaptations that are necessary so that the organism can actually make sense of those light pulses? I didn't think so.
And an eye with a few components still can give you an advantage over others that don't have it:
-Take out the muscles that move it around, you would have to turn your head to look at different things, but it would still be usefull.
-Take out the focussing stuff, you would only see a few things really clear, but when a large blob comes at you at high speed you might step aside while someone without this less usefull eye would get hit/eaten.
Oh yeah, that's assuming that there is optical/motor coordination which is necessary to make that primitive eye the least bit useful. And if it is not useful, why, again, would it have selective advantage?
-Take out color, black and white tigers still look dangerous enough without the yellow.
-Take out the transparent stuff and place a thing layer of skin in its place, you would get even worse focusing but one could still see blobs moving around.
Once again, an eye is not all that useful and would have no adaptive advantage unless you also have all of the neurological wiring in place so that the organism can make cognitive sense of any light pulses that might stimulate its nervous system, and initiate any motor activities that it thinks would be useful in a response to those light pulses.
-Remove the fluid stuff and place the retina close to the skin, you could still detect sudden changes in the lighting.
Do them all and you are very close to the simple lightsensitive braincell.
An organism does not live by a simple lightsensitive braincell alone.
I am not saying that is the way it happened, but I could think a possible path up in a few seconds without the need to drag some higher being into the picture.
Good for you. But there is one other thing that science requires: E-V-I-D-E-N-C-E. Your wishful hypothesis is just that -- unless you can cough up some evidence.
The whole 'irreducibly complex' stuff is a joke,
Ha ha, I'm laughing. I'm still waiting for someone to show me how random activity can produce order. I'm all ears. For example, there are two kinds of biological reproduction: asexual (mitosis) and sexual (meiosis). Now, meiosis is the more advance form, and so therefore, presumably, mitosis somehow evolved into meiosis. But the first time meiosis (accidentally?) happened, it would not really have had any survival benefit. So there is no reason that it should be "selected" into the population. It performed the same function as mitosis. And besides, for meiosis to survive, it needs the support of two completely different but complimentary reproductive systems: one male and one female. So we have the situation where meiosis has no real survival benefit. Plus, the infrastructure needed to support it did not exist at all. So this aberrant mutation is one of the many which vanished in the fog of history, right? Well, no, apparently not. But Neo-Darwinism can't explain why it should have survived at all, let alone how two completely independent reproductive systems evolved simultaneously to support it. I would be very impressed if you could show me evidence that a random process managed all that.
the being that is supposed to do that sort of stuff would need to be even more complex...
So, you don't think there might be any aliens out there that are more advanced than us?
I don't disbelieve evolution but neither
Evolution is a fact. Darwinism is a joke.
.... "when you get right down to it", if the human body *is* designed, it most definitely was NOT *intelliently* designed. I could could toss a list longer than your arm of design flaws that *I* would correct, if I were the one given the job of designing "Human Body" version 2.0.
cya,
john
Imagine all the people...
God is mildly amused at your clever use of logic. But he is not mocked.
Evolution is a fact. Darwinism is a joke.
BWAHAHAHAHAHA! BAAWA!
Oh, my, that's rich.
Tell me, which Christ is it that was tempted? The one that ascended from a room near Jerusalem where the disciples were seated 'round a table, outdoors after supper at Bethany, several weeks later at Mt. Olivet, or not at all? Because, like, I'd want to make sure I wasn't tempting the worng Christ and all.
Anyway, the reason it's written that you shouldn't tempt your god has nothing to do with his wristwear. It's written that way for the same reason that the Wizard of Oz is allergic to small dogs.
Cheers,
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
I believe that evolution is a fact. I also believe that Neo-Darwinian theory is nonsense.
I am stating this just to let you know that not everyone who disagrees with Neo-Darwinism is a fundamentalist/creationist.
Open your mind. It's good for you.
Evolution is a fact. Darwinism is a joke.
I don't usually read past the default threshold here. Usually I don't have a reason. But a quick check of the first page (there's two pages, also rare) shows almost no posts under 5. And they all agree. And there isn't much new to explain in any of them.
We cannot accept what we observe as fact, because we don't even know how we observe what happens. We do not know how consciousness works.
- I don't know that germs exist, because I've never seen them, and even if I had, I don't "know" that they cause disease--it's just a postulate.
- I don't know that the Earth is round, because I've never been in space to see the Earth from the right perspective. The apparent roundness that scientists speak of could be an optical illusion, or a mistake--they've made them before, you know.
- I don't know that atoms exist. I've never seen them. They're just a postulate that happen to fit the facts.
- I don't "know" that WWII happened, or for that matter, whether anything before a certain day in Dec 1969 happened. I wasn't there. I guess I'll withhold judgement on all that other stuff, like Caesar, Jesus, etc. Interesting postulates, though. Maybe someday I'll "know" with absolute certainty that anything outside my own mind exists.
- I don't know that the Earth revolves around the sun.
- And so on, ad infinitum...
Science does not offer the certitude of religion, but then again, neither does religion. Science is the only flashlight we have available to find out about the world around us. It isn't perfect or all-powerful, and it doesn't address Truth with a capital "T", or for that matter any absolutes at all. I read a criticism of science the other day that I really liked -- "Scientists don't really KNOW any of this. All they have is a theory that happens to fit the facts." That's pretty much true, as long as we keep in mind that scientists are the only ones with a process that involves fact-finding, logic, experiments, and revision to ensure that the theory does, after all, come as close as we can to fitting the facts as we know them. All the other camps are just saying "goddidit" and waving their hands mysteriously. That approach contributes nothing at all to our understanding of the world, and in fact undermines our knowledge by discouraging critical thinking.Speaking of critical thinking, I find it bizarre that someone can flirt so heavily with epistemelogical nihilism, but only when it comes to this particular scientific theory. I've come across a lot of people who, from their explanations, are only trying to be conscientious skeptics, and they too adopt they whole "hey, we weren't there, so it takes just as much faith as creationism!" line. But they would never apply that "we can't REALLY know" approach to the court system, or to the germ theory (and it is a theory, by the way) when their child is sick, or to any other aspect of human existence. Their epistemelogical nihilism clicks on and off like a lightswitch, and it's only on when they're talking about evolution. By their logic, medical schools should devote equal time to teaching that demonic possession causes illness as they do to this "germ theory." Germ theory is, after all, only a theory, and we don't really know that it's correct--it just happens to fit the facts, and since there is the "element of doubt" in all fields of study, then all are of equivalent value. This position is obviously absurd, and I doubt you could find many creationists or ID advocates to support it, but as soon as we bring up evolution then they want to challenge the very foundations of thought. You never see people run so quickly to question the nature of "knowledge," "facts," and "conclusions" as when their "knowledge" isn't supported by "facts" that support their desired "conclusions." "What do we really know, after all?" can usually be translated as, "the facts do not logically support the conclusion I'm comfortable with."
To say that is to suggest that evolution is a fact. That is fine by me because I believe that evolution is a fact.
But what you say says nothing about whether the Neo-Darwinian explanation of evolution is in the least bit accurate.
Evolutionists seem to make statements like these frequently, as if they bolster Neo-Darwinism. They do not.
Neo-Darwinism is, as much as I can tell, a bunch of nonsense.
Evolution is a fact. Darwinism is a joke.
I am not SPock.
http://www.google.ca/search?client=firefox-a&rls=
You'll find I used "a process for evaluating empirical knowledge", as required by the Wikipedia definition. I also "systematically acquired knowledge that is verifiable", as required by Oregon State University. I'd say what I did had a great deal to do with science. It just didn't come to a conclusion you wanted to hear. Just because it's an observation from my driveway over a couple of years doesn't make it any less scientific than a government-funded research group digging huge holes in the desert. I admit, my chances of publication are significantly smaller, however.....
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
Ha! that's a good one. There is no evidence that micro-evolution has anything to do with macro-evolution.
This has been observed, e.g. several new mosquito species have evolved in the London subway.
And you know what? My Great Dane does not mate with my Chiuaua. So I guess those are two different species as well.
Evolution is a fact. Darwinism is a joke.
I must have missed something in graduate school. When was it proved that there is no God?
The existence of god is still up for debate; nothing has been proven. It's a gross simplification, but I am going to lump all of the posters into two groups: The first is trying to define what "god" is. The other group is trying to define what "god" is not. Feel free to draw a Venn diagram. So there is a boundary that separates what god is and is not. Some folks (first group) have faith that god is defined to be consistent with their beliefs. So from their perspective, religion being what it is (slow), the boundary of what god is (or religion, or whatever) does not change much with time.
However, much of the other group sees the same boundary change rapidly-- they have learned what god is not, through science, experimentation, experience, etc. For example: Lightning and thunder are not really god bowling in heaven, though not too long ago, it could easily "correctly" interpreted as a sign from god. So, yeah. God is not lightning. (Or rather, lightning is not god.)
The problem here is that many people (from one perspective or from both-- the religions scientist, maybe?) see a contradiction, and it agitates them.
Personally, I think the hard-core ID side needs to get a grip, and quit thinking that science is chipping away at the rigid walls of religion. Think of it this way: The more often we can show something to NOT be supernatural or devine, the more incredible the unexplainable becomes. With science, your god is not getting smaller, but bigger, and much more complex.
You're very assertive, but did you witness it first-hand? For that matter, did I witness our creation first-hand? The answer to both questions is "no". Both require a fair amount of faith to believe in.
Did the trial at Dover actually take place? Did you actually go there and witness it first hand? Or are you simply assuming it did given reasonable and sufficient evidence that it did occur, and nothing soundly verifiable to the contrary.
Did birds evolve from reptiles? Well I don't know that they did, but then I technically don't know that I wrote the comment you replied to - perhaps I was simply created a moment ago with prearranged memories of having written such a comment. Dropping pointless solipsist thinking, what do I actually know? I know that there are an awful lot of fossils that provide a remarkably rich array of intermediary forms that all fit chronologically together to make a very plausible line of descent showing slow but steady morphological changes. I know that genetically birds and reptiles share a suprising amount in common, to the point where scientists can flip a single genetic switch and produce chickens with scales instead of feathers. I know that speciation in the wild has been observed, and I know that given a sufficiently forceful and directed selection process huge morphological differences can be generated even within a single species (see dog, and pigeon breeders for instance, or rose growers for fairly significant morphological change coupled with speciation). I know that the fossil record provides plenty of other rich and detailed examples of transitional forms and series. I know that the concept of evolution makes rational sense to me. So while I didn't witness reptiles evolving, over the course of hundreds of millions of years, into birds, there is an awful lot of evidence that makes such an explanation entirely plausible, a lot of evidence that will require significant alternative explanation should something else be the case, and, as far as I can tell, very little evidence for the explanations that you seem to be forwarding. Weighing the likelihoods of the various possibilities, it seems that reptiles evolving into birds is far and away the best explanation we have on hand at the moment.
If I hold a book up and prepare to drop it then it is entirely possible that the book will simply fly up and rest against the ceiling when I do let go. Regardless of what has happened in the past the future is not written (at least, not in any script you or I are privy to), and there is no way that you or I can know what will happen when I actually drop the book - certainly neither of us have actually witnessed it; we can't see into the future. It is, then, an act of faith to assume that the book will fall to the floor, just as much as it is an act of faith that the book will fly up to the ceiling. The fact that both beliefs are matters of faith does not preclude the fact that, given all that we know, one is a far more likely explanation than the other.
Jedidiah.
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From my extremely limited knowledge of the case, it seems that the issue (and the judge's job in this case) is not to decide which theory is correct. There are arguments for and against both theories. The issue is whether both theories should be given due investigation.
Both Intelligent Design and Evolution can be considered theories, and both should be examined and researched scientifically. Both have underlying presuppositions. Both sets of assumptions are irrelevant to the veracity of their truthfulness. The assumptions are either true or untrue, regardless of your personal view on said assumptions. (The majority of people have a problem with this point, regardless if they are Christians waving their ID banners, or secularists waving their evolution banners.)
As long as it is possible that a theory's underlying assumptions could be true, then the theory should be scientifically investigated. Since the underlying assumptions of both ID and evolution could be true, they should both be investigated.
Refusing to investigate a particular theory on the basis of its underlying assumptions is bad science. This has happened with evolution before, and the tables are now being turned and it is happening to ID.
Once it is established that either could be true, it becomes an issue of investigating at the evidence for (and against) both, and building scientific arguments on both sides. However, this is not the issue at hand.
The judge seems to have denied the veracity of a theory (ID) on the basis that science can neither prove nor disprove said theory's assumptions. Put another way, the judge ruled against investigating theory #2, because it disagrees with the assumptions of theory #1. This is a textbook definition of bad science, or, in this case, bad politics enforcing bad science. This is a disturbing trend, and is just as bad as when the Catholic Church forbade many scientific advances in the name of religion, during the middle ages.
endoplasmicMessenger wrote:
Dude...we're talking about brain cells here. You know, those things that're already doing that neurological stuff that makes sense of those electromagnetic signal thingies?
Okay, fill your ears with this.
Go to the toy store. Buy a bag of marbles--at least a double handful.
Go to the shoe store. Get a shoebox.
Toss the marbles into the shoebox. Be certain to do this randomly!
Observe as the marbles spontaneously arrange themselves into the exact same arrangement as a beehive, and, hey-presto! What have we got? Why, order from chaos, of course!. For that matter, just try to keep the marbles from arranging themselves in a nice, neat, orderly fashion.
This whole ``order can never arise from randomness'' thing is pure bullshit. How do you think entropy works? If an ordered state is more stable than a disordered one, then the ordered state will persist where the disordered one won't. It's why astronomical bodies are (generally) spherical, it's why crystals are so pretty, and it's why you're here. So get over it, already: your god is completely superfluous, thankyouverymuch.
Cheers,
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
These are called design constraints. They are found in just about every design activity you can think of.
Every design has constraints, but none of them require the optic nerve to go where it does. Squid eyes, for example, have no blind spot, can see in very dim light, are more sensitive to color differences than ours and move the lens rather than bending it (preventing focusing problems, like the ones that lead to reading glasses) - and have no known major downside.
From a ways back: Okay here's one for you: explain the eye. It either works or it doesn't. There is no evolutionary intermediate form that would function so how could it have evolved?
I really don't understand how you could say "It either works or it doesn't". There's a huge, obvious groups of people that have partly working vision:
People that need corrective lenses or lasik surgery
People that need cornea transplants
People that use glacoma medication
People with macular degeneration and other diseases
Even if they eventually go blind (it doesn't work), they go from normal sight (it works) through a period of slowly degrading vision (it partly works). If vision was always all-or-nothing, we wouldn't have "needs corrective lenses" on driver's licenses or have distinctions between "legally blind" and "completely blind".
As for intermediate stages, any vision is better than no vision. Just knowing which way the sun or moon is helps with navigation, and freezing when a shadow falls on you can help you avoid predators - and neither one of these uses even requires a real eye.
I pour toasty grits on my balls.
You raised a very good point, which there was no plausible answer for until a few years ago.
I strongly suggest the book "Starlight and Time" by Dr. Russell Humphreys.
That you doubt that God would "trick" us by creating the "appearance" of a universe (i.e. light in-transit just for "show") is a very good point. It is, in fact, one of the motivations behind Dr. Humphreys's research.
He has put forth an ID theory that seems to offer a plausable answer to this particular issue. The first section is a layman's version, while the second second section is more technical. (Equations from General Relativity, how they apply, etc)
This won't suddenly become 'quite efficient' in the next 100 or even 1000 years, people are getting taller, not shorter (this is caused by better nutricion and medical care while growing up), this will become a bigger problem in the future.
That's why God invented tobacco, famine and poverty. Duh.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I don't have a problem with evolution per se, but I do have a problem with bad science being rammed down the public's throat as "fact" because any challenge to that bad science is immediately tarred with the big, nasty "pushing your religion" brush.
...? Which evolution would that be ... Darwins', Mayer's, Gould's or Dawkins'? They all are hailed as proponents of this beautiful but flawed theory, and they all contradict each so damned often that it is impossible to reconcile their individual notions about the "facts". If evolution is not fatally flawed as a hypothesis, why all the unresolved contradictions?
Teaching "evolution"
Prove this for yourself sometime. Ask almost any group of "evolutionary scientists" to define some simple term like "species", and watch the stream of contradictions. If the notion of "species" cannot be clearly defined, then what is it that we are talking about in the first place I ask?
What is the difference between a religious argument and a scientific one?
A good scientific argument is one that starts from facts and observable phenominon and then discusses possible solutions as possible solutions. It is not afraid to say "in these cases we don't have all the answers."
The term simple is hard to define, and largely subjective. The principle of parsimony is just a scientific sounding way of saying that what seems like the simpler answer, probably is. Obviously, some people will feel that ID is the simpler answer, while others will not.
I think that the phrase "One should not needlessly multiply entities" is clear enough. The ID folks think that it is necessary to posit a creator as a sceintific theory, but I find no reason why this is necessary. If the creator is not *necessary,* then the existance or lack thereof of a creator entity is beyond the scope of the scientific theory.
The real problem is that people want to see a Grand Unified Theory of Science and Religion, and that is not going to be something that is accepted in scientific circles for the reason stated above. It is generally simpler to say "We don't know how what determines the exact collaps of the quantum waveform" than to say "God decides in his infinite intelligence how every quantum waveform collapses." Same with every area of evolution attacked by ID.
In essence, it is *always* scientifically simpler (because it is more predictable) to assume a lack of knowledge of the natural than to assume divine intervention. Because science is involved in predicable, repeatable phenomina,areas that require divine intervention are outside its scope. So for example, whether or not the god you pray to hears your prayers is outside the scientific theory simply because you cannot link a prayer by anyone to the same or a similar observed effect. Does this make sense?
For the record, I am a polytheist and am certainly not anti-religion. I am against having mandatory education laws at *at the same time* teaching theology in school.
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Something I find interesting, is that it's completely circular to take the perspective, "What are the odds that the Earth and Humans and all this stuff would come to be, so much would have to go just right to result in the conditions for our existence," -- which, of course, is true, but then to follow that up with "the odds of us existing are so small, that this must have been the work of some intelligient being."
I would call this a non-sequitur. Why? Because if you accept the idea that the odds of us existing are, say, 1-in-6-billion, and especially if you also accept that the odds of some other world with "life," or anything even slightly related and stable enough to survive over billions of years (or even "10,000 years" as the bible reads), existing close enough to us in this huge universe that we'd be able to know about it with the current state of space exploration progress, then the "intelligient design" theory doesn't hold.
Why? Because the argument is essentially, "it's so unlikely that we'd come to exist, that it's more likely we were created by an intelligient being."
This is actually a really stupid thing to say, though, because it is only as a result of your EXISTING that you're able to have such a thought.
A perfect analogy is a different kind of "creationism" -- human conception. Let's say there's 6 billion sperm all trying to get into the one-passenger-only unfertilized egg. And let's say you are that one, single sperm that managed the feat. Now, 20 years later, you exist. And you say "what are the chances that I exist?" There's not really any useful meaning to be derived some such a thought. The other 5.999999999 billion sperm would be thinking the same thing, if they existed instead of you. There were 6 billion babies/Earths with the potential to exist, and one that came to exist. All 6 billion of those potential babies would grow up to ask the same question, maybe even to believe that "God" created them. This fact alone is why it's foolish for you to consider yourself "unique" in your existence. All 6 billion babies were unique and "unlikely", and if they had the chance to grow into humans they'd tell you that themselves.
To put this another way, saying "something intelligent MUST have created us because it's too unlikely that we came to exist through random events," discounts the obvious fact you've already stated -- that you DO exist as the combination of extremely random events, and that even if some intelligent being later took credit for it, the other 5.999999999 billion possible alternate realities you calculated, based on the known elements the intelligient being placed in the world, do not cease to exist as potential alternate realities.
So what I'm saying is, it is actually irrelevant to the concept of evolution (and "Big Bang" theory, and all other science theories) whether there is a "God" or any other creator. The explanations remain unchanged, theories based on the observed reality. Even with the revelation of an intelligent creator, we are still an "extremely unlikely" permutation of the existing world/universe/reality (regardless of who created it), so you cannot argue that our unlikeliness is somehow "proof" or "suggestive" of the idea of there being an intelligent creator.
In other words "God" could have created 5.9999999999 billion other realities. If "He" exists, he chose to create ours. If "He" does not exist, ours was created out of extreme randomness. Because the outcome is the same whether "He" exists or not, it is foolish to suggest that the outcome (our reality) in any way points to or against "His" existence.
Even as a theory, Intelligent Design doesn't make sense. It draws an illogical conclusion (the existence of an intelligent creator) from its observation (the unlikeliness of our existence).
And claiming there are "gaps" in Darwin's theory is even more ridiculous, as if to say "our theory gains credence from the fact that Darwin's theory is incomplete." This makes no sense, nor does its opposite: Even if Darwin's theory explains everything 100%, this does not weaken a competing theory. It does make it likely that someone will want to reach for Occam's Razor, though.
Blind spot? I don't see any blind spot...
Boy, you should read some of the comments in this story more carefully then.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Half the people in the USA are below average in intelligence. (Shit, that's US average intelligence, too.) And, not to be rude, a person of average intelligence probably isn't as intelligent as a trained scientist.
But to leave out something that a majority of people in the USA believe is wrong.Who the hell cares what most people believe? Science isn't about believing. It is about reproducible quantifiable observation. If it doesn't belong in a science curriculum, as indicated BY scientists, then it shouldn't be part of the science curriculum. By the way, as far as science is concerned, 2000 years ago, I bet most people were wrong in their understanding of almost all things science.
You must - by law - have your children ready and on the street corner by 8 am. There they will be picked up by numbered yellow buses and taken to publicly-funded learning centers. At these centers your children will hear lessons and recite facts which the government deems appropriate.
If any parent should happen to disagree with the doctrines taught there, it would be best for that parent to keep these disagreements to his or her self. Even the most passionate objections - even those which spring from the centuries-old cornerstones of your culture - would be best left unsaid.
Science will nurture your children in ways you can't possibly imagine. So make sure your children come to school with open minds. We'll close them tight on the government-sponsored truth!
The thing is, we don't know if the exact same logic applies in all existance. We only know it applies in our physical universe. It could be a constraint willingly applied by God as he created the universe.
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Google scallop eyes.
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If you had read the next sentence, you would see that I went on to discuss the original term, itself. To wit: ``It wouldn't be too hard to prove that any of the magical properties they're supposed to have are impossible; that's all you'd need to prove that they mythical variety of unicorn doesn't exist.'' I really don't appreciate people lying about my own words.
That's funny, since I was speaking specifically about your comment regarding one-horned gazelles as unicorns, made in response to another poster who was clearly referring to the common, lexical definition. Further, "magical properties" aren't essential to that definition, either. The point was that it isn't possible to prove they don't exist, although I disagree -- it's a matter of probability (and what is technologically feasible) rather than possibility, in my view.
Just because humans have limits doesn't mean that they're incapable of understanding the unlimited.
Who shall be the judge of that? You? That would be rather arrogant. This isn't a subject that can be settled with word games. Thousands of years and the greatest minds in human history has been thrown at this puzzle and it still stands. If you would claim to have done so, I would like to see your proof, not a bunch of irrelevant bs that makes you look like a school boy who, by his own misunderstanding, thinks he's come to some brilliant insight and wants to show off. I mean wow, you figured out that not only can you not find the greatest prime number, you can't divide by zero, either. I'm so impressed. *Of course* that proves God doesn't exist, simply because dividing nothing into multiple sets of nothing makes no sense. Mystery solved./SAIC
No. ``Omnipotence'' can only have one meaning: able to do anything. Come up with even one thing that can't be done--name a ``y'' for which y=1/0, for example--and the limit becomes quite real, not arbitrary.
How is that "limit" real, much less "quite real"? It's an abstract representation of "nothing". y!=1/0 simply because y*0=0. That's it. Nothing awesome or especially perplexing, just common sense. Whether you have 1 set of zero, no sets of zero or a billion sets of zero, it's still zero. Any number of sets would be arbitrary and infinitely interchangeable. (However, if you want to divide 1 into zero sets of whatever arbitrary number anyway, you can. You'll just have 1/0 left over, so you can try again. Forever. Have fun!)
And I believe that anybody who tosses out logic for dogmatic reasons is an idiot. And if you really think that every mathematician, logician, theoretician, and scientist since before Plato is a fool, then I think you're an anti-intellectual asshole.
Tosses out logic? Anti-intellectual? Hm. That's a new one. You do realize I was referring to proofs for/against the existence of God, don't you? Well, maybe not.
He's done nothing of that sort, you're building a strawman here.
His argument was, that you're building a strawman (i.e. a being that "can do anything" becomes able to do anything that's logically possible while your argument to disprove it implies that it should be able to do things that are logically impossible) which you then proceed to burn down to prove something else. If an omnipotent being is bound by the rules of logic or the laws of nature there are things it can't do which by definition makes it not-omnipotent.
Also your "proves" against omniscience either don't account for the possibility that the many-worlds interpretation is correct, that the omniscient being needn't be omnipotent or that it could answer but the answer would take infinite time to tell you.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
You don't have to disprove a theory. The burden is on the one putting forth the theory to prove that it is true, not on anyone else to disprove it.
I could state that there are some bright pink penguins and you could never prove me wrong. But until I produce a bright pink penguin to prove me right, then the statement is false.
You see, this is what we like to call "science."
I agree that there isnt enough time in the science class to begin with but if these points are to be made (that religion and non falsifiable methods are not monotonically improving anything) they're going to have to be made in the science class room, cause where else will they actually be made??
and of course its important to get the basics right first, or at least early, or failing that, soon.. maby...
I agree with your point, but to play Devil's Advocate (or is that God's advocate?)...
Being omnipotent, God can work outside any logical constraint.
Also, don't try convincing these people they're wrong. No matter what you throw at them, you'll get nowhere. You're just wasting energy. Trust me.
I don't even understand why Christians are pressing this issue. If one believes in the Christian God and all that he has done, why can't one wrap ones mind around the fact that He could create the Earth and make it appear the way that it is? I thought the whole idea of religion is that it is the faith that is important, not the physical evidence anyway. If it was readily evident that God had created the universe and He had left irrefutable evidence of this fact, we would know. There wouldn't be any requirement for belief and there wouldn't be any disbelief. In that environment, we would have no choice in our future or belief, inherently we would believe and inherently we would be saved. Our faith could never be tested in such a world and in fact we could then only argue over which religion is actually worshipping the correct God, which really couldn't ever be construed to be any sort of true faith as we know it.
I haven't even touched upon the strong case for evolution and the total lack of any scientifically-accepted, provable evidence in support of ID -- I'm referring to well-respected scientific journals here . Nor have I mentioned the fact that ID is provably based on creationism and that no one has the legal right to teach _my_ child religion in public school (not that I have any children, but still). It's not my problem, the scientific community's problem, or my government's problem that the scientific evidence doesn't support ones belief or religious interpretation of a religious text. Religions survived the discovery that Earth isn't the center of the universe, and it will survive the theory of evolution. Just because ones faith can't surmount scientific evidence doesn't give one the right to teach religion in school. This republic was based on liberty above all, including Christianity, something that apparently many would like to forget along with the scientific method.
Finally for those that think that I'm enforcing/choosing a religion, consider this: while I'm not a believer in any specific religion I support the theory of evolution. Evolution has no bearing upon my religious beliefs, it neither supports or detracts from my religious beliefs, much in the way that mathematics has no bearing upon my religion. I don't support ID, primarily because it doesn't follow the scientific method. If one's going argue this against evolution, let's start talking about physics. There is no law of gravity in regards to what exactly creates that force (for starters). So we can just say that God is just pushing us down (literally THE MAN is keeping us down!!). What is time? Ah, it's just something God made, it just is! Whoops, I mean "Intelligent Entity", not God [we can fix that with a search and replace, don't worry]! Can anyone help me expand this theory? Maybe we can tack it onto ID and we'll present it as the all-encompassing theory of existence? What possible barrier can withstand the answer "because the intelligent entity created it that way"? Seriously, if we can't agree that ID isn't science then let's just let this be settled in the scientific circle. That means it doesn't get into the public school system until it's proven itself in the scientific community, which at the very least means it's discussed and accepted in scientific journals. Every modern theory took that course before becoming mainstream and ID deserves no special treatment. If ID is to measure up to evolution, then it needs to be subjected to the same peer review process to which all other scientific theories are subjected. One can't railroad a theory into mainstream by teaching it in school, and one can't legislate a statement into a scientific theory simply because it is what one believes. It needs to adhere to the scientific method and it needs to withstand scientific testing, neither of which has been done from the data I have gathered.
The fact that there is no direct scientific evidence to backup the existence of a god is not a denunciation of all religions that depend upon the premise. That fact
I wrote a program a couple years ago that uses neural nets and a genetic algorithm to evolve beings. It doesn't simulate the so called abiogenesis event but intelligence is certainly evolved. Check out the Java applet: http://peberdy.addr.com/jp/projects/page.php?p=ai
...considering this is already done with things like phrenology and homeopathy. Steeling students against the onslaught of pseudoscience is a worthy part of the teaching of real science.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
The speed of human development is produced by the combination of these three powers.Combining them in different parts produces different results.The three produce a safe speed to evolve in a changing enviorment.All three are needed to produce a large mass .Genetic beliefs systems that have worked in the past get reused and modified.This is part of evolution.Perfecting science,religion and politics can never be accomplished.They are suppose to be seperate to work properly. Remove any one of the three and bad thing happen.A single person can live without religion ,but to create mass large enouph to produce technology is impossible without it at this point in human evolution.
W00t! Go Cafe Press! http://www.cafepress.com/reasonstreet
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
The whole western civilized world is laughing at the fact that there is even a discussion wheather ID has a place in schools as a serious alternative to the evolution theorie. How can a nation claim to be leader of the world and at the same time have religious wackos ger away with schools teaching bullshit to children? This is the year 2005, not 1005. If this goes on --
Under normal circumstances (other issues perhaps), I'd be offended by your comments. I must agree with you, however.
... I'll stop ranting now.
But, it is obvious you don't live here. I'll have to inform you that anyone can launch a lawsuit for any reason for the most part. It's called tort and I'm a major supporter of tort reform. Unfortunately, lawyers make up both houses of congress so it would never pass.
And uninformed school board killed their political careers with this stupid stunt to politicize a crackpot idea. All were rejected during the special election last month. The town was outraged that such a topic hit the national news circuit.
Listen, there are whackos all over the place. It just happens that the US attracts the whole lot. Be glad they're not vocal in your country. Just know one thing: 80% of the population may believe that the universe was created by an intelligent being, but only a small percentage of that group believe earth is mearly 6000 years old. And all existing strata on earth's beautiful surface was created during some flood where every mountaintop, including everest, was covered with water. Then it all, magically, disappeared. Maybe it's on the moon's dark side
Anyway, I agree with you wholeheartedly. I, for one, am embarrased to be an American with a story like this.
Where's my sock? There it is...
Maybe God is gay? Some of the best set designers I know are gay and this is one hell of a set design.
I REPEAT I AM NOT CHRISTIAN AND NOT PROTESTANT. I do not believe in Jesus or teh God. So stop telling me how stupid Christianity is because I know.
Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.
"The principle of parsimony is just a scientific sounding way of saying that what seems like the simpler answer, probably is."
No. Occam's Razor (the principle of parsimony) just says the following:
Suppose there are two theories, and both of them make the same testable predictions. Then you should use the one that makes the least assumptions.
Now, if later you find another thing to test, and the theory that you are using does not make the right prediction, then you stop using it: That theory is wrong. So you use another one that makes the right predictions. If there are lots of them that make the right predictions, then you choose the one that makes the least assumptions again.
Now, the theory of evolution posits some things. You can call them axioms. Then you can get things from these axioms; Maybe something like "species will change in such-and-such a manner." You get things using rigorous logic. These are predictions. Then, maybe you are lucky enough to find a new experiment. You can test a prediction! So you test it. If the theory's prediction is right, then the theory is still not necessarily wrong. But it is definitely not necessarily right, either. But you keep using it anyway, because so far it predicts everything right, and it is the simplest theory (that you know about) that does that, because you chose it that way.
Every scientific theory does that. It has axioms, and it finds predictions with these axioms. Then you find experiments and see if the theory works for the experiments. Actually, the definition of a scientific theory is that. A set of assumptions that makes predictions and you can test them.
Now, the problem with the intelligent design theory is easy to see!
It posits that something is making everything happen just the way that it wants, or some such. But that's not enough to make predictions. Just because something's doing everything that it wants doesn't mean you know what it wants. So you need to posit other things. So you have to suppose things about what it wants to do. For example, you could suppose "so-and-so happens" is what it wants. So you have assumptions about what the something wants to do.
Our assumptions are simple. We assumed that there's something making everything work the way it wants. And then we assumed that what it wants is that "so-and-so happens." From this, it's pretty clear that so-and-so should happen if our theory is true! If so-and-so doesn't happen, then we are wrong. Or if so-and-so happens and something else also happens, then we're missing something in our theory, so it is still wrong (or at least incomplete).
Now, suppose that so-and-so does happen. So our theory is not necessarily wrong (but also not necessarily right). But what if we make a new theory, and just assume "so-and-so happens." Well, then we get the same predictions as with the other one! But we didn't assume that the something exists. We assumed fewer things! Then Occam's Razor tells us to take the new theory instead.
That's why the intelligent design theory isn't the one that should be taught. It makes an assumption that you do not need. Without that assumption, everything works out the same. So it violates Occam's Razor.
Pierre-Simon Laplace (the guy who showed us how to solve all sorts of cool differential equations) said something about that once. It is in French, but translated (from his page at wikipedia):
I have no need of that hypothesis. ("Je n'ai pas besoin de cette hypothèse", as a reply to Napoleon, who had asked why he hadn't mentioned God in his book on astronomy)
God created man in His image, so unless the universal standard for perfection includes "suboptimal eye", either God is not perfect, or man was not created in His image and therefore the bible is not accurate (neither answer being acceptable to a creationist).
That's bullshit. The existence of species is an underlying tenant of evolution, since evolution describes how species adapt and change over time. If the word species is not well defined and meaningful, the theory of evolution can not be either.
No. Evolution is about how organisms adapt and change over time.
With the assumption being that after enough trial and error, eventually we arrive at a point where all explanations fully predict observations. At this point, if we have not arrived at "truth", then we have at least arrived at something so practical as to make "truth" irrelevant.
According to Genesis, there was a flood which covered the whole earth. Everything alive at the time would have been washed away, and eventually settled to the bottom. Small stuff would have fallen through the cracks between the big stuff, resulting in a layer which shows nothing (already there at the time of the flood), a layer which shows small stuff (where all the small stuff settled to) and higher layers showing bigger and bigger life forms.
Explain to me, scientifically, why your viewpoint is the right way to interpret this evidence, and mine is incorrect.
Well to start with, you'd have to show evidence of the flood...
"Grab them by the pussy" -- President of the United States of America
Close - I prefer the more scientific way the Dire Straits put it (Industrial Disease, Love over Gold): two men say they're Jesus, one of them must be wrong...
Even if the simplest life came from IE it seems to me that it would still evolve over time. IMHO IE is complete bunk, all I'm saying is that if life was Designed by a higher power it could still evolve so it doesn't mean that Darwin was wrong either way.
Jay Dale "If you're not living on the edge then you're taking up too much space!"
Now tell me with a straight face that you have no faith.
Then you might know that, at least for Catholics, it is expected that they use their reason fully in the investigation and acceptance of their faith.
Half of my extended family are devout Catholics. If I didn't know them so well I would never have guessed them to be religious people, as all of them (the adults at least) are college educated and work either in the medical profession or as educators, and almost never do anything invoking the supernatural whatsoever. Even the few religious events I've attended with them have a friendly, welcoming feeling to them, and don't at all make me feel alienated or like I'm somehow violating my own naturalist beliefs by being there.
I'm rather quite fond of Catholics (ones like them, at least) for this reason - they don't let their faith get in the way of their reason. If there is an apparent of conflict between them, they don't discard their reason, but rather modify their understanding of the articles of their faith to remain compatible with reality.
For this reason I see the entire Catholic faith, in a sense, similar to a huge software project struggling to maintain reverse compatibility. A long time ago, someone hacked together a workable program for how to run a human life, which had some pretty huge feature gaps and some serious bugs but for the most part worked pretty darn well, and a lot of people adopted it. In the intervening millennia, newer and more efficient programs have been created for running this or that bit of life, and the developers of the Catholic faith program - which are just its advanced users, since it's open source you know - have incorporated hooks for those algorithms and modified their own code base to maintain reverse compatibility with the old program. Slowly, over the ages, their own code is becoming deprecated, but it's still there with extra layers to translate between the new code and the old, since there's some bits of old code that don't have newer replacements yet, and so people want to keep using this old program since there's no fully suitable replacement for it yet.
It's really a marvelous piece of social engineering and now that I think about it, quite a sensible approach. Some of us may be 1337 hax0rs who can code up our own life-programs from scratch, taking the best of what we've seen and inventing our own and tying it all together into one elegant system, thus rejecting anyone else's system as weak and broken and in many ways quite Evil (to use a technical term). But not all the lusers out there can code up their own stuff, and they've got to use something in the meanwhile, so they use whatever hack job best suits their needs. Catholicism seems something like Mac OS X - lots of free and open source stuff in there, highly compatible with open and non-proprietary systems, but with layers that make it all reverse compatible with the older Mac code, and a slick face on top of it all that most everybody feels comfortable using.
My biggest pet project is, by this analogy, writing a whole new Life OS from scratch, all open source with clean and elegant code, no ugly hacks, and a full feature set that's mostly compatible with all the major brands out there, only breaking compatibility in places where the other brands had really ugly hacks that shouldn't be propagated - thus allowing anyone who wants to switch completely over to this new and improved system in a very easy transition, and leave their old junkware behind. I know put in those terms it sounds like a major project that will never be finished - and I guess, like any great open source project, it never will be - but I hope that at the very least I'll wind up with a usable product that other systems can incorporate bits of into their own code. I'll be happy if it just helps programs like Catholicism, who seem eager to incorporate newer cleaner code, to develop into a better product in the end, thus migrating all their millions of users off the crapware that they're currently using.
No offense to Catholics or anyone else is intended by this post. I think you're being stupid if you blindly follow anything, but chances are you and I would agree on a good majority of topics, once we got the semantics straightened out.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
> ... anything is subject to testing by the scientific method ...
No, it isn't. Off the top of my head, the grounds for belief (or disbelief) in the soul is not testable by the scientific method. Nor is belief (or disbelief) in a god or gods. (Nor is most of mathematics.)
Because I prefer my explanations elegant and compact, I don't happen to believe in the soul or any gods, whereas I do believe in the validity (note: not truth) of mathematics for the same reason. However, this is belief (and trust in Occam's Razor) and I recognise that it is not scientifically testable (although eminemtly reasonable).
What a long, strange trip it's been.
Speciation, or evolution of one species into another, is not observable and has never been found in the fossil record.
Wrong.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
ID proponents testified under oath that ID is not supposed to be religious in nature. Either Pat Robertson is an idiot totally unfamiliar with the issues or the Dover school board members committed perjury.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
Actually we do not know whether or not a specific scientific theory is indeed provable until it is indeed proven.
No. Scientific theories can never be proven. Scientific theories must always be tentative; that is, they cannot be considered so firmly established that absolutely nothing can prove them wrong. Scientific theories are always subject to revision or even outright falsification, no matter how much evidence mounts in support.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
Now there's some good 'ol fashioned common sense.
Here's something on a similar note. If god exists and is interested in human beings, then I can't imagine he is an arrogant god. More precisely, I don't believe that god would require or even suggest worship, let alone a relationship based on fear. Worship is as human a quality as they come, and fear-mongering is clearly the agenda of a con man. Both are quite obviously human inventions, and moreover, history has proved it over and over again.
So to expect or require worship is plainly arrogant. Given that god is supposed to represent peace and love, I would expect that he judge us only on our peace, love, and general respect for his creations, especially our fellow human beings.
So let me get down to the bottom of all this: Regardless of whether god exists, organized religion is a scam!
I'm continually shocked that people with your mindset are Slashdot readers.
Wow. That post may just convince me that evolution is indeed true. Perhaps some of us are still in the process of evolving from a lesser being. Come to think of it, I've seen other examples of primitive life form thinking on the highway since I've been commuting again.
Patient: "Why do I have cancer?"
Evolution Doctor: "Your Brain Evolved."
Patient: "OK. I'll go die now, since I have no one to pray to."
Yeah, ID promotes fatalism. Maybe you should get cancer before you talk about it. I have a brain tumor, but I don't recall being fatalistic about it.
By the way, I have a Bachelor of SCIENCE degree in Engineering. Design is anti-scientific.
Ops, I shuld have usd the prevuwe but in.
Simply put... 1st law- matter and energy are neither created nor destroyed. 2nd law has to do with work, better known as entropy, that things go from order to disorder. Evolution as it has become, (do not confuse micro-evolution with macro-evolution) states that lower, simpler, lifeforms have some how formed into higher, complex, lifeforms. This is called macro-evolution, which is not able to be tested and reproduced. Many people confuse micro-evolution with macro-evolution and think that if one is true both are. This is however a serious lap in logic. Minor adaptations in a species does not a new species make. You have to have genetic differences on a larger scale. First you start with thousands of random proteins that some how become a complex bonding called DNA. That is the first issue that from disorder came order and not just order, but extremely complex order. Next you have single celled organisms; amoebas, bacteria, protozoan; deciding to stop acting alone and work together to form a complex multicelled organism. There has yet to be proof of these first two items. This is why evolution is bad science
I eat Karma for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. That's why I don't have any.
I'd like to see at least two intermediate fossils, please.
Here are many:
http://www.origins.tv/darwin/landtosea.htm#whales
This illustrates the evolution of whales from land mammals.
By the way, has anyone "invested" in evolution asked themselves if they could possibly be wrong?
All the time.
This is why more than one dating method is often used to check the age of fossils (radioactive decay + position in rocks). There are frequent controversies about how different animal groups are related (such as dinosaurs and birds).
Questioning is at the core of science.
By the way, if you would like to read detailed refutations of Buchanan's points, let me know and I will provide them. I do think it is unfair for you to have been modded 'Troll', as you are simply expressing a commonly held belief.
No, it really isn't. One organism cannot evolve. It is about groups of organisms, loosely termed "species". That doesn't mean "species" has a strict definition though, you can look at a group and say "that's a species" and study how they change over time without being able to define when they become two distinct species effectively.
No, it really isn't. One organism cannot evolve. It is about groups of organisms, loosely termed "species"
Actually, it isn't even about that. The only thing that really can evolve is DNA.
All indoctrination is good, unless it's by those goddamned godless commie LIEberal advocate judges!
Why is that a trick? If he didn't create the light in transit between the star and us then obviously we wouldn't be able to see the stars. Creating the light in transit doesn't have to mean that God's trying to make us think the universe has been around longer than it has; it's an obvious requirement if he wants us to be able to see stuff further away than the speed of light would allow.
Looks like your numbers are a little off but the percentages are roughly correct. Perhaps you are using older figures?
t ml
http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.h
Shows this...
# Christianity: 2.1 billion
# Islam: 1.3 billion
# Secular/Nonreligious/Agnostic/Atheist: 1.1 billion
# Hinduism: 900 million
# Chinese traditional religion: 394 million
# Buddhism: 376 million
# primal-indigenous: 300 million
# African Traditional & Diasporic: 100 million
# Sikhism: 23 million
# Juche: 19 million
# Spiritism: 15 million
# Judaism: 14 million
# Baha'i: 7 million
# Jainism: 4.2 million
# Shinto: 4 million
# Cao Dai: 4 million
# Zoroastrianism: 2.6 million
# Tenrikyo: 2 million
# Neo-Paganism: 1 million
# Unitarian-Universalism: 800 thousand
# Rastafarianism: 600 thousand
# Scientology: 500 thousand
Now, personally I think this is a little bit tricky since christianty ignores some fundamental differences which some branches would say other branches are going to hell (which would indicate to me that they don't think they follow the same reliigion).
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Well said. There are definitely atheists who elevate their atheism to the status of religion -- ever seen those people who go around trying to get into religious debates, and haranguing everyone they can? But in general, no. Atheists lack any of the characteristics associated with religious faith. Which is why I fucking hate secular humanist clubs... it's atheism, with all the annoying bullshit of a religion. What the hell!
The discovery institute is largely funded by everyone's favorite monopolist, Bill Gates.
And he dares to complain about the state of science education in the US!!
1) There is strong geological evidence of a 4 billion year time span. This is a -really- long time. In just a million years, humans have 50,000 generations. Consider what humans did to wolves in way less than 5,000 generations (wolf -> great dane, Irish wolf hound, beagle, pit bull, chihuahua, etc. All from the same parent wolf line).
2) Evolutionary theory has been applied to programs and using this method generated the standard solutions humans usually figure out and - this is cool - a new method to solve the problem, not previously considered, which was more efficient than anything we had thought up yet. Really exciting stuff. You really should look into this area.
3) Given that there is -no evidence- of human existence before roughly 100,000 years ago (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cro-magnon_man) and strong evidence of things similar to humans before that for only 2 million years, I think it would be very illogical to conclude that we started out perfect (unless by perfect you mean a small marsupial creature first seen during the dino era).
4) Remember- we are not perfect- we have lots of bad design in humans (the eye being a common example- our eyes are horribly designed).
5) "Bad" things are relative. Sickle cell is "bad" but in areas with maleria it is "good". "Good" things are relative. Dumping water for cooling is a good strategy in areas where you can replace the water- elsewhere, it's not such a good idea.
ID is creationism renamed (they know it too- the recent trial showed one of the big id books was originally written with "creationism" and when "creationism" was overturned, they just did a global search and replace with ID- that's lying- and that's pretty damn disappointing for a religion that is supposed to prize honesty and honorable behavior).
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Since you are obviously having difficulty understanding my position I'm going to help you out:
#1. I do not disagree with keeping ID out of schools, science classrooms in particular. I do not even like the idea of ID or creationism as I am not religious and general dislike religion in general.
#2. What the fuck does that or ID have to do with the Constitution of the United States of America?
No where does the Constitution say religion is unconstitutional. No where does the Constitution say that the federal government must root out religion where ever it can be found in a public place. The only thing the federal government can do is pull its education funding from that district if it's being misused.
Letting a community decide to teach its children in the manner it deems best. The federal government saying that constitutionally allow activity is unconstitutional. See the fucking difference?
Well... maybe, but while clearly the DNA is evolving, the organism evolves as a result of that. You could say a balloon doesn't grow, it is just more air filling the inside, but the result is that the balloon grows anyway, surely the same applies?
It is interesting that you essentially concede my point with your pink elephant example, but then you try really hard to deny it. I'm not sure why, because the point I was originally trying to make is/was so very minor.
And hey-presto! we've just come up with some more things that even a supposedly-omnipotent being couldn't do. Therefore, ``omnipotence'' is its own self-contained oxymoron.
No, actually. The thing is, if a truly omnipotent being were to exist, it could (by definition) create any of those paradoxes you have listed. How could it do so? I have no idea but then again, neither of us are omnipotent. Just as I cannot have an internal representation of what an infinite series of objects looks like, I am also unable to comprehend the possibilities of what an omnipotent being would be able to do.
If I were to become part of the Q-continuum, I presumably could alter the fundamental nature of reality in such a way so that I could create a square-circle if that was what I really wanted to do. As an encore, I would divide by zero just because I could!
I'm sorry, but hand-waving won't do shit to stave off your crisis of faith.
Since you obviously know me so well, could you please tell me which crisis of faith it is that I am trying to stave off?
To paraphrase the Monty Python sketch, an argument is a series of linked premises designed to establish a conclusion.
Your example about all but God being able to do something is really quite pointless. This is obviously not a course in formal logic, but all the same I would have thought that you would be able to create a valid argument. If not, please feel free to continue with the ad-homenim attacks.
Careful, I think your blinder might be slipping.
Oh well, ad-homenim it is then.
I'll spell this one out a bit more clearly, since you really didn't think about the details of your "test" of omniscience. In your example, you know in advance what the predictions are, and as such the experiement is utterly compromised. Under double-blind conditions, a truly omniscient being should be able to predict with 100% accuracy exactly what you will do in the next 5 minutes, 5 hours, or whatever interval was mutually acceptable.
Unh-huh. ``Teach the controversy.'' More properly, ``Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!'' Because, like, if you use your brain, we won't be able to pull the wool over your eyes.
Straw man and ad-homenium. I think I detect a hint of "poisoning the well" too. That's one of the nice things about /. - so much variety!
Look, if you are unable to participate in, or uninterested in a rational discussion, just say so.
And all I'm doing is pointing out that you're worng. Sorry.
When are you going to do that? All you have done is indicate that you disagree with my opinions.
An omnipotent god *could* create a perpetual motion machine, simply by virtue of it being omnipotent.
Proving that the universe is creatorless is trivial;
You are indeed a great philosopher. I'm clearly out of my league here. Please enlighten me with the details, if you can dumb them down to my level..
Whether or not there's some remarkable being that resembles a giant plate of spaghetti is another matter entirely,
Actually, it is the core issue I presented. Can you logically prove that such a being does not exist?
but we can be certain that it had nothing whatsoever to do with the creation of the universe.
Why? Because your definitions say so? What if your premises are wrong?
That's the interesting thing about logic. If you start from false premises, you can logically reach a false conclusion.
A gazelle with an amputated horn looks nearly exactly
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
"religion" is not unconstitutional, of course.
STATE ESTABLISHMENT of religion IS. And it applies to the states as well by the 14th amendment.
Pennsylvania and it's localities can't force me to send my kids to church on Sunday, or any other day of the week. It can force me to send my kids to school, and therefore, schools cannot act as churches. There is a constitutional standard that governs what religious activities a school must allow, and what religious activities a school cannot allow or mandate.
Just declaring something "a community" doesn't give it the power to take away constitutional liberties, like the freedom to not follow a state-mandated religion. Dover, PA can't violate my constitutional liberties for free speech, against unreasonable search and seizure, or remove my right to vote based on race, color, creed, or national origin, or any of those other constitutional liberties.
Well... maybe, but while clearly the DNA is evolving, the organism evolves as a result of that.
Exactly. Change starts at the level of the DNA/Organism, not the species.
Tell me God, ``yes'' or ``no,'' will you answer, ``no''?
But how are you supposed to ask the question if you are unable to speak?
Exactly.
But seeing that "further away" stuff is exactly one of the things that makes us believe that the universe is approximately 15 billion years old, see? Light coming from the sun takes 8 minutes to get to my eyes, light coming from alpha centauri takes about 4 years, and light from the very furthest objects takes about 15 billion years to get here.
We see it today here on Earth, therefore, it appears to have been around long in the past, and presumably the universe was there to contain it.
If it can't be provable, demonstrable, repeatable then it is not solid science. It is a theory. No aspect of evolution nor ID has been proven by science's own definitions. So why limit the child's view by not even mentioning other non-proven views but are popular with a LARGE portion of acclaimed scientists. Let those kids proceed with science to remove the THEORY OF prefix from either. Let FACTS triumph! Not zeal.
You shall know The TRUTH, and THE TRUTH will set you free.
Science is a processed developed by man to provide a method for observing the universe, and to create a model describing how things work. In many cases the models produced are very good, but science can not be confused with fact. Science is a living field, and the models we are using to describe the universe continue to evolve. Just look at the model of an atom over the last few hundred years for a good example.
Traditionally throughout history Science has gone hand in hand with Philosophy. Aristotle's book on Physics was followed by his book on Metaphysics. Philosophy doesn't throw out a theory because it doesn't have a testable hypothesis, but attempts to combine all of human knowledge together to discover the truth behind reality. Biology class certainly isn't the best place to be teaching any idea that has an un-testable hypothesis, but there really isn't a better place in public schools to familiarize students with those ideas. Most public schools don't even have a philosophy curriculum, possibly because of its limited commercial applications.
Clearly I made a slight error in wording that one :) The dna evolves as a group, so organisms evolve as a group. An organism can't possibly evolve. An individual organism's dna clearly can't change over time. The way to see DNA changing over time is to take a set of examples of DNA and view the general trend... view the descendent organisms of the original organism, as soon as you have an organism and its descendents you have a group of organisms, loosely a species, and we're back to the original point of species evolving, not individuals. You cannot, afterall, take an organism and watch it evolve... it'll die, and you're left with no organism.
is a way to prevent all the literal creationists from benefiting from all of the benefits of evolution. Which would include the denial of a considerable amount of medical treatments. Then when they have a life expectancy of 45 and an infant mortality rate of a third world nation, the reasonable people can be secure in the fact, their ignorance will quickly die with them.
It's nice that morons like you have your convictions. To bad you're all such great cowards you rarely stake your lives or the lives of your children on them.
Thanks for that bit about the "troll" ranking. Many Christians point out that evolution can't withstand a serious debate, so its proponents often stymie debate by using ad-hominem attacks to redirect the direction of the debate. The "troll" ranking is another example, and it's sad because it's censorship, plain and simple. Isn't that something that only Conservatives/Republicans practice? As to the point-by-point refutation, you can skip all that if you want and just direct me to a website that shows the intermediate fossil record for the transition between a primitive animal and the modern animal it was supposed to have evolved to, say, ape and man. I'll take another look (with an open mind)... :)
Clearly I made a slight error in wording that one :) The dna evolves as a group, so organisms evolve as a group.
I kind of see what you mean. I may have been imprecise as well! I know that single indivuals can't evolve, but evolutionary selection happens at the level of the individual - ideas of group or species selection (if that is what you are implying) is pretty much out of date.
Well, this omniscient individual would know that you would ask that question and reply by saying that you'll do the opposite of what will be said.
"The modern theological god is essentially dependent on so many logically-impossible traits it's not even funny. First cause? Well, if everything needs a creator, then what created the creator? Omnibenevolent? Then, whence comes evil?"
I believe that this is what is referred to as a strawman argument. The creator has no creator, it is thought of as the exception to the the rule, being the first cause. When dealing with the supernatural, these are the kinds of arguments that'll come up. It most certainly isn't science, and that's why it shouldn't be confused with it. And as for omnibenevolence, then I think you need to take the concept of free will into account. The statement regarding omnibenevolence does not mean evil cannot exist. So if you're going to attack these concepts, you may want to at least make sure you get the facts right.
Good God, man, have you ever actually read anything about the modern theory of evolution? Did you get your information from a Creationist screed, or did you just sleep through biology class?
Your post makes as much sense as saying that atoms can't be split because phlogiston doesn't exist.
The "troll" ranking is another example, and it's sad because it's censorship, plain and simple.
I agree.
As to the point-by-point refutation, you can skip all that if you want and just direct me to a website that shows the intermediate fossil record for the transition between a primitive animal and the modern animal it was supposed to have evolved to, say, ape and man.
My favourite example is the whale:
http://www.origins.tv/darwin/landtosea.htm
All fossils are shown (click on the pictures for the fossils) and the step-by-step evolution is clear.
Does this help? I can provide other examples if you are interested.
"Professing to be wise, they became fools..." (Romans 1:22)
"I pity da fool." (Mr. T, "Rocky III")
I note that the majority of rhetoric against ID is ad hominem attacks; i.e., "ID is stupid, and stupid religious zealots are the only ones who believe in it." There is very, very little effort given to proving points on a logical basis, which is what I would assume "scientific" people would try to do. The debate is very emotional and non-factual.
This leads me to believe that the people attacking ID have been blinded to the truth, just as it says in I Corinthians 4:4: "...whose minds the god of this age (i.e., Satan) has blinded, who do not believe, lest the light...should shine on them."
So, I am not angry at this wayward judge, or the ranting "scientists", or the wise fools that post on Slashdot. Rather, I pity da fools because they have been blinded.
Fortunately, I can read to the end of the Book, and I know that some day:
"...at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, and that every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." (Philippians 2:10-11)
AMEN!
Peace out and MERRY CHRISTMAS (not some politically correct euphemism) to all!
Thanks for the link. Here's a refutation from the Answers In Genesis group: http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/re1/chap ter5.asp
One thing the article points out is that the diagram showing the transition from a land mammal to the first sea-based one fails to show an important point: the two species are RADICALLY different in size. I'll let you read the article, but I will say that in regard to the aforementioned transition, I think it's a bit of a stretch to go from what appears to be a fully functional land animal to a fully functional sea animal! I don't buy it! Why don't these transitional animals die off due to poor ambulatory ability, poor digestion ability, etc., which would be the result if the one were really changing into the other; evolutionists can't answer that one!
Here's a much more technical refutation, but I'll admit: I only skimmed it since it goes over my head!
http://www.trueorigin.org/whales.asp
I believe God created ALL of these transitional forms in order to "fill in" different parts of our ecology, that is, the food chain. We don't know what role each of these animals played, but they all had a purpose.
I'd also like to point out that radio-carbon dating is far from perfect. It was used (back in the '50s I believe) to date some lava flows (or some such) to 800 million years old, but it was later discovered from records that they were in fact only decades old. (I think the process relies too heavily on assumptions of the underlying material, where it was found, etc.)
Here's a refutation from the Answers In Genesis group
The article is full of so many errors it is hard to know where to start.
People who (like in that article) post statements like "Therefore, natural selection would not have favored incomplete intermediate forms." Really aren't putting forward a sensible argument.
You can't say that intermediate forms can't have a function and then say:
"we should not assume that ignorance of a function means there is no function"
One thing the article points out is that the diagram showing the transition from a land mammal to the first sea-based one fails to show an important point: the two species are RADICALLY different in size.
That isn't a problem at all. Evolution of size changes is extremely simple. Remember we are talking of changes over millions of years.
I'll let you read the article, but I will say that in regard to the aforementioned transition, I think it's a bit of a stretch to go from what appears to be a fully functional land animal to a fully functional sea animal! I don't buy it! Why don't these transitional animals die off due to poor ambulatory ability, poor digestion ability, etc., which would be the result if the one were really changing into the other; evolutionists can't answer that one!
We can easily answer it, as there are plenty of animals around right now that are transitional - think of hippos, seals, penguins, crocodiles. They seem to be coping OK!
Wow. That was priceless. It's also why I have you marked as "friend."
What happened to #5 on 1992_Called's Open Letter to T/\/\/\/\? You used to reply to your SlashStalkers all the time, making your posts quite fun to read. Now you just ignore them. Since your karma has been maxed out, and it isn't about karma anyway, what do you have to lose? I'm sure I'm not the only one who misses your artfully written responses.
Of course, your Stalker will probably reply to me saying something obscene, or a modder will mod me offtopic or something, but it's not about karma and maybe I will make a response of my own.
Ah, gotcha. No, not at all :) Selection is at the individual level, I was just misinterpreting your comment as saying that individuals themselves evolve... which as you say, is nonsense, hence species evolve.
You can't say that intermediate forms can't have a function and then say...
They're not saying the intermediate forms can't have a function. They're saying they aren't functional! There's a difference.
Evolution of size changes is extremely simple. Remember we are talking of changes over millions of years...
The sea animal is 10 times larger, for heaven's sake! And if the transition took place over millions of years, why don't we have any fossils for the intervening time??
These aren't transitional animals! They're fully functional, fully articulate! You expect me to believe that (going back to the land/sea analogy) the transition was intantaneous thereby eliminating any difficulties that would normally arise during the transition? Talk about taking something on faith!
And I don't know how you can gloss over the immensely sophisticated functionality of whales and dolphins mentioned in the article. Engineers try DELIBERATELY for years to reproduce this functionality and fail (even when we succeed, we often don't know why we succeeded because the chemical interactions are unfathomable...) There just isn't enough time for these trillions upon trillions of random (mostly failing) mutations to occur!
Evolutionists routinely paper over (or use fancy paintings) to fill in the massive holes in their theory. From the article: "The difference is illustrated well in the article 'A Whale of a Tale'. This article shows that the critical skeletal elements necessary to establish the transition from non-swimming land mammal to whale are (conveniently) missing (see diagram)."
I'm sorry, but I refuse to believe this crap! I'm going to leave it here. I hope you will consider reading the two aforementioned books, plus books that are pro-Christian (which, as I have said, do a much better job of eliminating doubt than evolution), such as those by Grant Jeffrey, Josh McDowell, Norm Geisler, etc. I wish you the best - Merry Christmas! (oops, I offended again...:)
"To believe that something is true is to not question it." Do you love me? Do you love me? How about now? Do you remember the movie AI? The blue fairy was a blue fairy was a blue fairy, for 10,000 years it never changed. We humans on the other hand have something called intuition, and intimacy...
The sea animal is 10 times larger, for heaven's sake! And if the transition took place over millions of years, why don't we have any fossils for the intervening time??
Because fossils are very rare, and size changes can happen very fast. An animal the size of a mouse could increase in size at a rate that was barely detectable in several human lifetimes and still get to the size of an elephant in a time too short for this change to be in the fossil record!
These aren't transitional animals! They're fully functional, fully articulate! You expect me to believe that (going back to the land/sea analogy) the transition was intantaneous thereby eliminating any difficulties that would normally arise during the transition? Talk about taking something on faith!
No - you are for some unknown reason assuming that there are transitional animals that would have problems. All of the intermediate animals would have been fully functional and healthy. Why should they have problems?
There just isn't enough time for these trillions upon trillions of random (mostly failing) mutations to occur!
That isn't the way evolution works. Failing mutations rarely even survive to birth. There is selection for good mutations.
"The difference is illustrated well in the article 'A Whale of a Tale'. This article shows that the critical skeletal elements necessary to establish the transition from non-swimming land mammal to whale are (conveniently) missing (see diagram)."
Where is this from?
I'm sorry, but I refuse to believe this crap! I'm going to leave it here.
Please don't - I am enjoying this. You did say you were going to look at things with an open mind. Calling it all crap without being prepared to debate is not doing that.
Merry Christmas to you too! (You don't have to be un-Christian to accept evolution).
You completely and utterly missed my point re the eye. It wasn't that it was complex but rather that it either works or it doesn't.
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
I think you have a point but I'd throw in two things to consider: despite your argument there may well be a pattern. Second what people seem to forget is that we're not at the end of the process (well unless life on earth ends in the near, in evolutionary terms, future). Evolution doesn't appear to treat "now" as a special case where as creationism and ID seem to.
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
Well, yes of course. But you can't assume the universe is not young, take observations like this, then use them to prove the universe is not young; that's what scientists generally call invalid reasoning on the grounds of being a circular argument. All observing a star 15bn light years away proves is that that star is 15bn light years away; it requires other assumptions, or observations that themselves do not rest on the "not young" assumption because then you've still got a circular argument, before you can conclude "therefore the universe is at least 15bn years old."
IMHO since ID proponents get accused of being unscientific, it's only fair that its opponents should be required to be scientific.
It's hard for many of us computer scientists to think that evolution leads somewhere wrong when evolution has clearly led us (computer scientists) to the field of evolutionary programming. This is a field which is unabashedly based on evolutionary theory, and which has enjoyed tremendous success. I've personally employed many genetic algorithms (a sub-field of evolutionary programming) to help me solve problems that are difficult to solve in other ways. The idea that random mutations in the context of a "fitness terrain" can lead to useful solutions is a well tested idea in computer science.
By comparison, what scientific/technological fields has ID contributed to in a useful manner?
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
All right, no really, this is the LAST reply, and then I have to get on with the rest of my sorry life...:)
p ter5.asp
Regarding massive growth spurts: There would HAVE to be fossils for intermediate transitions. Let's take the fallacy of human evolution. Based on what we know of human growth population, and assuming that humans have been around for millions of years as postulated by evolutionists, the Earth would have to be littered with skeletons! There would literally be hundreds of billions (if not trillions) of ancient human fossils laying around, even accounting for plague, wars, ice ages, etc. This isn't up for debate - it's merely statistical. For a mouse to increase in size to an elephant, statistically there would have to be at least one intermediate fossil proving this! It's only common sense. The evolutionary record on this is remarkably shabby in this regard.
As to transitional animals being fully functional, this belies commonsense too. You can't take two completely different respiratory systems (for example), make an intermediate form of them, and expect them to "just work". They won't. We're expected to believe that ALL transitional forms of eyes, brains, respiratory systems, skeletal systems for ALL existing species were fully functional? This is completely unreasonable from a scientific point of view, and no reasonable man would believe this. If you do, you're wilfully suspending disbelief in order to support a world-view that fits your current lifestyle (which is the whole basis for evolution, in my opinion).
Regarding the trillions of positive mutations that would have to occur, you say, "There is selection for good mutations", I have to ask you, "Who is doing the selecting?" Since this is all supposedly random, the odds of any given complex system randomly assembling even over 250 million years is ridiculously absurd, even for simpler systems. Again, it's the law of statistics: let's say there are 10 microorganisms in a given complex system that have to work right for it to be "functional". The odds of them evolving together is 1/10 * 1/10 * 1/10 * 1/10 * 1/10 * 1/10 * 1/10 * 1/10 * 1/10 * 1/10. That's 1 in 10 billion (if my math is right). That's just one very simple system, and the human body has billions of them! That makes the odds WORST than astronomical!
The "Whale of a Tale" article is linked to in the original article, which I repost here: http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/re1/cha
There are many other arguments that counter evolution, such as the evidence of a massive worldwide flood, the fact that the sun would have increased in size to envelope the Earth over that time-span, etc. Many books have been written on this.
I don't have time to keep going. Bible prophecy is playing out before our eyes, and history, archeology and past fulfilled prophecy all tell us we can trust the Bible to know who we are and where we're going. Time is running out. I feel that with the recent very bad behavior from Iran recently, Armageddon is very near. Accept Christ while you still have time! Seacrest out...
I didn't start with the assumption that the universe is old.
I started (and astronomers started) with the idea that light has a consistent speed through space, and that light is produced by the same atomic processes in stars that produce light here on Earth and in the sun. Then, we make observations, and see that they are consistent with 15 billion year old quasars and whatnot emitting light that we are just seeing today.
THE OBSERVATION OF AN OLD UNIVERSE IS THE CONCLUSION, NOT THE ASSUMPTION. THERE IS NO CIRCLE IN THE ARGUMENT.
To argue that the universe was created a short time ago with the *appearance* of age requires an ADDITIONAL assumption (or MORE). That is, requires something like the change of speed of light over time (which is ruled out by other physics consideration), or the supposition that there was some "magical" event that made everything just so to look old, but happened just, say, 10,000 years ago, but otherwise everything looks exactly like an old argument.
Where is the evidence for any young age? What justifies the assumption? No credible scientific observation that I know of.
Adding these unnecessary assumptions that add NO PREDICTIVE VALUE to the model is the unscientific part. Conventional cosmologists don't make them. Young creation apologists do. That's why the first are acting scientifically, and the latter are not.
You are a fucking moron. Nothing like even 0.0001% of organisms die in such a way that their remains are preserved as fossils.
"Ashes to ashes and dust to dust" and all that. Ever see roadkill, or dead wildlife? Not much left after the carrion-eaters and the insects and the fungus and everything get done with it. Gone in a few days. It turns into dirt. UNLESS it gets quickly buried in an anoxic environment. And geological processes leave it in a place that human fossil hunters can access it.
Fossilization is exceedingly RARE, and fossil discovery by scientists is even RARER. We're lucky to have found the fossils that we have! Demanding that we produce millions more to satisfy you is preposterous.
Why don't you provide a few dozen more letters from St. Paul? Why don't you show us where the cross is?
The basic argument in Intelligent Design seems to be, "Structure X is too complex for me to figure out a plausable evolutionary pathway for it; therefore it must have been designed."
ID advocates overlook some fundamental (though widely misunderstood) aspects of evolution. For instance, no "primitive" organisms live today. Every species now alive has gone through the same 3.8 billion years of evolution as the rest of us. The biochemistry of so-called "primitive" organisms has thus had plenty of time to complexify.
There's also lots of evidence that life evolves reduntant systems, which leaves it free to delete "primitive" method A in favor of "complex" method B.
Imagine an alien scientist studying plumbing in a modern U.S. city -- perhaps one of California suburbs constructed since the 1950s. With no outhouses, cesspits, or pit latrines as examples of incremental development, our scientist might conclude that modern plumbing -- which requires metallurgy, ceramics, hydraulics, pumping, electricity, etc. -- is too complex for the inhabitants to have developed. The technology must therefore have been given to them by an alien race.
I pointed these fallacies out to Michael Behe (author of ID classic Darwin's Black Box) some years back, but received no reply.
The OP forgot to mention that while performing this experiment, he has his eyes closed, fingers in his ears, and is humming hymns.
So you can wave all sorts of textbooks at him, but he really can't see.
I was well aware that the trial was "selected" actually. Nor do I consider that a "scam". The teacher in question chose to violate the law thus setting up the trial in the first place. That wasn't the first (dumping tea in the harbour) or last time that laws were deliberately violated to protest their existence.
As to the reaction in dayton, that wasn't the text of my discussion. Nor did I draw in any way from "inherit the wind". Since the trial it has (for better or worse) become a symbol of the evolutuion/creation debate and, perhaps outside of Dayton, spurred both sides along.
Consider this, the 6 members of the Kansas state board of eductation, scvheduled their pro-creationism dog and pony show for the exact same days as the Scopes Monkey trial starting it on the anniversary of the trial's opening. That wasn't accidental.
Whatever the intentions, or mood, of the participants at the time, the trial is now well beyond that in the minds of both creationists, and rationalists.
Test away. I'm very interested in seeing what observations you can think of that might favor a null hypothesis.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
Let me put it this way: Eating a delicious meal is not just about being full at the end. Maybe death will be a great adventure. I don't know. What I know is that life is more of an adventure than anybody could really take in completely.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
OK, what about supernovae? This is the remnants of the explosion of a star that is at the end of it's life.
Supernova SN1987A is determined to be about 170000 light years away (a recent, near supernova). That means the star exploded 170000 years ago for us to see the explosion in 1987.
So for the young earth theory to be correct, God must have created the star already exploded, then created the light of the star (that didn't really exist), and the explosion, in transit so we would *think* that the star exploded. You don't call this trickery?
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
> If god exists and is interested in human beings, then I can't imagine he is an arrogant
> god. More precisely, I don't believe that god would require or even suggest worship, let
> alone a relationship based on fear. Worship is as human a quality as they come, and fear-
> mongering is clearly the agenda of a con man. Both are quite obviously human inventions
Yes, because man created god in his own image.
> Regardless of whether god exists, organized religion is a scam!
So true.
This seems to be a one sided conversation everyone is completly and totaly pro evolution and so here is some more information on the subject. Biblical Creationism: The Universe is the result of design and construction by the all powerful, all knowing.... God. This may take a long time to read but please read the whole thing and give me your reaction. "Coal: Evidence for a Young Earth" Abstract: Evolutionary theory requires millions of years in the formation of coal in order to afford time for the development of living organisms whose fossils are found in coal deposits. However, laboratory and field research has demonstrated that coal is formed rapidly and in vast quantities. These vast coal deposits are unsullied by other material. The conclusion is drawn that actual research indicates a young age to the Earth that contains such coalified materials. Introduction "If coal takes millions and millions of years of heat and pressure to form, how is it possible that creationists are teaching that the earth is only a few thousand years old?" This is a commonly asked question among individuals seeking answers about the age of the earth and the universe. Research has been done by several creation organizations, as well as independent scientists, in order to answer such questions. The evidence actually shows that coal does not take millions of years to form, as is commonly asserted. In fact, the formation of coal has been proven to be a rapid process that can be duplicated in modern laboratories in a matter of days - or even hours. I. Rapid Formation In order for coal to be formed, several factors must be present. Pressure, temperature, water, time, and some sort of vegetation are the key elements for the formation of coal. According to evolutionary theory, the slow accumulation and decomposition of vegetation living in past ages accounts for the coal seams. However, this theory can not answer why such large amounts of original vegetation without soil can be found in the areas that are now coal seams, or how these coal seams became so thick - some being over two hundred feet in depth. Scientist Robert Gentry analyzed coalified wood found on the Colorado Plateau in order to determine how long it took for coal to form.1 By treating coal with epoxy and slicing it into thin sheets, Dr. Gentry was able to examine tiny, compressed radiohalos found in the coal. Radiohalos are discolorations in the coal, ejected by radioactive elements in the centers (such as uranium). According to evolutionary theory, in order for these halos to form, several processes must have occurred. First, water-saturated logs must have been laid down in several different geologic formations, including the Triassic, Jurassic and Eocene layers. Later, uranium solutions infiltrated the water-saturated logs, and uranium decay products were collected at tiny sites within the logs. The radioactive decay from the tiny particles ejected spherical radiation damage regions around those sites, thus producing halos. Finally, a pressure event on the site of the formations compressed the logs as well as the radioactive halos within them. However, because coal is not a malleable substance, scientists know that these logs had not turned to coal at the time the compression event occurred. This points to a quick burial and coalification of the logs rather than a long time period.2 II. Decay Ratios When the ratio of uranium decay to its decay product (lead) is analyzed, the conclusion is drawn that all the logs within the various geologic formations were buried at the same time. The high lead-to-uranium ratios admit the possibility that both the initial uranium infiltration and the coalification could possibly have occurred within the past several thousand years.3 III. Polystrate Fossils The presence of "polystrate" trees (trees petrified or coalified in an upright position) point to a rapid coalification process. One of the most commonly known polystrate trees is found at Katherine Hill Bay, Australia. This fossilized tree can be seen extending over twelve feet, thr
There's no need to shout. This is supposed to be a (n at least semi-) scientific discussion, not a slanging match.
OK, I make the additional assumption that God created the star plus the light in transit so that we can see it straight away without having to wait for the light to get here. Doesn't your assumption that this wasn't the case also count as an extra assumption that balances out my extra assumption, and if not, why not?
No, you are absolutely and completely wrong in saying these balance out.
1) my "assuming god didn't do anything" is the same as assuming nothing did anything. I place no requirements at all on the nature of God's interaction, because I claim there is none. I do not depend on the truth or falsity of the statement. It is *not* an assumption at all! If you cannot grasp this, you are lost to all logical thought.
2) More importantly, your assuming God put everything together in exactly the right way does NOTHING to change the predictions of the theory. Just scratch it completely out, and all the observations and predictions stay absolutely the same. It is totally superfluous, and thus has no motivation to be included. This is the famous Ockham's razor.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Isn't it wonderful to see that every once in a while rational thought prevails? Yay rational thought!
Listen, there are whackos all over the place. It just happens that the US attracts the whole lot. Be glad they're not vocal in your country.
Hey, we had a deal with the Natives.. we ship over all of our religous whackos from Europe, they get an easy source of protein. Damm those communicable diseases.
I mean, we tried to deal with the problem ourselves - when it comes to reliegous genocide, you Americans haven't even made the starting grid yet - but these fundies breed.
I'm glad that you have such a fulfilling life. :) I didn't mean that life is completely miserable; perhaps I exaggerated a bit. But if somehow you haven't already, I can assure you that you will go through difficult, painful times in your life. Loss, disease, and death are inevitable.
... Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. ... Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known."
Really, you're right, this life is just a march to a better end. After all, this life will end, but eternity will not. But this life is really an opportunity. It's an opportunity to serve God by serving others. Philippians 2:3-4 says, "Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others." And we are to do this out of love. In Matthew 23:37, Jesus said, "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments." I Corinthians 13 explains love in detail: "...If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.
The point is, when this life ends, what will you have left? You can gain knowledge, gain power, gain fame, do great things, earn lots of money, have lots of fun...but when you're on your death bed, what will it matter? You will leave this world, and remember none of it. Time will pass, and the world will not remember you.
You're right, it's not just about being full at the end. But what if, at the end, you're not full, but empty?
Death will indeed be a great adventure for all. But whether it's an adventure with a happy or unhappy ending is up to each person. If one believes in the Lord, confesses their faith, and is baptized, calling on his name, and lives faithfully to their death, they will have great joy when they die.
"When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: 'Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?' The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." I Corinthians 15:54-57
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
Your reasonning has *several* huge flaws.
...).
...)
- What you're basically considering, even if you can't name it, is only punct mutation (a single base pair some where is randomly replaced by another or deleted). Single points of mutation do happen, but they're not the only way to create diversity.
There are other much more efficient ways : recombination, which is shuffling functionnal units to produce new genes using old parts. (whole gene subunits like "domain that goes thru cell wall" can be copied or moved around. The result is another gene that can function).
It's like trying to create something different out of a bicycle by throwing hammer randomly at it (point mutation. After an eternity and if done in parallel on a lot of bicycles, I may indeed work by virtue of the Shakespear and thousand monkeys principle) compared to taking a bicycle appart, combining the pieces differently and ending up with a tandtem, a mono-cycle, or a motor-cycle if you threw in a motor from somewhere else in the mix (recombination. then evolution will sort out which of your products is useful).
recombination is the quick method to obtain something useful out of almost nothing, point mutation help only for the fine tuning, most of the time.
All living cell can do it (both bacteria and eukaryote). The whole genome research is about trying to discover genes and infer their uses by recognizing such functionnal units ("auto-labelling" is exactly that. Computers look for known units inside the full genome).
The most trivial example is that this technique is used by your white blood cells to create new kind of antibodies to be prepared for your next infection. (They are obtained by shuffling around antibody "spare parts" and then fine-tuned by point mutation).
Some bacteria have developped new functions by creting new proteins that are inserted in their wall and let them interact with their surroundings in new way.
- Full gene can be duplicated, and then mutate independently ending in different variants.
Take your exemple of hemoglobin. In fact there's not a single kind of hemoglobin, but a great number of different related proteins. regular blood cells take 2 different kinds, 2 samples of each, and pack them in groups or 4. Myoglobin is another proteins that is used in packs of 2 by the muscle to store local oxygen suplies. All these proteins have very closely related structures, and are produced by genes that look similar and stem from a comon ancestor, but then got duplicated and evolved into separate proteins in the end even used by different type of cells.
Same goes for the pigments in the color sensors of the retina. In fact, the blue pigment and the green pigment sits next to each other on the same chromosome. They probably are a single gene that got duplicated and then specialised into 2 different pigments. Some kind of very light daltonism (that doesn't prevent seeing colors like regular daltonisme, but only mess detection of subtle differences) is caused by this genes getting once again duplicated and being now three copies on the same chromosome (green, blue, and mixed).
- Don't forget that proteins aren't linear but are folded. By repeating small segments, or by point mutation at strategical points, you may end up with something that is folded completly differently and has a complete different function. Same goes for the post-processing once the protein is builded (sugars may be added on the sufrace,
- and there are a lot of other way to obtain new creative results quickly (plasmids, scavenging,
- As another reader pointed out, the point is not to produce this single exact protein which today's human have. The point is to create whatever comes, and the let the evolution sort whatever is usefull. There may be hundreds of different combinations that are viable, functionnal and useful. Out of lots of possible alternatives, one specific got picked by luck.
Take the eyes : Insects, molluscs and vertebrate have evovled separatly and ended w
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
what gives you the idea that my mind is closed ?
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
So, you want links - here is the main site that is trying to coordinate the fight to legalize dancing: http://www.legalizedancingnyc.com/
There was a great story on NPR some weeks ago (months) about this problem. Bar owners being fined a lot of money due to patrons "swaying and moving to background music"! (Warning, you need to listen to the story)
The amazing thing is the link to the Footloose movie - there are some people from that movie that are now working to address this law in New York. Some of them even claimed that when they first saw the script for the movie that they thought it was "too unbelievable" until they did the research.
I hate that interesting and thoughtful critiques from science studies/ philosophy of science might eventually work for these christian fundie fascist wingnuts.
Before flaming back, NB the above description is a simplification (and, often conflation) of Feyerabend's work, such as I conjecture ID'ers might turn to. His actual work is quite interesting and far more nuanced.
To understand recursion, you must first understand recursion.
Now that we are rejecting evolution, let's start reexamining those other so called "firmly held theories of science". I say we give this guy a shot at teaching his theory in schools as well.
http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/fe-scidi.htm
You know, we got lucky. Following this trial, I was actually expecting ID to be upheld, because I assumed they would have picked their fight in a district where the judge was known to favor creationism. When the judge isn't biased, the system comes up with the truth on average, but a biased judge can rule with any opinion they want. If there'd been a jury, same deal.
Back in college someone asked what the C syntax was for a function pointer. The professor said she didn't know, and asked us to vote on what the answer was. We all laughed. The reason we laughed was that we knew there was a correct answer, and that majority opinion had no bearing on what the correct answer was. Same here: the outcome of a court case is an opinion by a group of people, and doesn't affect what the correct answer actually is.
good point. There is also very strong evidence that changes in size occur with you put a speicies on a smaller landmass. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/eden/giants.html The link is pretty self explainatory.
If ID is 'flawed' for attempting to introduce the supernatural to explain the tough parts, then evolution is 'flawed' for lack of credible evidence combined with the presence of contradictory evidence. If ID is pseudo-mystical, then evolution is non sequitor.
I have no problem pulling BOTH of them out of science class. If you look at the facts objectively, it cannot be said dogmatically that either one happened. Let's all just stop pretending that the evolution proponents aren't secular zealots and just teach what can be scientifically proven.
One of the most impressive Slashdot posts I've seen in a long time. Skoal!
It's not a lie. It's the truth with lossy compression.
By removing the term "design" from the discussion, you've rendered the discussion meaningless. If you see the universe as a big creation of "art" .. then that creation needs no intelligent design. If it doesn't need intelligent design, then you've capitulated that it therefore evolved according to its own "rules".
If I ever meet the guy, I hope I remember to ask him why men have nipples.
It's not a lie. It's the truth with lossy compression.
Yeah, robotics is intelligent design, so it does not belong in a classroom either.
That makes no sense. If a being, like you and I, is discovered to be creating us, that is just as much science as us manipulating genes. It is a theory just as much as evolution is. Which might be a case to say that evolution does not belong in the classroom. Which brings us to the question, what defines "science."
Official declairation: I think both should be allowed in a classroom and both should be declaired a theory, since they both are.
Slant
Between the Spaces
To quote Terry Pratchett:
"People are always a little confused about this, as they are in the case of miracles. When someone is saved from certain death by a strange concatenation of circumstances, they say that's a miracle. But of course if someone is killed by a freak chain of events (the oil just spilled there, the safety fence broken just there), that must also be a miracle. Just because it's not nice doesn't mean it's not miraculous."
RMN
~~~
Science is the process of building, testing, defining, and redefining models of reality. In creating new models, new ideas, and new words, the work of Science is to constantly improve the ability of the Theory to match and model the perceived reality.
The problem with I.D. is that it looks outward for a supernatural creator to guide the functions of the universe and life. Their god might as well be just an alien, like Q from Star Trek. What seems to be missing is that it is the Observer that most impacts the perceptions of the cosmos.
We humans interact with the cosmos through the dim filter of our eyes and brains.
The human eye can only perceive certain bandwidths of light, and the rest goes sight unseen. Likewise the human mind perceives the cosmos in an ordered and structured way, because the mind is a pattern recognition organ that has evolved for the purpose of helping the individual survive day to day and reproduce successful offspring.
Java programming on paper would mean little to an ant, unless the ink tasted good. The ant does not have a perception of the computer code, or a computer. Likewise a human's perception of the universe is limited, because of the limits of the human brain. It's not the fault of the ant that it is an ant, and it is not the fault of the human that it is a human, that is just the nature of the function of the organs in the creatures.
Perhaps someday our minds will be able to build machines that can more accurately unravel the mystery of existence - what everything is 'made' of, why energy flows the way it does, how it got here and what happens next. Already we use devices to convert radio waves into sound we can hear, convert X-rays into black and white photos, and MRI machines to convert humanly undetectable energies into vibrant color pictures...
Now, just to break that FTL space/time misconceptions and discover the simple and cheap way to travel the Galaxy!
I.D. major flaw is making a religion out of a side effect of perceiving the cosmos through a pattern recognition organ.
They might as well say fairies paint the flowers colors every springtime, because we see the new colors pop up from nothingness... so it must be fairies.
LOL. The parent was rated insightful?
miracle n. An event inexplicable by the laws of nature: wonder. See supernatural.
By definition, something being explainable or natural removes it from being a miracle.
Go to the toy store. Buy a bag of marbles--at least a double handful. Go to the shoe store. Get a shoebox. Toss the marbles into the shoebox. Be certain to do this randomly! Observe as the marbles spontaneously arrange themselves into the exact same arrangement as a beehive, and, hey-presto! What have we got? Why, order from chaos, of course!
This whole ``order can never arise from randomness'' thing is pure bullshit. How do you think entropy works? If an ordered state is more stable than a disordered one, then the ordered state will persist where the disordered one won't. It's why astronomical bodies are (generally) spherical, it's why crystals are so pretty, and it's why you're here. So get over it, already: your god is completely superfluous, thankyouverymuch.
Here's another experiment for you. Go to the toy store. Buy a bag of white marbles and a bag of black marbles. Now, put the white marbles in your shoe box, on the left, and then put the black marbles in the shoe box on the right. Now put the cover on and shake well. Open box. Are the white marbles on the left and the black ones on the right? No? Repeat. Continue this until the marbles are segregated again. Make out your will because you will probably die before you produce this outcome.
Now, what is the difference between your experiment and mine? Well, your's depends on energy state and mine doesn't. But guess what? The information encoded in DNA does not depend on energy state. Oh yes, the DNA molecule itself depends on energy state. But not the information encoded in it. DNA is a neutral medium. It can encode anything. It can encode the Encyclopedia Britannica. The point to remember is that the information encoded in DNA does not depend on energy state.
So, in fact, my experiment more closely models the information structure of DNA. Your experiment is meaningless and irrelevant when discussing biological information.
Evolution is a fact. Darwinism is a joke.
Every design has constraints, but none of them require the optic nerve to go where it does. Squid eyes, for example, have no blind spot, can see in very dim light, are more sensitive to color differences than ours and move the lens rather than bending it (preventing focusing problems, like the ones that lead to reading glasses) - and have no known major downside.
Well, a squid is neither a vertebrate nor an insect. And humans do not descend from the family of squids, now do they. Next time, listen more closely to the assignment.
Evolution is a fact. Neo-Darwinism is not. You seem like a smart guy. Open your mind. It's good for you.
Evolution is a fact. Darwinism is a joke.
But most evolutionists define speciation it terms of whether two group are observed to interbreed. Not if they can interbreed. This is one thing that make speciation observations somewhat controversial.
Evolution is a fact. Darwinism is a joke.
endoplasmicMessenger wrote:
Bullshit.
``Survival of the fittest'' is just another way of saying, ``reproductive efficiency,'' after all. And, if you don't believe that there's any correlation whatsoever between reproductive efficiency and dependency on an energy state, I've got a perpetual motion machine to sell you.
Cheers,
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
But I would be interested in what you mean by "God went through this elaborate lie to trick us."
That certainly doesn't sound like you are giving God much of the benefit of the doubt.
Evolution is a fact. Darwinism is a joke.
Bullshit.
``Survival of the fittest'' is just another way of saying, ``reproductive efficiency,'' after all. And, if you don't believe that there's any correlation whatsoever between reproductive efficiency and dependency on an energy state, I've got a perpetual motion machine to sell you.
I see that you think you know something about physics but don't know much about biology. Let me see if I can educate you.
The DNA (deoxyrobonucleic acid) molecule is a polymer (a chain) whose elements (the links) are called nucleotides. One part of each nucleotide is a phosphate group (a phosphorus atom joined with four oxygen atoms). These are the same in each nucleotide and serve to hold the links together.
The main part of each nucleotide is called a nucleoside which is composed of a sugar (deoxyribose - carbon, oxygen and hydrogen) and a base. The sugar sits in line with the phosphate groups and forms the the backbone of the construction, which looks something like this:
So far, this is nothing but a repeating structure that contains no distinct information. And certainly, in terms of energy state, it is just a repeating molecule, no part of it having an energy state which is any different from any other part.
Now, we said that a nucleoside is composed of a sugar and a base and we have described how the sugar is part of what we so far have called the backbone. The base extends off to the side from the sugar and so is not part of the backbone proper.
There are four kinds of bases: adenine (denoted by A), thymine (denoted by T), cytosine (denoted by C), and guanine (denoted by G). Each of these bases is composed of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen atoms.
It is the base of each nucleoside which gives uniqueness to each link in the chain. By creating a string of nucleosides, a string of unique pieces of information is being created. The backbone is an information neutral (and energy state neutral) sequence of repeating identical sugars and phosphate groups. The information gets attached to the sugars in the form of 4 distinct bases. But these are not directly attached to each other. The bases attach to the backbone via a sugar -- the identical sugar in every case. So any difference in the molecular configuration of these bases only trivially effects the energy state of the DNA molecule as a whole which is primarily defined by the identical components of the backbone.
Each triplet of nucleotides specifies one genetic codon. This means that the string of nucleotides in the DNA molecule are interpreted in groups of three. There are 64 (4^3) different mathematical combinations of the three bases. That is, there are 64 possible codons. So individual bases do not directly contribute to the interpretation of the DNA molecule. They are only interpreted in groups of three. So if there are minor differences in energy state between the different bases, this is further isolated by the fact that the bases are not interpreted individually, but only in groups of three.
Each codon (group of three nucleotides) specifies one amino acid. But there are not 64 different amino acids. There are only 20 amino acids. So there is some redudancy in the way that codons map to amino acids. For your edification, here is histogram of mappings:
Number of Mappings/Amino Acid
6/Ser - Serine
6/Leu - Leucine
6/Arg - Arginine
5/Ala - Alanine
4/Thr - Threonine
4/Pro - Proline
4/Gly - Glycine
3/Val - Valine
3/STOP
3/Ile - Isoleucine
2/Tyr - Tyrosine
2/Phe - Phenylalanine
2/Lys - Lysine
2/His - Histidine
2/Glu - Glutamic Acid - glx - Z
2/Gin - Glutamine - glx - Z
2/Cys - Cysteine
2/
Evolution is a fact. Darwinism is a joke.
Please read my other post about this here.
Also, holding the view that the entire universe was created solely for our benefit (which is what IDers are implying when they say it is 6000 years old and created according to our bible) is possibly the most arrogant thing I've ever heard. Nowhere in the bible does it say this -it is solely a human interpretation. There are countless billions of galaxies each with billions of stars. Why would all of this be just for us when we cant even see the galaxies let alone visit them? This simply doesn't make sense.
It is so much simpler and more logical to believe that God created the universe out of nothing (i.e. the Big Bang) as the bible says, and allowed the universe to evolve on its own according to a set of rules that he set up (i.e. rules we discover and call Physics, Geology, Astrophysics, etc.) You can always interpret the bible such that it does not conflict with known and accepted science - the majority of Christians and other religions take this approach, and it is the official view of their church.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
endoplasmicMessenger wrote:
Duh.
Like I said, bullshit.
Look, just how do you think DNA gets propagated? Do you really think that DNA encoded in an organism's cells is going to survive if it causes that organism to expend twice the energy to do half the work? Do you really think that a stronger, faster, more efficient organism--thanks to its DNA--isn't going to create more offspring?
The way I see it, there're two possibilities. The first, and most likely, is that you just cut-n-pasted that introduction to DNA because you found it linked off of some Liar-for-Jesus's website. You don't understand more than a few words of it, but that doesn't bother you. It sounds all technical and impressive, and it all boils down to, ``DNA can encode ANYTHING.'' You like that, because it's not too hard to then make the false leap to ``Every permutation of DNA is equally likely.'' You really like that one, because the obvious conclusion is that ``Only Jesus can make sure that only good DNA winds up in your genes.
Shit, even your summary contradicts your premise, when you talk about interlocking blocks bumping into each other. Right there, in that very paragraph, you demonstrate that, in the real world, DNA cannot encode ``ANYTHING.'' What makes you think that's in any way different from my example with the marbles, or a crystal, or anything else? Just how fucking stupid does Jesus make a person, anyway?
The other possibility is that you're the Liar-for-Jesus yourself. You know that it's all bullshit, but you also realize that, the more people who believe your lies, the more power you can wield over them and the more of their money they'll give to you.
So, if you did a cut-and-paste job, you owe it to yourself to educate yourself to the point that you can actually understand it. Because, if you do, you'll realize the smoke-and-mirrors job that somebody is putting on you.
And if you wrote it yourself, fuck off, eat shit, and die. You asshole Christians are doing your damnedest to create hell on Earth just so you can be smug in knowing that you're more powerful than those who've got your boots in their faces. Meanwhile, us atheists are trying as hard as we can to turn Earth into heaven--it doesn't exist anywhere else, after all--and we're damned sick of having to put up with your crusade to tear down everything we've built.
Cheers,
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
Well, I'm not sure who you're refuting. I'm not a creationist and I don't believe in a young earth. I believe that the universe is 13.7 billion years old. That the earth is 4.3 billion years old. That life started on earth about 13.8 million years ago. And that Neo-Darwinism is mostly a bunch of nonsense.
Now, if you want to convince me of something, convince me of how earth went from a ball of molten lava to a host for living creatures in only about 500 million years.
I think you are probably confused by the fact that most creationists are in some sense, IDers. But not all IDers are creationists. In the future, I would suggest that you first make sure that your audience is in fact creationist before expending too much energy in refuting creationist arguments that your audience does not hold.
Also, holding the view that the entire universe was created solely for our benefit (which is what IDers are implying when they say it is 6000 years old and created according to our bible) is possibly the most arrogant thing I've ever heard.
You seem to be confusing IDers with creationists. They are not the same thing. If I look at a mouse trap, not knowing its origin, I might conclude that it is designed, and not the result of unguided random processes. Likewise, if I look at certain structures of a cell, I might come to the same conclusion. Making observations and coming up with hypotheses does not suddenly make one a young earth creationist.
Evolution is a fact. Darwinism is a joke.
Duh.
Well, I'm glad that you agree that the DNA molecule can encode anything. Because that's the same as saying its encoding is not dependent on energy state of the DNA molecule. If encoding were dependent on energy state, then there would only be certain things that could be encoded. And the fact the DNA can encode the blueprints for every creature that has ever lived pretty much means that in can encode anything. It's up to you to demonstrate that there is something that can not be encoded by the DNA molecule.
Like I said, bullshit.
Oh, now I'm convinced (not).
Look, just how do you think DNA gets propagated?
What does this have to do with the energy state of the DNA molecule?
Do you really think that DNA encoded in an organism's cells is going to survive if it causes that organism to expend twice the energy to do half the work?
Probably not. That's something that will be decided between the organism and its environment (maybe you've heard of Natural Selection). It doesn't have anything to do with the energy state of the DNA molecule itself. It's because the encoding of the DNA molecule does not depend on energy state that it can encode arbitrary changes that can be beneficial (or not) to the organism.
Do you really think that a stronger, faster, more efficient organism--thanks to its DNA--isn't going to create more offspring?
I don't think you even understand what the energy state of a molecule is. You originally seemed to be suggesting that what gets encoded into the DNA molecule was determined by the resulting energy state of the DNA molecule. As if a DNA molecule in a lower energy state will result in an organism with better survival characteristics. The energy state of the DNA molecule, and the resulting survival traits in the organism are to completely orthogonal concepts. It does not appear that you understand that.
The way I see it, there're two possibilities. The first, and most likely, is that you just cut-n-pasted that introduction to DNA because you found it linked off of some Liar-for-Jesus's website. You don't understand more than a few words of it, but that doesn't bother you. It sounds all technical and impressive, and it all boils down to, ``DNA can encode ANYTHING.''
As they say, Ad hominem attacks are the last refuge of the weak minded. If there is something you disagree with, why don't you engage the argument instead of slashing out.
You like that, because it's not too hard to then make the false leap to ``Every permutation of DNA is equally likely.''
Well, for the first time you are showing some evidence that you actually understand the matter at hand. Yes, that is exactly my point: Every permutation of DNA is equally likely. If you can demonstrate that this is not true, then please be my guest.
You really like that one, because the obvious conclusion is that ``Only Jesus can make sure that only good DNA winds up in your genes.
Huh? Mutations are more likely to be harmful than to be beneficial. Maybe you should check out these frogs in Minnesota. They will have a hard time producing any offspring at all.
Shit, even your summary contradicts your premise, when you talk about interlocking blocks bumping into each other. Right there, in that very paragraph, you demonstrate that, in the real world, DNA cannot encode ``ANYTHING.''
Huh? The things that are bumping into each other are called "proteins". A protein is a chain of amino acids usually several hundred long. All cells function literally by proteins bumping into each other and in doing so, modifying how the inte
Evolution is a fact. Darwinism is a joke.
My audience, and the people who were responding to my posts were creationists who were pushing Intelligent Design as science.
ID was thought up by creationists. If others have discarded the obviously stupid portions of their beliefs then good for them. Since you are using analogies. I put forward this one in rebuttal.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
endoplasmicMessenger wrote:
Seriously, just what the fuck are you smoking?
On the one hand, you seem to be intelligent enough to realize that what gets encoded in an organism's DNA is far from random, and is, indeed, highly dependent on all the environmental pressures that have been so-well described since Darwin. In other words, an organism is what it is (and its DNA carries that particular encoding) for exactly the same reasons that a bunch of marbles is neatly organized in a shoebox.
On the other hand, you can't let go of the fact that, in laboratory conditions, DNA can be twisted into any shape you want--never mind that all but a vanishingly small number of those permutations would encode something that could never possibly result in a viable organism.
And you use this red herring to argue that evolution is impossible, that only your god's magical powers can explain the diversity of life?
Dude...you need drugs, all right. Just not the ones you're taking.
Cheers,
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
ID was thought up by creationists. If others have discarded the obviously stupid portions of their beliefs then good for them. Since you are using analogies. I put forward this one [csicop.org] in rebuttal.
... is who
designed this marvel of complexity [modern free market economies]?
Which
commissar decreed the number of packets of dental floss for each retail
outlet? The answer, of course, is that no economic god designed this
system. It emerged and grew by itself. No one argues that all the
components of the candy bar distribution system must have been put into
place at once, or else there would be no Snickers at the corner store.
From your link:
The natural question
I was looking for the rebuttal. I couldn't find one. Someone thinks that comparing the activity of many, purposeful, creative, intelligent people is comparable to an unguided random process?? I guess he is trying to say that this marvel of complexity is "undesigned". He might as well say that the Internet was undesigned (which he basically did say in his reference to email). I have news for him. Both of them arose from the dedicated, persistent, intelligent work of countless individuals. If it is all just so random, then why is it that some countries have better economic systems then others? Shouldn't every country's economic system have randomly evolved in the same way to the same level of perfection?
And this somehow proves that complex systems arise from unguided random processes? I've heard of better arguments using genetic algorithms. But even these are not persuasive because they never model real evolution very well.
There are better arguments against ID. I encourage you to find them and intelligently engage in the issue. This is the only way we will find the truth.
Evolution is a fact. Darwinism is a joke.
Your problem seems to be that you think belief in evolution precludes belief in God. If you accept that God and evolution can coexist then there is no need to debate Intelligent Design.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
> Then send your kids to private parochial (or other such) school.
Yeah, sure, if I could afford it.
Maybe if the government would give me the $9,000 per year (or whatever it is these days) that they would have to spend on my child's education, if I left them in public school, then I could afford to send my child to private school. As it is, they tax me enough for private school, then refuse to let that money go to my child's education - unless of course I send my child to one of *their* schools.
Anyway, this fight isn't about "mythology". This fight is about preventing the government from teaching my kids that all scientists believe that humans came about through random evolution from lower species. And when the bible-thumpers try to add even the smallest disclaimer, like beginning the evolution teaching with "by the way, this is only a theory, and it's not the only commonly-accepted theory, either", all hell breaks loose.
The government wants to take my money from me and use it to teach my children that religion is wrong about the origin of our species. That is *not* seperation of church and state - that is state-sponsored atheism.
(sig) The last bug isn't fixed until the last user is dead. (/sig)
I did. :-) Good point.
All I said was that evolutionary theory has led to advancements in computer science, whereas to the best of my knowledge intelligent design has not led to any scientific or technological insight. Evolutionary theory (and the law of natural selection) have also led to insight in many other fields, but I thought I'd draw from a discipline (and a sub-field) from which I have first-hand knowledge. I am not saying evolutionary programming being useful in computer science proves evolutionary theory must be correct.
Again, let me be clear - I'm not comparing computer programming to complex (or even simple) biological processes, although comparisons can and have been made. (Comparisons are not the same as equality. One can learn a lot about a complex situation by comparing it to a simpler, easier-to-understand problem. Such comparisons can lead to great insight, although I will readily admit that one can over generalize from such comparisons. You seem intelligent enough to understand this distinction.)
What I am comparing is the scientific worth of evolutionary theory to the scientific worth of intelligent design - since ID is being proposed as a scientific theory (in the current context) and not just a theological theory. One measure of the value of a theory (and only one measure of many) is the scientific and technological return of that theory. Evolutionary programming is one such return (out of many) to come from evolutionary theory. Have there been similar returns from intelligent design? Have there been any scientific returns from intelligent design?
So to answer your question about why I'm "skewing off into a tangent about computer programming", in case you missed it in the above discussion, is because it demonstrates one merit (of many) of evolutionary theory, and hence is a valid framework from which to analyze the evolutionary theory vs. intelligent design debate.
And, of course, I will have to agree to disagree about whether evolutionary theory can explain one species changing into another. Many other posts on this thead have aptly explained how we have observed other species being evolved into. However, you would no doubt point out that what you really meant is that we haven't seen one genus evolving into another, and if such an example came up, you'd no doubt claim we haven't seen one family evolving into another. And, as many other posts have pointed out, there's a big difference between the couple hundred years (at most) that we've been accurately recording such things and the couple billion years that evolution has had to accomplish what it has accomplished. Again, I don't expect to convince you of this, and you, no doubt, don't expect to convince me that anything is too complex for evolution.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
"before the bible was WRITTEN -- women were often the heads of Roman households"
The point is that when the Old testament was written there were no Romans yet and the idea as males as heads of the household and as priests was established then. The New testament merely echoes the sentiments when it writes about making men the head of the church and the household. Your stating that they had to change things is ridiculous when the Biblical doctrine on this subject was written hundreds of years before Rome existed.
"It wasn't until Christianity gained currency as a religion that they decided they didn't want women to be the head of a household"
Historically and factually incorrect. This is like saying that it wasn until Christians gained currency as a religion that they didnt want their congregation killing people for money. Again, the doctrine of male head of household, priesthood, even primogenicy was established by the Old Testament before Rome even existed. You cannot use a modern change in social structure to say that the past dosen't exist. It dosen't even make non-logical sense.
Furthermore, claiming that the reason for this is sexism merely proclaims your complete and utter misunderstanding of the Bible. Women are consistently declared to be better then men in almost every aspect in the Bible. They are revered for their characteristics. The idea of the greater individual being submitting themselves and serving a lesser being (for the right reasons mind you) is Biblical as well. For example, Christ washed people's feet. This does not mitigate the fact that there is a heierarchy that was established by divine fiat. It also does not mean that it was done for sexist reasons. You have to go a bit deeper than your unfounded accusation of sexism to get the real answer.
"from which some hypocrites can shout condemnation at others."
I wont argue that many people who classify themselves as Christians fall quite short of the ideal. I will also not argue that some will condemn others for what they see as evil, wrong, or contradictory to their best interests. I wont justify their actions either. The Bible is clear on how a Christian should act and the mental attitudes and motivations they should posess. That individials do not live up to perfection is expected. The Bible discribes two types of degeneracy. There is immoral degeneracy, the one that everyone identifies easily. This is drug use, sexual promiscuity, anti-establishment activity, etc. Then there is moral degeneracy. This is the one you likely encounter that turns you off to Christians in general. Some people become assured of their holiness and become self-righteous and legalistic. These are the people that unbelievers look at and say to themselves "if THAT is what it is to be a Christian I don't want any part of it!" The fact still remains that what the Bible says about how to interact with people is violated continually by people that call themselves Christians. You may call them hypocrites for doing this, however by condemning for not being perfect you hold yourself up to ridicule from others if you are not perfect yourself.
"You don't actually have to do anything, or live a certain way, to reach "god's kingdom"
This is a central part of the character of God as discribed in the Bible. Man cannot, under the power of the flesh, attain purity of character on par with God. God, in his purity, cannot associate with mankind. Therefore it was incumbent upon God, as the greater and capible party, to devise a way for makind to posess the attributes of God that would allow Him to have fellowship with Man. The mechanism that allowed this was Christ's substitutionary punishment and death on the Cross that atoned for the entirety of the sin debt of all mankind for all time. If the price was paid by Christ what else is necessary? The one thing required is faith in Christ; belief based on the merit of Christ Himself, not the rational or empirical gesticulations of the
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
"Right, but if you kill yourself, you're going to hell, right?"
Wrong. All sins were paid for by Christ on the Cross. Those who believe in Christ go to heaven regardless of thir method of death, self imposed or otherwise. Remember in your other post where you lamented how Christians just had to believe and they went to heaven? It still applied to Christians. As for everyone else, it dosent matter how much you sin. Your entrance into the lake of fire is determined at the judgement seat of Christ (Rev 20 if you want to look it up). Your good deeds are measured and compared to the good character of God. If you measure up you can get into heaven. Sin is not an issue, again, because Christ suffered and died for all mankind, not just those who believe.
"But, if you do something wrong here on earth, god will still forgive you so there is much less motivation than in an orthoprax religion to do good"
Your statement here would be true if we omitted about three quarters of the Bible. Unfortunately for your ill considered viewpoint, most of the Bible is the testament of people who chose to do the wrong things and had to pay the price for it during their lifetimes and sometimes even longer as their children inherited some of the backlash. The idea of forgiveness is definitely there, but I cant see how you miss the massive amount of content that concerns judgement and punishment for sin on Earth. The idea of Karma is not so far from the Christian idea.
What is discribed in the Bible is that when we engage in sinful or evil actions or modes of motivation and thought we engender punishment. This punishment can be for good or ill. It is like when we are chastised by our parents in childhood; God can attempt to correct us in the same way. What the Bible then says is that your attitude toward God and the sinful behavior will determine the outcome of the punishment. It can be punishment for cursing, in the case of the sinner who continues int eh wrong mode of behavior. It can also be punishment for blessing and correction for the believer who admits their mistake and repents (literal definition: change your mind) of that sin and returns to the correct mode of action.
Either way, your idea of the Christian believer getting off scott free for anything they want to do is at least simplistic and verges on being an intentional mischaracterization. In the case of the latter I would assume that you are either carrying a grudge or you are trying to convince yourself. Either way it makes you look kind of foolish when the evidence contrary to your opinion occupies the majority of the pages of the Bible.
"...shit instead of spending that money to improve people's lives"
1: its their money, they can shove it up their asses in fistfulls if they want and they shouldn't face condemnation from you, as you didn't contribute any. As long as the congregation gets to determine what they spent their money on that is fine.
2: Teaching the word of God is, in the minds of Christians, the best way to help them help themselves. If they have a large place to teach from that people want to go to all the better.
3: You have no idea what Churches spend their money on. My father is handicapped, bedridden even, and on a ventilator 24-7. One of these so called "big fancy" churches has paid his electrical bill every month for a year. "Not a big deal you'd say", I'm sure. But, because of all the ventilation, ac bills, air purifiers, etc. his electric bill is $700/month. Of course you don't see that. All you see is a big building and you mock and ridicule it. What I see is people who have that big guilding because they have the blessing of God himself because they DO contribute to the health of society in ways that go beyond even the money that you would so love to see spent in a "better" fashon.
"and it's the reason you treat people well whether it has a bearing on whether you go to heaven or not. "
As you mentioned before, Christians go to heaven because they believe in Christ and nothing else. This statement contradicts what you stated in your ealier post. Not trying ot be mean, just pointing out an inconsistency in your evalution of Christians motivation and behavior.
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
This statement almost caused me to decide not to read the rest of your comment, because it is utterly wrong. The Jews were under Roman rule when Jesus started his preachin' and Christianity began as a splinter cult of Judaism. It would likely not exist today if not for Roman oppression. See this document for more info on rome. Note that the dates fall between about 100 BCE, and 200 CE. Now, if you are paying attention, you know that the date of 1 CE corresponds roughly with the existence of Yeshua of Nazareth (although of course that date is widely disputed.)
Why is it that religious types often hide behind scripture, but don't know a damn thing about the history of their religion? It only serves to prove that they don't know shit about what they're talking about.
Try reading this. Maybe it will open your eyes just a tad? Jesus preached for a year or so. He got busted for bitch slapping the money changers (take a good look at the famous painting sometime) and hung up to drip dry. Some years later, some documents were written by the Essenes, arguably the most strict cult of Judaism. They became the basis of the bible and after much revision, expurgation, and translation, we ended up with the mismash garble that we call the Bible today. Well, actually, we have a whole bunch of different bibles, because Jehovah-worshippers can't agree on a damn thing.
That, sir, is a pile of horseshit. Women are expected to honor and obey their husbands in all things, but it's a one way street. If women are so great, why do they have to be subject to the will of men? Also, let's not forget that Original Sin entered the human race through woman. Granted, from what I've heard, that particular part of the bible is Paul's doing...
"And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat."
Sexual promiscuity is banned because it is a tool of other religions which were stamped out around this time; several of them featured "temple prostitutes" who hung around and fucked people for donations. (Just because it's in Snow Crash doesn't mean it's not true...)
And I sure am glad that anti-establishment activity is against God's will! I guess that explains why the fundies do what their president tells them?
Like the silly Apple commercials say, it's the cracked ones that let the light into the world. Christianity's goal is the same as that of public schools - to turn out legions of easily controlled sheep who will question nothing. This, of course, guarantees the mediocrity of our nation (the US) since we now have a bunch of students who don't even know what science is, let alone a theory. Hence, the continuing
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Interesting. Let's expand on this, shall we?
Actually, the reason I had so much info on this particular subject was because I myself submitted this story...only to be rejected because I was too late. Other people actually appreciate the additional information I frequently bring to discussions...as you would if you were actually interested in participating in the discusion. Some dilligent digging can usually (but not always) turn up some good additional information on a subject. It stimulates healthier discussion, but we've already established you're not interested in that sort of thing.
I will give you the benefit of the doubt on being a late submitter; however, you cannot convince me that for every article for which you just so happen to have "more information can be found here" links that you also were a "too late" submitter. Your posts clearly reveal a consistent pattern of always coincidentally having a "more informative article" ready to go by the time that the article is posted. Participating in a discussion with one's own unique insights and perspectives is one thing. Always having "more information" while often not necessarily adding any comments of substance is quite another.
Here's one that never fails to amuse me...apparently, you feel that you and I are the only participants here who aren't sheep. Every time you bitch about me 'tricking people into thinking I'm insightful' you manage to insult the entire Slashdot readership. And you wonder why you're regarded as a 'troll'...
From this, it's clear that you need to step out of your TMM persona and look at some of the posts that you submitted that for some reason got modded as "ingishtful". There are posts that are paragraphs long, loaded with what most people might not agree with but still can be insightful in thier own right. A great deal of your posts however are nothing more than an article quote with comments equivalent to "I [agree|do not agree] with that", although not so distinct in their brevity, the somehow get modded as "insightful". You of course have no problem with this being on the receiving end, but so someone who is "karmatically indifferent" so to speak, your ability to continually get modded up is suspicious at best. Some of your posts are indeed insightful; some of your posts are indeed funny. But a quote from TFA with a one or two short sentence comment of your own tagged at the end gets a +5 insightful or +5 informative when others quote articles and get modded down for karma whoring? Something is wrong here.
Or perhaps the anime smile that appears to be pissing off one person multiple times...of course, we'll never know, since you insist on hiding under the AC blankie.
"Blankie"? You accuse me of immaturity then you revert to an ultimately childish word as "blankie"? Although I don't expect you do believe this because you would have to admit that I'm right and that you are starting to annoy people with it, out of the last four or five anti-anime-smile posts against you as of this writing, I accounted for one.
It's true that I get my share of first posts....it's also true that I use them to discuss the topic at hand.
I fail to see how a link to another article or a quote from the article with a one or two sentence commentary can qualify as discussing the topic at hand. Many of your initial thread posts do qualify as you said. I would argue that most do not.
My karma has been maxed out for longer than I can remember. If this was about karma, I would have quit out of boredom long ago. What this is about is discussing issues in a forum of like-minded individuals, but it seems you can't get past the 'frist psot' and 'karma whore' slashdot-is-a-big-game mentality long enough to see that.
This is where I call "bullshit" on you. My karma has also been maxed out for more than a year. However, if you deny that there is no slight thrill in seeing a +5 attached to a post, I will call you
And you use this red herring to argue that evolution is impossible, that only your god's magical powers can explain the diversity of life?
I believe evolution is a fact. I think you need to reduce the intake of whatever it is that you are on.
Evolution is a fact. Darwinism is a joke.
I believe evolution is a fact. What's the problem?
A critic of ID once pointed me to talkorigins.org, a mostly pro-evolution web site. Here is one thing that I found: You may find that your emperor Darwin is wearing no clothes.
Evolution is a fact. Darwinism is a joke.
You previously stated that you rejected Darwinism, but now you state you accept evolution as a fact.
Stop screwing around and wasting everyones time.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
After you wrote this comment implying that there was an ignorance of philosophy that led me to say what I said, I hate to reply by saying that you, in fact, just don't understand science. But, well... you don't.
The problem with what you are saying is that your example where "logic" seems to fail does not use the scientific method. A scientist would not do an experiment by dropping a stone 5 times and then drawing a conclusion about the sixth. Furthermore, a scientist wouldn't stop there and deem the situation a job for philosophy! So, you have yourself created a fallacious argument by attacking this strawman.
A scientist would first look at other important laws and theories in this area, including the law of gravity, as well as mass and friction, to determine what would happen. From these general principles, he would in fact be predicting a specific situation based on more general principles. If the stone did not behave as predicted from this information, and this could be repeated and tested, affected theories would potentially be revised.
Or, assuming that there was no body of knowledge concerning gravity etc. from which to draw, a scientist in this situation might form a hypothesis that the stone would fall the sixth time, and possibly anytime in similar conditions. He would then test his hypothesis, which would likely lead to other experiments. To make a long story short, he would carry out these experiments using the scientific method, draw his conclusions, and then share his results for others so that they could review and verify the results. This would happen over and over, with the theories becoming more and more grounded as they were refined.
Having consistent, predictible results for scientific theories is necessary because *that is what science was created for*. Science is not a thing that we discovered and we must have faith in it truly being what we think it is. We defined it. Just because, before the scientific method, the best thing people had was philosophy, doesn't mean that science now must include philosophies-- natural philosophies science without the rigor, or hypothesis without proper scientific testing. Any philosophy may in fact be correct, but in order to be included in science, it must be tested in a certain way, and it must be capable of being tested in this way.
A strong argument for being consistent in science classes, and not teaching philosophies, is because we want to have less people who, like you, do not seem to understand the differences between science and philosophy, not more.
If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. -- Carl Sagan
You've just argued in a circle.
This issue dates all the way back to David Hume, who realized it was insurmountable; Kant thought he had overcome it, but I don't buy it.
Those scientific laws you depend on---on what are they based? A finite number of observations. Those observations are, in principle, isolated events. You can't watch the Earth & planets forever to verify that they keep moving as they do. You watch them for a minute, or an hour, or a year, you still can't be *logically* sure that they will keep doing the same thing. All you can say is that, all the observations that people have happened to make, within experimental error, agree with these laws.
You cannot *logically* deduce scientific laws. That's exactly the fallacy of induction that the original poster was referring to. You can logically assume them as axioms, but you can assume *anything* as an axiom without it being objectively true.
Basically, there is no way to be certain of *anything* in the physical world, and I would extend this to the metaphysical as well, although religious types can claim you can ask God to explain things to you, and you can be sure his answers are true---I consider these to be isolated observations as well, that could turn out to be false, but that's the difference between religion and logic, isn't it?
Religious types stop here and say that because you can't be sure of anything, believing in evolution is the same thing as believing in Genesis, so we're all being religious, aren't we?
The real answer, in my opinion, is that we have to take a pragmatic stance, and assign some provisional level of certainty to our speculations. "3 is a prime number" is very certain, although five minutes from now, the integers could (in a barely conceivable way) change their properties. Gravity rates pretty highly on that scale, as well as other physical laws, because they are based on relatively few, simply understood, basic assumptions, which I give a high level of certainty to. Darwinian evolution would have a high degree of certainty as well, based on the huge amount of observations of so many biological and fossil specimens, the basic logic of Darwin's argument.
The level of certainty I give the Genesis account is very low; it shows very little reason to be objectively distinguished from comparable creation myths of similar age; it makes no concrete claim that shows access to privileged information (as opposed to, say, Jesus explaining quantum mechanics in the Gospels, two thousand years before any experiments had raised the possibility...that would be strong evidence for a direct connection to an omnipotent Creator, as opposed to a philosophy and outlook compatible with first century Judaism.)
Obviously, not everyone agrees with my choice of certainty values, which is why these fucking Slashdot threads go on so long.
Newton's theories were refined, altered, and expanded upon by scientists like Einstein. But even if you teach kids about Newton's work as part of a science class, you can teach how the scientific method was used, and how his work formed the basis for new conclusions that were more accurate than what he came up with.
The thing you don't get is, if you think science might potentially be fundamentally wrong in how it is defined-- that the universe really doesn't allow for things to be consistent and repeatable-- whatever you would (theoretically) think is right still doesn't belong in a science classroom, because it isn't science, it is something else.
Your example of the actual creation story IS something that supposedly happened in the natural world, and as such *can* be tested to a certain extent. And it doesn't jive with what scientists believe about the history of earth. However, we aren't talking about people trying to get the creation story in schools, we're talking about the "Intelligent Design" philosophy. And that philosophy does not hypothesize anything that is testable or natural, so it just doesn't belong in a science classroom.
What I'm saying is, science doesn't have to be *right*. It works right now, and has allowed us to do a lot of great things, using the scientific method. Maybe it is how the universe works and maybe it isn't. But, in a basic science class, you want to teach kids how "science" works, not some other thing that you think might be better. Otherwise, they come out not knowing what science *is*.
If there is some other way of looking at the universe that is more useful than science, then tell people about it. In that case, it should probably replace science in schools. Until that time, however, teaching non-scientific philosophies in a science class (unless you use them to contrast science with non-science), only because we have no way of absolutely knowing what will happen for all time, isn't going to help all the scientific advances we've made over the past century, it can only hinder it.
Yes, science may not be "true". Perhaps the laws of physics *can* change. Perhaps everything that has happened up to this moment that we perceive to have actually happened in our minds was just placed in there 3 seconds ago, and we actually just came into existence at that time. Maybe I'm the only being who actually exists, or maybe I don't exist. And so on. Any of that could be true, but introducing all of that into science isn't going to help treat cancer or help us explore other planets in the solar system, it is going to confuse people.
If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. -- Carl Sagan
Evolution is a fact. Darwinism is a bunch of nonsense.
Evolution is a fact. Darwinism is a joke.
You are essentially agreeing with me; I think the important thing to maintain in discussing "truth" is the crucial distinction between an absolute logical truth and a pragmatically "true" basic assumption, which you seemed to be blurring. Especially because religious types often don't maintain the same distinction.
The "physical universe being a sanely consistent place" assumption is almost impossible to avoid once you agree to be pragmatic. Otherwise, you get scared to breathe because, you know, maybe oxygen is bad for you now. From that, you pretty easily get that scientific investigation is the most pragmatically valuable method for gathering additional knowledge.
The other conclusion that is important is that you never claim even basic scientific laws like general relativity to be "true", just "true enough that life is too short to avoid believing it", which scientists shorten to "proven", or if it is their field of active inquiry "currently accepted".
Let me break this down for you once again.
The Biblical idea that males were the head of the household, and also that only males were to be priests, was established in the Old Testament. It is explicitly implied in Genesis and is amplified with the Levitical priesthood and the responsibility of Abraham for his family. Just to remind you, Old Testament means books like Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, etc. These books range in dates but you can consider that many of them were written around 500BC. Oral traditions are reported to begin around 2000BC by some historians as well.
HERE IS THE CRUCIAL PART: The passages you see in the New Testament that talk about women not being priests and men being the spiritual and authoritative head of household merely echo these sentiments that were first stated a couple of thousand years before.
To be fair, the Roman kingdom was probably started around 700BC; however if you study that era it was patriarchal in the extreme and wouldn't help your argument. The Roman Empire, generally stated to begin in 27BC, is more what you were referring to. It was definitely hundreds of years after the writing of the Old Testament and again, thousands of years after the inception of oral traditions and events that compose the Torah.
Your definition of Christianity as a "splinter religion" may be correct in your view, however the fact remains that other than the rituals of the Jews, the content of the beliefs of modern Christians are inclusive of Jewish beliefs. This means that things like the nature of who and what God is, the beginning of life, the historical figures, and, yes, even the authoritative structure and positions of males and females written about in the Old Testament are directly inherited by the Christian faith. We revere these teachings of the Old Testament in the same way we revere the red letters in the New. Therefore it stands to reason that if in the Old Testament there was a prohibition against women pastors for doctrinal reasons it will continue into the New Testament unless there is a dispensational reason for change.
It's almost as if you believe that Christianity is an independent entity and has no reference to the Old Testament. Nothing could be farther from the truth. In fact the very point of contention we are discussing is proof of the fact that Christian doctrine is consistent with Old Testament doctrine.
"Women are expected to honor and obey their husbands in all things, but it's a one way street"
So the passage where it says for men to love their wives as Christ loved the church is actually a misprint in every Bible on Earth? Seriously though, if you consistently take things out of context you can make the Bible say anything you want it to. Even things that is specifically does not say.
"If women are so great, why do they have to be subject to the will of men?"
The authority structure was established in the garden. Adam was given dominance in a mirroring of the authority structure in heaven. According to the Bible God the Father has the same characteristics, essence, and character as the other members of the trinity. You could have asked why Christ or the Holy Spirit subjects himself to the will of the Father when he is just as powerful as the Father.
"Also, let's not forget that Original Sin entered the human race through woman."
Romans 5:12: "Sin entered the world through Adam." If you cannot even understand this simple thing how can you feel competent enough to comment on the more complex things in the Bible? Eve was deceived. Adam sinned through volition. The Immaculate Conception was designed to make sure that the sin present in all MEN was not present in Christ. Paul wrote Romans by the way.
"Sexual promiscuity is banned because it is a tool of other religions"
Sexual promiscuity didn't start in Rome. In the Old Testament it was condemned as well. Interestingly enough the book Snow Crash refers these much more ancient practices an
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
None of those writings made it into the bible without severe editing, which many believe was mostly done by Saul of Tarsus, based on analysis of writing styles.
Just because the subjugation of women is a time-honored tradition doesn't make it okay, no mattr what your excuse is.
Finally, none of that shit has anything to do with Christianity during the life of Christ, nor shortly after, because there wasn't a bible when Christianity was young. Therefore the bible could not tell people not to allow women to be heads of churches - it didn't even exist! It had yet to be compiled. Otherwise the Old Testament could not say anything about Yeshua. In Roman times the woman often acted as the head of household, while the man worried about all the matters outside the house. When Christianity started to gain currency, it was seen that this would give women power and some documents which may or may not have been 500 to 2000 years old at the time may or may not have been applied to the decision to disenfranchise them.
You have yet to produce any useful or significant argument to the contrary. Let's face it; it was done out of sexism. Your religion is sexist. You can argue it all you want but it won't make you right! The fact is that the bible says that women should do what their menfolk tell 'em to and there's simply no basis in reason for that. The only basis is male sexist arrogance.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I think what appeared to seem like something I was saying was true, I only meant was concrete in the sense that it is science as far as *we have defined it*. So, while the law of gravity may or may not be 100% accurate, I can say that the law of gravity is testable and natural, and thus does fit into our definition of science.
I tried to express the latter part more concretely because it is a human construction, and so if "science" were found to be something different, or something more, then what actually happened is that there is something else entirely that should be given a new name, because we already called science this specific thing (flawed or no).
That is why I feel I can say "that is or is not part of science", although I can't say "that is true/false because of science".
Sorry that I am beating this one point to the ground-- yes we do agree on "truth", and in fact I would say that any remotely credible scientist absolutely would agree with you as well about pragmatic truth in science, even for fundamental things such as gravity. I just want to distinguish that those scientists stating something "is/isn't science" aren't disagreeing with that concept either. Saying our word "science" might include the supernatural or philosophical is like saying the word "red" might be talking about other colors that no person or creature can see or detect. There may be such a color, but it isn't "red".
I keep beating at this minute distinction only because I see this bit of grey area as the place where the "ID as science" fallacy gets its foot in the door.
(Unforunately, not all science teachers are good scientists, but that's another problem entirely...)
If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. -- Carl Sagan
Do I interpret that correctly? 73% of the DNA of the tuberculosis virus is identical to that of humans? Amazing. I presume the quantities are not the same, and so then it's 73% of the TB DNA, but a lesser % of human DNA, right? Or do I misunderstand?
I would like to see them [ID'ers] actually define design, and how to recognize it unambiguously. Then we can start to talk about whether things are designed.
No, that's what they try to do. They come up with some bogus concept like "irreducible complexity", they claim it conclusively identifies "intelligent design", then identify something that has "irreducible complexity" in Nature, then claim they have evidence of ID.
In principle, that is fine. The counter-arguments would go like this
1) Natural selection can produce things that are very near optimal, and can LOOK designed. Lots of pre-Darwinian naturalists marvelled at how "well-designed" stuff is: flowers designed for bees to pollinate, one can go on and on. Darwin's HUGE contribution to knowledge essentially boils down to: things in Nature can LOOK designed, but NOT be. So if you make the slightest mistake in defining design, you get false positives.
2) Design probably can't be proven after the fact; it's really a question of motive and intent. Yes, there's "I know a watch is designed", but really, can you tell how much of the watch's workings were due to human choice, and how many were just accidental, or tradition, or trial and error?
3) "Irreducible complexity" is not equivalent to "cannot arise by natural selection." No one (except someone looking for a straw-man version of evolution to knock down) insists that evolution works only in a straight line from simple to complex. Simple can become reducibly complex *before* being reduced to irreducibly complex. Irreducibly complex generally is equivalent to "the historical evidence of development has been obscured by the process of selection."
The problems are
1) the political ID advocates and the school boards do not wait for the counter-argument to appear, or use it to justify "see there's scientific debate, we need to teach the controversy" instead of as the smackdown that it is.
2) the scientific ID people will just come up with some other example, or strained definition, without admitting that "design" in biology is just a step down the chain of theology to "First Cause".
3) There will always be particular examples (abiogenesis is a big one) where the historical evolutionary path is obscured by more recent changes, and we might *never* come up with the explanation, and the ID argument could say "here's something that was designed." That does not disprove evolution. It just means that the evidence was eaten or otherwise destroyed a long time ago, and we'll never know.
Just because I can't name my great-to-the-20th-grandfather doesn't mean I didn't have one. If he was some illiterate serf, there is probably no evidence (other than my being here) that he ever was. Requiring me to explain every branch of the family tree to disprove that I descended from Adam in the Garden of Eden is too high.
Basically, the whole ID scheme is just bad science. Either through incompetence, or bad faith. To pursue that line of argument is just fruitless, and proves nothing.
Let's see what I don't understand about science: that it uses independent repeatable observations to confirm hypotheses about the measurable world. But can you explain to me why the scientific method should work? It's not because of "logic".
The problem with what you are saying is that your example where "logic" seems to fail does not use the scientific method.
We are talking about why the scientific method works. You can't use the scientific method to explain why the scientific method works.
A scientist would not do an experiment by dropping a stone 5 times and then drawing a conclusion about the sixth.
Really? So when Galileo was performing his original experiments on the inclined plane and he saw the same result 5 times, he would, of course, not expect to see them a sixth time??
Furthermore, a scientist wouldn't stop there and deem the situation a job for philosophy!
You're really not following me, are you. Science works. But can you explain why science works? Although science uses logic, you can't explain why science works by logic alone. Science goes beyond logic. If science was purely logical, then it would use only deduction. Please explain how Einstein came up with the Theory of Relativity using deduction alone.
So, you have yourself created a fallacious argument by attacking this strawman.
No, this is not a straw man. This has to do with a fundamental understanding of what science is and why science works.
A scientist would first look at other important laws and theories in this area, including the law of gravity, as well as mass and friction, to determine what would happen.
What if you are Galileo and have only Aristotle to fall back on? What if you are Einstein and have only Newton to fall back on?
From these general principles,
And where did these general principles come from? Who defined them? Why should I put my faith in them? How do I know that these principals are eternal and universal and will work as well tomorrow as they did yesterday and in the Andromeda galaxy as well as the Milky Way galaxy?
he would in fact be predicting a specific situation based on more general principles.
You're talking about previously establish scientific paradigms. I'm talking about the principles on which science itself is established.
If the stone did not behave as predicted from this information, and this could be repeated and tested, affected theories would potentially be revised.
Let me recommend to you The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn. It gives a slightly more realistic description on how the scientific process works.
Or, assuming that there was no body of knowledge concerning gravity etc. from which to draw, a scientist in this situation might form a hypothesis that the stone would fall the sixth time,
Who says? Your problem is that you are so entrenched in The Way Things Are, that you don't even understand WHY things are the way they are. And you think that logic explains everything. Let me also refer to you Godel's Incompleteness Theorem. In it he PROVES that in a formal system, there are TRUE statements about that system which CANNOT BE PROVED from within that system. In othe
Evolution is a fact. Darwinism is a joke.
Dude. Take a step back. I'm not trying to prove science "right", partly because it is unnecessary here and partly because it may be impossible. I'm just reiterating what *is* or *isn't* within the realm of what is considered science by definition. Science is a thing we defined. The topic was about ID entering the science classroom. You don't have to prove science is "right" or that it will hold for all time.
Don't you see that it doesn't matter if there was some supernatural god or not? I mean, your closing paragraph is basically trying to get at the possbility for it. If you understood my point, you would realize that may well be true, but it doesn't matter in a *science* classroom.
If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. -- Carl Sagan