Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: Little Red Hoax, Firefly, Google
A little red hoax. MyNameIsFred writes "In an earlier Slashdot story, it was reported that a student was investigated for requesting Mao's Little Red Book on inter-library loan. It appears that the story was a hoax."
Firefly franchise death greatly exaggerated. Kazzahdrane writes "Joss Whedon has spoken out against the Entertainment Weekly that claimed he has turned his back on the Firefly/Serenity franchise. From his post at Whedonesque: 'All right, now I have to jump in and set the record straight. EW is a fine rag, but they do take things out of context. Obviously when I said I had "closure", what I meant was "I hate Serenity, I hated Firefly, I think my fans are stupid and Nathan Fillion smells like turnips." But EW's always got to put some weird negative spin on it.'"
Intelligent Design tantamount to teaching religion. rcs1000 writes "After much deliberation Judge John Jones has ruled that teaching Intelligent Design is tantamount to teaching religion. The judge was pretty forthright, arguing that 'it is unconstitutional to teach Intelligent Design as an alternative to evolution in a public school science classroom.'"
EU launches first Galileo navigation satellite. Xserv writes "The EU launched the first in the series of Galileo Navigation Satellites signifying the start of a lessening of dependency on US Military GPS Systems in Europe. The new Galileo system is touted to be much more accurate and will also be more accessible on higher latitude zones where the US GPS system is known to be less than ideal."
Why AOL chose Google over Microsoft. gambit3 writes to tell us that the Wall Street Journal has a nice article deconstructing AOL's decision to go with Google instead of Microsoft. From the article: "Two weeks ago, when Time Warner Inc. was on the cusp of signing a sweeping online deal with Microsoft Corp., a team of executives from the media company's AOL unit traveled to Microsoft's headquarters in Redmond, Wash., to make sure everything was in order. When the executives returned, they reported back to Time Warner's top deal negotiator, Olaf Olafsson, with some less-than-satisfactory findings. They had found some of Microsoft's technology to be clunky, while the contemplated joint venture with the software king contained what they thought were financial pitfalls."
Endgame in Blackberry patent case. waynegoode writes "The New York Times is reporting that a recent decision could spell the end of the NTP vs. RIM Blackberry case. The US Patent Office apparently took the unusual step of telling NTP & RIM it will likely reject all 5 of NTP's patents, meaning the basis for NTP's lawsuit and it's billion dollar claim will most likely disappear. This puts pressure on the judge to not issue an injunction against RIM but to instead delay until the USPTO gets around to actually rejecting the patents."
Katrina aftermath still making waves. An anonymous reader writes "Approximately 50 people have been indicted in relation to a scheme that drained almost $200,000 from a Red Cross fund designed to put money into the hands of Hurricane Katrina victims. From the article: 'Seventeen of the accused worked at the Red Cross claim center in Bakersfield, Calif., which handled calls from storm victims across the country and authorized cash payments to them. The others were the workers' relatives and friends, prosecutors said last week.'"
More cloning doubts emerge. LukePieStalker writes "The Boston Globe is reporting that the South Korean cloning team whose troubles have recently been chronicled here on Slashdot used "borrowed" photos in their Science journal article that "appear in the journal Molecules and Cells, in a research article by another Korean team, submitted before the Science paper". In the earlier article, the cells in the photo are described as having been created without cloning."
I am sure that some Religious fundaments will call this ruling of some crazy liberal judge. I am conservative myself and I personally do believe in inelegant design but I do not believe that it should be tough in schools as science. Intelligent Design is not science it is faith-based assumption. I believed in Inelegant Designed when I was taught Darwinism. I just replaced Random with God. It was not an eureka moment, just about anyone can make the connection without any hoaxing, just an understanding based on my faith that nothing is truly random but work of God, as Einstein said God doesn't roll dice. But that being said teaching science that there is a force that we cannot measure or prove or disprove is not science. Science is not guaranteed to be absolute truth, science is a process of observations and finding a theory that best fits the observation, if a pattern cannot be found it is called random. If God is behind random that is fine but because God cannot be proven or disproved scientifically, it shouldn't be placed in science. Just saying God did it is a shortcut that ends further investigation, but by leaving God out of the equation then it shows that you have more to examine thus growth in understanding.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Predicted comment breakdown for this Slashback I love the ID stories, those are where I can tell rational people from kooks by my "Fans/Foes" changes that day.
Trolling is a art,
Turns out the researchers really meant to say they had used the Photoshop clone tool to copy the pictures of the cells. The next step would be to clone the actual cells instead of just the pictures. Small misunderstanding.
n an earlier Slashdot story, it was reported that a student was investigated for requesting Mao's Little Red Book on inter-library loan. It appears that the story was a hoax.
But that's exactly what they want you to believe!
The problem with slashdot is that most of its users were bullied and stuffed into lockers as kids!
News stories like this make me sad. I am sad for the people of New Orleans who are suffering. They have lost so much, many have lost loved ones. Many have lost homes. But I am also sad that there is a small number of people who could take advantage of others and steal funds which should have helped the people of New Orleans. What kind of deprived life can a person have where they think it is okay to steal from the less fortunate?
And what is worse is these kinds of actions will make people less likely to donate. They will be wondering "Is my gift really going to help people, or will it be sucked up by greedy people taking advantage of a situation". What can a person do? Give and hope for the best??
I learned my ABC's watching television! I learned science watching Voltron.
That particular story ("the Little Red Hoax") may have been fake, but it does illustrate, in a very compelling and inspiring way, the very real civil rights abuses going on every day in this country.
Abuses that are so thoroughly not in evidence that the people who believe in them are forced to manufacture them.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
Can someone tell what the heck Joss Whedon's comment is supposed to be? What I read was too weird to be understandable on Slashdot. Either way, sounds like Firefly/Serenity is history and/or J.W. had a massive brain fart without knowing it.
I also believe in inelegant design. How else do you explain the Edsel?
But there's still no reason for the "blink" tag.
Well, at least that makes things a little more clear. I want to know how Jewel felt in the pilot of Firefly (by which I mean "Serenity", not "The Train Job") when she had to kiss Nathan on the cheek, given the fact that he smelled so bad.
Though, honestly, I hope he does find another way to tell the story.
Haec merda tauri est. Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
This hoax has gotten to NPR and other (More liberal) news agencies as well. Which is really sad, I do want to hear both sides of an argument but when both sides jumps to find a story that proves that other side is bad just makes me sick. Ok you don't care of the of Many of Bushes Anti-Terroism laws but making up stories that show how bad it could be will only smear your side when they find out that it was only a hoax.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
You know he was pretty much wrong when he said that, right? Hidden variable theories of quantum mechanics have been pretty thoroughly disproven.
Just because someone expresses an unpopular viewpoint (in this case that they believe in god perhaps?) does not make them automagically troll. the parent is a well thought out statement of position. NOT A TROLL!
Do we really have to rehash the ID thing yet again? The link is to an article dated December 20, there's nothing new here.
...was just entertainment, weakly.
Should read:
... They had found some of Microsoft's morals to be evil, while the contemplated joint venture with the satanic king contained what they thought were hellish pitfalls."
"Two weeks ago, when Time Warner Inc. was on the cusp of signing a sweeping
online deal with Microsoft Corp., a team of executives from the media company's AOL unit traveled to the beast's lair in Redmond, Wash., to make sure everything was in order.
Seems the editor forgot to post any link to any article about the discovery of the Little Red Book hoax. Here's one.
0 5/a01lo719.htm
http://www.southcoasttoday.com/daily/12-05/12-24-
AC: Only on slashdot... could the sentence "My hovercraft is full of eels." be moderated "+4, Insightful
They had found some of Microsoft's technology to be clunky
Let me guess, they were running Windows, right?
"Kittens give Morbo gas!"
I remember after the CBS memo thing a number of people yielded to the temptation to say "Well, maybe the memos were fake, but the information in them must be true."
Occasionally you need to concede that the news gets it wrong instead of trying to bail out a leaky story. It reeks of desperation when instead of simply admitting you've been had on this one you cling to something that is rapidly being proven false. Isn't this the mentality you're trying to fight against?
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
I just read the decision. Many have expressed concern over judges deciding scientific issues. But the judge in this case has done a truly admirable job of identifying the key scientific issues, and identifying the flaws in ID doctrine.
"An unnamed Dartmouth student was visited by Homeland Security for requesting a copy of Mao Zedong's Little Red Book for a class project." From the article: "The student, who was completing a research paper on Communism for Professor Pontbriand's class on fascism and totalitarianism, filled out a form for the request, leaving his name, address, phone number and Social Security number. He was later visited at his parents' home in New Bedford by two agents of the Department of Homeland Security, the professors said."
when, it turns out,
"The University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth student who claimed he had been visited by agents of the Department of Homeland Security for requesting a book written by Mao Zedung through interlibrary loan has confessed to making up the story. The unnamed senior tearfully admitted to the hoax after UMD history professor Brian Glyn Williams confronted him with inconsistencies in his story at his parents' home December 23, the New Bedford Standard-Times reported December 24."
I'm a little confused. Nowhere in TFA does it say that the Dartmouth student's claim is a hoax. It says an earlier claim of a similar incident at UC Santa Cruz was false, but does not directly address the Dartmouth claim, which is what the previous Slashdot story is about. They got some random official to say that he doubts it happened, and would be surprised, but no quote in that article says it didn't happen. They admit that the student requested the book, but by a means other than was originally reported.
Sure, the original story should be looked at with skepticism, but keep looking for better evidence that it really was a hoax before reporting it as such.
I am sure that some Religious fundaments will call this ruling of some crazy liberal judge.
That would be delusional. The judge is a rather conservative Bush appointee.
I am conservative myself and I personally do believe in inelegant design but I do not believe that it should be tough in schools as science.
Believe whatever you want according to the dictates of your own conscience. So long as you don't try to put it in public school science curricula, that is fine with me.
Science is not guaranteed to be absolute truth, science is a process of observations and finding a theory that best fits the observation, if a pattern cannot be found it is called random
Science is a bit more than you give it credit for. There is a pretty well defined set of philisophical principals that extend it well beyond pure empiricism.
As far as 'random', this is whare I disagree. Self-organization is easy to show on many scales and doesn't require any faith to accept. This argument is an approach used to try obfuscate the fact that there are real ways of dealing with the question of self organization. Unfortunately they require some pretty careful thinking to undersand and are not as easily presented to the general public as Darwinism is.
Just saying God did it is a shortcut that ends further investigation
And that is the problem. Progress ends when you stop looking for alternative explanations.
And I'd be willing to bet it has something to do with the 10% of Blackberry users who work for the federal government. Don't get me wrong--I'm also sure NTP's patents are bogus, but that hasn't stopped the millions of other bogus patents (such as Myriad Genetics' downright immoral patent of breast cancer genes), or any of the many software patents that keep popping up in /. articles. Why the special treatment for RIM? If I were less cynical, I'd think this was the dawn of an age of rejecting bogus patents, but let's be realistic.
Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a soportar Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a espabilar
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I also believe in inelegant design. How else do you explain the Edsel?
Not to mention the prostate and appendix. Also it seemed to be a factor in the Google story as well.
But there's still no reason for the "blink" tag.
I thought most browsers had evolved away from that.
About the only thing I got from the article was that there was an error in how the book was reported to have been ordered, and there was a similar story from another college that turned out to be false. That gives some credence to the notion it is a UL, but doesn't prove anything. After all, there appear to be mis-statements or mistakes in most news articles. Also, the article didn't claim it was a hoax, just that there was an error in the original reporting.
Many techies view Microsoft with contempt because of its monopolistic anti-competitive behavior. Why give RIM the pass to satisfy the argument that there are bogus patents out there? They are crushing the small guy, pure and simple.
I agree, it seems like special treatment to review these patents again. Seems like someone said, "Make this go away." Now, "who said it?", is the question.
too bad evolution doesn't equal random.
And god can be scientifically disproven. In fact, I have ran tests, and in each and every one of them this god fellow failed to show up, deliver lottery numbers, or cure children inflicted with AIDS.
God doesn't exist, QED.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
You know he was pretty much wrong when he said that, right? Hidden variable theories of quantum mechanics have been pretty thoroughly disproven.
How do you prove a negative? Proving that there isn't an underlying pattern to the apparent pseudorandom behavior on a quantum level is like proving there is no God. And in fact, being a firm believer in the "God of the Gaps" theory- that's exactly what you're attempting when you claim there are no possible hidden variable theories of quantum mechanics. At best, you can only say there are no proven hidden variable theories- yet.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
paraphr5ased that very quote:
"Joss loves firefly, and in fact, feels the no one has a turnipy smell at all."
You got to know this grape vine.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
"That would be delusional. ..."
Yes, fundies aren't known for having delusions at all....
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Myself I am a strong believer in evolution (belief not being the best word) , I consider myself a very observant Jew(and a Tanakh minimalist )
I find it ridicules that some people can not combine faith and science , the two things do not mix normally (unless science can define the view in question) .
Science is there to help us understand the world and how things work , faith is there to help us accept the things we can not understand , till the time comes that we may understand those things .
Science and faith should never be opposed and have no reason to be .
I like to think of it like this , if g-d is all mighty then surely it would have the power to architect a world an existence than can construct itself and follow its own rules , such as the laws of physics . Much as I do as a systems admin to automate my tasks . Science helps me to understand the way things works . Perhaps my views are naive and cowardly and there to help me cope with a short term life , but they do not affect my scientific views as I hope they would not any person who is religious .
sadly they do as they are too blind sighted to accept anything.
To them I say this , if g-d is all mighty then perhaps g-d would do as us sysmins do and automate the creation process . Why would the divine waste time on something which us mere mortals would have found a simple solution for .
These things need not be a dividing line , they are only made so by hatred and fear . Fear to know truth and to understand the workings of the world and if you choose the workings of g-d
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
Yes, because there have never been any documented cases of the US government (any one)overstepping it's bounds and goose-stepping over the rights or freedoms of the citizenry. Never happens, nuh uh. Never ever.
If I even have to, y'know, illustrate that, you are so going to fail History class next fall.
Hello Kettle,
You, my friend are as black as pitch.
With love, Pot.
text-decoration: blink; is in the CSS specs (forget which), so it's still here. marquee, however, is not, so it is done via an XBL binding in Firefox at least.
'Yes, firefox is indeed greater than women. Can women block pops up for you? No. Can Firefox show you naked women? Yes.'
You are letting the facts get in the way of a good argument!
Stop the Slashdot Effect! Don't read the articles!
God requires faith... He's a faith monster. If he was to show up for your tests, deliver lotto numbers, cure children, or anything like that, he would not exist. Or at least he wouldn't be God... He'd just be Bob, that guy that swung by and gave you lotto numbers and cured some kids, but hasn't done anything since. Stupid one trick pony Bob... And God doesn't want to be Bob.
For a good time call www.sawkie.com
I really think my Freshman biology book got the creationism vs. evolution thing right. In the first chapter, probably within the first few pages, as it was introducing students to biology at large, it mentioned how most, if not all, of modern biology is built on the theory of evolution.
It went on to say that there are groups which believe that the earth and the creatures as we know them, were created by a higher power. And while this could be possible, it was beyond the scope of a science class as it was not a scientifically testable hypothesis. It finished with suggesting that, should you wish to learn more about the idea of creationism, you should contact the clergy of your church of choice.
Simple, Factual, not more than a parapgrah. Now if only I could remember who published that text book.
Even people that believe in pre-destiny look both ways before crossing the street.
and no, they are not "geostationary" orbits. Just so ya know ;-)
In "Trash", while Kaylee and Jayne are working on the dumpster's control panel right before Jayne gets electrocuted, you can plainly see that the screen on the control panel is a screen shot of a Windows 2000 Desktop, complete with Start bar. The window that is up appears to be the Add New Hardware window.
:)
I am serious - the scene appears at around 21:39
Just food for thought. I believe there is a reality, and that there's a truth in this situation. But I'm not sure I have the evidence for what it is. "It's a hoax!" just means that we have to start thinking rationally and not be so ready to accept everything we read. Let's start right here.
If aspiration is a virtue, achievement cannot be a vice.
Allah is the Prince? Islamatari Damacy!
Allah (meaning "the God") is the King of All Cosmos. The prophet Muhammad is the Prince, and Jesus and the other prophets are the cousins. (But didn't you know that a katamari can give you AIDS?)
We aren't the Bush-hating crowd... we:
Groupthink Bush doubleplusungood
"All you have to do is be fragile and grateful. So stay the underdog." Chuck Palahniuk, Choke
Let me test a theory on why people would believe something like this.
OK, poll time:
Whoever trusts the government, reply to this post.
This would be a start:
1 35819476/sr=1-3/ref=sr_1_3/104-5361903-2512740?s=b ooks&v=glance&n=283155
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0691116245/qid=1
So, can you give me a reason the scenario couldn't happen? Like, would it be possible for the student to sue, or do anything about it if it did? I think it's blatantly unconstitutional, but it seems to me that the Patriot Act specifically allows this kind of thing. Power that can be abused will be. If not by Bush, by some later president that you don't agree with.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
Technically, judges don't belong to a party. Therefore, he's neutral. Just because Bush appointed him doesn't make him a conservative "nut".
Software is like sex. It's better when it's free. -Linus Torvalds
Precisely the grandparents point? The price of democracy is eternal vigilance and that includes democrats, republicans, corporate leaders anybody?
As an official and unrepentant Bush (all male family members, including Barbara) hater, I apologize for rushing to the conclusion that a Bush-crony run government department could have a crack squad of Communist anti-infiltration investigators watching over inter-library loans with any sort of competence. Most likely the "crack squad" are really George W's dealers, and the Communist anti-infiltration unit is apparently investigating all the "Red" Cross workers in the "blue" states.
"It's overkill, of course. But you can never have too much overkill." - Anonymous Slashdot Coward
"And that is the problem. Progress ends when you stop looking for alternative explanations."
Even with evolution we are starting to stop to look for anything alternative. I am not for nor agaisnt the theary of evolution. But it remains just that - a theory. Being a better theory does not make it true. Remember the time when the most acclaimed minds in the world thought that the world was flat? Or how the best minds once thought the molecule was the smallest unit before they discovered atoms and electrons and those became the smallest. Then they they spilt THOSE up too. Remember the period table 50 years ago had less elements than they do now.
Intelligent Design may not be the answer. But that does not mean evolution is. Scientists are supposed to have an open mind. Accept your believes and accept that they may be wrong.
I love humanity, it is people I hate
..the judge will ignore the patent office. The judge's ruling so far has been intelligent. The patents were granted and until officially rejected they are empowered by law. If we are lucky, the judge will rule against Blackberry, it will have close. Only then will corporate America and its subjects realize that (most, if not all) software patents are NOT in their best interest.
I do not like the idea of Blackberry losing on behalf of those individuals who will be harmed, but America has always needed a dramatic failure of the system before it is corrected. Having the patents that tanked a company declared invalid would clearly demonstrate the idiocy of our system that allowed them to be granted in the first place.
Bel, the mostly sane.. "Of course I can't see anything! I'm standing on the shoulders of idiots." -- Me
How do you prove a negative?
MEEP! BEEP! The bullshit-o-meter just burst!
Any statement of fact can be written in positive or negative form, so your statement simply says you can't prove anything at all. Positive: "I am going to the park today." Negative: "I am not going to remain outside the boundaries of the park today." Or more simply, "It is not true that it is not true that I am going to the park today."
And in case you really believe the statement, "You can't prove a negative.": I'd like to see you try to prove it. Oh, I'm sorry, did I ask you to prove a negative?
Remember the time when the most acclaimed minds in the world thought that the world was flat?
So you're saying that we should continue looking for alternatives to the current understanding that the world is round?
Any statement of fact can be written in positive or negative form, so your statement simply says you can't prove anything at all. Positive: "I am going to the park today." Negative: "I am not going to remain outside the boundaries of the park today." Or more simply, "It is not true that it is not true that I am going to the park today."
Double negatives are not true negatives. So sorry, you lose on that one. Please try again.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
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I have a poblem with this statement from the judge:
The separation of church and state is enshrined in the US constitution
Anyone care to pint out WHERE? I have not read the constitution in its entirety, however I have skimmed through it and have not found anything that would suggest seperation. The first amendment prevents the government from interfering with established religion. It does NOT, however, prevent the church from meddling with government (AKA public schools). When Thomas Jefferson enacted seperation of church and state, it was a one-way seperation.. the state cannot mess with the church.
It amazes me that a judge is ruling this "unconstitional", despite the fact that the constitution has no bearing on religion outside of the church.
I've done a basic Google search, and all the articles refer to myths and misinformation. I can't find one single article explaining how this is unconstitutional.
Anyone care to help out? Point out how "religion in schools" is banned by the constitution?
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
1) The constitution prevents the establishment of religion in the First Amendment, and 2) Congress has no power except that which is explicitly granted to it, therefore it can neither support nor discourage religion.
...on its own makes no claim as to whom this being might be, what its motives were, or how we should regard it.
You don't consider teaching one particular sect's creation story in a science class support?
The theory of ID...
ID is not a theory, at most it is a hypothesis
Except (by your own words) that it must be a being in the first place. That is a pretty specific claim
Acknowledging an opposing viewpoint is not anti-science; rather it is the very foundation of science. To blindly follow any hypothesis or theory without regard to alternatives is the definition of bad science.
All opinions are not equally valid in science. Only those opinions that can be tested in some way count. To blindly posit a hypothesis with no way to verify it and call it a theory is the (literal) definition of bad science in that it does not follow the scientific method.
On the second point, sociology is science, and religion is part of sociology. Sociology is not hard science like chemistry or physics, but it's science nonetheless.
Sociology class is not Biology class. People would not be nearly so upset it they were suggesting it for the sociology curriculum.
On the third point, Congress only has powers which are granted to it by the Constitution.
And converselty cannot wield powers that are specifically denied it. Of course, we are talking about the judiciary branch re: the article. To get to the heart of the matter (FTA): 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.
Case closed (thank God).
Putting the word "firefly" and the words "another episode" near each other before the second coming of the messiah is cruel.
its like telling children that santa is coming tomarrow on the 24th of november.
Damn the man!
There in lies the rub. If you accept evolution as a scientific law, then you would be just as guilty as those who say intelligent design is the only answer. Until proven, noone knows the answer. No one can prove that mutations that happen in evolution are caused by god or by natural means. Radiation is naturally occuring and who's to say that god didn't cause the radiation to increase at the right time in the development of say a tadpole to change it to a lizard (or whatever). Some people will say that evolution has been proven and I say that alot of evidence and data has been captured, but not enough to concretely say that it's a fact. Again, you must present BOTH Intelligent Design and Evolution because those qare the two prevailing theories. One can teach intelligent design without bringing the Chrisitian God, Buddha, Allah or whoever's teachings into it. You can just use the term supreme being or a generic god or hell even aliens. I do not understand why the Intelligent Design theory is being dismissed as the Chrisitian right's agenda only. Almost every other religion on the planet believe in a god and that that god influences and controls things on Earth. Intelligent Design is not only a religious teaching.
Gorkman
When the executives returned, they reported back to Time Warner's top deal negotiator, Olaf Olafsson, with some less-than-satisfactory findings. They had found some of Microsoft's technology to be clunky,
Pot. Kettle. Black... Heh. Should have been a match made in heaven. Or, erm, in that other place...
Flying is easy, just throw yourself at the ground and miss. -Douglas Adams
God exists, just not in any of the quantum states that collapsed when you made your observations.
There is a lengthy article in The Standard Times here with great detail about the whole thing and how it came down. As usual, the kid got attention, started embellishing the story, and the whole thing came crashing down.
Some days it's just not worth chewing through the restraints.
It just makes it highly likely he's a conservative nut!
Me too. That's why I comment my code, and never trust my arguments. And I always punt refactoring to some lackey.
This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
In this vein I propose an alternate theory, that in fact the world is spherical. No need to thank me. Just tell everyone that you heard it first on slashdot.
I am a lawyer and this constitutes legal advice and I shall indemnify you against any losses arising from taking it.
By "round" I suppose you meant spherical?
What about snowflakes? Why do snowflakes have a regular pattern and don't fall as chunks of ice (hail)? The water molecules, under certain conditions, self-organize into regular patterns? Why do iron filings form loopy patterns around a magnet? Other patterns which may seem random aren't, like bird/bug flight (each bird/bug self-organizes in continually changing relationship with its fellow neighbors to flock/swarm. There are rules that exist that cause an individual something to behave in a non-random way. It may be difficult to fully understand things (bonds between atoms, ElectroMagnetic theory, etc.), but to kinda understand in a layman's way shouldn't be too hard. Swarming? If i fall behind, speed up. If I get too close, slow down. Avoid hitting something. There might be another rule or two I'm missing, but you get the general idea. There are several books written for the laymen (rather than that college level text) that are out there, stuff on chaos and complexity.
Everyone knows "God is dead" and Jesus is a myth just like all the Greek and Roman gods we quickly brush aside as fairy tales. With that in mind, "Intelligent Design" has no place in science class, you can shove it in philosophy or comparative religion though and learn about all the other creation stories the world has to offer.
Intelligent Design = Creationsim is sheep's clothing.
This "liberal" judge was appointed to the bench by someone you might have heard of - George W. Bush - in 2002. You're correct that some are calling him an activist judge, but I imagine that will be limited in scope given that he's a Bush appointee.
Science is not guaranteed to be absolute truth, science is a process of observations and finding a theory that best fits the observation, if a pattern cannot be found it is called random.
No it isn't. Some simply say "we have not yet found a pattern - more study is required". When you assign "random" occurrences to God instead of just accepting your lack of understanding, then I believe that you're looking for validation of your belief. It's easier to believe in something when you can assign events or circumstances to it. "I don't understand lightning and therefore it must be that God is angry at us". But wait - it's just something to do with clouds n' ice n' stuff. Man I feel silly...
I'm not religious myself, but am very glad that others have found a faith that makes them happy. All that I ask is that thoey leave me alone, stop trying to "save" me, and also leave science alone.
The fundies can call the judge whatever they want but their man in the white house appointed him.
--wikipedia--
John Edward Jones III (born June 13, 1955) is an American lawyer, political figure, and jurist from the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. A Republican, Jones was appointed by President George W. Bush as federal judge on the United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania in February 2002 and was unanimously confirmed by the Senate on July 30, 2002.
I patented screwing your mom. But it got revoked for "prior art."
Please read this. Theory means something a little different when we're talking about science and I'm a bit tired of religious nutcases pretending that it means the same as the dictionary definition.
Does a Christian soccer team even need a goalkeeper?
From And Maggie Makes Three.
Careful - rightnext to the bsometer is the wasnt-paying-attention-in-junior-high-ometer.
The g.p. is refering to the scientific principle that you cannot prove an absolute negative. In general, it is a warning not to infer too much from one's own limited perspective of the universe.
For example, "I can see no stars in the sky at this time" is much more easily supported than the statement "There are no stars in the sky." The statement, "I found no fish in this pond" is sensible, but the statement, "This pond has no fish" is close to nonsense.
Per your example, "I do not intend to go to the park today" is a statement you can support. "I will not go to the park today" is not provable. Of course, that is because it is future-tellings, not because it is negative.
Which brings us back to...
This is misleading. The theories have not been disproven. They have simply not been proven. The fact that they have not, to date, been proven, does not imply that they are disproven. Actually, the theory of some pattern existing behind pseudorandom quantum phenomena may very well be not-provable and yet still true. (In order to emphatically prove such a theory, one have to discover the pattern... rendering the point moot!)
Ask any metaphysicist.
Most of them *do* have an open mind. But they require decent scientific theories do actually consider. Intelligent Design is the weakest theory around, and it's not science. You can't pitch a scientific theory against something that is not a scientific theory.
ID is better explored in philosophy or theology (where is used to be before it was rebadged as ID).
Remember the period table 50 years ago had less elements than they do now
They may be true but it doesn't matter! Good scientists would have assumed that more elements may be found, given that they kept finding them! Intelligent design says, "I don't understand that - it looks way too tricky and complicated - God must have done it! Hooray for God, I was just *looking* for something to credit Him with".
JESUS CHRIST people - get with the times!!!!!!!
Being a better theory does not make it true.
There is no way to judge what is truth is this context. Talking about truth here is a waste of time and is fuzzy thinking. It is not decidable.
Science gives you the answer that evolution is a principle that you use until something better comes along, 'better' being defined by a set of philisophical principles we call the scientific method. It is the same thing as any other scientific theory. If people stop investigating alternatives it's because they think there are better things to work on, not because there is a big red sign 'TRUTH' on the front of the evolution book. That is very different than in the case of a faith based belief where somebody just says THIS IS THE TRUTH, END OF DISCUSSION.
Intelligent design is a faith based belief that some people accept. A faith based belief is not science - and there is no way to test whether or not it is truth in any way other than somebody believes it to be so. So long as you don't try to say intelligent design is science, and teach children that it is acceptable as a scientific alternative in public schools you can believe it or not according to your particular view and that is fine by me. Personally I have found science to work better but that is just me.
Also, your examples are very bad. The Greeks (from the time of Pliny the Elder) knew enough geometry to realize the Earth was round and actually computed its circumferance. Flat Earth Theory was actually based on Christian religious dogma, a faith-based belief based on some Biblical interpetations of how the Earth had to be shaped. Nobody with any training in mathematics believed it. As far as molecules being the smallest unit of matter, again that was never the case. The definition of molecule includes that it composed of two or more atoms.
Good idea! By doing that we could bring it back into the classroom as a "science" and that would get around some pesky Constitutional Amendment that doesn't allow us to teach religion (or creationism) in public school science classrooms. Maybe we could modify an old book about Creationism, change every instance of "creationism" with "Intelligent Design", call the book "of pandas and people" and lobby school boards to get it into the science classroom!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Of_pandas_and_people
Rant aside, please read the link and research the history of Intelligent Design. It is rebadged Creationism-lite Pseudoscience. As a theory, it's entirely valid in Theology or in private schools far away from my tax dollars.
Smart people will see how those that reported the Little-Red-Book story do retractions. They should have to report past errors and do so in an open way (not burried somewhere in the back hidden in the advertizing.)
Do you see Fox retract much of anything?
I bet if we required retractions, Fox would setup the Fox Retraction Channel -between 2 music channels, all text with no sound, and written by lawyers. At least they'd document their own misinformation.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
crackberries for everyone! it's good to see the US Patent Office appears to be getting their act a bit more together.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
...as Einstein said God doesn't roll dice.
But Einstein was referring to quantum mechanics, not evolution. I'm not sure if he ever expressed an opinion on natural selection.
-h-
If you accept evolution as a scientific law
There is no such thing as scientific law or proven fact in a scientifc context. Science doesn't work that way.
Radiation is naturally occuring and who's to say that god didn't cause the radiation to increase at the right time in the development of say a tadpole to change it to a lizard (or whatever).
Why bother - just create the lizard, and the fossil record too while you are at it POOF!. There is no way to tell what happened, so obviously evolution theroy doesn't mean anything.
The problem - if you are going to accept the existance of an actively interfereing all-powerful diety than absoultely anything is possible. For all we know the universe and all its contents is created one millisecond to the next by this diety, and there is no future or past and there no way of determining if this is going on. Done, finisned. Well, guess what. This is not useful in any way - it doesn't lead to stuff like genetic biology, the understanding of evolution of diseases and medical treatments based on that knowledge. It is utterly stupid. You can have it, I'll take a different approach.
I do not understand why the Intelligent Design theory is being dismissed as the Chrisitian right's agenda only.
Read the court decision in the recent PA trial. This was investigated in court and it was found that "Intelligent Design" is just weasel words for creationism established in order to try an end run around existing court decisions regarding the teaching of creationism in schools. In fact the judge stated that some of the witnesses who tried to claim otherwise probably commited perjury.
What is sad now is that Dover PA has to pay legal costs for this farce. This is going to hurt the education of the children in this small town for years to come. These idiots should be run out of town on a rail.
Ah, my apologies for the semantical mis-step. I should not have implied that we had disproven every single possible 'hidden variable' theory, as it is possible that there is some underlying truth which gives the appearance of breaking all these rules while still, in fact, retaining them at some deeper level (much like how His Noodly Appendage is being obfuscated by this "evolution" business).
Although I would note that, as far as I've seen, since the EPR 'paradox' was shown to in fact represent how the world works, hidden variable theories are not faring well - they involve giving up significant numbers of other aspects of our classical universe to retain the deterministic effects, and often introduce large amounts of additional cruft that doesn't lead to any useful predictions.
According to TFA:
"An earlier report that the incident occurred at the University of California at Santa Cruz has proven false."
The article includes that, and a quote from a DHS representative saying that it "seemed unlikely." How has it proven false? Did the professor make it up? Did a reporter make it up? What happened?
"Im such a nonconformist I'm going to not conform to the rest of you!"
"Dude I think we just got goth-served"
uh you mean [include scr="www.example.com/media/midi/Jeomain.mid"]
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
Time to rename random number generators, since I can't explain why they're random. God must have designed them. It's /dev/god for me from now on.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
Just go ask the congress and the senate, they have been doing it for years, and they don't seem to have a problem with it. Insurance companies do this too, so you can ask them... Oh yeah, the 30% loan companies... they do it too... (oh well it's actually 30% + prime) so ask them...
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. Emo Philips
In history we teach kids that people thought the world was once flat, then show evidence that says that idea is wrong.
In chemistry we teach them that people once practised alchemy, then show evidence that that idea was wrong.
We teach the old "plum" model for atoms, then show evidence that that idea was wrong.
I don't see how you can teach biology while omitting the idea that for the longest time almost every culture assumed life came entirely from a super natural being.
God IS in the gaps. He always has been. The gaps are just perpetually shrinking as science fills the gaps with explanations that prove things behave deterministically. :)
set softtabstop=4 shiftwidth=4 expandtab nocp worlddomination
> If macroevolution and intelligent design are two different theories addressing the same question (the origin of the universe), then how can one be religion and the other not?
> Let's keep this objective... can anyone justify the classification of one theory as religion and another as science, when they both address the same thing?
Ignoring the fact that ID isn't a theory...
It's not what they address, it's how they address it.
ID clearly isn't science. It doesn't use the scientific method, its "researchers" don't do any research, they report their "results" at religious gatherings rather than scientific conferences, etc. Anyone who says they can't distinguish it from science is ill informed about what goes on in one or both camps, or hasn't stopped to think about it, or is being disingenuous.
As for why it's considered religion, you can think out its implications (where did the first generation of designers come from?), or you can look at what its leading proponents say when they're not pretending to be scientists.
If your questions is honest rather than rhetorical, you would do well to read the judge's written opinion, which you can find with Google and download.
> Are there any examples of similar situations?
Diet.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Just to establish my cred, ID isn't science and shouldn't be taught in school.
Now, having said that, I want to issue a cautionary note to my liberal friends. Let's take a sober approach toward this, shall we?: Having a federal judge deciding what is and is not science, and thus what should and should not be taught in school, is really a terrible state of affairs.
If the government didn't have a near-monopoly on education, this wouldn't be an issue, of course. But that's a whole 'nother can o' worms.
- AJ
Half of that AOL article is about the failure ofthe AOL/Time Warner merger, a subject which could fill many libraries.
Okay, I am not a lawyer, but I play one on TV...
/. nerds on the defense team would have heavily swung this in the opposite direction (also a little more corporate courtesy on RIM's part). Seriously though, I've heard nothing but nonsense about this case, and I'm happy for a chance to set the record as straight as I have found it.
0 5opn.pdf
(seriously though, I often do legal research)
and quite frankly people need to RTF case. The judge has explicitly said "I don't tell [the patent office] their job, they don't tell me mine." What that means, and it's listed EXPLICITLY that the judge in the case doesn't give a hoot about the Patent Office ruling, and that he (not will not, implying no decision has been rendered) DID not grant RIM's motion to stay pending patent ruling.
He also clearly states that part of the main reason for his rejection of this judgement is that he buys COMPLETELY NTP's argument that if the patents are rejected, they will appeal, a process that could drag on for years (RIM contends it would only be a few short months).
Furthermore RIM is guilty throughout the trial of what is considered 'bad behavior.' There was considerable question that RIM followed all necessary protocols (particularly with an internal investigation of whether the patents were reasonably valid). This is backed up by conflicting evidence from the varies executive party at RIM.
Okay, so no one seems to get this, but I'll spell it out for you, and link the document: RIM lost. Not will lose, not might lose, HAS lost. Their 45 page appeal proceeding (one needs Lexis Nexis to access it, thus I won't be posting that one here) reads VERY poorly for RIM. In fact the only part that was remanded to a lower court does little to allow them to win. NTP won. RIM is in violation (imho because they a.) engaged in 'bad behavior,' which is to say trial etiquette and b.) during the Markman hearing [a hearing where the judge determines things like definitions and scope of patents, est. 1996, Markman v. Westview Instruments] they did horrible job allowing NTP to fully dominate definitions of email and patent scope, giving them enough broad leeway to technically sue any computer manufacturer that makes a wifi laptop that can check e-mail, but I digress... and c.) their initial arguments (which cannot be dropped in favor of new arguments unless the appeal strikes those specifically, and it didn't) were ridiculously weak, and essentially claimed that the Intel chipset inside was the RF device (the NTP patents specifically call for an RF device), not the Blackberry pager itself, and therefore was not liable for infringement (no judge in the WORLD would buy this argument on common sense alone, but there is numerous precedent in US patent law that clearly says that by possessing this part, RIM infringes)...
Here's how it's going to end:
RIM is going to pay NTP a ton of money.
Everyone's going to keep their Blackberries.
In 2012 (when the original patents expire, and thus the payments mandated by the court) or whenever RIM migrates every BB customer to a non-infringing system (whichever comes first) NTP stops getting paid.
Please note, I'm a huge fan of RIM. I think RIM should have won this case hands down, and I passionately pursue research in the area strictly as a hobby, as a fan of both law and technology. I believe that RIM was doomed from the beginning, and a few
Here is the rejection by the honorable James Spencer of RIM's motion for a 'stay of proceedings' pending review of the patents by the USPTO.
http://news.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/rim/ntprim1130
It's a PDF, and an enlightening read.
Enjoy.
;-) Don't worry, we won't go *poof* right away 'cause the Universe has a certain amount of momentum to it's existence (with respects to Zelazny's Siddhartha). But in terms of "the emperor has no clothes", it is more like, "there is no spoon" at levels that Heisenberg uncertainty principle comes into play.
Very easily, actually. In fact, most of the "great" proofs in mathematics are proof of a negative. I offer one as an example:
Hypothesis: There is no greatest prime number
Proof: Suppose there were a greatest prime number; let's call it P. ... * pn * P; call that product Q.
Then, by using a sieve method we could create a list of all prime numbers.
Postulate that this has been done, and call the resulting list p1,p2,p3...pn,P
Consider the product of this list, that is, p1 * p2 * p3
Consder the number Q+1. Q+1 is relatively prime to every number in the list p1,p2,p3...pn,P because Q+1 differs from a multiple of each number in that list by only 1.
But p1,p2,p3...pn,P is by hypothesis a complete list of all prime numbers.
Therefore Q+1 is relatively prime to all prime numbers less than it, and is therefore itself prime.
But Q+1 is greater than P, because Q = P * some integer and Q+1 > Q
Therefore the results are in contradiction to the hypothesis, and by reductio the hypothesis is false.
There, we just proved a negative. Where do people get the ridiculous idea that a negative can't be proven?
All's true that is mistrusted
Good job at staying objective :P
You're only going half as far as I'm asking you to. You propose that intelligent design is clearly religion... supposing I allowed your argument, couldn't we use the same criteria to establish evolution as a religion?
If you think that sounds ridiculous, try it out:
Scary, huh?
I'm looking not for a reason why the intelligent design theory is religion (other than "It's clearly not science, and anyone who thinks it is is dumb"); I'm looking for a justification for calling intelligent design religion without calling evolution religion.
The scientific method is moot. Those little steps "observation" and "repetition" are a little finicky when it comes to the origin of the universe.
No, actually. Throughout recorded history man (the educated ones, at least) has known the world is roughly spherical.
Columbus didn't have to convince Ferdinand and Isabelle that the world was round; they knew that as well as we do. They just also knew as well as we do how big it was (Thales's measurement of the circumference of the earth was not surpassed in accuracy until the 18th century). And they didn't know if there was a continent between the Iberian peninsula and China (and neither did Columbus unless he heard it from an Icelander when he was there).
All's true that is mistrusted
The assumption you refer to is that "macroevolution" refers to the evolutionary theories about the origin of the universe.
Upon some quick investigation (google wikipedia), I realise that is indeed a false assumption.
That being said, my question is about comparing two theories regarding the origin of the universe.
Two ways:
1)if a theory says A is true, find an example where A is not true. I.e., a counter-example = proof of a negative.
2)Logical deduction, i.e. mathematical proof. Hidden variables are proved not to exist by a mathematical theorem (Bell's Theorem, specifically).
You can't prove there's no god, because God isn't formulated as a scientific theory. You can prove there are no hidden variables, since quantum mechanics is a scientific theory.
Hey, all science is provisional. Thing is, you need something more than handwaving and sniping at evolution. I think it'd be really neat if the ID folks could actually come up with something. I just don't see how they can do it. Apparently they can't either.
If you are going to comment, you probably should actually take the trouble to RTFD (note: PDF). I think it deals with this argument rather well:
> I don't see how you can teach biology while omitting the
> idea that for the longest time almost every culture assumed
> life came entirely from a super natural being.
You missed the distinction. It's okay to mention that some Christians believe in ID. It's not okay to say that ID is an alternate, valid scientific theory.
It's just like how you can learn in history class that Jesus/Buddha/Mohammed/etc was/is worshiped by Christians/Buddhists/Muslims/etc, but they won't tell you that it is right to worship Jesus/Buddha/Mohammed/etc.
that's my biggest problem with the US legal system - we don't have one.
If you want to revert to the letter of the Constitution - or rather, to somebody's opinion about what the letter of the Constitution means - a lot of stuff would change, and you might find that you didn't like all of it.
Right - ever since FDR essentially abrogated the constitution by expanding the "interstate commerce" clause beyond all sense and intent we've been right off the legal deep end. If we *want* the federal government to control social spending instead of the states, that's fine but we should *change* the freaking laws to permit it, not pretend that they say something that they don't or, even more heinous, use federal tax dollars to manipulate the states the way a dealer uses drugs to manipulate hookers.
"Change your DUI laws or we cut your highway funds."
"Change your civil rights laws or we cut off your school funds."
Right. Extortion is exactly what the founding fathers had in mind when they divided the federal and state governments.
Clear, Dark Skies
However, I guarantee you that molecules, atoms, and subatomic particles will still be talked about by educated people hundreds of years from now. Evolution, too, will still be in the framework of biology. Not because of some ivory tower intellectuals, but because the science has overwhelmingly supported it so far, and the only way that evolution as a whole will be disproven is if the Invisible Pink Unicorn gallops into a science lab and neighs the truth to people in lab coats. There will be changes, yes, and refinements, as with all science, but it probably won't be any worse than something like, oh, the theory of gravity (although who knows, it may just be Intelligent Falling, wait, I'm gonna go write "Of Apples and People")
You can read the patent yourself if you don't believe me. They claim the rights to do anything with the BRCA1 gene. Legally, you have to send your genetic sample to Myriad Genetics and pay them ~$3000 to even sequence the gene. Here's claim number one, which should demonstrate my point:
How is patenting a mutation of a gene any different from patenting a gene? You're still patenting a genetic sequence. I think it's fair to say that mutations in just about any gene can cause pathogenic effects, but if those mutations occur naturally, why should anyone be able to patent them? The sequence would exist whether Myriad discovered it or not. They don't have any new technology--just a sequence. Instead of coming up with something novel, they claim the rights to use pre-existing technology to detect a common variant (~3% of the population) of the BRCA1 gene. Claim 10 is just one example:
(They also claim the rights to run gels, PCR, and pretty much all other standard methods of nucleic acid analysis.) I'm not saying they didn't do a lot of work to pinpoint which mutations increase a person's susceptibility for breast cancer, but they should have kept it a trade secret if they didn't want people sequencing the gene themselves. They would have had a few years with a monopoly on testing, then someone else would have duplicated their work and the information would be public domain. What if someone had been able to patent the rights to sequence any of chromosome 17, rather than a specific gene? Craig Venter wanted to patent the entire human genome before the Human Genome Project could publish it. The Myriad patent sets back cancer research, preventing people from even researching BRCA1 without paying a fee. That, as I said earlier, is immoral.Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a soportar Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a espabilar
So why don't we just pray to Bob?
This is misleading. The theories have not been disproven. They have simply not been proven. The fact that they have not, to date, been proven, does not imply that they are disproven.
This is incorrect. It HAS been proven that hidden variables are mathematically incompatible with quantum mechanics. Try looking into the EPR paradox and bell's inequality. That's not to say there are no hidden variables, but quantum theory works damn well, and it's incompatible with hidden variables - so it's a whole lot more convincing an argument than simply "it hasn't been found yet"
Ask any metaphysicist.
Yeah, while you're at it, ask an astrologist, a tarot card reader, a televangelist, and a reporter for a tabloid mag.
Intelligent Design is not provable as a theory, because they are yet to admit that Midiclorians prove the truth of Intelligent Design.
The Force is the manifestation of Intelligent Design. Midiclorians are its agents, shaping and forming all life.
Light Saber training should be included within the High School Science Curriculumn. This will also be very popular with High School students and renew their interest in Science, and additionally is a mechanism to make sporting oriented students have as much to offer science in the classroom as academically oriented students. In this way Science will also be more supportive of diversity.
Because I'm too tired to read the other posts in this subject :P...
;)
Darwinism can be looked upon as a religion of sorts as well. I personally have investigated both sides of this dispute, and have found that the evidence that one side holds up is the next point that the other side was planning to present. Therefore, in my (sleep-deprived) opinion, I think that an argument could be made that the 'facts' that the Darwinists use are as tangible as the 'facts' that the Intelligent Design people use.
As Darwinism cannot be conclusively proved (nor, at this point, have major parts of many of the theories on which many scientists today base their findings) it should not be presented as the only option. If a family feels that Darwinism is wrong, they can opt to send their children to a private school, or homeschool.
It is not right for a school to force one point of view on students, unless it is an extreme case, such as the Holocaust. The place of the educator is to educate and enlighten the students, allowing the students to make decisions later on in life. (Unfortunately, this concept is generally ignored throughout the education system.)Therefore, it is the responsiblity of the education system to present both Darwinism (as a scientific theory) as well as Intelligent Design. Intelligent Design is supported by all major religions (I believe) and is therefore the belief that is held by the vast majority of the population.
Let me know what you think about this. However, if you're a rabid evolutionist or creationist, I don't care to hear from you
P.S. I wrote this far too late at night, so my apologies for any structure or mechanical errors.
i_nick at hotmail dot com
I've come to place where talking about "truth" is only meaningful within a restricted context. If one slows downs, thinks, and looks broadly, then it becomes clear there is rarely ever "truth" -- there is instead only consistency with a context. When a fact is consistent within the larger surrounding facts, we call it "true" - when it is inconsistent, it is "false". The right would have us believe that this is the only way to think - to restrict your context and deal in the world or simple dichotomies. True and false, right and wrong, etc. While it is necessary to restrict ones world view to function - to progress with action, such constriction is also very harmful to one's world view.
If you followed all that , you've now done plenty of acid. it's time to start changing the world.
The prostate is important. I have heard from those who have lost them that orgasms are worse than pointless without them. Also, if you happen to like anal sex, chances are you won't without your prostate.
Both sound like very good reasons for existance to me.
The previous sig has been removed due to
There are many good points that you have made, however I do not believe that Intelligent Design is weasel words for creationism although they both are essentially the same thing, one can't really point to evolution and say that evolution itself does not have gods hand in it's work. Sure sure, a all powerful god can just poof....get rid of fossil record and change things at will, but it would depend of that's what god wanted to do! Maybe god's just being lazy, or maybe god is leaving this record for a reason?? I don't know. Intelligent Design COULD mean god, but it could mean aliens too. I think all that creationists/intelligent design proponents are asking for is that it also be given class time. One can't point at ID saying that it's non-science because one doesn't have the proof either way. I mean is it possible that everything is the way it is today by random chance? Yes. Is it just as possible a god or other intelligent being influenced how things appear to us today? Possibly. Noone has proof either is true yet. Why not propose both? It IS possible to teach ID with a non religious bent (and likely it would be a very short lecture....).
Gorkman
I agree. I think g-d(I am a christian but use this spelling out of respect for you), when he created this universe and this planet created the very mechanics we observe today. In fact I think arguing over evolution is a logical trap we have led ourselfs into, if you want to have any argument at all it should be over AbioGenesis verses Creation but neither is provable and both will always come down to a matter of faith. I also think that there is such a push for total seperation of all things religous in our culture alot of people feel a threat, and alot are trying to fight this on any ground the can find. I know alot of people who are simply tired of being told what they belive is wrong and basicly they should just shut up and go away. They fell like there cornered and there is nothing they can do about it. The funny thing is by not alowing any debate at all we are infact pushing human secularism as the defacto religion in the US.
The perversity of the Universe tends towards a maximum. - O'Toole's Corollary
Just to clarify, Einstein was an atheist. When he said God doesn't roll dice, he was speaking metaphorically.
By the way, just do a google search.....it's MORE then just religious right people proposing teaching of Intelligent Design. There are many PhD's and non religious people asking it be taught as well...
t ml
http://www.actionbioscience.org/evolution/nhmag.h
http://skepdic.com/intelligentdesign.html
Either way you stand, I think a intelligent debate on this should be allowed in a classroom setting and it should be touched upon in a science class. If it's never taugh much less researched, then how can evolution be provded as the defacto truth? Can we prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that evolution is a natural process??? No. Can we prove some intelligent species planned all of this? No. Can it be debated in class? Why not? When ID can be presented in a non religious way, then why the heck not?
Gorkman
Simple isn't it?
Granted, I've never studied this 'formal' Intelligent design stuff, but I don't think that any of them have really answered (by using the bible), the question of just how long god's days were -- especially when the earth didn't exist for the first day.
No real reason to believe that someone as godlike as, well, God would have a day the same length as ours.
In any case, I think (like the first poster) that setting an artificial barrier between God and Science -- and then using the descriptions in the bible (which were simplified no end for people who mostly had no understanding of science, or even the general concept) as the basis for an artificial pseudo-science -- are just setting themselves up to get their heads kicked in. (metaphorically speaking).
Then again, I figure these are the same kinds of people who'd freak out at the project Guttenberg people for listing The Bible's creator as "Anonymous".
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
Just to establish my cred, ID isn't science and shouldn't be taught in school.
Now, having said that, I want to issue a cautionary note to my liberal friends. Let's take a sober approach toward this, shall we?: Having a federal judge deciding what is and is not science, and thus what should and should not be taught in school, is really a terrible state of affairs.
If the government didn't have a near-monopoly on education, this wouldn't be an issue, of course. But that's a whole 'nother can o' worms.
- AJ
Having a judge with expert advice say it is not science is better then having a school board full of religious people proclaim it is. I would prefer the former to the later although Ideally I woudl accept the words of an actual scientist. However their words fall on deaf ears.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
From your link: One can sum up all this by saying that the criterion of the scientific status of a theory is its falsifiability, or refutability, or testability."--end quote
Theories are supposed to be treated with skepticism, and the "religious nutcase" you responded to displayed more of it than you have.
Sometimes I think you slashbots have a religion unto yourselves.
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
But you side-stepped his request: prove that you cannot prove a negative. If you do, you are proving a negative ("you can't do something"), therefore making your own assertion false. If you don't, then it is just another unproven statement.
In general, his point was valid: "you can't prove a negative" is a lazy assertion, and almost always used in religious-nutcase-vs-theory-of-evolution type of arguments.
"Macroevolution" does not address the origin of the universe. That said, "macroevolution" and ID do not address the same issue.
How is ID religious? ID states that life is too ordered to have come about naturally and therefore must have been designed. e.g. ID says that God Did It. This is obviously religion. (Doesn't have to be god could be Space aliens, blah, blah blah, who created the aliens?, blah, blah, God, blah. God always was so no need to create him blah, blah, blah. Tired old obvious arguments.)
We cannot test ID. ID is not falsifiable. ID is NOT science.
Evolution, on the otherhand, is a theory that was created to explain certain observations. That is to say, evolution is a theory that explains the data. The new data that we've found fits the theory well. Predictions made using the theory have further reinforced the theory rather than detract from it. We've been able to observe evolution and even identify some of the mechanisms of evolution. Also, when evolution no longer explains the data (a possibility) evolution will be thrown out in favor of a theory that explains the data. Evolution is observable, testable, and falsifiable. That is, evolution is science.
On a related note, I've yet to see any pro-ID material that does anything other than try to show evolution to be wrong (which none of it actually has). Why do proponents of ID attack evolution and not simply try to show that ID can stand on its own merits?
In addition, proponents of ID have been making the argument that evolution is religious (although it's not) and that if evolution is religious and taught in schools, then ID should also be taught in schools. The flaw here is that if evolution is religious then it shouldn't be taught in schools -- lest it open a door for other religious materials-- And no, evolution is not religious. The statement you make above (replacing ID in the grandparent posters comments with evolution) may look pretty, but it's obviously invalid.
Required reading for internet skeptics
Turns out the researchers really meant to say they had used the Photoshop clone tool to copy the pictures of the cells.
I was unclear on the whole sub-controversy with the female assistant, but now I understand - he must have borrowed her license of Photoshop. For shame!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Because I hadn't heard of the "Little Red Hoax" story, but if I had, I wouldn't have believed it. The department of Homeland Security showing up to harass a colege student for requesting a book through ILL that anyone can go to the local Barnes and Noble and buy right off the shelf? That doesn't make any sense. Misguided and draconian as some of the DHS's policies may seem, I have to believe that really they do have the best of intentions, and besides, if the government did ever think to institute a thought police, any right thinking individual would know that the first place they would go would be those darker corners of the net, not books published by trade paperback publishing companies.
It's got to mean something that prominent people and news organizations picked this up. At face value, it could very well mean that they're just gullible, but I think there is something more legitimate going on. In the wake of the revelation of the Bush administration using the NSA to spy on citizens without getting wiretap warrants (when they are fairly easy to obtain) we have had a range of official responses from "so what?" to "yes we did it, don't you like freedom?" Sadly, this kind of wavering and uncertainty where the truth is concerned is the hallmark of this administr~~~~~ persons with power. This leaves those without power in a position where they don't know what to believe, but always feel safe in assuming the worse. DHS stormtroopers showed up to implant your new baby with a RFID chip? Page one above the fold!
Unfortunately the natural paranoia that beaten down feel is only exacerbated by a media all too eager to jump on stories like this. Edward R. Murrough turns in his grave at the concept of this talking head journalism, but it sure does sell papers. Rightwing Extremist Nutcase vs. Leftwing Extremist Nutcase generates the sort of polarizing, us or them, emotional reaction quotes that make headlines. For those of you not paying attention, they make headlines because they sell papers.
So now we have some college student trying to feel good about himself and justify his own existence. With narry a street protest to find to have his head bashed in by the cops (a clear sign that the system has failed when peaceful protests go uninterrupted), and probably not enough initiative to walk downtown to where the proletariat live to participate in one anyway, this anonymous fellow makes up a story that maybe will score him some points with whatever hippy chick in philosophy 101 that he's had his eye on. Really, this kind of story isn't the sort of thing you tell your professor when you're looking for an extension to a paper, nor is it really the sort of thing one admits during an advising session; this is really the sort of thing you say when you're three sheets to the wind drunk and looking to score (score what, exactly, I'll leave to your imagination). So everyone in this thing winds up with egg on their face. The kid who started it, those who believed him, and the journalists who spread the story because it sells papers. Us sane folk who realize we're not living in a police state yet just kind of shake our heads and wonder which is worse, thought police or freedom of stupidity.
Sure there is. Consider the following HTML, carefully:
<p>
Schroedinger's cat is <blink>not</blink> in the box.
</p>
So what you're saying is that God is being squeezed out of His habitat as humans encroach? That would mean Intelligent Design proponents could be seen as an environmental group desperately trying to preserve a threatened species. How progressive of them!
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Offtopic, but it's something I've wondered:
Why is it that Orthodox Jews write "g-d", "gd", etc.?
Le français vous intéresse?
If anyone belongs in the Special Olympics, it is you, "glitch23". I hope you win.
Ellipsoids aren't round? Oh, crap, I guess I'd better go back and re-read my old high school geometry text!
Writing the name of god on anything that is not long lasting such as paper is wrong, some take this further and include god as g-d even though it's not his name.
er put a "they think that" in front of that.
Your comment has sparked me to point out one of the reasons that many athiests are so against people who believe in heaven. Now, please do not take this as an insult...its just a personal view that I've known many people to share.
Many of us see religion as the "opiate of the masses". Faith truly does offer some solace from the void that ultimately lies before us. But those of us who do not believe in heaven often see those that do as weak mentally, since we feel they cannot standup to the ultimate end of their existence. We see it as a cop-out and it has honestly made me look at a person who I once admired for being incredibly strong willed and fearless, and made me realize how timid they really are when it comes down to the wire.
Again, this post was not meant as a troll or flamebait...I just wanted to express a perhaps not so popular viewpoint on the athiest vs heaven side of things.
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If you say "...remains just that - a theory", you don't really understand what a scientific theory is. A scientific theory is not a guess or a hunch (which is the non-scientific meaning of the word 'theory'), it is much stronger than that. By contrast, intelligent design doesn't even qualify as a hypothesis - it's merely a conjecture. A scientific theory by contrast makes testable predictions and is falsifiable amongst other things.
The theory of electromagentism is "just" a theory too, but the lightbulbs in my house all seem to work when I flick the switch.
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What is this g-d thing? Some kind of incomplete equation where we are supposed to find the what the terms 'g' and 'd' equal?
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
I always tend to assume that those who are advocating "Intelligent Design" are advocating just that sort of debate, but it seems that I am wrong from reading the statements that most prominent IDers make. If they want to debate about evolution, they need to be arguing about the mechanism of evolution, not about the fact that more complicated organisms have tended to follow the more simple organisms according to the fossil record. I think that there is plenty of room for someone who believes in the Creator to debate the origins of life with atheists and they shouldn't be silenced for being religious.
Unfortunately, the fact is that most "Intelligent Design" advocates -- though not all (see this article) -- want to teach a literal belief in Genesis, which can in no way be reconciled with today's scientific knowledge, and belongs in a religion class. I suppose that this "theory" could be true nonetheless, but then they need to work out arguments about how plants can grow without sunlight and generally falsify the entire current understanding of how the world works.
I think that you're right, that the real sticking point is abiogenesis vs. creation. Unfortunately, both of these theories rest entirely on faith (at least until someone follows Julia Child's Primordial Soup video from the 60s through and produces life from non-living elements, which would at least lend some credibility -- if not falsifiability -- to abiogenesis), and so should really be left out of public schools according to this ruling...
...books request you!
There's an old saying that says pretty much whatever you want it to.
No there aren't. Did you even read the second link you posted?
Isn't the original name of the Judeo-Christian god the "tetragrammaton" or whatever?
Le français vous intéresse?
Which was, IIRC, the ONLY LEGITIMATE use of the "blink" tag.
Something certain Jews say, check in this very thread for someone's response to my question on why they do it.
Le français vous intéresse?
> if a theory says A is true, find an example where A is not true. I.e., a
> counter-example = proof of a negative.
A counter-example disproves a positive, which is quite different from proving a negative in general.
e.g. someone claims that all apples are red.
I produce a green apple.
I have proven that not(all apples are red), that is there exists(apple which is not(red)). I have not proven all apples(are not(red)), which is proving a negative, because I only showed you one example.
However, you are correct that deductive techniques can prove a negative.
X-Has-Sig: yes
It just proves that:
This doesn't proove that the student lied but that it have been quoted wrongly.
The other thing that have to proove this is hoax is:
As you can see, it just proves that they haven't gone to library. This is fine because the origibal story say they have gone to the student home. That makes perfect sense if they have spying on american citizens (i guess it is quite easy for echalon type system to catch mao in conversation).
"Are there any examples of similar situations?"
Galileo comes to mind.
Information doesn't want to be anthropomorphized anymore.
The previous poster seemed to be confusing the dictionary definition of theory, an unproven hypothesis, with the scientific usage, which is something, whilst not established fact, has been tested and is the best current explanation. I do have a religion unto myself it's true, I'm a Catholic, albeit a lapsed one.
Does a Christian soccer team even need a goalkeeper?
Theories are supposed to be treated with skepticism,
Yes, but for scientific reasons, not religious ones. I wonder if he has the same level of skepticism for the atomic theory of matter, special relativity, and the round-earth theory.
No scientific theory can be, or has ever been, proved. Theories are disproved. Those theories that have survived a significant period of time without being disproved are treated as likely to be correct, and these are the theories that are taught in science classrooms.
ID is not science, because it does not meet the minimum requirements of a scientific theory. It is not disprovable by observation, and makes no experimental predictions. Because it is not science, it makes no more sense to teach it in a science class, than it would be to study Shakespeare in a metalworking class.
1 - random mutation
2 - suvirval of the fittest
3 - inheritance of characteristics from parent(s) - including the random mutation
Darwinism is the theory that all variation in life on Earth has arisen solely as result of this process. Proponents of ID are not the only people that object to Darwinism - there is credible evidence for some mechanisms of non-random mutation.
Creationists using these subtleties is comparable to a flat-earther (or Velikovsky) using the 46-seconds of arc in the obit of Mercury to deny "Newtonism".
Let's keep this objective... can anyone justify the classification of one theory as religion and another as science, when they both address the same thing?
A scientific theory is something that contains an assertion that can be experimentally tested.
A religious theory contains an assertion that one must accept on faith as it is impossible to test.
This is the basic difference between the Theory of Evolution (a scientific theory by the above definition) and that of Intelligent Design (a religious theory by the above definition).
It's a very simple concept, really.
No Fair - you used math.
Not to mention the prostate...
It is likely that you would not be able to reproduce without a prostate gland because it adds enzymes that nutralize acidic urine residue in the urethra and activate sperm.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Throwing out the word "evolution" (since it seems I'm misusing it)... the original story is about teaching origins in school.
We can teach "stuff just got here..." or we can teach "stuff was designed..."
In neither case can we observe or reproduce the beginning of the universe... So it's religion.
In both cases, we make deductions from this theory (eg. the age of planet earth) and conduct scientific experiments on those deductions to find out if they can be supported by evidence... So it's science.
Moving away from the origin of the universe; we can teach "stuff gets better over time through natural selection", or we can teach "stuff was created perfect and disintegrates over time."
Still, since the amount of time in question is greater than a lifetime, we cannot truly observe or repeat these phenomena. So it's religion.
Or, we can make deductions and test those deductions... so it's science.
We must make sure that theories which "one must accept as faith" are not taught as fact. But can they not be taught as speculation? Or better yet, can not the implications of such a theory be scientifically tested and *that science* be taught in school?
You're absolutely right. While I'm still recovering from the gaps in my education... can someone point me to the theory that does address the origin of the universe without intelligent design?
By specifically saying the "origin of the universe" I was trying to avoid confusion from the many intelligent-design-through-evolution theories that won't let the two be separate theories.
Yet, whether we compare evolutionary-origin-of-the-universe with intelligent design; or evolution (origin of species) with intelligent design... I still don't see how we came to dismiss one as religion and accept the other as science.
Evolution is observable? Who has observed the spontaneous mutation of one species into another through the process of natural selection?
Yes, that was a serious question!
Or have I got the word "evolution" wrong again?
So, if a scientific expert or, say, the pope says that ID is a-ok, it's ok?
Here, let's spin this in another direction, just for allegorical purposes:
Which is better at serving web pages, Unix Derivatives or Windows?
Emacs or Vi?
My point is (and I think AJ's point is as well) that "experts" disagree with each other just as often as non-experts do, and usually on grounds that are harder to disassociate and argue for the favor of one or another.
Now, it's highly possible that the judge is well-schooled in the sciences, but a couple of weeks in court isn't the way to solve any educational debate on curriculum - this might be something that's a bit easier to decide on, but IMO it sets a nasty precedent for how our educational system is modeled.
While this would hardly slip under the radar, it seems that a judge has the power to say, "Modern Calculus cannot be taught anymore in High School" with a similar argument from "experts". Now while both of these topics are pretty high-profile and would be challenged, what about a more obscure, but important topic?
Really, if anyone should be doing anything about this, it should be the Department of Education. My wife is getting her masters in education currently, and it baffles me how many things she can't even MENTION because of parents who think lawyers are the only way that they can shape their child's development.
Its become a tradition , now admittedly it is not one of the original names of Adonai , but it is there to also show respect to the adopted cultures I believe .
I will do the same thing for the name Al-ah (which could be confusing )
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
I would say that G-d created the very basics , the laws of physics and the way energy acts, then created the energy . The rest took care of itself . .Which then gives me a belief in G-d one that I feel does not affect my capability to work with science . OK this does raise the further question as to how G-d came into existence in the first place .. These things are well beyond my current (perhaps even beyond all human understanding right now , but I can not know that one for sure) understandings and hopefully in time we will find answers , I hope these answers confirm the existence of G-d , if they don't then fair be it .
The thing that got me thinking about this is , Where did the energy come from in the first place ? is time cyclical ? even if it is how did the cyclical process start . how did the energy appear ?, if it has always been there , then were is here ? how did here come into being ?
Things can not simply appear out of total nothingness as is my current understanding
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
I was referring to your assumption that the previous poster was obviously a 'religious nutcase' because of that confusion. But you're right, I think we've all seen this fallacy many times before.
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
>A scientific theory is something that contains an assertion that can be
>experimentally tested.
So where's the spare planet where you tested the evolution of hominids from single cell organisms?
Schroedinger's cat was always in the box.
Whether it was alive or not is another question.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
I was concerned about Red Cross cash pay outs long before the call center scandal. Whenever anyone is handing out $2k to just about anyone with few questions asked; there exists a large opportunity for fraud. Reports of receivers spending the money at strip bars and liquor stores instead of clothes and essentials; a Gucci bag is not an essential item! Civilian records should have been used to distribute money. i.e. local N.O. tax records, voter registration, phone book (incl. unlisted numbers), SSN, etc. The cards should not have been debit cards, they should have had more restrictions on how the money could be spent. There are many reports of non-N.O. persons collecting money from the Red Cross, and gaining shelter services in Texas, etc. The same sort of fraud occurred after 9/11 with fake firemen seeking glory, and the hundreds of millions dollars being passed out with no checks or balances being performed. I am not against helping those in need but you can't just pass out money without accounting for it properly and making some basic assertions that the receiver is not committing fraud. Now there are more fraud allegations against other charity groups who collected huge sums of money and that money has not yet been distributed or the charities are unwilling to show their accounting books. This little scam where Red Cross call center workers were given the ability to simply issue payments to just about anyone without any checks and balances was just plain irresponsible of the Red Cross. The Red Cross only caught on to the scam by noticing a lot of payments were being picked up in the same region as the call center a location where few refugees were located.
Einstein's faith lay in the idea that the universe, at its most fundamental level, made sense and could be understood by a human mind. Of course it remains to be seen whether or not he was right about that. Here's hoping...
End of lesson. You may press the button.
I was an Atheist for about 2/3 of my life, and had similar views. During that period I faced death, came damn close in fact, and stayed an Atheist. Now I find myself a quasi religious person, Not a Christian, but more a cross of Buddhism and Hinduism would be the closest comparison. I used to feel the same way you do about those who use religion as a cop-out so as not to have to think about what does (or does not) come afterwards. But I begin to wonder if those feelings were not simply misplaced fear or anger in an attempt to make ourselves feel better about our own choices, and wonderings of if there is something there that we're missing? Now don't get me wrong, I certainly believe there are people out there like you describe. Met a few of them, but don't let someone's beliefs and religion dissuade you from who they are. See someone for who they are when they show you, not for their beliefs they profess. How we deal with our own end is up to ourselves at that moment, we have no one left to impress.
Don't see someone's religious views as a negative, or a reason to believe they are weak. Sometimes it can take alot of effort, patience, will, and yes, fearlessness, to accept one's own beliefs and embrace them.
--Keeping the flame wars alive, one post at a time
Remember the time when the most acclaimed minds in the world thought that the world was flat?
Actually, generally Christians believed the world to be flat... not all the "most acclaimed minds in the world" were Christian.
The reason for this is simply that taken at face value, the Bible intimates in a couple of areas that the world is flat (referring to "the four corners of the world", and a passage in (I believe) Mark which mentions a mountain visible across the world; only possible on a flat Earth). Literal interpretation of biblical teachings led to that belief.
Taken as a whole in history, the Flat Earth theory was only a "blip on the radar" of belief. It was a short-lived belief that was relatively quickly debunked. Yes, in Christian societies it was pretty devoutly believed because (a) the people at the top stated it often, and (b) the average lay person did not have a way to access information that contradicted this statement (few could read, and few that could had access to anything other than the bible at their local church).
Even the ancient greeks documented their belief that the world was a perfect sphere (it's not, but they didn't have instrumentation to disprove that), though to be honest most societies in history have not really given the shape of the world much thought. Most of them just knew that it was and it never really occurred to most societies to even consider that it might be shaped at all. Between the ancient greeks and the Christian belief of the flat Earth I don't think there were any documented ideas either way, thus it could be said that even making the argument that the Earth had shape and was therefore limited in scope had the benefit of novelty.
It looks like another martyr has just thrown himself to the geeks. I hope he's covered in Cheetos, or else this could take a while.
Um, not to be too pedantic, but yes. It's called Geodesy. And the world isn't "round" at all.
Doesn't fly, because you postulated that you've already got a complete list of prime numbers. If you've already got the list, saying that something isn't ON the list is trivial. So either Q+1 ought to be on the list, for being prime, or Q+1 is not prime, despite the mathematical definition.
The point of proving a negative is usually used with intention or prediction. For example, it's impossible to prove that some scientist won't come up with the good old Theory of Everything this year, or that any random person won't die in the coming year. Who the hell knows?
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Basic statistics teaches that it only takes one contradiction to prove that something has non-zero probability, but that no finite number of failures can prove that something has zero probability. The mere fact that it has never occurred does not necessarily guarantee that it will not occur in the future.
That said, it can be possible to prove something impossible through means other than testing. However, doing so requires a structure in which to frame the analysis---a set of rules and assumptions about how the universe operates---which, if wrong, potentially invalidate the proof.
For example, proving that a piece of code will never execute is easy as long as you ignore outside factors (external input, random hardware failures due to thermal instability, and so on). However, if you ignore those outside factors, you really aren't proving that the code will never execute. You are proving that it -should- never execute unless influenced by an outside force. The only way to prove that it will never execute is to remove it entirely, and even that requires the assumption that no one has the ability to revert to the previous version.
I guess the bottom line is that it is impossible to prove that something has zero probability unless all of the assumptions made in that proof can be proven. In a rigorous system like mathematics, this is possible. In the real world, it almost never is.
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Ah, my apologies for the semantical mis-step. I should not have implied that we had disproven every single possible 'hidden variable' theory, as it is possible that there is some underlying truth which gives the appearance of breaking all these rules while still, in fact, retaining them at some deeper level (much like how His Noodly Appendage is being obfuscated by this "evolution" business).
This is the exact real problem here- most scientific theories fall into the same semantical mis-step. This leads the religious bigots to accuse the scientific bigots of teaching atheism, and that's how we get into the whole mess. The obvious answer is to stop teaching science as fact- and start in middle school or earlier with the philosophical underpinnings of the scientific method and *why* they're assumed to be true, while NEVER actually claiming that they are true. Keep the magic in the system, there's no real need to expunge it.
Although I would note that, as far as I've seen, since the EPR 'paradox' was shown to in fact represent how the world works, hidden variable theories are not faring well - they involve giving up significant numbers of other aspects of our classical universe to retain the deterministic effects, and often introduce large amounts of additional cruft that doesn't lead to any useful predictions.
It is entirely possible we're too stupid to include enough variables- I remember when Star Trek tackled this in an episode, the holographic Einstein claimed it would require more than 21 dimensions to make sense of it. That's likely a low estimate. It's important to stay humble about all of this- arrogance is what leads us to the very semantic error you made above; and thus to the very argument we're discussing.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Well, I don't know what faith that would be, but it's not Christianity. The Bible specifically explains the origin of the universe.
Ever heard of RINOs? Republicans In Name Only? They should make a new designation ... CHINOs ... CHristians In Name Only. I don't know how they expect to be taken seriously when they say the Bible is the Word of God (TM) one day and that yes, it's the word of God, but it shouldn't be taken literally the next. Intelligent design isn't how it was written in the verses. Six days. No more, no less. Or six "Biblical" days, 5000 years or what have you. No evolution. No nothing. He did everything. He does everything. Static universe. If he didn't say it, it's not the truth.
If you believe your God said those things, then get behind his words, get behind his explanation of how things should be, be a man and stand up for what you believe. The way I see it, you're just making it up as you go along to appear less foolish in face of contrary evidence. Until JC shows up again to settle this, all you have to go by is what's written in the Bible. So stick with that.
God IS in the gaps. He always has been. The gaps are just perpetually shrinking as science fills the gaps with explanations that prove things behave deterministically. :)
Exactly right. And as long as science limits itself to explainations that prove things behave deterministically, eventually God will no longer be the God of the gaps- but a very well defined something, defined by the very physical laws it/he/she/whatever created AND UNABLE OR UNWILLING TO DEFY THOSE LAWS. The great philosopher of our time, Kevin Smith, put it best in his screenplay Dogma- all of reality hinges on one important concept, that what God says is true. If it turns out that what God says, truly says not what other people say about him/her/it/whatever, is not true, then what we have is an indeterministic universe- at which point it all collapses, and NO physical laws exist.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
http://www.studentsfororwell.org/
of course, the secret service actually comes to the door of many kids...
here are 3 diff examples:r 28.html
s &file=article&sid=16
s &file=article&sid=18
http://www.progressive.org/mag_mc100405
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/170992_prosse
http://www.warblogging.com/archives/000379.php
http://shockandblog.com/blog/modules.php?name=New
http://shockandblog.com/blog/modules.php?name=New
Let me guess. Everything bad that is happening is made up. All of it. They are all partisan attacks to make George Bush look bad. We are actually living in the freest paradise on the planet and nothing bad happens here.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
To be totally honest, I think this is one of the last things our government should be worried about, even only in the topic of education! I don't think they should be arguing over this (an easy solution, create a 'philosophy' class in high school), kids in the US have been falling behind their foreign counterparts for several years now (So much so that the sooner a kid gets out of standardized school, the better chance they have in direct competition). Thanks to our wise and loving president, that will increase ten-fold because with 'no child left behind,' the smart kids are given no opportunity to advance! they are held back to the level of the most *cough*retarded*cough* kid in the grade level. After some thought, it almost seems like a conspiracy similar to that in the George Orwell's Novel '1984'...
Young party members doublethink newspeak doubleplusgood to crimestop in unistatsoc blackwhite doubleplusungood future thoughtcrime.
Translation: The youth of the united states must accept a lower level of processing thought to allow the United States Government the ability to do whatever they want without a possible upraising. If they accept the lower level of thought processing, they will accept the activities of the government as being in their best interest, and thus feel no need to rebel. Therefore, the path we are taking is a good one! End Translation
But clearly you have something better to say...
That reminds me of a rather nifty science fiction story I read probably 30 years ago. An old bloke sitting at a bar who turns out to be god, but with his power's gradually diminishing as science proves what he can't do. At the start of the story he is wearing a rather splendid jacket that seems to contain shifting lights woven within its fabric. The lights go out about half way through the story.
Anyone remember the name/author?
http://www.studentsfororwell.org/
of course, the secret service actually comes to the door of many kids...
here are 3 diff examples:r 28.html
s &file=article&sid=16
s &file=article&sid=18
http://www.progressive.org/mag_mc100405
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/170992_prosse
http://www.warblogging.com/archives/000379.php
http://shockandblog.com/blog/modules.php?name=New
http://shockandblog.com/blog/modules.php?name=New
Let me guess. Everything bad that is happening is made up. All of it. They are all partisan attacks to make George Bush look bad. We are actually living in the freest paradise on the planet and nothing bad happens here. ...
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
Absolutely... a great first post... but you forgot to say FIRST POST! anywhere... so it does not count as a first post :). The real first post would go to the guy right behind you loudly proclaiming FIRST POST! with no other message content. unfortunatly with no one providing this thread with a "real" first post, we will have to erase all these messages and start over.
A theorem isn't PROOF- it's based on unproven assumptions that haven't been shown not to be true yet.
PROOF would mean written in stone forever, infallible, something you can count on. I maintain you still can't have that- no human being can, we're simply incapable of it.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
As you stated, "Just saying God did it is a shortcut that ends further investigation," is an excuse for lazy scientists. People have this notion that when God does something, that it is some "Miracle" that can't be explained; that it's something magic and beyond the realm of investigation.
Why can't God create something using natural means? Everyone here understands that a computer is ultimately based on tiny transistors and software instructions to control those, but to most of the population, it's magical and beyond the realm of comprehension. That said, the first reports of the biblical account of the creation would have reported the features of the creation, not the mechanics of it. That part is up to us to find out.
So, if you don't believe in God, that's up to you to work out. Leave the rest of us alone to discover "how" God did it. If you have something to contribute, then that's fine too. The more we understand His methods, the more we understand Him.
As believers and unbelievers, we should embrace science as a way to gain knowledge and truth. Both sides are letting their misunderstanding of religion to blind them and distract them from learning the truth about our world.
Just sayin...get along children and play nice.
nothing scientific about ID.
It has been statistically shown that helmets increase the risk of head injury.
Sorry, life in the US, here in 1984, is too weird to make sense of the story. I mean, *did* he make it up, or, given (for example) the whole Padilla case (now trying to charge him with *no* terrorist items), how can we know whether they contacted him and his folks, and told them that if he expected to graduate school, and ever get a job, he'd recant?
Come on, when Bush *admits* to having violated the 1978 law more than 30 times, and expects to be patted on the back over that, what *can* we believe?
mark
Let me make an analogy for the non-scientific:
Hypothesis: No dogs have green, purple and orange spots.
Proof: Suppose we put all the existing dogs in one place where we could physically inspect them for coloration.
Postulate that this has been done, and call the place the Dog Pound.
None of the dogs will have green, purple, or orange spots, because dogs don't come in those colors, therefore they cannot have spots of those colors.
Therefore, physical inspection will reveal that no green, purple, or orange spotted dogs.
Therefore, we just proved a negative. Except that obviously this is bogus, especially since I just painted my dog this morning.
Because it has so far proved impossible for any one human to be cognizant of all existence, therefore no human can ever be certain that there are not existing things or conditions outside his or her knowledge, therefore no human can provide rigorous proof of the non-existence of anything.
Consider: What if the earthly laws of physics are local to a specific region of space-time that the solar system happens to be in right now, and most of the universe is not in that region? Can you prove that this is not so?
You can, of course, prove negatives that can be restated as strictly confined positives. But as a general principle, you cannot prove that something doesn't exist anywhere.
Delusional and Bush go together like two things that go really well together.
... and then they built the supercollider.
No, there's no rub. Because scientific laws aren't considered absolute truth.
No one can prove that mutations that happen in evolution are caused by god or by natural means. Radiation is naturally occuring and who's to say that god didn't cause the radiation
Who's to say that a giant bumblebee didn't sting the universe into existence? These are not scientific questions. You need to be able to test a hypothesis for it to be science. Philosophical questions don't really count much in experiments.
Intelligent Design is not only a religious teaching.
Absolutely it is. How can it not be? What non-religious/philisophical basis is there for the theory?
... and then they built the supercollider.
You are making the foolish assumption that everyone believes in the same definition of God.
Is Earth's Sun the physical body of God? Deus Sol Invictus, all hail the invincible Sun! (I like to say that around this time of year.) I can prove the existence of the sun rather easily.
Define which God you are talking about (the Bhuddist god? Which flavor of Bhuddism?) before you start blithely asserting nobody can prove God exists.
Can you explain why you don't believe this? Every single piece of evidence shows that 'Intelligent Design" is a creation of American evangelical Christians, that is not widely believed, and has been used solely as a means to trick the US legal system into allowing creationism doctrines into schools. Because they can't get their evangelism into schools if they call it creationism.
In fact, the very definition of "Intelligent Design" is creationism. If life is so complex that it required a "Designer" - then that is irrefutably a creationist philosophy. The whole argument of Intelligent Design is that life could not happen by chance, so it requires a creator.
one can't really point to evolution and say that evolution itself does not have gods hand in it's work.
Why not?
Noone has proof either is true yet.
But there is zero evidence supporting intelligent Design. there is a lot of evidence supporting Darwin's theories.
It IS possible to teach ID with a non religious bent
How? Explain this to me.
... and then they built the supercollider.
"Even with evolution we are starting to stop to look for anything alternative."
:)
:)
Because "evolution" involves a fuckton of evidence. We look for different approaches to the same idea because the idea is correct. The questions lie in how the idea is put into place.
"I am not for nor agaisnt the theary of evolution."
You obviously are letting your creationist ties show through with nebulous statements like...
"But it remains just that - a theory."
Gravity is "just a theory", but its effects are just as visible. "Just a theory" is another creationist argument based off of a childish misunderstanding of how science is supposed to work. Anyone looking for "laws" is not grounded in reality.
"Being a better theory does not make it true."
No, being useful and with a stack of evidence makes it useful with a stack of evidence to assist us in our understanding of the world. Creationism has no evidence but wishful thinking in its favor.
"Remember the time when the most acclaimed minds in the world thought that the world was flat?"
The most acclaimed minds didn't think the world was flat. That was just the conventional assumption.
"Or how the best minds once thought the molecule was the smallest unit before they discovered atoms and electrons and those became the smallest. Then they they spilt THOSE up too. Remember the period table 50 years ago had less elements than they do now."
We thought that until evidence came by to further illuminate the molecule's components. When we understand how EVOLUTION works in a more detailed manner we will then further grow in our knowledge of evolution. That comparison doesn't work in your favor
"Intelligent Design may not be the answer. But that does not mean evolution is. Scientists are supposed to have an open mind. Accept your believes and accept that they may be wrong."
We do, and when more accurate information comes out, we'll accept the information.
Until that point, feel free to contribute to the wealth of creationist "science" sure to come out any day now! It's obviously a young movement, perhaps we can give it another couple of thousand years to see if we can get anything other than a halfassed and unscientific "god of the gaps" argument
"if a pattern cannot be found it is called random. If God is behind random that is fine but because God cannot be proven or disproved scientifically,"
. html ('what's wrong with creationists' "abiogenesis is so improbable" calculations') and if you dare http://atheism.about.com/library/FAQs/evo/blfaq_ev o_science.htm
I don't think you have read the same explanation of the evolution theory as I did. Could it be that you only read summaries in ID books? If so, and if you are open to other ideas at all, read http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/abioprob
"There are many good points that you have made, however I do not believe that Intelligent Design is weasel words for creationism although they both are essentially the same thing"
"one can't really point to evolution and say that evolution itself does not have gods hand in it's work. Sure sure, a all powerful god can just poof....get rid of fossil record and change things at will, but it would depend of that's what god wanted to do! Maybe god's just being lazy, or maybe god is leaving this record for a reason??"
Believing God drove evolution is not ID. It is theistic evolution, which while still not proper for classroom discussion is compatible with what is discussed in the classroom.
"I think all that creationists/intelligent design proponents are asking for is that it also be given class time. One can't point at ID saying that it's non-science because one doesn't have the proof either way."
And we say no because there's no science involved. If there's no proof, there's no reason to use it as if there was proof. "Irreducible complexity" is a nonscientific concept and regularly proven to be false.
"It IS possible to teach ID with a non religious bent (and likely it would be a very short lecture....)."
It would not be ID without a religious bent, it would be evolution.
That doesn't mean you were affected worse. New Orleans has a totally different topography, and different social problems. I don't think the police went around looting and beating people in Mississippi. I don't think the white people turned into vigilantes against the blacks. nor were there levees to break.
... and then they built the supercollider.
Sorry, your symbolic logic is wrong. "All apples are not red" is the negation of "there exists an apple which is red" - that's different from your first statement.
As you can see, that's different than "all apples are red", which negated is "there exists an apple which is not red." Remember - the negation of "all" is "there exists not."
So where's the spare planet where you tested the evolution of hominids from single cell organisms?
That isn't necessary; the assertions that we need to test are, essentially, that environmental pressures cause selection within groups of creatures that increases the chance of subsequent generations having particular characteristics that help deal with those pressures. This is frequently observed in cases of (e.g.) antibiotic resistant bacteria. Another assertion is that when this is carried on over large periods of time (probably connected with small isolated populations and rapid environmental change) new species can develop. This is also a testable assertion, although I don't believe it has been tested yet, as it is a very long term project.
Throwing out the word "evolution" (since it seems I'm misusing it)... the original story is about teaching origins in school.
No it isn't. It's about teaching biology, which is a science that is not usually concerned with the issues of "origins" -- in fact, that is one of the largest gaps in current biological knowledge, as nobody knows how the first life was formed. There are theories of ways that life could have formed, but as far as I know nobody has thus far been able to come up with a way of choosing between them (or even proving them all wrong).
I see something missing in this discussion. I can't quite put my finger on it but maybe I can hint in that direction.
Part of this issue relates to what we teach in the schools.
a) It's different depending on what grade you are talking about. For example, I'm an old guy and I learned in my formative early school years all about dinosaurs. I got what "science" said was known about them. I didn't look at it as current knowledge but as "truth." Now, it seems, the kids are learning a different version of things because we have found more evidence that tells us more about what dinosaurs were like. But, again, these kids are getting the idea that this is "truth." The lower grades learn science as "truth" and not as part of the process of science.
b) Even high school "science" classes have to deal with the societal context of the students. When they learn biological facts about sexuality there is often information given about how a student's sexual activities might effect their lives. Telling them that they are less likely to end up with an STD if they use condoms isn't truly "science" in the sense this Slashdot discussion seems centered around. But it is taught in science class. How a creator fits into the "origins" picture may be a similar situation in some communities.
c) There are a lot of people in some communities that have religious or pseudo-religious beliefs about how all this came into existence. Ignoring the close-held beliefs of those people in schools would be a travesty. It seems popular, in the US, to suppose that all education should be the same in all communities. We don't do it that way. Some high schools offer Calculus and some don't mostly based on what the parents and school officials feel is worth teaching. Some high schools offer classes to teach traditional homemaking skills. Some don't. Perhaps some information on how the science in a class relates to people beliefs is similar.
d) Who are WE to tell the ordinary people in some community what is important for them to teach their kids? I know we are much smarter than they. I know we are more tuned in to the needs of those kids in a global society. But I sure don't want even a benevolent dictatorship telling me how to raise my kids. That includes telling my community what our kids should learn in school. (We'll decide half the stuff we teach them is crap in 50 years anyway.) How arrogant.
I just think there is more to the issue than I'm seeing here.
More broadly one needs to realize that most of what we accept as truth (and all of science) is actually a set of conclusions reached by inductive logic. Since induction falls apart as soon as a counter example is presented, we are unfortunately subject to attacks by people who propose alternative theories (the world was created complete with fossil record by some deity half an hour ago).
Contextual truth has turned out to be useful in certain fields - mathematics for example is a set of rules which allows you to determine if something is true based on deductive reasoning. Even that is limited however since Goedel showed any formally consistent system contains undecidable questions.
Because of this there has to be a set of principles that can be used to choose between competing inductively based theories. We choose to name one set of such principles science. Another set is called religion. Now the big problem is when you start mixing the two. Then you have corrupted your meme basis and the usefulness of the underlying set of principles is dimished if not destroyed.
This is why religion must not be taught in science class. And yes, ID is most defintely religion.
Darwin's preferred term was Natural Selection. I think survivial of the fittest has become more prevalent because "fittest" has changed in meaning from "most suitable" to "strongest" and appeals to those who think might is right.
http://www.literature.org/authors/darwin-charles/
"I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term natural selection, in order to mark its relation to man's power of selection. But the expression often used by Mr. Herbert Spencer, of the Survival of the Fittest, is more accurate, and is sometimes equally convenient."
http://www.literature.org/authors/darwin-charles/
"This preservation of favourable individual differences and variations, and the destruction of those which are injurious, I have called Natural Selection, or the Survival of the Fittest."
on a related note I was reading (in New Scientist I think) that the life of the parents between their birth and the birth of their offspring also contributes to the genetic make-up of new individuals, in particular, the effects of malnutrition. I wish I had a URI for that if anyone can help.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
> Good job at staying objective
Don't shoot the messenger.
If you can't digest the message, maybe you should review your notion of what a theory is.
> Evolution clearly isn't science. It doesn't use the scientific method, its "researchers" don't do any research
Demonstrably false, just as my claims about ID are demonstrably true.
> they report their "results" through evolution-friendly media
The scientific media is evolution-friendly because evolution won the field in a fair fight. (Over 100 years ago.)
ID, OTOH, wants a free pass. And failing to get the free pass, they have preferred to skip the scientific forums altogether, and publish their claims in gradeschool textbooks instead.
> As for why it's considered religion, you can think out its implications (where did the matter come from for the Big Bang?)
The theory of evolution doesn't address the origin of matter. Nor the origin of life, for that matter. Evolution is simply what happens to biological systems, whether created by God, Space Aliens, or natural processes.
> Scary, huh? > I'm looking for a justification for calling intelligent design religion without calling evolution religion.
And you won't accept a straight answer.
> The scientific method is moot.
Now it's time for you to tell us what you think science is.
> Those little steps "observation" and "repetition" are a little finicky when it comes to the origin of the universe.
No science requires direct observations. No science requires repeatable experiments.
It appears that your inability to distinguish ID from science is a result of you not understanding the most basic concepts of what science is and how it works.
Which, BTW, is exactly the audience the Discovery Institute is targeting. They know darn well that putting on a lab coat and mumbling technobabble isn't going to convince scientists.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I by and large agree, though I sure hope that it's not as incentive/fear (read: heaven/hell) based for most people as you seem to imply. Though I do believe in heaven, I doubt it is the cartoony clouds and angels with harps that gets presented all over. Or pearly gates or what have you.
In my (christian) religion we believe that we existed before we were born and that we will continue to exist after death, indefinitely. This faith actually helped me a number of times in my life to have a bit of backbone. As a suicidal teenager, for example, knowing that death isn't going to make it all go away can actually help.
I think it's funny though, our whole existence is based on faith. Whether you believe in God or not doesn't particulary change that. It just changes what you have faith in. It could be argued that all of it is about perspective and what perspective we choose to make our reality around. I say this more as a musing than anything -- I'm certainly not trying to change your views. Thanks for the thought.
Actually, the judge in this case is a certified conservative... appointed by George Bush... so definitely not a "liberal activist" judge.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
The modern periodic table was first presented by Mendeleïev in 1869.
It had 63 elements and some gaps which Mendeleïev predicted would be filled with new elements. Between 1875 and 1886, three elements (gallium, scandium and germanium) were discovered, the properties of which fitted the theory that Mendeleïev proposed in his table.
Apart from rotating it 90 degrees and being able to record the atomic weights accurately, it has proved to be a sustainable representation of the elements, ergo a bad example to choose for your assertions.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Your post is hilariously recursive and ironic, though.
If you define "God" as "a little red demon made of paste that only lives in George Bush's nose" you can prove that such a thing DOESN'T exist. If you define "God" as Spinoza did, you can prove such a thing DOES exist. There is NO UNIVERSALLY ACCEPTED DEFINITION OF GOD so you must specify WHICH god.
And incidentally, my prior post wasn't a flame. THIS is a flame.
Do you understand yet, or am I using words that are too big for you?
There is no such thing as "Darwinism" outside the minds of fundamentalists.
There also is no such belief system as "Newtonism", "Galileoism", or "Einsteinism".
Words have power. Suffixing Darwin's name with an "-ism" clamps the scientist's name to a belief system, a religion. Fundies think of the world in terms of belief and absolutism, so it's natural for them to consider people who don't think as they do to be members of an opposing religion -- by definition evil and wrong, since only they are correct and righteous.
Science isn't a belief system, and doesn't do "-isms". It's a methodology and a collection of theories that describe known data. It is ultimately self-correcting, which religion IS NOT. Creationism is an -ism. It is predicated on the always-correct Bible, and cannot correct itself. It is not a science.
So, if a scientific expert or, say, the pope says that ID is a-ok, it's ok?
What the pope says is irrelevant. What a scientific expert says is irrelevant, if the scientific communities says one ideas holds some merit then I might aquiece but you won't be able to convince that many people such a retarded idea could be valid. It defies even cursory review.
Emacs or Vi?
Experts don't disagree ont his one topic just as either Pro-emacs or pro-Vi sides will agree notepad is garbage. What biologists will disagree on in theories with near equal validity, ID isnt' one of them.
Now, it's highly possible that the judge is well-schooled in the sciences, but a couple of weeks in court isn't the way to solve any educational debate on curriculum - this might be something that's a bit easier to decide on, but IMO it sets a nasty precedent for how our educational system is modeled.
While this would hardly slip under the radar, it seems that a judge has the power to say, "Modern Calculus cannot be taught anymore in High School" with a similar argument from "experts". Now while both of these topics are pretty high-profile and would be challenged, what about a more obscure, but important topic?
Unfortunately and fortunately we live in a legalist state and many many such things already occur. In this one case it is right. It sets no precedent, the ciriculum is already aprtially set by the state (general term, like France not idaho) because the state controls the education system. This only sets the precedent that local authorities cannot alter the ciriculum to be counter to the federal consensus of what is science. You'll note that many US text books calls vietnam and the war of 1612 a draw when everybody else in the world saw both as a loss for the US. The state already uses primary public education as a propaganda tool. Your arguement simply is pointless because all of the worst things this ruling implies already has happened.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Sigh... this is Euclid's proof; I didn't make it up. The claim is that there is no greatest prime number (a negative statement). You create a reductio proof by assuming the opposite and showing it leads to a contradiction. The contradiction is as follows:
- If there were a greatest prime number, we could create a list of all prime numbers, since there must be a finite number of them in that case, and we have a sieve method for getting all prime numbers less than a given number.
- Since that list would be a complete list of all prime numbers (by the hypothesis, there would be no prime numbers greater than P, and we have listed all prime numbers less than or equal to P), no numbers greater than P can be prime.
- But, Q+1 is shown to be prime, and greater than P
- So, since our supposition that there is a greatest prime number has yielded a contradiction, the supposition must be false.
That is how Euclid proved a negative, namely that there is no greatest prime number.All's true that is mistrusted
One can do foolish things, and make foolish assumptions, without being a fool. I was attacking the idea that God's existence is not logically falseable, but I didn't intend to attack you personally; I apologize for the miscommunication.
On the other hand, I could easily construe your post as a direct attack on my religious beliefs, so don't think I'm not excercising some restraint here.
"Delicious, spreadable puppies" actually sounds much tastier than butter, BTW, but then I'm mostly carnivorous and I've never cared much for dogs as pets.
Er... Did you read my post? Specifically, the bit where I point out that no scientific theory can be proved? Evolution is no less valid than theories on relativity, quantum entanglment, gravity or electromagnetism, none of which can be proven, either.
One can observe it through the fossil record. This is no less valid than astronomy, where scientists observe the radiation from events that occurred in the far distant past.
I'm sorry, you've lost me. Natural selection a reduction of genes? Why would less genes result in animals more adept at surviving?
Er, with respect, what the hell are you talking about? Evolution has been predicting things ever since Darwin proposed that humans evolved from apes. This led scientists to propose that, according to the theory of evolution, there should be fossils of our ape-like ancestors lying around. Years later, this prediction was borne out by the discovery of Lucy and similar fossil hominids.
But you side-stepped his request: prove that you cannot prove a negative.
His request was invalid based on an incomplete understanding of a negative. A negative is an event with zero probabilility. You can prove that a negative has never happened so far, but you can never prove that probability is exactly zero.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Can you quote instances where macro-evolution has been observed and tested? What data are you referring to that fits the macro-evolution theory well?
I am not trying to start a flamewar here, but some of these claims that you are making aren't quite true. Truth be told - macro-evolution has NEVER either been observed or tested because these are not expected to happen in anything less than a few millions of years. What we have seen so far are instances of evolution happening at a micro-scale. As for macro-evolution, all we have at the moment are assumptions as to what may have occurred in terms of evolutionary changes between two species where one is seen as older than the other.
Also, if one were to consider evolution as a process which a species will inevitably have to go through, how is that we have the so-called living fossils (eg: Chacoan peccary, Okapi, Coelacanth) which haven't evolved for millions of years?
Some references:
Coelacanth http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coelacanth/
Okapi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okapi/
Chacoan Peccary http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chacoan_peccary/
The Coelacanth (a species considered about 400 million years old) was initially thought to have gone extinct 70 million years ago! (compare this against dinosaurs which are thought to have gone extinct 65 million years ago). Fact is, the Coelcanth was used as an index fossil - so if fossil findings were found along with the remains of a Coelcanth, these other fossils were also dated to be atleast 70 million years old! That was until a live specimen of the Coelcanth was found in 1938. Coelacanth is considered not to have evolved in 400 million years which is difficult to explain in evolutionary terms.
As for the Okapi - it was considered to be a parent in the evolutionary tree of the horse.. until a live specimen was found in 1901.
So this opens up the possibility that the scientists may be wrong about other evolutionary trees as well - it also opens up the possibility that many of these species may have been alive at the same time; that is, one may not have evolved from the other at all.
Scientists are, at the moment, trying to piece together the evolutionary tree of animals based on a whole range of criteria - and a generous dose of their own assumptions. Many of these assumptions have NEVER been proven to be true and many of these are difficult to prove false as well (irrefutable) because of the timelines involved.
I think the whole point was that this isn't supposed to be taught at a _public_ school.. public as in religion-less, open for everyone regardless of religion.
You don't want your public school to teach your kid about Allah being the one and only god, now do you?
Intelligent Design has no place on a public school... now if it were a catholic school or something, this would be a whole different matter.
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However, hidden variable theories can be created which do accurately describe all quantum mechanical observations, but it requires that several of the other things which implicitly make up our classical picture have to be sacrificed, most typically locality (as in all particles can exchange information with all other particles at all times) or causality (which is comprable to sacrificing locality, but in different terms).
These hacks are, in general, not very appealing because the tend to feel very 'fudged'. Of course the typical counterpoint is that many aspects of modern physics are a fudge until enough information is available to correctly describe all of these interactions, which is a fair point, but once again feels somewhat like the religious position where 'God' is responsible for the things we don't understand, and is gradually pushed back into more obscure corners as new evidence is accumulated. That's not to say he's not there, but right now there's little to suggest that it should be beyond a feeling that that's how the world should work.
Well, there do exist QM hidden variable theories which sacrifice locality and suggest that all particles can interact with all other particles instantaneously, which would be comprable to a system with coupling variables between every pair of particles for every interaction they can have. That's pretty much the upper limit of non-redundant information the universe could possibly hold. The problem is many of these theories are set up so that they reduce exactly to 'normal' QM predictions for any observable system. Meaning they don't really offer us much new predictive power.
The obvious answer is to stop teaching science as fact- and start in middle school or earlier with the philosophical underpinnings of the scientific method and *why* they're assumed to be true, while NEVER actually claiming that they are true.
I do agree here, to a point. I have argued in favour of getting some more rigorous background teaching put into physics modules at my uni (both mathematical and philisophical). The problem is that at this point, courses are heavily dominated by people who are not there for the love of physics, but to get a degree because that's the done thing. Only about one in ten of us has gone on to do masters/phd work, and probably even fewer of them will actually pursue it as a career. These people are going to be somewhat put off by extremely heavy mathematics which is not particularly necessary to understand the basic concepts, or by philisophical musings which they are not likely to pursue on their own time. And the department can't risk that, since they're having enough trouble keeping some courses open as it stands.
This problem is even more pronounced at lower levels in schools - a small minority of people really enjoy their subjects and would welcome detailed background, but most will simply be put off by it. And if they can get easier courses without these unappealing aspects, they're going to take them. As an example, in the UK the A-level physics syllabus has been changed to no longer include any calculus, since this was taken as offputting to people who wanted to do physics without maths. Of course, the idea of physics without maths is pretty laughable to begin with, but since numbers are low to start, no course director is going to want to risk losing that number of people. So the syllabus gets thinned out, and quite often the unviersity courses have to be modified to take that into account.
It would be nice to expand the level of detail in these courses, but since it is likely to damage the number of people in already weak courses, I doubt it will happen any time soon.
Well, there do exist QM hidden variable theories which sacrifice locality and suggest that all particles can interact with all other particles instantaneously, which would be comprable to a system with coupling variables between every pair of particles for every interaction they can have. That's pretty much the upper limit of non-redundant information the universe could possibly hold. The problem is many of these theories are set up so that they reduce exactly to 'normal' QM predictions for any observable system. Meaning they don't really offer us much new predictive power.
Neither is my theory that places the mistakes on the observer's side of things, at first glance. But that's the philosophical hole in Occam's razor- it can cause us to reject theories and models without testing them merely because they seem to be more complex on the surface.
I do agree here, to a point. I have argued in favour of getting some more rigorous background teaching put into physics modules at my uni (both mathematical and philisophical). The problem is that at this point, courses are heavily dominated by people who are not there for the love of physics, but to get a degree because that's the done thing. Only about one in ten of us has gone on to do masters/phd work, and probably even fewer of them will actually pursue it as a career. These people are going to be somewhat put off by extremely heavy mathematics which is not particularly necessary to understand the basic concepts, or by philisophical musings which they are not likely to pursue on their own time. And the department can't risk that, since they're having enough trouble keeping some courses open as it stands.
That's precisely why you need to do it at a lower level. Right now, for most of the public, science may as well be done by witch doctors- it's got just about the same philosophical connection to real life (only results count) as the shaman in a primative tribe. It's taught strictly out of textbooks, any thought or dissent from that standard is swiftly punished, sometimes even in court. This yeilds the sorry state of science in the United States today- despite the fact that we've recently created a new method of peer review that is much more efficient than the old journal system, for many scientists if it wasn't published in a peer reviewed journal it didn't happen, and for most of the public what is real depends upon what somebody with an arbitrary and subjective set of letters behind their name chooses to tell the general media, or worse yet, testify to in advertising for money.
This problem is even more pronounced at lower levels in schools - a small minority of people really enjoy their subjects and would welcome detailed background, but most will simply be put off by it. And if they can get easier courses without these unappealing aspects, they're going to take them. As an example, in the UK the A-level physics syllabus has been changed to no longer include any calculus, since this was taken as offputting to people who wanted to do physics without maths. Of course, the idea of physics without maths is pretty laughable to begin with, but since numbers are low to start, no course director is going to want to risk losing that number of people. So the syllabus gets thinned out, and quite often the unviersity courses have to be modified to take that into account.
So go even lower- and don't give them a choice whether to take it or not. Philosophy and history should be the begining of any level of science- even primary school kids and kindergarteners.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
There is no hole there, it's in the misinterpretation of Occam's razor which is common. If the two theories offer identical predictions (as is the case with many of these hidden variable theories, by design) there is no way to perform a test which will distinguish between them. Therefore there is no possible test which enables us to distinguish between them. Thus we either have to say 'maybe' or pick one to use, and it is simply sensible to pick the one with fewest levels of complexity. Of course there may be future results which enable us to distinguish between them, but as it stands they have simply been fitted to match everything we have, so we have nothing to go on at the moment.
That's precisely why you need to do it at a lower level...
Unfortuantely, I do not think this is exclusively a result of the teaching of science. The fact is, most people just don't care enough about it. Society doesn't respect critical thought and research. The syllabi are designed to try and teach the material without being offputting to the potential students. Making scientific education more extensive and detailled may help with how people look at science, but the problem is probably more a function of people not really wanting to learn as of them not having the opportunity. And if you consider most schoolkids, forcing it onto them is simply not going to ignite any sort of a passion for it, and may off kids who otherwise would be. The change would probably have to come in how society views science before any changes in education are really going to make any traction.
There is no hole there, it's in the misinterpretation of Occam's razor which is common. If the two theories offer identical predictions (as is the case with many of these hidden variable theories, by design) there is no way to perform a test which will distinguish between them. Therefore there is no possible test which enables us to distinguish between them. Thus we either have to say 'maybe' or pick one to use, and it is simply sensible to pick the one with fewest levels of complexity. Of course there may be future results which enable us to distinguish between them, but as it stands they have simply been fitted to match everything we have, so we have nothing to go on at the moment.
Complexity is a completely arbitrary and subjective line in the sand, is what I'm saying. And yet we pretend otherwise for no apparent reason. Saying maybe is more accurate than picking one to use in this case.
Unfortuantely, I do not think this is exclusively a result of the teaching of science. The fact is, most people just don't care enough about it. Society doesn't respect critical thought and research. The syllabi are designed to try and teach the material without being offputting to the potential students. Making scientific education more extensive and detailled may help with how people look at science, but the problem is probably more a function of people not really wanting to learn as of them not having the opportunity. And if you consider most schoolkids, forcing it onto them is simply not going to ignite any sort of a passion for it, and may off kids who otherwise would be. The change would probably have to come in how society views science before any changes in education are really going to make any traction.
Possibly true- but you're not going to change how society views science by destroying science with censorship laws. It's only by encouraging a more open discussion, a more open foundation for science to begin with, that we can eventually change this three or four generations from now.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
> Many of us see religion as the "opiate of the masses". Faith
> truly does offer some solace from the void that ultimately lies
> before us. But those of us who do not believe in heaven often see
> those that do as weak mentally, since we feel they cannot standup
> to the ultimate end of their existence.
Funny thing is, being a Roman Catholic in a Catholic country (Costa Rica), I've seen the opposite - sort of.
Many of the atheists I know seem to choose not to believe in God, because our religion burdens us with guilt and chores. Also, many people have converted to "lighter" forms of christianism, apparently for the same reasons.
This, of course, is just what I've seen in my small corner of humanity. YMMV.
--Moo
I don't think this was a scientific decision. The question is whether non-science is taught in science classrooms. Who gets to decide what science and non-science is? Well, *scientists*. If you want to learn fantasy be my guest and attend (at your own expense, on your own time) a parochial school. But it doesn't belong in the nation's classroom. School is for education not indoctrination.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
I think I over-reacted to be fair. I don't like my religion being hijacked, especially given the history of the Catholic church.
Does a Christian soccer team even need a goalkeeper?
Since when has ID become a theory? The thing that really bugs me about all the Creationism/ID people is the use of the word theory. We've got two different people using the same term with different meanings based on perspective. Scientists use the word theory for a hypothesis that has been tested pretty strenuously and it has held up. The hypothesis then becomes a theory when it is pretty widely accepted. Is the testing over? Is the theory complete with no future amendment or correction? Of course not, but a theory is considered the way things happen as far as we understand it. The Creationism/ID crowd, and most other people for that matter, use the term theory to mean what scientists call a hypothesis. To them a theory is any kind of idea that someone comes up with, read ID. To a scientist ID is a hypothesis, an untestable one at that. To the other side ID is a theory. To the ID crowd they think evolution is a hypothesis because of the jargon scientists use. The simple fact that ID is untestable and unproven, and will be until the Intelligence behind it loudly proclaims the fact, makes the teaching of ID a horrible move. Philosophy is a completely different story, but science class absolutely not. And that from a guy that isn't too crazy about evolution and kind of likes ID.
Heroscape, it's like legos combined with anachronistic wargames.
I have to warn you, though; I don't have much truck with non-empirical arguments or representational systems that are totally divorced from subjective reality. "I seen a cow, I seen a horse, but I ain't seen none of that thar bovinity nor horsiness neither" was Edward Abby's reply to Plato, and I have a similar reaction to Wittgenstein and his ilk. My mind doesn't work that way, I guess.
Yes; this has become apparent in retrospect; thanks for your help. The other posters were talking about the syntactical rules of a representational grammar (that is, today's version of math) whereas I'm talking about physical reality.
Have you read Spinoza's Ethics? I'm working on it at the moment, because I'm trying to understand why so many pantheists (which he was and I am) have come to the conclusion that God has no personality. Spinoza states both the ideas he believes and those he disbelieves in the form of a "geometrickal proof" - not because he thought that mathematical proof was canonical proof, but because he wanted to restrict the incidence of misinterpretation of what he was saying by forcing the arguments into a very rigid, well known format. This apparently worked for a century or so but makes the work more difficult to comprehend for most modern readers. It also freaks out mathematicians because he essentially provides "geometrickal proof" of concepts he then states are false. Lots of interesting discussion of this here.
If you want to prove something to me, you must provide independently verifiable evidence or describe a means of finding same. This, to me, is the meaning of the english word proof. It's also the number one definition on dictionary.com, incidentally, and you are only the second poster to state that you are using the special mathematical meaning for the words "proof" and "prove" and not the common english meaning. Again, my thanks to both of you.
I'm not sure it's true that "no group of true statements will ever lead to a contradiction". I know that's the target, but I need to think on that a little more. Are you saying that all paradoxes are the result of erroneous axioms, or that our logic is imperfect because the syntactica of human communication permit paradoxical statements, or some combination of both?
I understand. But without empiricism, the only thing that method is useful for is creating very abstract methods, and
Actually the Kochen-Specker theorm is even more powerful than Bell's inequality. It even rules out locality issues.
It proves that in many cases there is no POSSIBLE set of consistant values that could have been assigned prior to the measurment. It relies on a very powerful and broad mathematical non-existance proof.
Experiments can be easily arranged to demonstrate it. I'll give a simplified example of the issue. Lets say you have entangled particles with random +1 and -1 spin values on the X Y and Z axes. It is impossible to do experiments exactly revealing all of the values involved. However if you do the right combination measurements, you can get one result proving that there are and even number of -1's and you can get a second measurement proving that there are an off number of -1's. It is therefore impossible to assign ANY consistant set of +1 or -1 spins to all of the axes of both particles.
(A*B) * (C*D) * (E*F) = 1; and
(A*C) * (B*D) * (E*F) =-1
With those letters being the X Y and Z spins of particles 1 and 2.
The only "loophole" that remains to save realism hidden values would be to violate noncontexturality. What noncontexturality means is that the universe isn't spying on how and why you are testing a real value and then deliberately returning different experimental results for the same value.
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How do you prove a negative?
Pretty easy, just demonstrate a contradiction.
In fact we have proven that there is no possible set of consistant hidden variable values that could produced the observed results. For any professional physicists or mathemticians out there, or anyone who wants to bend their brain on some hardcore physics and math, I am referring to the Kochen-Specker theorem. It is more powerful than the Bell inequalities at refuting any possible Hidden Value theory.
Proving that there isn't an underlying pattern to the apparent pseudorandom behavior on a quantum level is like proving there is no God.
Gahh! Leave God out of it. God is neither proven nor disproven by anything. So lets try that again...
Proving that there isn't an underlying pattern to the apparent pseudorandom behavior on a quantum level
Proving the impossibility of any and all hidden variable theories does NOT prove there's no underlying pattern.
You were mistaken in dragging "random" into this at all. Hidden variable or no hidden variable, it has no connection to random or nonrandom. You can have hidden variables and randomness, and you can have no hidden variables and complete determinism.
For example the "many worlds" interpretation of quantum mechanics does not use hidden variables, and it can be perfectly deterministic.
Under the "many worlds" model, each option that can happen does happen. When you look inside Schrodinger's box at his cat, the cat *is* both alive and dead... it's just that those two options split off in two different directions of a higher-order multiverse, and that there is a separate copy of you looking at each outcome. Subjectively the outcome appears completely random, but that is only because you cannot perceive the other copy of you looking at the opposite outcome. The appearance of randomness would be an illusion due to the single subjective vantage point.
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In fact we have proven that there is no possible set of consistant hidden variable values that could produced the observed results.
Even a set larger than any previously tested? How can you possibly say that there is *no possible set* until you've tried the infinity of *all possible sets*? There simply hasn't been enough time.
For any professional physicists or mathemticians out there, or anyone who wants to bend their brain on some hardcore physics and math, I am referring to the Kochen-Specker theorem. It is more powerful than the Bell inequalities at refuting any possible Hidden Value theory.
And fails from the same lack of imagination, unfortuneately. After all, it doesn't cover that perhaps the complexity comes from variables that don't follow mathematical axioms and assumptions. All this proves is that there is no set of variables that are consistent with mathematical axioms and assumptions.
Gahh! Leave God out of it. God is neither proven nor disproven by anything. So lets try that again...
It's the same thing, unfortuneately- the reason you can't prove or disprove God is because He/she/it is outside of the scope of the investigation. Same with the pattern that you're interpreting as random.
Proving the impossibility of any and all hidden variable theories does NOT prove there's no underlying pattern.
Then why bring it into a discussion on the existance of randomness?
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
For the record, 'separation of church and state' was created in the late 1940's by a sitting federal judge.
That's odd, considering that Thomass Jefferson wrote that exact phrase, and that James Madison REPEATEDLY used the phrase "perfect separation" and the like, and he extensively wrote on the suject of what it means, and he even vetoed legislation explicitly explaining how and why it was a violation of separation of church and state, and virtually all of the famous Founding Fathers are on the record in one way or another on the dangers of crossing or blurring the line between religion and government.
This means that Congress cannot pass laws specifically to either hinder or help a church
First of all the 14th Amendment extented to the states and local governments as well. (What good is a requirement for search warrants or anything else, if state and local police are exempt?!? What good is any of the Bill of Rights?)
Seocondly, like all of the Bill Of Rights, it applies broadly to any use of the force of government. A department administrator or a school principal nor anyone else using their governmental powers to establish an unconstitutional rule or policy. Those powers granted to those government officials are derived from legislative powers.
Third, it is not restricted to Churches. That is a misreading of the word "establishment". It applies to any act of government for the purpose of establishing anything with respect to promoting or suppressing any religion or religious belief or religious practice.
For example the ACLU wins all of their School Prayer cases because the ACLU supports the right of students to pray in School. The ACLU wins because they only target shool officials acting in an official capacity as agents of the government and attempting to abuse that governmental power to either promote or supress prayer by students.
It does not prohibit public display of religion
Correct. In fact the ACLU jumped in to defende a public display of religion on government property. Some idiot town tried to block a group of people who were preforming baptisms at a public lake in a public park. It was public land and it was open to general public use, and their religious performance and display was part of their Right of Religious Freedom. The government could not exclude it from the public park.
as when Congress appoints a minister to begin each session with prayer.
I suggest you read when James Madison wrote about it. He explicitly said that it was a violation of the establisment clause, that the federal government had NO BUSINESS forcibly collecting tax monies and having the congressmen vote for their favored religious preachers to be paid to provide such services. He said that if the congressmen wanted to engage in services of THEIR PERSONAL RELIGIONS, that it was up to them to pay for their personal religious expenses out of their own pockets.
In the first 50 years of the nation, this was understood to be a right of the states... in 1845 Massachusits had an established state religion... This was legal, and was supported by the supreme court of the time.
Of COURSE it was. As I mentioned above it was the 14th Amendment that extended the Bill of Rights to apply to the state and local governments as well. The 14th Amendment was added in.... 1868. That's 23 years AFTER the case you cited. It was, sadly, a correct Supreme Court ruling at the time based on the then current version of the Constitution.
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While I'm still recovering from the gaps in my education... can someone point me to the theory that does address the origin of the universe
The closest well established theory to fitting that bill would be the Big Bang. However the Big Bang noes not attempt to address anything earlier than a moment after the bang itself. (There are a few other theories that try to go back before that, but none of them has gone much beyond the "wild speculation" stage thus far, and are obviously unfit for highschool science class.)
There's nothing wrong with science shruging it's shoulders and saying "we don't know that yet, good question, lets keep looking into it". At one point we had an excellent theory of chemistry and absolutely no theory of nuclear fusion and no idea where the elements came from. Not knowing the origin of the elements is in no way a legitimate criticism of the theory of chemistry. And in exactly the same way, not explaining the origin of the universe is CERTAINLY not a legitimate criticism of evolution. You might as well be attacking the Theory of Gravity for not explaining the origin of the universe.
I still don't see how we came to dismiss one as religion and accept the other as science.
Evolution is a falsifiable scientific theory that has made many predictions, and those predictions have been exhaustively tested and conclusively confirmed. It is solidly and overwhelmingly supported science with virtually universal acceptance by professionals in the field. It make no religious claims for or against God. Evolution says no more about religion than a sun-centered solar system says anything about God or religion.
ID is inherently unfalsifiable and makes no predictions and cannot be tested and has never been tested and has never been supported. It is not science.
And the ID movement we are discussing was, as the judge noted, EXPLICITLY developed by a pair of fundamenlatist religious organisations in DIRECT response to to a Supreme Court Ruling that Biblical Creationism cannot be taught in government highshools and as admitted in their own publications was EXPLICITLY created as a sham to subvert that Supreme Court Ruling and to slip their stripped down version of Biblical Creationism back into the schools. The terms ID and Intelligent Design and body of work DID NOT EXIST prior to that Supreme Court ruling. Try Googling up the "Wedge Strategy" paper. The people who created ID admit in their own fundraising literarure that ID is nothing but a wedge to get their religion into the classroom, and... believe it or not... they state that it is part of their TWENTY YEAR PLAN to conqure the schools and legislature and to ultimately RESHAPE SOCIETY ITSELF in their own religio-moral image. Ahhh.... here's the Google link. The first stage of their twenty year plan was supposed to be to do real science to support the whole thing. However they have not done one damn bit of science or funded one single experiment or anything. Every single cent of their millions of dollars in fundraising goes to nothing but PR campaigns and political lobbying.
And just in case you had any other missunderstandings... there is absolutely nothin in the biological theory of evolution, or anywhere else in science for that matter, that says God does not exist. Evolution, and the rest of science, are perfectly compatible with God. In fact the majority of Christians in the world both belive in God and accept evolution. Even multiple Popes have recognized the legitimacy of the scientific field of science and that it in no way conflicts with God.
Anyone on either side saying that evolution disproves or denies God is an idiot.
Science does not, and cannot, say anything about God either way.
The entire problem is people trying to single out one random field of science for attack, and with rediculous claims that it is anti-God. It's just as bad as when the Church had Galileo imprisoned for life for saythign t
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Evolution is observable? Who has observed the spontaneous mutation of one species into another through the process of natural selection?
:)
Yes, that was a serious question!
And the serious answer is of course! You'll see quite a few examples described there. As for who, you'll find over a hundred scientists listed at the bottom by name, and that is just a sampling on the scientific literature on the subject. Evolution really is solid extensively supported science.
Or have I got the word "evolution" wrong again?
Well you didn't write much that post, but as far as I can see everything was A-OK!
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One more time kids: no scientific theory is ever proven "right". Theories get to be called theories when they meet two criteria:
- They are stated such that they can be potentially falsifiable.
- They then need to have withstood numerous scientific attempts to falsify them.
Notice that "right" never enters into it. Theories just have to be explanations that still seem to fit the evidence, even after you look really, really closely at them.The part of Darwinism that seems to trouble people the most, that of common descent, fits both criteria. All you would have to do to falsify it is simply find an organism that does not appear to be related to the other organisms on the planet. However, despite a century and a half of looking (post-Darwin) and, more recently, decades of research doing genetic sequencing on every organism we can get our hands on, we have yet to find any critter, no matter how strange, that is not somehow related to everything else. Maybe you need more evidence than the 100 Gigabases sampled from over 165,000 organisms, but in my book, that's withstanding a pretty rigorous challenge.
"There is a thin line between ignorance and arrogance, and only I have managed to erase that line." - Dr. Science
macro-evolution
First of all there is no definition of "macroevolution" other than a whole lot of "microevolutions" piled on top of each other for a Long Time.
Can you quote instances where macro-evolution has been observed []?
Can you quote an instance of a sun-class star aging and turning into a red giant?
Some things obviously take too long to directly observe. However that doesn't prevent a theory from being TESTABLE...
Can you quote instances where macro-evolution has been [] tested?
Sure. Probably the most powerful and staggering MOUNTAIN of test evidence has come with the development of genetic analysis.
Macroevolution is an inherent component of Common Decent. Any test of common decent is a test of macroevolution. Common decent predicts that life on earth will fall into a VERY STRICT tree pattern, and moreover that that tree pattern will line up with the tree pattern we built up from fossils and morphological studies.
To illustrate just one aspect of this, every once in a while viral DNA will accidentally get inserted into a random spot in the host DNA, becoming inert but easily trackable DNA. This DNA then gets passed down to all decendants in the sub-tree, and that exact viral DNA will not appear at that exact spot in any species other than a decendant, won't appear in any species outside that subtree.
For example at least one such insertion happened in the common human-chip ancestor. There is a specific bit of viral DNA at a specific location in both humans and chips, and has neven been seen in any other species. We share that DNA at that location because we both inherited it from the same parent.
Going back a bit further back in time, going backwards one "tree branch level" there was that sort of viral DNA insertion in the common human-chip-ape common ancestor. It is identical in these three species and appears in no other primate nor in any other species.
According to the tree pattern of common decent, you can't have such a DNA maker in apes and humans but not in chimps.... if it was inserted back on the common human-ape line, it couldn't reach humans without passing through the common human-chimp ancestor, and it would have to be in chimps as well.
Going further back to the common primate ansestor, there is another unique viral DNA insertion that exists in all primates and not in any other species.
Going back even further you can find such examples that appear in all mammals, from humans to whales to cats, but not in any other species. In fact this sort of a genetic analysis very precisely pins down whales to a specific point on the land mammal line, as a decendant of a grazing-type animal.
Birds are decended from dinosaurs - themselves a branch of reptiles - which means that we should never find such a marker at the same spot in all birds and in some mammal unless it appears in all reptiles.
This strict tree pattern is a powerful prediction and test of common decent - and thus a test of macroevolution - and in the last several years we have done a TREMENDOUS number of genetic analyses across almost every kind of species, and all of the tests powerfully confirm common decent and thus macroevolution.
And then of course we also have detailed sequences of fossil intermediate forms, for example on the dinosaur-to-brid line, where the fossils line up in perfect date order and in each step we see just a couple of structural microevolutions appear or dissapear in each step. It starts off a little sparse, then gets better. First your basic bird-like dinosaurs. Then dinosaurs with feathers. Then feathered dinosaurs with crude gliding wings and dinosaur claws at the tips of the wings. After that it gets more detailed, though I don't remember the exact order. The hands dissapear from the tips of the wings. The wings get better developed. Then one of the toes reverses to point backwards (all bird feet have one backwards toe), the better for grabbing branches to perch in trees. The bones b
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Which, BTW, is exactly the audience the Discovery Institute is targeting. They know darn well that putting on a lab coat and mumbling technobabble isn't going to convince scientists.
;)
They bought lab coats?
White ones?
Wow! They really are getting serious about the science of ID!
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Thank you. I appreciate your taking the time to write this detailed explanation and more importantly I greatly appreciate the fact that you are not calling me any names or just trashing my comment. I state this because I have been modded down (unfairly) for comments like the one I made here by people who absolutely don't seem to grasp either evolutionary theory or ID or any other theory for that matter.
Thanks again. This is food for thought.
No one can prove that mutations that happen in evolution are caused by god or by natural means.
It actually can be "proven" (i.e. a model or a theory completely explaining the process in a manner that is entirely consistent with all other aspects of our understanding of the universe) how a radiation-induced mutation occurs. "Radiation" as a whole is fairly well understood, and the mechanism where radiation damages DNA to cause a mutation is well understood as well. We don't necessarily have a camera capable of watching a single event where a single quanta of radiation causes a single DNA mutation that causes a demonstrable instance of speciation, but you don't need to build an MRI machine the size of the earth to tell that there's molten rock inside.
Those things we can fit into our models. We can come up with theories explaining it, and we can test them and see that our models do a great job of explaining what's going on.
However, we can't, through this process, prove or disprove that some God-like entity is working "behind the scenes" to orchestrate all of this in a manner that also just happens to fit our models. The goal of science is to explain the observed universe. Since most definitions of God insist that God isn't bound by the same natural laws that govern our universe (and consequently our theories for how the universe works), it's a bit difficult to work God into the equation.
I say that alot of evidence and data has been captured, but not enough to concretely say that it's a fact
Why not? Do you have experimental data that invalidates the theory? Or are you just aware of cases where you just can't imagine how it happened? There's plenty of evidence and data to support the theory, and zero evidence disproving it. A bunch of "wow, I just can't believe it!" cases isn't a reason to disprove a scientific theory. If you have some sort of experimental data that could not be explained by evolutionary theory (we're not talking about belief here--again, this is science, not faith), then that needs to be investigated. Science regularly deals in situations that are non-obvious to the layperson. Scientists themselves are frequently surprised by what their theories ultimately predict, but when those theories are tested and the non-obvious situations experimentally verified, at some point you just have to accept the data sitting in front of you.
you must present BOTH Intelligent Design and Evolution because those qare the two prevailing theories.
The former is not a scientific theory and consequently it has no place in a science class. If you want to present information that casts doubt on a scientific theory in a science classroom, you need to do it in a way that's consistent with scientific principles and methodology. You can't go through the fossil record in a biology class, point out significant climate changes and the ways that the various species seemed to adapt to those changes (or go extinct), and then wrap it all up with, "Or maybe some magical God being waved His hands and just made it happen because he didn't like the way they smelled." If you want to present an alternative to a scientific theory, you either need to attack it from a scientific angle, or present it outside of a scientific context. I have no problem if someone wants to start up a philosophy class in public schools and make this one of their points of study.
I do not understand why the Intelligent Design theory is being dismissed as the Chrisitian right's agenda only.
It is the Christian Right that is pushing for Intelligent Design in public schools. You're right though: the concept of ID isn't Christian-specific. It is, however, rooted in religion. You can't have governments sponsoring (without scientific evidence) the existence of a supernatural force (God or otherwise) in science classes without sound scientific basis. The judge here found that there was no scientific basis, and that
I still see two problems with this approach:
1. There will be people that still cannot afford to send their children to school, even with that tax break. Families below the poverty line were not paying enough in taxes to send their own children to school. More likely, the burden of schooling their children was shared more by middle- and upper-class households who pay more in taxes.
2. There will be families who decide to keep the tax break and use the money for things like food, shelter and heat, instead of schooling their child.
Threaten parents with jail all you want, but either way, the result is that there will be more children without adequate schooling in the US. These children will grow up without the knowledge and skills to succeed, and will consequently have to rely increasingly upon aid programs such as welfare.
One way to avoid that situation is to guarantee every child a minimum level of education using tax dollars. In other words: public school systems and minimum requirements/standards for those systems to follow.
Are you suggesting that the theory of evolution is anywhere near as well proven as the round earth theory, atomic theory and special relativity?
As well proven? No. Anywhere NEAR as well proven? Actually, yes.
Hint: You can see the earth is round if you just get into a plane
Actually, I can't. I can see a horizon, which is not inconsistent with a flat earth. And besides, The Great Illusionist can bend light and provide all kinds of false evidence for a round earth, just as He created 6000 year old fossils that appear by carbon dating to be millions of years old. And by the way, he can also grab the occasional alpha particle and toss them back when they're being shot at a sheet of gold foil.
[...]see a photograph taken from a space shuttle, watch other planets through the telescope etc. Contrast this with evolution - have you personally observed anything even remotely resembling macro-evolution?
Um, I haven't personally taken a photograph from a space shuttle. I assume you haven't either. I also haven't seen my twin take off on a space ship at near c and return practically un-aged either. I assume you haven't either. But since you seem ready to accept the evidence observed and reported by others, it's unclear to me why the extremely well confirmed notion of evolution by natural selection doesn't deserve the same.