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Evolution Named Scientific Achievement of 2005
lazy_hp writes "The BBC reports that research into evolution's inner working has been named rtop science achievement of 2005 From the article: 'The prestigious US journal Science publishes its top 10 list of major endeavours at the end of each year. The number one spot was awarded jointly to several studies that illuminated the intricate workings of evolution. The announcement comes in the same week that a US court banned the teaching of intelligent design in classrooms.'"
Nominated for 2006, GRAVITY!!!!
-- There are 10 kinds of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
Gravity to be named the top scientific achievment of 2006. Expect the contest for 2007 to be between the invention of Algebra and the discovery of atoms.
I thought the mail client Evolution was named "Scientific Achievement", until I got past the headline...
For example,"I think the planets should be renamed because they're named after fake gods."
Given that you Christians believe in one God (or is it three?), won't it get rather confusing if you name all the planets after him?
You won't be able to tell Uranus from Urelbow.
This comment has been sent a 'cease and desist' order. Please refrain from discussions regarding 'Intelligent Falling' as it is covered by our recently granted patent.
Gekido's Lair
I wonder how "Evolution" feels about the award - 4 billion years of hard work, and now it gets recognition.
.. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.
Wrong. Just because someone presents an alternate conjecture about the accuracy of a scientific principle does not mean that said conjecture is automatically on the same level of legitimacy as whichever principle one seeks to disprove. If that were the case, I could argue that computers run on magic, and then protest when my theory of devine computation was not taught in computer science classes. The antecedents of ID are undoubtedly religious in nature; ergo, the conclusions postulated by ID proponents are derived from sources known to be false, or at the very least untestable.
...ID differs from science in that the key promoters of its hypothesis begin with their own surity of their ideas, and then disregard conflicting facts.
- How did the falsity of propositions based on religious sources become an axiom? That is a premise of humanism, but humanism is not known to be a correct doctrine.
ID, not being a scientific hypothesis, will *always* be rejected by legitimate scientists, due to the fact that it:
* Cannot be tested
- you obviously didn't understand my original post
* Cannot be separated from religious dogma
- we believe that the Bible is a direct account of absolute prehistory from the only One who existed at the time. So you're right, our beliefs are rooted in that account. Can you think of a more reliable source for such beliefs? The historical accuracy of the Bible is remarkable, as has been shown by many archaeological discoveries, and is more reliable than any other document that ever existed.
* Requires belief in the supernatural as part of its core support structure
- Would you outlaw the supernatural from science if it does in fact exist? How do you then expect science to accurately describe the universe?
* Negates many scientific principles which *are* tested and well-regarded among people of learning.
- There are a great number of scientific principles which were considered to be adequately tested and were well-regarded in the past that nonetheless have later been widely ridiculed. Unfortunately, one of those, macroevolution, has made a stunning comeback in modern times.
- It sounds like you're condemning evolutionism, not creationism. We are using much different interpretive frameworks.
The Earth is not young. Carbon dating, fossil records, geology, atomic theory, astronomy, and many other scientific disciplines have all independantly dated the earth at more than four billion years old.
- there are many holes in such methods that rely on a uniform past as a basic premise
If God did create the world, and all the things in it, in six days, then how were days reckoned before the creation of the sun?
- time existed before the sun
If God created all the animals, why were so many of them such complete failures as to become extinct?
- there was a catastrophic, global flood
If all humans are descended from Adam and Eve, then why the biblical prohibition on incest?
- the prohibition of incest arose fairly late in history, after the gene pool had become corrupted through genetic
mutations
And, furthermore, I am not a genetic researcher, but I'm fairly certain that thousands of generations of familial in-breeding would result in a rather, shall we say, shallow gene pool.
- our original (and current, to a lesser extent) genes contained an incredible amount of diversity
The *key difference* in these bits of biblical lore which seperate them from real science is that the observer, the reader of the bible, assumes them to be true solely on basis of religious conviction.
- Certainly not. I want to believe the truth, wherever it m