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Prof Denied Funds Over Evolution Evidence
radarsat1 writes "The Montreal Gazette today reported that a professor at Montreal's McGill University was refused a $40,000 grant, allegedly because 'he'd failed to provide the panel with ample evidence that Charles Darwin's theory of evolution is correct.' Ironically, the grant was for a study into the detrimental effects of intelligent design on Canadian academics and leaders." From the article: "Jennifer Robinson, McGill's associate vice-principal for communications, said the university has asked the SSHRC to review its decision to reject Alters's request for money to study how the rising popularity in the United States of 'intelligent design' - a controversial creationist theory of life - is eroding acceptance of evolutionary science in Canada."
Haa-haa.
I'd love to help you out -- which way did you come in?
FSMism is the one true belief! Of course he can't prove evolution is correct, any Pastafarian knows how the world (and midgets) truely came to be.
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HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHA! I GET IT! HAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHA! I think.....- No Man the Barbarian.
Still, this should be easy to rectify, right? All you have to do is send them several books full of the evidence for evolution as it is currently understood- thus proving the point that ID should be banned from Canada.
But that's the problem with the whole debate, isn't it? ID can take the complexity of life and the structure of the universe itself and explain it in terms anybody who has ever been to church can understand. Biology can't. Which is sad.
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Wrong way around- if he doesn't worship at the altar of ID, AND doesn't prove his basic assumptions, he's denied funding. (the basic assumptions of ID being unproveable of course, gives you the meaning of the word Irony).
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Without trying to cause a flamewar, it seems to me the grant is justified, so long as the board is also willing to provide a grant to a theologist that is trying to prove creationism or intelligent design. Refusing to allow someone a grant to research a subject that causes such differing opinion is fairly small minded.
Just so I clear this up I believe in evolution, however, I also firmly believe in God, I see no reason why both theories cannot co-exist, even the vatican support this view.
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you misread
Ironically, the grant was for a study into the detrimental effects of intelligent design on Canadian academics and leaders
whoever modded you up should be smacked.
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
Things like this happen because the unwashed masses keep electing idiots that barely went to college (went to college = 4 year vacation), and then those same idiots get to push around people that have a clue.
Stupid people hate smart people.
SSHRC: Can't this Alter guy take a joke? Did anyone see the date on the rejection letter?
It looks like the committee itself proves that ID has an influence without him actually having to perform the study!
"...study how the rising popularity in the United States of 'intelligent design' - a controversial creationist theory of life - is eroding acceptance of evolutionary science in Canada."
$40,000 was saved from being wasted on a useless study. Too bad that doesn't happen more often.
Don't take life so seriously. No one makes it out alive.
This researcher was on CBC radio this morning and one of the fun things that came out was that by denying his application the funding board simultaneously saved $40,000 and actually proved the central hypothesis of his research; obviously ID is having a detrimental effect.
-- If it isn't broken, you haven't let my users have a crack at it yet --
I'm holding opinion until we see what the actual criteria for rejection were. I could see this as a situation where the letter said something along the lines of, "We found that you did not do sufficient work to establish your definition of evolution when surveying the people." The researcher, of course, would like to have a groundswell of earnest defense from reactionaries, so he rephrases it to sound like the government is advocating ID. In all the noise and hubbub, the government cuts its losses and pays him off rather than spend tons (metric tonnes, I'm sure) of money defending themselves.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
I was very surprised to see that the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) is part of the Canadian government, not McGill. That wasn't clear from the summary, and it seems important. Wow, the Canadian election wasn't that long ago...I guess the Canuck neo-cons can purge the scientific types from policy-making positions even quicker than American neo-cons!
[command INSERTWITTYQUIP failed: insufficient wit]
Ironically, the grant was for a study into the detrimental effects of intelligent design on Canadian academics and leaders.
That's what you expect! That haughty religious folk who Don't Like Your Beliefs will make decisions based on their magic sky deity and try to punish you for it.
Irony is when events do not unfold as usual. For example, researching how creationism is bad and having the fundies actually consider the point and even help. That would be irony.
The popularity of intelligent design is not rising in the US. The volume and rate at which its supporters, a group which remains fairly static, are speaking are rising.
So if a researcher doesn't worship at the altar of Darwin, he is denied useful funding?
Huh?
I think you skipped a few steps in your reasoning.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Due to the ample proof for evolution, he should have no problem coming up with the necessary information to get the grant, right?
He has nothing to worry about, right?
There is proof, right?
I smell six people who shouldn't have the authority to teach kindergarten, much less sit on a grant board for real science.
So it looks like a someone fullfilled their fudiciary duty and decided not to write a $40,000 check to a McGill professor to lavishly sponsor a pointless study. And the controvercy is?
an ill wind that blows no good
I'll never understand the intelligent design versus evolution debate. The two seem to me to have nothing to do with one another. Evolution is a valid scientific theory based on physical evidence and intelligent design is more of a philosophy that really can't be proven one way or another. Further, they aren't mutually exclusive. If there is a God, why couldn't he/she/it have used evolution as the means to design life? Clearly, if there is a God that's exactly how he/she/it went about it.
I don't care what the effects of ID are, it sure as hell isn't worth 40,000 bucks to study it. Canadian taxpayers have better things to spend money on.
So if a researcher doesn't worship at the altar of Darwin, he is denied useful funding? Doesn't that come across as hypocritical?
You're joking, right? Did you read it? From the article:
In its decision to deny the grant, the SSHRC panel said Alters had not supplied "adequate justification for the assumption in the proposal that the theory of evolution, and not intelligent design theory, was correct."
A: None. The Universe spins the bulb, and the Zen master merely stays out of the way.
As my Evolution instruction often reminded us, Darwin did not invent evolution, nor is evolution his theory. Darwin was the guy who first proposed Natural Selection, a theorized mechanism by which evolution can occur (although even this had precursor theories by earlier fellas who never seem to get any credit).
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But in answer to your question: if a researcher has problems with a fundamental tenet of his field then he can expect to find it extremely difficult to get support. That's exactly how it should be. No hypocrisy involved.
Apparently, I left my brain stem at home today. It helps to read the entire article. Nevermind.
Clearly I forgot to equip my +5 Codpiece of Karma.
There always seems to be a blurring between Intellegent Design and Creationism in everything I read about this controversial topic. Doesn't seem correct to me.
Intellegent Design is simply looking at the complexity of all the things around us and saying that to some degree or another, some higher intellegence has a hand in it. Even if it was simply putting it in motion at some stage of history. There were and are plenty of scientists who don't buy full-out evolution but also don't buy "world created in 6 24-hour days" Creationism either.
Seems unfair to start lumping them together. People should be able to talk about ID without being labeled "Christian Crazies". Even Einstien believed in some sort of God.
Lest we go without a link -- here's an anonymous post to solve the day.
Read on
Ooo boy. I guess the page views were down, huh? Time to get some more hits by bringing out everyone's favorite whipping boy, the Intelligent Design proponents. Now it's time to make fun of people who go to church, and smear all religion as evil! Maybe this story can break the 1000 posts the linked story got!
Basically, somebody got his grant money denied. The stated reason sounds really stupid. However, from the way his proposal was summarized in the story, he shouldn't have received a grant anyway. Essentially he's already assuming that promoting ID causes harm.
Wait! Stop! Put down the flame throwers, you're making the same mistake! Yes, I know, ID is pseudo-science, blah-blah-blah. However, the point behind his study should be to prove that promoting ID is causing harm, and not presume before the study that it already causes harm. The title of the study is "Detrimental effects of popularizing anti-evolution's intelligent design theory on Canadian students, teachers, parents, administrators and policymakers".
Science is supposed to be about gathering evidence and coming to conclusions, not about taking conclusions and gathering evidence to support them. His study should be on the Effects of popularizing ID, not just the deterimental effects. Once he's completed his study, then he can come to conclusions. But not when proposing it.
It sounds to me like his study was turned down for not being scientific. But it happens to involve Intelligent Design - meaning it's just perfect for sparking a flamewar, regardless of the actual merits of the study.
Public Policy... as art!
First, the professor was requesting a grant for a sociological study, not a scientific one. He wanted to study the impact of US creationists on Canadian science. Why the grant board denied him a grant on the ground that he assumed evolution to be correct. What confuses me is why that matters in the slightest. The validity of evolution or creationism is irrelevant in a sociological study. If someone did a study on "the impact of people who believe in the Loch Ness monster on tourism in Scotland", it shouldn't be rejected because Nessie doesn't actually exist (or does).
Second, at the risk of beating a very old, dead horse, it bugs me that here's a professor who teaches at Harvard, who testified as an 'expert' in the recent creationism/evolution in school case, and still insists that "evolution is scientific fact"... dammit, it's a theory! I guess that's what happens when a professor of sociology is your evolution expert. Grrrr.
Its things like Intelligent Design that makes me understand why some cultures have vaned and dissapeared troughout history. By denying straight thinking and bending things backwards you can really stop progress and then another culture comes in and takes over. I find myself seeing this alot today with idiotic things like Intelligent Design, patent laws and IP ownage. The list is long but current denial of scientific theories like evolution and global warming takes first price.
China has it really laid out for them in the future thats for sure.
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see, that's funny because, um, it's a theory and uh, science, and uh, scientifically you can't, like, prove a negative
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That's it! I'm moving to the USA ... oh wait ..
The problem is not the proff, but the jury... They don't seem to understand the difference between a (layman's) guess and a (scientific) theory
The SSHRC (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada) is not a backwaters school board stacked with religious fundamentalists. It is a mainstream, government-monitored agency that hands out almost $300mm per year of social sciences funding. Only 40% of applications get approved. In this case, it looks like they were justified in rejecting his application. Indeed, it looks like Alters is being a bit of a publicity-hunting suck. From another source:
Eva Schacherl, a spokeswoman for the council, said Wednesday the multidisciplinary committee was not convinced the proposal's scholarly approach was sound or that it would provide objective results on the question.
"I just want to underline that it is not correct to suggest that the funding proposal was not accepted because the council or the committee had doubts about evolution," she said.
"We understand the way the committee's comments were transcribed or written down or summarized could have misled him and we really regret that the note sent to him gave the impression that the committee had doubts about evolution. That was really not what the committee intended."
Schacherl noted the council has funded other research projects on evolution and gave $175,000 to Alters last year for a three-year project on concepts of biological evolution in Islamic society.
In short, just because you have the right idea doesn't mean you automatically get funding for a flawed study.
When you have nothing left to burn you must set yourself on fire
Since when is Intelligent Design/Creationism a "theory"? It doesn't even deserve the reputation as theory. Theories are rational, testable and predictive. ID/Creationism is fantasy. Evolution can offer predictions about the natural world. What can ID/Creationism "predict"?
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
that you are all so seething with anger that someone doesn't believe the same thing you do. Ban religion? Wow that's a blast from humanities past. It's been tried many times - sometimes in conjunction with genocide as race is often intertwined with religious belief.
No matter. If I'm wrong, nobody loses anything. If I'm right, you lose for eternity. I can't wait to see the stupid look on your faces then. Maybe you can ask a professor to forgive you or something. Or maybe you can sit at the edge of Darwin's grave and ask him.
Science is "The observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of phenomena" - Answers.com. At no point has intelligent Design been observed or tested, only speculated. The Bible is not a scientific journal and cannot considered a legitimate source of observational data.
A theory is "A set of statements or principles devised to explain a group of facts or phenomena, especially one that has been repeatedly tested or is widely accepted and can be used to make predictions about natural phenomena" -Answers.com. At no point has Intelligent Design been tested so despite being widely accepted it has not been accepted by science.
The only purpose of teaching Intelligent Design in school would be to make teaching it in church optional. This fact means one would be supporting church in schools, but this cannot be allowed in the US because of the separation of church and state. Good luck Canada.
What else is there to argue about?
- John Smilanick (http://www.johnsmilanick.com/
Whether Darwinists want to admit it or not, there are gaping holes in the theory of evolution you could drive a truck through. Even Darwin himself admitted this. He freely admitted that evolution could not explain complex organs like the eye.
Fortunately evolutionary science didn't stop with Darwin.
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ID has a way for life to begin. Evolution doesn't. It is a Biological law that life doesn't come from nonlife.
Hold on for a moment while I calm the spasms of laughter...
Ok, first, the study for which he applied for the grant was flawed. ID does not in any way claim that evolution did not happen, only that it may be the method through which an intelligent entity created us. To study the effects of a belief in a socialogical sense one must first understand the real belief, not the view of the uneducated on the topic. ID offers evolution as one of the possible methods of Intelligent Design. I will grant here that much of ID is conjecture and more hypothesis than theory. Creationists of late have been twisting ID to fit their view that nothing evolved but was created. The grant therefore should have studied Creationism and its negative effects on the study of evolution. True ID still allows for the study of evolution and Darwin's theories. It merely attempts to give an explanation of the catalyst for it. Anything that calls itself ID but eliminates evolution is Creationism.
Now before the Creationists and followers of Darwin on this site try to have me drawn and quartered, I personally withhold my opinion. I merely wish to state that parties on all sides of this debate are fond of not taking the time to understand each other's arguments.
Let the flaming by those who don't take the time to read my entire post begin...
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I think he skipped a few steps in his ontogeny.
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if it's a study into how far ID has got in educational and academic institutions then I reckon it's worth it.
This is all Bush's fault! Oh wait... this is in Canada. Well it's STILL Bush's fault, dammit!
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
It's just as easy to turn scientific theory into dogma as it is to accept the words of clergy, no? Either way, it runs counter to science when any scientist refuses to question his own store of theories and facts from time to time.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
I almost cry when I hear about things like this. For me, evolution is not a theory, it is my religion. It is how I live my life and understand every element of humanity. We are about to reach a point in history where intelligent people will be persecuted because of how outnumbered they are by idiots. Theres no way around it and I don't know what to do. Maybe I should move to Europe. Any advice or just telling me I am over-reacting would be very helpful.
DankLogic - There is a system to everything.
Perhaps he did a lousy study, it wasn't worth $40K, and it was rejected because it was incomplete and not because of any opinions about ID.
Thus proving nothing about his central hypothesis.
Has anyone actually read the study to try to make this decisions for themself?
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
What you say is correct I think (it reflects my own opinion, at least). But that's only when looking at ID surface deep. As soon as you start digging, it's no longer evolution + a hint of guiding from an unknown force. It's the world was created in 4000BC along with dinausors, adam and eve all living nicely together.
Intelligent design, when taken in a pure form that never attempts to imply who or what the designer is, is as legitimate a theory about life and the universe as evolution is.
No it isn't. That you _think_ it is merely shows that you are an uneducated ingnoramus.
To all of the flamers out there who are bashing the committee without knowing anything about the Canadian grant system...
This has absolutely nothing to do with a person's religious or scientific views. It has everything to do with the fact that someone applied for a grant that has no justification. He submitted an unprepared request for a grant. period.
In the same way, if I submitted a request for a grant to study "the effect that the knowledge of the theory of gravity in Canada had on the leadership of the United States" it would also be denied. Without having both proof and possible linkage, it's not a valid request.
Bottom line, is that this is nothing more than an otherwise insignificant person trying to get some press. Same as the guy who tried to patent the wheel in australia... Just trying to get some attention, and by the previous comments, it looks like it may have worked.
Just because a theory is easy to understand doesn't mean it is inherently true. It is most certainly easier to "understand" when I say that li'l people in the computer make it tick, compared to how it really works.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I don't suppose it's any more useless than the rest of the studies done in the sociology department. (And that may be enough to stop right there.)
I consider it kind of an interesting question: is the US Intelligent Design movement having any effect on Canadians? I imagine that Canadians, at least, would like to know if they have to worry about encroaching creationism. And if there is, to begin to have a direction in which to fight it.
The professor considers the board's refusal evidence of what he was trying to demonstrate: that anti-evolutionism isn't restricted to the US.
I haven't looked at the study design; many sociology studies are badly designed and statistically biased. So maybe the study is a bad one. The title "Detrimental effects of popularizing anti-evolution's intelligent design..." certainly suggests that he's starting with a biased point of view. And you may not be able to do a good one for a mere $40,000. But I consider the question that it proposes to answer interesting.
I think the real issue here is the misuse of a grant. From the article it appears that the proposal was to do a study whether ID was ruining evolution. Their grant denial seems to come from the assumption that Evolution=Science to the extent that they state:
I guess the granters didn't think evolution had evolved (sorry I couldn't help it) to the point of acceptable science to the tune of 40K.
Assuming evolution is not equal to proven hard science. Here is the logic I think the grantor is trying to avoid.
ID is eroding evolution!
Lets have a study to show how ID is harming evolution.
We got money to prove ID is hurting science since they accepted our proposal that assumed evolution is complete science.
Circular funding. Ha.
Hello all:
I like to point out that the MAIN issue in the article has been lost due to the North American cultural war between Evolution and Intelligent Design. Sparked by this event, there will be many posts made to debate whether evolution is correct or not. Yet, at the end, these posts will all be irrelevant to the main issue. Here is the summary of the article I read:
"A funding request for an academic study has been denied by a review board, due to, and I quote, 'he(the professor of the study)'d failed to provide the panel with ample evidence that Charles Darwin's theory of evolution is correct.'"
Reading the article, it seems that the author has tried to put the issue into the context of an ongoing debate between evolution and intelligent design. That debate is absolutely irrelevant here. What is this article about? It is about the professor of a study not providing enough support in his proposal for funding. The board may very well acknowledge that evolution IS correct, but for the purpose of due academic diligence, the review board decided that NOT ENOUGH evidence has been provided to support "a theory acknowledged to be correct".
Reading this article more in details, the research study in question has little to do with the science of evolution itself. The title of the study is "how the rising popularity in the United States of intelligent design" - a controversial creationist theory of life - is eroding acceptance of evolutionary science in Canada". This is a cultural study: it's about how a controversial theory and the effect it has on the Canadian scientific community. In short, this is a study about people, not about evolution...
Finally, I like to point out that the rejection message was read in front of a public lecture... As a graduate student, I applied for funding and got rejected all the time. Yet, I have never heard of a rejection letter being read in public before... It sounds as if the focus has been shifted, the public roused, and attention redirected to a direction that is, ultimately, irrelevant to the main issue. (picture of many people, flaming torches, and pitch forks in mind...)
Cheers.
B. Pascal.
I believe the SSHRC decision highlights a different problem in Canada, namely bureaucratic inteptitude and not some paranoid fantasy that Intelligent Design is making inroads in Canada. Canada has a long history of government by committee where balancing interests and compromise is seen as the primary goal before making good decisions. One only needs to look at the CRTC (Canadian Radio and Television Commission) to find almost universal distaste for the quality of their decision making.
Most Canadians have no taste for the kind of right wing politics found in the United States as we've been slowly growing into a more liberal society. Intelligent Design or Creationism is not taught in any public school and probably only a handful of private Christian schools. The ID movement is a non-starter here and I don't see that ever changing given our liberal climate.
I chalk this one up to bureaucracy gone stupid, as usual.
...they felt he was not well prepared enough to argue against ID. Perhaps the money will go where ID can be more effectively challenged?
Radio on your iPod
This "controverial theory" of intelligent design, was the only theory for thousands of years. It's popularity has been shrinking, not rising in the United States. The actual controversial theory here is evolution, even if only because it's such a new idea.
DISCLAIMER: After studying evolution, I believe that it is supported by enough evidence to be considered true.
And HALF of them are even DUMBER than THAT!
Man, you really need that seminar!
I wish I had mod points for you, sir.
Proud member of the American Non Sequitur Society. We might not make much sense, but boy do we love pizza!
Point by point, oh foolishly self-ignorant one:
... as evolution is.
... there are gaping holes in the theory of evolution you could drive a truck through
Intelligent design, when
Not even close. Evolution is a fact. The various hypothesis as to how it functions are layed out in a format that can be examined against the evidence available as to their validity. Furthermore they can make projections, like say, if humans create new carbon-based chemicals, the biota will adjust in time to consume them. Guess what? Nylon ingesting bacteria.
Mighta helped if you offered one, but I'll make do. Evolution basically states that organisms will change over time. We have literally tons of fossil evidence which explicitly supports this idea. If you have further thoughts, you might at least make them less vague.
He freely admitted that evolution could not explain complex organs like the eye.
Why, oh why do creationists keep trotting out lies like this? Not only did he not say that (provide complete context, not quote snippets), we currently have on this planet various life forms which exhibit the states of the eye's evolution. In fact, we have various life forms which show that the eye is not only capable of being evolved, it is capable of being evolved in a number of ways.
My point here is NOT to advocate ID, or the dismissal of Darwinist theory.
Uh, bullshit. If that were so, you wouldn't have made the false claim about the lack of evidence, for instance.
When you continue to insist you are right about something you can't prove, what you have is not a theory anymore - it's a religion.
Excellent, you've just described ID. Since there is emperical evidence for evolution, arguments against its very existence reek of a religious point of view that holds a book written thousands of years ago as being more correct than one's own eyes.
I personally believe that the answer to this is somewhere in the middle.
Just for your edification, there is no middle ground between goddunnit and the world works with its own mechanisms. Not in any manner that can be examined at least. And that is the fundamental deciet of the ID'rs, that the "theory" of ID can be examined. A noteworthy point is that they are incapable of coming up with a manner with which it can.
But it's just a theory - I could be wrong.
Much like ID, not it in a scientific sense. You are wrong because of your refusal to examine the evidence and frame a logically sound, yet falsifiable hypothesis. No more.
I think that most creationists simply are looking for evolutionists to just admit that evolution is a theory, and not hard fact. Yes, it's science, but it's also based on conjecture, speculation, and mostly fragmented data.
(And I'm specifically referring to evolution in the "origin" sense, not the "within-species changes" sense.)
$40k for "a study into the detrimental effects of intelligent design on Canadian academics and leaders"? Seems a little extravagent.
Traders throughout the world discovered the origin of spices a long time ago.
Found it. Read it all if you have time, or scroll down to the last paragraph for the crux of it.
... is when people start asking more questions... Galileo's works had also a very detrimental effect on the official science... As one proverb says - true virtues are not afraid of critics. Is ET?
--
Mod me down freely - my karma is at the worst level anyway.
Now, mod me down freely. My karma can't get any worse...
No Child Left Behind and various other laws make education a nationally standardized mess of differing opinions. With more Federal money being thrown at what should be a local issue, we're going to have more problems like this than ever.
I'm not fond of any public funding, grants, guaranteed loans or any form of research, but I am also not the kind of person to push my opinions on people I don't know. I am frustrated that my future kids would have to learn subject matters that are outside of my belief system. I believe that if a family wants to teach their children creationism, they'd choose a school that teaches it. If they want to teach evolution, the same would be true. That is more important than shoving every kid of every family into a common thinking (indoctrination).
Why the debate, anyway? What do you care what people you don't know, will never meet, and have no direct contact with teach their children? How does the standard I set affect you, even if you're 2 communities over?
Learning is about basic math, basic reading and writing, and basic discipline. It isn't about higher science or sex ed or history or foreign languages -- that is for the individual to decide if they want it as an elective that will affect their futures.
The more we shove people into the same mold, the less we'll be able to compete in the world. Variety is the spice of life, including in education, faith and science.
If I understand all this correctly, then this rejection is something to worry about, and something to watch. But it isn't anything to get angry about, not yet.
my first thought was, HA, this is a stupid study. What is the difference how intelligent design affects our thoughts on evolution? Then I realized that this is what social studies are all about, some Phd or whatever is sitting there and coming up with ideas for his/her funding for the next year. Obviously nobody really cares about this except for this individual (he has plenty to gain from it.) What is more interesting what other totally pointless 'studies' are conducted in this way and paid for by our tax money?
You can't handle the truth.
If I've gotten this straight. He is asking for a grant to prove that ID is bad and he doesn't, in the grant application, give sufficient evidence that the other theory is right. Logically then the researcher who turns in an application that does show that evolution is right will get the money. I have no problem with this. There's nothing to see here. Move along.
Is buying a Harley Davidson as your first motorcycle since you were 16 at age 49 a midlife crisis issue?
Oh, Canada. :(
I don't think that any scientist with a truly objective view could ever state that Darwin's theories ARE correct. We simply don't know that this is the case. Currently, the theories that exist which are lumped into "evolution" do appear to act as better indicators, from which predictions can be made which appear useful... but that doesn't mean that they are correct. It doesn't even necessarily mean that they're close to correct. It simply means that based on the current physical evidence we have, they appear as the most useful theories, that fit with the most data points.
These theories are providing some really great predictions, recently, not only was a fossilized type of animal predicted, but the likely grographic location was predicted as well. Now it may be that the creature found will eventually turn out to be something less exciting than we currently think, it may be that there are 1000 coastal areas where similar fossils could be found. We don't know...
In the end, what does it matter? Evolutionary science appears quite important to biologists, perhaps some anthropologists and a goodly number of geeks like us... but, for Joe "The Nazerene" SixPack, does it really matter if he believes some science book, or believes his pastor? The science book will provide him with a whole load of theories which, without deeper study may appear completely ludacrious. The Pastor will provide him with an easily understood answer which will likely appear perfectly rational to a person who lives in that tunnel-reality. Should Jope spend 20 years researching evolution, or just accept the Pastors word and spend 20 years improving his business as *insert whatever career Joe might want to do here*.
Get a life, not a lifestyle. - Hikem Bey
Frankly, I'm disappointed that he didn't even include any of the mounting evidence of the Flying Spaghetti Monster story of creation. I know I've been touched by his noodly appendage!
I am somewhat suspicious that it is "proof of evolution" or lack thereof that is preventing him from a similar grant in the next year.
.. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.
"detrimental effects of intelligent design on Canadian academics and leaders"
OMG, ID is like second hand smoke!
Jeez, the grant should have been denied as a waste of time.
Professor Foo at Bar university is denied funding, for his research on the detrimental effects of the spread of education on evolution instead of ID, by the United States Gvmt, on the grounds that he cannot proove that ID is true.
I agree that in many ways we end up with superior service for less cost than our U.S. neighbors. My main gripe has more to do with the television aspect of the CRTC and not the telecommunications aspect (I should have said it was the Canadian Radio and Telecommunications Commission, but I wasn't thinking).
The Canadian content and simultanous substitution regulations drive me crazy, especially if you're trying to get a decent HDTV picture from any Canadian satellite or cable companies.
You're also right in that many of the commissions and committees do make good, solid decisions, but not always the first time around. There is a definite bureaucratic mentality in this country that can be so frustrating.
The blurb was poorly worded, so I went and read the story. And it didn't make much sense either. Intelligent Design is just Creationism dressed up in scientific clothing. Lots of pseudoscience proponets try to dress up their ideas under the guise of science. As the late great Richard Feynman so aptly called it Cargo Cult Science. They talk the talk, but when they attempt to walk the walk, they can't.
For years Johannes Kepler tried to make his observations fit his theory that the planetory orbits corresponded to the five perfect solids. He took the courageous step to reject his pet theory because it was wrong and came up with his three laws of planetary motion. They fit his observations better and made actual predictions. It was, it is testable.
The fundamentalists are trying to make their observations fit their 'theory'. Except they have no observations and a theory that is mere window dressing. The problem is most Christians forgot God was a metaphor and are trying to interpret their flavors of the Bible as absolute fact and history. You can still be a devout Christian and understand evolution and accept it happened (I'm not a Christian). By rejecting Creationism they don't have to reject their entire faith. That is to say they don't have to throw out the baby with the bathwater.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
As a McGill student, I can tell you that they're probably just being greedy more than anything else and they're looking for an excuse. I can remember after Katrina last year when the school called the press to announce they accepted students from New Orleans as a gesture of good faith.Then I learned there were only a dozen or so of them.
"I could see this as a situation where the letter said something along the lines of, 'We found that you did not do sufficient work...' ... "
That was exactly my first thought on this matter. Perhaps the researcher thinks that any proposal on this topic should be funded, regardless of quality?
Grants are never awarded "perfectly," expecially in the eyes of the applicants. But this simplistic reaction is absurd.
While the researcher claims that this rejection "proves him right," I, OTOH, find that his (and/or the media's) reaction proves the committee right for having rejected him in the first place.
.>
What? Just do it, already!
I hope you do not consider this a flame. There are holes in the sense there are lots and lots of gaps in the fossil record. Each time a new transitional species is found there a usually at least two more.
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
Just one nitpick -- I'd like to add "a religious point of view that holds a particular interpretation of a book," since ID / creationism / whatever is very much an American phenomenon, and most Christians worldwide who accept the Bible as true do not have issues with evolution. It's only interpreting the creation story in the Bible as literal science that leads to this conflict, and there was at least some doubt about that interpretation among church leaders thousands of years before Darwin.
The Catholic church is often trotted out as an example here, since the Vatican has basically said that evolution is probably true, but a lot of people don't realize that they seem to have learned their lesson over the Galileo issues -- though the acceptance of evolution is often portrayed as a reversal of stance, the Catholic church never said anything against Darwin or evolution. It was never even an issue, and active Catholics were involved in evolutionary research very early on. The primary conflict here is with the American fundamentalist subculture, and a lot of Christians are just as annoyed at their behavior as the rest of you...
I am the man with no sig!
Why do you continue to bore us with your moronic ideas? Why do you think people give a shit about what you think?
Stop saying the same stupid shit over and over, nobody gives a fuck about you or what you have to say. Do you get it? Jesus you self-important prick, nobody cares.
Must be an Irreducible Complexity (sarcasm).
.Whatever is present is attributed to the way God designed it.Creationism at a glance.Convieniently ."because God made everything,he must be so powerful and omni-qualified".Full circle.No,this isn't stupid joke and non-sense,there people in america who believe it(and they are substantially more mainstream then Flat Earth Society).
,inhuman and emotionless) corporations feeding caged animals their chemicals to see if they
But if we check seriously Biology has some gaps and flaws and Intelligent Design is one-size-fits all explanation.
If its like this because "God made it this way"
forgets the existance of such God is really shaky business
The ID proponents have much more logic( with extra circles! Improved and guaranteed to explain all mysteries of life in a hour) at their disposal now.Enough to make people believe? Well,most believe(d) Bush.
Believed 9/11 is a well explained story,
that aliens are figment of imagination(disputed by heaps of evidence),and goverment works for benefit of society(introducing such nice laws and using the budget at optimum efficiency).
Now on Biology:
I don't support biological "ethics" and
"research" in present form(biology and western medicine are deeply flawed branches of corrupt science).
It reminds me of souless(as in cruel
are lethal and how much.Sure,it advances science, but killing frogs and lab rats
makes your science a horrible work to choose for person(i.e. become biologist) such as myself(who values animal life as much as human).
I'm vegan and i will never trust or support experiments on animals no matter what the cause.
On other hand: whatever ridiculous crap those religious people
spew they far more "humane" and "ethical" then most scientists.
they support their ideals,while [mainstream] science works for profits (and make the humanity progress technologically as side-effect).
Their denial letter could have been pretty short:
Man, I've gotta try his approach with my boss. If it works, I'm in triple-overtime heaven!
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
God loves you so love him back or he's going to let you be tortured in Hell forever. Now that's Love!
I would ask anyone who can do so to provide me with a fictional or real example of evidence that would disprove intelligent design.
What would disprove evolution? A rabbit fossil in the Precambrian. Since there is a class of evidence that would disprove evolution if we actually had an example from it, evolution is a valid subject of science. If Intelligent Design cannot provide a similar method of disproving itself, it is not a valid theory; if it can provide that method, it is.
No matter how many facts you have to support yourself, there will always be people who don't believe in evolution. Why? Because, if you think about it, it's a bit more far-fetched than an almighty creator. Think about it. Even the simplest bacteria have DNA and RNA, which has to be perfectly aligned and with no errors for the cell to survive. An error in the DNA means a protein folding error, and even the smallest changed amino acid can change the entire shape of a protein. Then, think about all the information needed to have a cell with the ability to reproduce. The cell needs to know how to copy its DNA, pull the chromosomes to each side of the cell, and then perform cytokinesis. If the cell that's 'accidently' (I mean, how else will life happen? The only theory I've heard of, and it's *quite* possible I'm ignorant about this, is that the chemicals were in the right place at the right time...) produced doesn't know how to reproduce, then it will just die and be a microscopic piece of dust in a giant, lifeless earth.
:P )
It's possible that evolution is true, but don't hate on people who don't believe it, because, let's face it, it *is* *kind* of out there.
(Readies flame shield against hundreds of replies giving facts and evidence supporting evolution up the wazoo
A bit of background for those who are not familiar with some of the common academic research funding bodies here in Canada.
SSHRC is for the funding of Social Science and Humanities research, which includes things like literature research. A good friend of mine who is working on her Ph.D. in English has an application in for an SSHRC grant.
NSERC is for the funding of scientific and engineering research.
There are a few critical points to understand about these two funding organizations:. NSERC has way more money than the SSHRC. Scientific and engineering researchers typically have no problems getting the funding they need, whereas social science and humanities researchers can have a really hard time getting anything from the SSHRC. The SSHRC just doesn't get much money, and has to be stingy in doleing it out to ensure they get the best bang for their buck.
As such, it is entirely possible that the reason for the SSHRC denying this grant would be because the grant application was simply incomplete.
From my perspective as someone who has lived in three Provinces (and who has been to all the rest, with the notable exception of Newfoundland), Intelligent Design is a complete and total non-starter here in Canada. If it weren't for /. and exposure to US-based news services, I doubt I'd even have heard about it. There is no political movement here to stop the teaching of evolution in schools, no court cases, nothing. To most Canadians, it's just another of those idiotic ultra-conservative American things that occurs from time to time, and not something the vast majority of Canadians want any part of.
While I personally think this research would be interesting, it is quite possible that the SSHRC has more pressing areas of research to handle, such as the serious social problems in native communities. With only so much money to go around, there are inevitably going to be very worthy projects which get rejected for funding. The trick for a researcher is to look elsewhere for the funding they need to get their research completed and published.
Yaz.
ok, how do you prove/disprove an theory?
well, you can't prove a theory fully.
And if you can't, then both Evolution (hate that term implies to little) and ID (or creationism whichever you prefer) can't be denied as possible. Thus them being a Theory.
So how do you disprove a theory?
You must test all possible statements of the theory, and if one contradicts another or proves incorrect in an experiment, then that theory can be disproven. (That being that the experiment is correct and repeatable.)
So my challenge to you is. . . Prove the Theory of ID is false. Prove Evolution is false. Take your pick. You can't do either.
So. . . . . Both are currently viable theories. So get over it.
Self proclaimed wannabe geek. You know how it is. Most of us who read this stuff probably fit in that category.
a religious point of view that holds a book written thousands of years ago as being more correct than one's own eyes
Please cite which passages in the Bible are inconsistent with evolution?
While you're at it, please build a working honeybee.
Thanks.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
poking holes in Darwin's theories to disprove evolution is like poking holes in Newtonian Physics to disprove relativity. The theory of evolution has come a long LONG way since the days of Darwin.
I think creationists shouldn't be allowed to have access to any of the medical technology that biology has given us. Oh wait, they only believe in things when it benefits them, I forgot.
Which is consistent with a few scientific facts about the Shroud which is:
- The image is burnt into the cloth
- It's carbon dated around teh approximate time of da Vinci, who seems to be the likely culprit for the actual creation.
Generally speaking, the shroud is one of the more famous relics that is proven fraudulent. Not that it's not stopping masses of the faithful from attempting to "scientifically" disprove the science.You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
Ultimately, on both sides of the religion aspect of this issue, people do not make it clear what the implications are if evolution was used as the tool for the creation of the array of life we see on Earth, and for other life that may exist elsewhere in the universe. Never once in any sacred, irrefutable text in which a creation theory was explicitly mention was there any description of the process being guided by evolution.
These texts are supposed to be definitive. No room for interpretation. If you are a follower of a belief structure that proclaims a creation theory that does not explicitly describes evolution as its guiding force, how can you possibly negotiate at all with the evolutionary process? If the fundamental explanation of life in one of these religion/philosophies can be left up to interpretation thousands of years later based on new information, what about this way of thinking is off limits? At what point does the interpretation of that belief structure stop? At what point are you a follower of this most certainly unified set of beliefs, or just someone that picks and chooses aspects that you can rationalize and feel comfortable with?
Examining new theories, viewpoints, and evidence in the name of understanding the world we live in is worthwhile in my opinion, even if we come to find that we don't have it exactly right all the time. This way of thinking is much different than trying to fit a rigid, archaic thought structure into a modern world, with realities that contradict its very foundations - realities that cannot simply be ignored or wished away.
Your viewpoint is common among those Christians who appreciate science and aren't aware of the fundamentalist political motivations for ID. My father, for example, put it in more or less the same terms: "Intelligent Design" just means that evolution occured, and that it occured was God's will. From this view, where science is the "how" and God is the "why", "Intelligent Design" is just putting a name to the concept and shouldn't affect one iota the scientists doing evolution research (whether those scientists are religious or not), because it makes zero new scientific claims.
Of course creating a word for the harmony that can exist between science and religion is not the reason ID was created.
The whole point of Intelligent Design is to be an alternative to evolution, to replace it with a theory that (very) superficially* does not seem to be religious in nature. ID is supposed to discredit evolution, and leave open the possibility of Creationism, and to even allow Creationism (its nature covered by the thin veneer ID offers) to be taught in public schools without violating the 1st Ammendment.
ID was created to destroy the "heretical" teaching of evolution, and as such people with views like yours (and mine, and my father's) are diametrically opposed to the true supporters of ID. It is the thin end of the wedge intended to drive fundamentalism into our schools and "secular" scientific teaching out.
ID is a political movement with political goals, and a rational attempt to reconcile ID's statements with the scientific facts of evolution is contrary to those goals. So while I agree 100% with your view, you must take great care in using "Intelligent Design" to describe it, because you will be misrepresenting yourself.
* ID proponents may tell you that ID does not necessarily mean the Christian God or any other god did it, and maybe it was space aliens. They're lying to conceal ID's religious basis. The whole argument of ID is that something like the human brain could not have developed from natural processes, so some other intelligence must have made the brain. By ID's central hypothesis, that other intelligence could not have arisen from natural processes. Simple induction tells us that however long the sequence of Designers, the original Designer must therefore be supernatural. Everyone intuitively understands this, especially the fundamentalist backers of ID, but they have to pretend not to in order to avoid that annoying Separation of Church and State.
The enemies of Democracy are
Just so I clear this up I believe in evolution, however, I also firmly believe in God, I see no reason why both theories cannot co-exist, even the vatican support this view.
I know that it is popular to hold the Vatican up as an anti Scientific organization which is unfair because it's attitude to science has radically changed since the 16th century (Just for example: Gregor Mendel the genetics pioneer was an Augustinians monk). The modern Vatican is in no way shape or form a staunch supporter of intelligent design. Pope John Paul II was quoted as saying that "fresh knowledge leads to recognition of the theory of evolution as more than just a hypothesis". As far as I know evolution is taught in the Catholic school system and the Vaticans traditional position has always been either 'no comment' which in later years has given way to the cautious position that evolution and Catholic dogma are not in conflict. You can probably cite a number of examples of people in the Catholic Church making pro Intelligent Design comments but recent and official outspoken statements by people in the Vatican that REALLY matter against Evolution and in support of Intelligent Design as preached by the most vocal US based Christian fundamentalists is something I'd like to see.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
I agree with the other AC, this is about Canada you fucking twit.
Stay on topic or "shut the fuck up"
Personally I am a man of science and I definitely believe in Darwin's theory, I mean how much scientific evidence do they really have to put out there before religious zealots just accept the truth. However I have posed this question to many people who are also dedicated to the realm of science and I have recieved some very interesting answers (sometimes no real answer at all actually).
The big bang and humans evolving from apes..that all happened plain and simple. The question is, with so many naturally occuring phenomena (everything from 2 hydrogens and 1 oxygen = water to gravity) that can be consistently explained through scientific analysis and reasoning...how is it that without some type of intelligent design that science would be able to solve any of these problems in a consistent fashion?
For example, we take it for granted that as planets in a solar system orbit around the largest star due to gravitational pull. But why?? Why is it that planets orbiting a large star undergo gravitational pull towards the star, why couldnt it be the other way around? Because if it was we would not have any galaxies at all because basically everything would repel each other. We take this fact for granted when really all it would have taken is a few twists a few billion years ago and that is concievably what could have happened.
Basically my point is this...if there was no elegant design of the universe then (unless you believe in pure mass coincidence, which I do not) everything would be random. Nothing would be able to be explained on a consistent basis using math and science because there would be no pattern to anything. In order for math and science to explain how our universe works, it relies on patterns of repeating phenomena to prove the various laws that form the basis of scientific belief. I have yet to meet anyone that can accept the fact that everything happened by coincidence and that the many laws that govern our universe just happen to work out. They prove all this with science, but why does the science work?
The problem to be solved is that there is more to the story than the part explained by Darwinian Theory.
After Darwin's day, we learned how DNA carries the genetic code, and how the encoded blueprint for an organism code can change from one generation to the next, producing variations within a species and the occasional emergence of viable new species.
We have a pretty good story to tell about how DNA codes for proteins, how proteins build tissues, how tissues make organs, how collections of organs comprise an organism, and how organisms mate, exchange DNA, and reproduce.
What we don't yet have is good story to tell about how DNA-based life arose in the first place.
For that, we might eventually learn from research in Molecular Biology how DNA-based self-replicating structures arose from simpler nonliving precursors.
Or we might learn from space scientists that DNA-based micro-organisms (or their more primitive precursors) arrived on Earth via cosmic dust from extraterrestrial origins beyond the Solar System.
As wonderful as Darwin's Theory is, and as wonderful as present day Molecular Biology is, we still have a gap in the story when it comes to explaining how it all got started in the first place.
Rather than argue about Evolution vs ID, we ought to be looking for evidence to answer the question about how DNA-based life got started in the first place, and whether it got started here on Earth or arrived here via some precursor carried in the cosmic winds.
If and when space scientists demonstrate compelling evidence for Panspermia, we can then have a good time speculating on whether DNA-based self-replicates arose through elementary natural processes explainable with Freshman Chemistry rather than by sophisticated molecular engineering by some long-lost intelligent race of technogeeks who lived inside of some ancient computer-based technocivilization long before the creation of our own Latter Day Solar System.
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they were entirely correct to deny him the funding in the first place!
What a paradox!
Fight Frist Psoting!
Browse Slashdot with 'Newest First'!
I want to start by saying that I absolutely despise creationism and intelligent design. I agree to the fullest extent that they are simple religious nonsense that is impeding the expansion of our knowledge.
But, when you think about this decision, it's really being "spun" to look worse or more stupid than it actually is.
The onus is generally on Creationists/Intelligent Designists these days to prove that Evolution is false and/or that theirs is true - however, when we spin the table and attack Creationism/Intelligent Design, it falls on us.
If we have only got attacks against Creationism, and not proofs for evolution, then we have no right to do an entire study about how bad Creationism is.
I mean, we've got to face it. Evolution isn't proven. It's the best answer we have, it's assuredly very close to the full truth, it's sensible and supported by tons of evidence and been proven on a small scale, but it simply isn't as sure as, say, the laws of gravity. Thus, while we can definitely mock Creationists who try to push their shaky "truth" on us, they can certainly mock us when we try to push our much more sensible, much likelier to be true "truth" on them.
When this Professor attempts to attack them, he's got to have a reasonable base, otherwise it's just a pointless foray into the religion/science politics that make the world a worse off place daily.
Evolution isn't inconsistent with the existence of God, but it certainly IS inconsistence with the particular set of fairy tales that evangelical Christian religions want to teach in schools.
Intelligent design is not about teaching God in schools, it's about teaching Christian Fairy Tales in school. Anybody who tells you that ID has nothing to do with Adam and Eve is a liar or an idiot. When the Discovery Institute talks to evangelical Christian audiences, they certainly do link the two. It's just when they speak in public that they try to maintain that there is no connection.
Then there are the charlitans who want you to believe "Intelligent Design" has nothing to do with religion or even evolution, and try to divert the conversation by pretending it's about PEOPLE designing things intelligently, so they try to imply the anti-ID people are actually for PEOPLE designing things UNINTELLIGENTLY. That's an intellectually dishonest straw-man argument, and the people who make it know that. They're just afraid to address the real issues because they know they're wrong, but want to defend the ID agenda for their own religious reasons they're afraid to admit in public, because they know they'll lose that argument.
-Don
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
"the rising popularity in the United States of 'intelligent design' - a controversial creationist theory of life - is eroding acceptance of evolutionary science in Canada." ---- Blaming the US for the ignorance of Canadian Christians.. I don't know how valid this is.
A reproduction.
Not much more to say.
I find your skepticism for all things big business particularly ironic when juxtaposed with your (apparent) faith.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
There is no theory of evolution. Just a list of animals Chuck Norris allows to live.
Also another article referencing the one above, and having more information as well.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
I hope you do not consider this a flame. There are holes in the sense there are lots and lots of gaps in the fossil record. Each time a new transitional species is found there a usually at least two more.
I'd only consider it a flame if you're implying more than you are saying. As it is, I agree. There are holes in the fossil record. In fact there is a hole for each organism we don't have a fossil of, and as such new findings only reduce the number of holes. However this is not the same as saying there are holes in evolutionary theory, in fact quite the opposite. Evolution predicted a creature like Archeopterix, and we found it. Evolution predicted a creature like Homo Erectus, and we found it. Each transitional species we find is reinforcement of evolution because it supports the predictions made by evolutionary theory.
The enemies of Democracy are
The Easter Bunny is the best proof yet of intelligent design! What other explanation is there for rabbits laying painted eggs on Jesus's birthday? Obviously that proves the existence of God, and supports the story of Adam and Eve.
-Don
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer proves ID! What other explanation is there for a reindeer having a bright red nose that lights up to guide Santa Clause's way to deliver gifts to all the good boys and girls? Even more proof for Intelligent Design, and another strike against the ridiculous idea that the Earth is more than 6000 years old.
-Don
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
ID claims that humans, the Earth, the universe, etc are much too complex to be the result of one or more accidents. Such complexity could only be the result of the intervention of a master architect or intelligent designer, if you will.
The problem with this is that it only pretends to solve the question by introducing an extra level of indirection. The logical followup question is never asked: how did a being as complex as the one that designed the universe come into existence?
If life, the universe, and everything are too complex to have come into existence by accident, then almost by definition, the designer, which is at least as complex and most likely even more complex than his/her/its creation, could not have come into existence by accident. And so by applying the principle of ID (complexity above a certain level requires an intelligent designer), we unavoidably come up with the notion that our designer has a designer of his/her/its own. Applying ID again, we see that our designer's designer has a designer of her/his/its own. And on and on we go ad nauseam, resulting in an infinite number of intelligent designers.
Ain't ID fun?
So-called intelligent design is a belief in creationism opposed to knowledge about evolution. Thus, ID is fighting against knowledge which is why their arguments are of the form "but the eye is too complex, prove it evolved. oh you can't and btw where's the missing link?". So how do you fight belief? By mocking it of course, hence the "flying sphagetti monster". Both approaches are similar in that they basically just insult the other side's core principles.
If you really want to fight their belief then come back with an equally compelling belief of your own. For example, argue with IDers that our universe is a mere simulation contained in another, greater one. "God" is a computer. This should be particularly infuriating because it actually makes more sense than "big bang" -or- christianity because it gives you an appeal to authority that is completely consistent with science. When they say "well science can't even explain gravity, what causes that? or explain quantum physics then?" you just say "it's part of the simulation duh". It just is, and covers for science's "problem" of not knowing everything. Plus you get to look as insane to them as they look to you, and by being finally on the same level of discourse some progress can be made.
Incidentally I think a Finite State Monster would be far more terrifying...
One doesn't have to be a Christian to be in favor of telling fairy tales to school children.
Every culture has its myths, including secular beliefs that eventually prove to be misconceptions.
The history of science is full of paradigm shifts, including many that are still underway.
If we want to attack myths, how about attacking myths about regulatory structures that claim to yield order, predictability, and stability (rather than chaos and instability).
I daresay that most people blithely adopt the widely-held secular belief that rule-driven systems are inherently stable, orderly, and predictable. School children are not only taught this, they are obliged to adopt this belief as our prevailing secular religion.
The mathematical truth may be a bit jarring, but the problem is that most people don't have enough math to understand why rule-driven systems are likely to be chaotic and unpredictable.
What's even worse, most people don't have enough math to understand how to design a functional regulatory structure that yields the stability lacking in rule-based architectures.
Poincare and Lorentz notwithstanding, this isn't a new idea. One can find this same idea in the Story of Adam and Eve.
The Orenda Project -- Community Soul on the Right Path http://www.musenet.org/orenda
Obviously, he got his answer to the question "Are American ID fanboys affecting the conduct of science in Canada." It's a resounding YES. And he didn't spend any government grant money to find out.
Edith Keeler Must Die
The pope said Creationism and the story of Adam and Eve are true, and he has an infallible doctrine that says he's never wrong. What more proof do you need! Everyone who believes the Pope without question should also be skeptical about Evolution. It's only fair and balanced.
Anyone who tells you that that the "Pope Says Evolution Compatible with Faith" or that John Paul II did say evolution was "more than a hypothesis," just doesn't understand the nuance of those words and the context in which they were spoken. You see, religions are special because they get to have it both ways.
-Don
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
Slashdot article gets modded down for failing to provide evidence of anti-evolution conspiracy.
Actually, the central insight in the Story of Adam and Eve is supported by the work of Poincare and Lorentz, not the Easter Bunny.
The Orenda Project -- Community Soul on the Right Path http://www.musenet.org/orenda
What stories prove is that if you want to get an idea across, packaging it up inside a good story is not such a bad idea.
Umberto Eco says, "Whereof we cannot make a theory, we must tell a story instead."
I say that even if we do have a good theory, we're prolly gonna have to package it up inside a good story anyway, if we wanna get it out there for public consumption.
The Orenda Project -- Community Soul on the Right Path http://www.musenet.org/orenda
Gosh darn it...
.../
Of course I would pick the indian creator god.
Sorry
From http://www.dollsofindia.com/library/article0007/2
Ganesha is the beginning of our world. He was created first and he gave shapes, the qualities, the elements, the modes of time, the Gods, the people. Ganesha is the symbol of the personality, which surpasses the human ego and superego. Ganesha is the innocence, living in constant worship of the Spirit. In other words, Ganesha is the unrealized, potential innocence in everything. Lord Ganesha is source of the illusive energy "Maya", hiding Atma (soul) from the mind in the same way as an illusion makes one mistake the rope for a snake.
Ganesha is also the Lord of Categories. All that can be counted or comprehended is a category (gana, hence the lord of gana, Gana-pati). The principle of all classifications through which the relations between different orders of things, between the macrocosm and the microcosm, can be understood is called the lord-of-categories.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
ID is not a competitive theory. It is not an alternative to Evolution. It proposes no alternative model to explain the things Evolution attempts to explain with it's model.
Intelligent Design is a criticism of evolutionary theory's gaps and an elucidation of the things it doesn't yet convincingly explain. As such, it's constructive and valuable scientific criticism. It also points out that science isn't all-knowing, which has always been one of it's primary tenets (which is more than you can say for religions).
Intelligent Design is Creationism cut off from it's religious materials. Instead, religious models of biology are hushed up, taken out back, and made "implict" so that proponents of ID don't have be ridiculed on their behalf. Instead of proposing whacky religious theories of biology which would be tossed out in a heartbeat, they simply attack evolution and let people believe whatever they want. Of course, we all know exactly what those beliefs are.
Instead, ID focuses on criticizing the science behind darwinism, a discussion science should welcome - because that's how science works.
Where it goes wrong is where we lose focus. I think as long as we can keep the focus on darwinism, rather than creationism, the soundness of evolutionary theory will stand out - ESPECIALLY because of the criticisms ID levels at it.
Those social studies people will just waste the money on semantic nonsense anyway.
Piltdown man
a tooth of a pig drawn into an apeman!
a lie and a fake 5 years by 1927.
Nebraska man
a lie and a fake for 40 years
by then everyone in the world thought they were from apes.
how did it take 40 years for the scientific community to find it was a clumsy fake?
Javaman (homo erectus)
discovered by Dr Dubois and he himself declared in 1938 that it was just a monkey (gibbon)
he had found human skulls in the same stratum did not tell anyone for 30 years!
a lie and he eventually renounced the javaman as a fraud himself
Peking man
Dr. black discovered it
a tooth and some ashes
soon after human remains were found mixed with animal remains. the animal remains were the food of the humans.
hey but they wanted an apeman! so they grabbed bits of both and made Peking Man!
1972
Richard Leaky
found a skull that supposedly blew evolution out of the water by 2.5 million years. the only thing left was
ramapithecus. just some fragments of jaw bones and some teeth. the same size and shape as a babboon in ethiopia.
It never has been found and it never will be found a creature that is more than brute and less than human.
Also there is such little evidence for apemen that the amount would not be accepted in any other field of science.
And there's plenty more evidence for the non-existenance of evolution!
(I know this is not what you like to hear, so just score me a 0 as usual. Thanks)
Why is that ID is the recipient of so many attacks. There is nothing "unscientific" about the notion that there is an intelligence greater than ourselves that created this universe we live in. There is no single contradiction with science as we know it. It contradicts Evolutionary theory, if you call that science. The scientific method states we should start with evidence and draw our conclusions from experimentation on the evidence. Darwin began with a fundamentally flawed premise, which was to say Creation is incorrect because he didn't believe in God, therefore there must be another way. He did not prove there was no God, but yet started from this premise. It is wrong to assume that which there is no evidence for. All evidence points to Intelligent Design. The oldest known documents also back this theory up. Evolution was born from the denial of a man that made up a fantasy theory in which no God was required. Evolution has so many contradictions to evidence. Theory should be the result of experiment and observation of results. I am glad ID is making the headway it is. Evolution just doesn't follow reason.
And in case you'd like evidence to back you up, here is the actual scientific paper describing the "too stupid to know it" phenomenon. http://www.apa.org/journals/features/psp7761121.pd f/
----- And all that the Lorax left here in this mess was a small pile of rocks, with one word...UNLESS.
That, or we could get smarter policy makers who don't need idiotic studies to make up their minds on things most rational people have little trouble with?
/that/ would ever happen.
Right, sorry. I guess I'm just dreaming to think that
'intelligent design' - a controversial creationist theory of life
Look, dumbshits. It's not a theory. And it's not controversial, it's just wrong. How about this, more accurate description:
'intelligent design' - a wrongheaded piece of creationist propaganda
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
Did you hide any Easter Eggs inside any of the Sim Games you developed?
See, it's all about capturing people's fancy and imagination.
The Orenda Project -- Community Soul on the Right Path http://www.musenet.org/orenda
Yes, I think we are in agreement. It is true that the "gaps" in the sense I used the term serves as confirmation of evolutionary theory. But the number of gaps is increasing because, as you pointed out, the number of transitional species we discover are increasing. It is debatable how many gaps each new discovery adds. One would expect a one to one correspondence but it is not always a liner relationship (branching). Also, it could be semantically interpreted to mean each new species creates a "gap" before and after its kind.
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
I don't understand. Why does he have to prove that the theory is true to get the right to prove the effects of those who believe the theory on those who do not and vice versa? One is a study in biological sciences, the other is a study in sociological sciences. The two are not the same thing believe it or not, despite the fact that some rare societies do form in nature. I have yet to hear of a group of wolves fighting over whether God created them or they came ultimately from a small thing swimming around in the ocean, but, you can demonstrate the effects, of, say a group of humans who believes God hates wolves on any nearby packs without having to prove that the wolves came from the ocean so long ago. Just counting the heads should be enough I think. Might want to look at the other way around too though. Count human heads too.
If you think about it, the imagined situation, while a bit far-fetched, is rather comparable to the sitation of Darwinists vs Creationists. (Oh, and before you start automatically associating wolves with violence, most wolves hunt the sick and old and typically attack humans only after being close to death due to starvation or having been attacked first because the human believes the stereotypes that wolves are horrible beings who love to eat humans. There are exceptions, but, then again, there are exceptions to the rule that most humans don't try to kill each other for no reason...)
I second the earlier mention that it's synonymous to a scientist being denied a grant to prove a deadly meteor is on a colision course with the earth because he has to prove gravity first. It doesn't matter whether you believe in gravity or not, the fact is, the meteor is coming whether it is because gravity is pulling it in some direction or because the super titans of planet Excelon tossed it our way. All that matters is whether it is going the right direction and speed or not. You can debate over gravity and other such things all you like, but, I want to know if it's time to start making my "things I want to do before I die" list, not see proof positive beyond a shadow of a doubt that an apple falls at the same rate as a rock excluding the effects of air friction because of an attractive force between them and the Earth. (Ok, maybe not the best example since no one questions gravity, but, you get the general idea.)
The Real Topic is how people form their beliefs, including how they model the beliefs of others with whom they are not very familiar.
I've been collecting evidence about how you form beliefs about other people, Don.
I believe your methods could stand to be a tad more scientific, Don.
Take, for example, a famous fairy tale, known as the Tragedy of Romeo and Juliette. In that story, the central characters form erroneous beliefs and act on them as if they were accurate, without bothering to check their veracity. The outcome, of course, is tragedy.
I have a question for you, Don. Why are you so eager to conclude that I hold untenable beliefs? What's in it for you, if you can assert that someone else is laboring under a misconception?
The Orenda Project -- Community Soul on the Right Path http://www.musenet.org/orenda
It's not just the existence of God that people are arguing for. Christian fundamentalists would be horrified to be told that God exists but doesn't intervene in human affairs, for example.
What's at stake, according to the fears of the ID/creationist crowd, is the specific idea of a God who deliberately created humans as they are and who issued a set of documentation with them which constitutes morality. In other words, it's about the nature of humanity, which they see as distinguished from other animals by a spark of divinity. Chimpanzees, they might say, are amoral -- without resourt to the supernatural, how can we logically require animals 98% similar to chimps in their DNA to obey a code of morals?
Before you can use reason you have to address fears. You could try pointing out that humans were decorating graves and writing theCode of Hammurabi long before the Bible was written and won't suddenly revert to animalism if they abandon the 20th-centruy movement to take the entire Bible literally.
I can state without a shadow of a doubt, it's an absolute fact that I have two testicles.
You're only saying that because you know we're not going to ask you to prove it!
Well since they both can't be unequivocally proved, I don't see a problem with this....
Well the only problem is that the board didn't think about how much bandwidth on slashdot would be wasted over another ID vs Evo "shit a brick fest".
So what i got 4 wifes? They all get a turn.
I'm surprised you don't know this, Don.
It has to do with the wisdom (or foolishness) of dividing things into binary categories called Right and Wrong (or Good and Evil).
There are two competing characters in that oft-told story. One of them warns Adam and Eve not to adopt the practice of dividing things into discrete categories called Right and Wrong (or Good and Evil). This character warns them that doing so will lead to tragic outcomes.
Another character convinces Adam and Eve to go with the binary category paradigm (which they do).
Now to be fair, the Story of Adam and Eve was written long before Poincare and Lorentz worked out the mathematics of Chaos Theory, so it's understandable why their theory is wrapped up in the form of a story. After all, most people enjoy and respond to stories, but glaze their eyes when some tiresome professor starts spouting theory. Especially mathematics.
Now I don't like to call Adam and Eve's mistake 'Original Sin'.
I prefer to call it Hammurabi's Original Logic Error (HOLE).
Of course, it's probably unfair to attribute it solely to Hammurabi, but he does get credit for being among the first to enshrine it on stone tablets.
The cute thing about calling it HOLE (instead of 'Orginal Sin') is that one can then say that those who reprise this classic mistake are laboring with a HOLE in their head.
The Orenda Project -- Community Soul on the Right Path http://www.musenet.org/orenda
ID was created to destroy the "heretical" teaching of evolution
It's worth pointing out that Intelligent Design as a term has been used in a variety of ways by a variety of people and only a subset of them use it in the way you describe. It's a common misunderstanding that ID was designed to combat Evolution, but the truth is that it was really designed to draw a clear line between the beliefs of the Judeo-Islamic-Christian groups and those of many other faiths and to a lesser extent atheists. Whiule we bleieve that the universe is the byproduct of an Intelligence or directed Will, many other faiths see it as something more impersonal. This, as the original poster said, is not fundamentally in disagreement with Evolution.
However, just as with the Dixie flag, the German cross, and the phrase "Who ya gonna call?" it has been ruined by prominent subsequent use such that it can no longer serve its original purpose.
As a degreed theologian, that pisses me the hell off because it used to be quite an elegant answer to the question of the one of the larger differences in faith; now it is useless to me.
Tom Caudron
http://tom.digitalelite.com/religion.html
-Tom
Science funds should go to fund science, not politics.
So take it back. That's what I did.
To my mind (and you know this already), Intelligent Design is something we strive to do in Engineering.
Creation is something we do in the Creative Arts.
One of the things I'd like to discover how to do more intelligently is to create stories that inspire, entertain, and enlighten.
Making up stories that scandalize, demean, or ridicule others doesn't strike me as exemplary of the intelligent design of a functional story that inspires and enlightens in an entertaining manner.
The Orenda Project -- Community Soul on the Right Path http://www.musenet.org/orenda
The 'Talking Snake Theory' of human origins should be equally matched
with a sticker stuck to the front of all Bibles listing all the 15,000 or so 'alternative god' theories
(the Greeks, Romans, Thor, Odin, Ra, South American, Native American, African, Egyptian, Asian, Pacific Islands, Various European gods, UFOs, etc...).
Also the Bible should come with a disclaimer, saying the Author(s) is/are not responsible for the ongoing global genocide against indigenous peoples, three way Islam/Hebrew/Christian warfare, various anti-semitism movements, and the overall bloodshed, race hatred, justification of slavery, female oppression, denial of civil rights, ethnic cleansing crusades, class warfare, and the 'clash of cultures' created by the 'Good Book'.
Supporters of Intelligent design should also remember never use new advanced antibiotics, no matter how sick they get. Newer Antibiotic medicine is only needed if disease causing bacteria can 'evolve', and that is only a theory, not a fact. So, in theory, I.D.rs don't need medicine, they should just get better all by themselves!!!
If GM loses money, most people would say, GM needs to build better cars. In a similar vein, scientists have to stop whining about how the public prefers TV preachers and snake oil salesmen to them and start asking themselves why that might be the case.
Let me throw some things to correct out there.
a) Scientists making grand predictions that do not happen. Global cooling comes to mind.
b) Scientists making recommendations that were proven to be horribly bad. Anyone remember the four food groups? Yes, the US Government scientists recommended that everyone each roughly a ration of 1 carb, 1 cheese, 1 beef, and 1 fish per day. You could substitute peanut butter for fish.
c) Scientists involved in ethics scandals. I worked on a case where scientists invented a drug, but it totally didn't work and wasn't going to make it through the FDA. So, they loaded up the trials by stuffing the placebo group full of people with severe sepsis infections (aka, doomed to die), in order to make the drug look effective, and lied to families of those dying about the hopes...
d) Scientists can't think on their feet. Scientists really do not know how to debate in a political sense. As such, whenever they get political, they usually sound stupid, and that undermines their credibility in their field.
e) Scientists that patronize people with less of an educated background. You know, you get that advanced degree and you want to feel like royalty, but, it shows. Then, when you bumble on your feet, see d), the public loves to see you crash, ignores everything you say, and then, goes off and hangs out with the preacher that makes them feel good.
f) Science costs too much money. Have you seen how much a subscription to Nature costs? Who the heck is going to buy that when the Church gives out their stuff for free!
The list goes on and on and on. But really, if Science and the people who practice it had a solid reputation, and image, it wouldn't be under assault from those who basically make stuff up (ID folks). GM wants you to buy their cars, they should make them better. Similarly, if scientists want to sell their beliefs, they should make them better.
Until you supposed smart people can see that basic point, people are going to go on and buy into ID, crystals or whatever else that someone can invent.
This is my sig.
Ugh...
"The rising popularity in the United States of 'intelligent design' - a controversial creationist theory of life - is eroding acceptance of evolutionary science in Canada"
Repeat after me, people -- ID is NOT creationism.
In fact, ID and creationism are antithetical to each other -- if one is true, the other is false.
Creationism == the earth was created as it was said in the bible (created in 7 days, the earth is only a couple thousand years old, etc.)
ID == natural selection is true, creatures evolved, but an intelligent designer influenced evolution.
If the professor himself couldn't understand this very basic difference between the two ideas, he definitely didn't deserve to get a grant to study it. It'd be like a physicist not understanding the difference between newtonian and quantum physics applying for a grant to study the possible implications of quantum mechanics.
Before you can use reason you have to address fears. You could try pointing out that humans were decorating graves and writing the Code of Hammurabi long before the Bible was written and won't suddenly revert to animalism if they abandon the 20th-centruy movement to take the entire Bible literally.
One thing the biblical-era writers were good at was constructing stories that became the basis for inculcating themselves into their culture.
Tom Clancy reminds us that a well-told story has to embrace and sum up all the fears of the characters who inhabit the story.
I'm not sure why it is, but modern man seems peculiarly inept when it comes to reasoning about fear. The few who get good at it become novelists and playwrights.
One doesn't have to take bible stories literally to appreciate them as literature. Then again, we can also turn to the modern era of novels for even keener insights about dramas emerging from the sum of all fears.
Dostoevsky did that as well as any writer of traditional bible stories.
The Orenda Project -- Community Soul on the Right Path http://www.musenet.org/orenda
>>The whole point of Intelligent Design is to be an alternative to evolution, to
>>replace it with a theory that (very) superficially* does not seem to be
>>religious in nature.
Panspermia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panspermia) is a valid (ish) scientific theory, that would serve as the "intelligent designer" of ID. Crick, IIRC, is an atheist who also believes in panspermia (which I'd say qualifies him as an ID believer).
So, yes, it's quite possible to be a scientist, an atheist, and believe in ID.
The problem is coming up with a functional way of understanding abstract ideas.
How do we understand the Process of Creation in the Cosmos, or the Process of Evolution in the Biosphere, or the Process of Enlightenment in the Noösphere, or the Discovery Learning Process in the Developing Mind, or the Creative Problem-Solving Process, or the Healing Process, or the Peace-Making Process?
Traditionally, we have found it helpful to make up stories in which some heroic figure represents one of these abstractions.
I don't have a problem with the use of storycraft to help us wrap our brains around abstract ideas. And I don't have a problem populating stories with heroic characters. Storycraft is a useful tool in educating young people and inculcating them into a culture.
Science could probably profit from making better use of storycraft as an educational tool.
Having said that, it's important not to take our stories too seriously. What we need to take seriously is the intelligent use of story and drama to encapsulate elusive abstractions.
The Orenda Project -- Community Soul on the Right Path http://www.musenet.org/orenda
Being in Slashdot, a simile with disk fragmentation could be used: Each time a new file is placed more or less randomly in a blank space on disk, it'll fill part of that hole, while at the same time increasing the number of holes (one before and one after the new file). So in a way, new additions to the fossil registry increase the fragmentation of the evolutionary hard drive.
To do list for Windows
There are no "Darwinists". There are biologists.
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
Its like believing in the postman.
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
Evolution is inconsistent with the Abrahamic ... god.
Not really. Consider that the God of Abraham didn't have a name until Moses bothered to ask.
In the Hebrew, Moses learns that the God of the Hebrews is called Eheyah Asher Eheyah.
It's an interesting name. If you translate it literally, it comes out 'Will Be What Will Be'.
Not very grammatical.
But if you allow for the poetry of the language, you can render the name of the OT God as 'The Process of Creation'.
As a scientist, I happen to believe in the Process of Creation, the Process of Evolution, the Process of Enlightenment, etc. Science is largely about understanding how those processes work.
The Framers of the Constitution were Deists who also believed in Nature's God. Not only that, they understoond that the ongoing work of creating the world we live in is everyone's responsibility.
For some odd reason, modern day humans still fight over the names of these essential abstractions and their meanings.
The Orenda Project -- Community Soul on the Right Path http://www.musenet.org/orenda
McGill was where Ernest Rutherford and Frederic Soddy actually made some of their earliest vital discoveries about the structure of the atom, during Rutherford's first job out of his education at Cavendish.
sounds like all you're going to be able to study there now is the so-called gospel of Judah....
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
http://www.economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm? story_id=6740040 MMkay, lets find something else to divide up about. Gingers vs. nongingers debate anyone? Gingers are the supreme race!
The very notion of science itself is incompatible with religion.
No it isn't. Science itself is a kind of religion, with beliefs and practices adopted on faith.
Science takes as its central premise that nothing should escape testing or questioning.
That sounds like a recipe for The Inquisition.
But the real central premise of science is that observable phenomena can be understood, explained, and even predicted in terms of testable theories and models. The notion that the world can be understood in theoretical terms is an unprovable belief. It's a successful belief, but it can't be proven.
Moreover, the method for constructing scientific theories -- the Scientific Method -- is also adopted on faith. There is no guarantee that it will work in every case.
Part of the problem that we face in science is that the theories we are obliged to construct are often mathematically subtle and abstruse. Most lay people don't have the math to understand the mathematical models which comprise many of our best theories.
One of the reasons people like to debate Darwinism is because there isn't very much math in it, and so the lay public can readily understand what it's saying. Lay people don't take issue with Newtonian Gravitational Mechanics or Einstein's models because they are written in pure math -- a language most lay people don't understand. More to the point, they don't even take issue with population genetics, since that's mostly about calculating probabilities associated with breeding. And that was a subject founded by a religious cleric who bred peas.
The Orenda Project -- Community Soul on the Right Path http://www.musenet.org/orenda
So whenever someone uses the word fair, make sure you know which word they are using.
i'd hit it so hard, if you pulled me out you'd be the king of britain [bash.org]
Board: So, you'd like a grant to look for evidence to support your theory?
Scientist: Yes
Board:Very well, all we need is evidence that your theory is correct, and will give you the grant.
Scientist:Ummm....
...this sounds a little like a political stunt to me.
AFAIK, the word "detrimental" almost never features in the title of research proposals. "Study into the effects of..." yes, "Study into the detrimental effects of..." no.
IANAP (I am not a professor), but it seems to me that if you put a presupposition like "the detrimental effects of..." into the title of your research proposal, then you are begging the research council to reject it on the grounds that you have presupposed that the effect is detrimental before you have carried out your research, so you are less likely to produce objective results. Regardless of what you are studying. If he had simply put titled his research "an investigation into the effects of belief in intelligent design on Canadian science" (simply dropping the presupposition "detrimental"), I'm not so sure it would have been rejected.
And $40,000 seems a small sum for a research grant too, making me wonder if the submission's value might have been as much political as monetary. (Acceptance gives a chance to say "see, even the research council agrees ID is detrimental"; rejection gives the opportunity to rail against the influence of ID on the research council...)
But then it might just be me being a cynic because the whole ID debate in the continent of North America is so politically-infused.
Q: Why do programmers confuse Christmas with Halloween?
A: Because DEC 25 = OCT 31
-Don
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
id isn't creationism - ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha haha ha ha ha ha ha ha
:"the grant was for a study into the detrimental effects of intelligent design on Canadian academics and leaders."
Sounds like he had already arrived at his conclusion, i.e. that there were effects and that they were detrimental. Now all he has to do is "create" (pardon the pun) some evidence.
Doesn't sound like science to me. Probably deserved to be turned down, though not for the reason stated.
Imagine people who believe/preach about babies being conceived without intercourse.
Imagine people who believe/preach about all babies born are evil.
Imagine people who believe/preach about people coming back from the dead - zombies that is
Imagine people who believe/preach about the earth only being 5000 years old
Can you imagine the above people deciding what scientific and what's not
ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
The Evolution of Eyes
Hello Canada, We have a lot of nuts here in the U.S.A. Our nuts have the right to expression since we have free expression. Its part of our constitution. We like that way. We are not going to change it. No matter how wrong, dumb, or hurtfull the speech of these nuts is, we are not going to amend our constitution to silence them (as some other countries have). Get used to it. We have.
On the other hand you people of Canada also rights, amoung these rights
is the right to ignore what our nuts say. We recomend that you do so. We do.
When you say "We're prolly gonna have to package it up inside a good story anyway, if we wanna get it out there for public consumption", I wonder: is that particular wording the product of your intelligent design process?
Your statement reminds me how George W Bush affects his artificial good old boy colloquial accent, makes anti-intellectual statements to appeal to his base, talks down to the American people as if they were children, makes up nice sounding stories he knows aren't true, "packages" the truth he refuses say in public, and doesn't believe the American people deserve to know what he really thinks.
As they say in Texas (or is it Tennessee?), and as Laura Bush embroiders across several pillows: "There's an old saying in Tennessee -- I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee -- that says, fool me once, shame on -- shame on you. Fool me -- you can't get fooled again."
The Affective Computing Rearch Group at MIT Media Lab should hit the White House Press Office up for some research funding, to help perfect the skill of looking directly into the camera and lying with a straight face. The Bush Administration is going to need to get a lot better at that, during the next few years.
Maybe they'd pay Picard millions of dollars to develop a vibrator for Bush Administration officials that goes off when people look like the don't believe the lies they're being told with a straight face. Just to be fair and balanced, imagine what a mess we could have avoided if Bill Clinton had one: "I did not have sexual relations with that woman. BZZZZZZZZZZZ!"
Doesn't Bill O'Reilly already have one of those? It just always going off all the time, for him!
-Don
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
This is what occurs when such a situation happen.. And now Stephen Harper ends his speeches with "God Bless Canada"! Why does conservatism include religion? i mean.. they could be conservatives and use typewriters.
No one will read this comment, but if you are, i hope you didnt read all the 8.5 Mb of crap placed before it. ah!
Brought you by Religion® - Your source for fights and wars since 2000 B.C. (tm)
I hope this isn't lost at the end of the thread but if anyone wants to leave an imprint on these boobs who think it's that easy to "prove evolution". I have some email addresses you might enjoy.
h tm h eap.html 6 5 r _ruth.html
Links that have emails for the SSHRC members who rejected Alters application:
http://www.english.ucalgary.ca/faculty/s_bennett.
http://www.ucs.mun.ca/~lfelt/oldindex.html
http://www.uottawa.ca/academic/arts/history/prof_
http://www.uqac.ca/aemeir/articles.php?lng=fr&pg=
http://www.economie.uqam.ca/fich_profs_html/prof_
I was tempted to paste the emails directly but I didn't want to get in trouble for that. If you care about this, send them an email and tell them how you feel and if you're Canadian cc your MP, you never know if your MP might get involved. I cc'ed mine, I hope he does something because this just hurts. I'm without words to convey how pissed I am.
Oops, how did this get here?
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
As a degreed theologian, that pisses me the hell off because it used to be quite an elegant answer to the question of the one of the larger differences in faith; now it is useless to me.
Well, that's unfortunate. Since your explanation sound definitely more theological, I'm going to say the problem started when someone decided to apply the concept to science, for political ends no less. This also suggests even more strongly that the underpinnings of the ID-as-science movement are in fact religious.
You have piqued my curiosity about what term originally meant, though.
The enemies of Democracy are
A proof that God does not exist:
http://www.pvv.org/~kim/Bevis.html
So there, now you know that God does not exist,
and therefore cannot have created life.
And Darwin was right.
Kim0
Right. Except ID acknowledges an old earth, natural selection, etc.
Which part of "not created in 7 days" is so hard for you to understand?
Many creationists are drawn to ID since it isn't based on sollipsism, but it's unquestionable creationism and ID are mutually incompatible theories.
Learn2Think. KKTHX.
Panspermia is a valid (ish) scientific theory, that would serve as the "intelligent designer" of ID.
No, see, it wouldn't. Having life come from another planet doesn't address the fundamental issue ID has, which is complex organs like eyes and brains and intelligence itself arising naturally.
If you're referring to the version where bacteria somehow made the journey to earth from somewhere else, which I think could certainly be possible, then that bacteria would still have to evolve into us. ID says this is impossible.
If you mean that aliens sent/brought life to earth and possibly manipulated it, this is also at least conceivable, where did the aliens capable of doing this come from? They either had to arise naturally (impossible acording to ID), or have been designed themselves. Thus the recursive problem I described in my footnote.
Space aliens do not work. The only origin of intelligent life ID allows is supernatural. Panspermia is not equivalent to or compatable with ID. I wouldn't believe that Crick was an ID believer unless he had said so himself.
The enemies of Democracy are
That's what happens when you give decision power to idiots. A most unfortunate side effect of democracy. A few idiots in charge of billions can do a lot of dammage (e.g. the Bush government).
On the research side, politics and funding always dominate the research agenda. Our modern scientific tradition started somewhere around the renaissance period. Funding in those days came from the catholic church which only recently and grudgingly accepted some of the scientific findings of that era as true.
Now even Darwin is finding acceptance in some religious corners. Intelligent Design people are firmly rooted in the conservative, anti change, anti progress corner. These people are the descendants of those that claimed the earth was flat, the sun is revolving around the earth (logically only after the previous was accepted as true), and that some guy with a beard created the earth in seven days. This strange collection of pseudo scientist, ignorant peasants and religious nuts can do a lot of dammage through their political power. Not only can they do this but they do so on a regular basis.
For research agenda's this usually means that they are driven primarily by short term political issues. Getting long term research funding is hard and it requires good marketing skills from the researcher. For evolutionary researchers in the US this means being friendly to those intelligent design nuts that otherwise vote your research projects away with their wallet.
Jilles
I'll never understand the intelligent design versus evolution debate. The two seem to me to have nothing to do with one another. Evolution is a valid scientific theory based on physical evidence and intelligent design is more of a philosophy that really can't be proven one way or another. Further, they aren't mutually exclusive. If there is a God, why couldn't he/she/it have used evolution as the means to design life? Clearly, if there is a God that's exactly how he/she/it went about it.
ID and evolution are in conflict because of Edwards vs. Aguillard, the US Supreme Court ruling that struck down the teaching of "creation science" in public schools. ID is nothing more than an attempt to re-insert creationism into public school by avoiding any explicitly religious terminology. This was graphically demonstrated in the Dover court case, when it was shown that the publishers of "Of Pandas and People" had simply done a find-and-replace to swap out the term "creation science" for "intelligent design." The definitions used for the two were identical.
For sale: one sig space, gently used. Inquire for details.
Fucking right you are!
You post this crap every time that there's a ID/Darwin discussion on Slashdot.
Fo the X millionth time ID is not a theory .
If you have nothing useful to contribute to the debate SHUT THE FUCK UP, WANKER!
No but, yeah but, no but...
While the article mentions creationism's 'rising popularity', I'd dispute that. What I'd say is that the exposure of creationism is growing. It wasn't that long ago that whole states banned the teaching of evolution, then we had moaning and complaining about the occasional district that taught 'alternatives' to evolution(IE they'd actually teach them creation along with evolution). Now we're working on stupid 'a theory is only a theory' stickers for a very few districts.
It's almost like a KKK rally. Used to be that one would be local news at best. Nowadays whenever they manage to put together a half dozen people it makes national news. Do we have a 'rising problem with discrimination'. No, not at all. It's just that the remaining events get so much attention that it looks worse.
I don't read AC A human right
And why you insist on acting as though you are correct is a bit childish.
Those people who agree with the idea of punctuated equilibrium are not Darwinists. In fact, they often come to different conclusions, but just as often agree.
In other words, yes there are Darwinists. You are wrong.
"The government grants you rights, not the other way around."-- beav007. Yes, these people really exist...
Then perhaps you should learn how to read better. You seem to have taken claims made by one side of the debate and misinterpreted it as a complete and accurate account of the situation. And ofcourse the accused are going to say, "there is no controversy here, we did nothing wrong." The reason for the controversy is clearly stated in the following parts of the article:
I have no idea how you could have missed that crucial portion of the article, but it's abundantly clear from the text that the controversy isn't simply over the fact that Alters was denied funding. It's why he was denied that is the point of contention. The SSHRC's executive VP is arguing that they didn't deny Alters' request based on a disagreement over the validity of evolutionary theory. McGill University is arguing that they did. I think it's more than plausible that Halliwell is just be defending her agency's decision. Her ambiguous and avoidant responses seem to suggest that she hasn't taken a hard stance on the issue and/or she's hiding something:
Ohhh... so the letter was open to misinterpretation. Gee, I guess someone ought take a formal composition class and learn how to express their thoughts more clearly. Or perhaps this is a case similar to how Intelligent Design "theory" is often misinterpreted as a thinly-veiled creationist subterfuge put forth to inject religious beliefs into the our public schools' science curricula. But let's see what else she says:
Hrmm... her mention of "confidentiality obligations" seems awfully suspicious. It's almost as if she has something to hide... And her statements about scientific understanding of life being incomplete and "evolving" seems a bit gratuitous don't you think? C'mon, all bodies of scientific knowledge are constantly undergoing evolution; it's not just biology, and it's not just current theories. There's no point in even making such vacuous statements. Furthermore, if the validity of evolution really were a non-issue here, why then does she even mention
WRONG. Your suggestions to send some textbooks to Canada for the purpose of proving your idea would only compound your problem if intellegent and informed people reveiw them. The theory or eveloution as it now stands (Phylogeny) contradicts BASIC Mendel genetics. I.E. -Individual variation remains constant- In other words genetic information varies only within the existing information in a gene pool--new information cannot be added. Information can only be sorted and rearanged within the population. There has never been any example of new information being added. Now, unless you've got some proof that Mendel is wrong, you'd better reconsider sending your textbooks.
Listen, you're being a prick about this, so I'm going to enlighten you.
The word "Detrimental" in the title displays bias. And no, it doesn't matter if you think it does, because these boards aren't based on what people think, they're based on rigorous standars set by the scientific community.
The words "anti-evolution" are also biased, and unacceptable, based on the same standards.
These standards, and the problems I pointed out to you, are well understood in the field, and no one who has any experience in grant writing or funding would have difficulty with them. In other words, this guy should have known better, and fankly he probably did.
The grant submitter based his proposal on a (well defined, generally accepted) theory, but DID NOT adequately justify why he did so. That isn't the same as "evolution isn't proven" it is actually "you didn't do a good enough job in this application of explaining why you assumed evolution was valid for this study".
He didn't get rejected because he didn't provide proof of evolution, he got rejected because he wrote a biased, unacceptable grant proposal. Then he got up in front of an audience and read it.
You got fooled by a publicity whore.
And the worst part of all is that you aren't listening when people explain it to you.
Why are you allowing yourself to be manipulated so easily?
"The government grants you rights, not the other way around."-- beav007. Yes, these people really exist...
You know. I'd really like to see how these people would interpret quantum theory with their own special spin. We know that parts of the standard model are a bit iffy - wouldn't it be a better target for them?
Discuss.
I agree with most of your post except for your belief that non human forms of life lack the "divine spark" of humans, or as you have said, lack the ability to deny one's impulses, etc. I think as time goes on, more rigorous scientific study will prove that animals possess many of these characteristics that were previously applied to humans only. i wait for the day that scientific equipment is sensitive enough to measure someone's chi, q, vital life spark, or "divine spark". EEG's, brainwaves, or pulse are currently a brute force and gross way of oversimplifying that picture. That day might be a ways off. Probably about the time that quantum physics theory becomes more than a theory. until then, we only have compelling stories such as these, such as this story explaining that chickens practice self control http://www.goveg.com/f-hiddenliveschickens.asp or that cockroaches colllobarate, previously reported here on slashdot http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/04/0 4/1532235&from=rss
Yes I do mind. Not because I can't, but because you ran your mouth without having checked into it yourself. You're a typical slashtroll know it all, and regardless of where I send you (apa.org, csaa.ca, cpa.ca) you'll make an excuse and defend your point.
Everything I stated in my post is general knowledge amongst researchers. As in, THEY don't have to look up why "detrimental" isn't acceptable because they ALL know already. They wouldn't have made it out of Research Methods 101 if they didn't.
But because you asked, "detrimental" has a negative connotation (first reason it's unacceptable) AND it presupposes that there WILL BE detrimental effects.
You simply aren't qualified to discuss this if you have to ask these questions.
And you're a troll, so we're done. Go on jumping to conclusions and looking like an idiot. It just makes things that much harder for REAL scientists and researchers, who you claim to support.
(and why didn't you answer my question? You're being manipulated, and you're letting happen by wallowing in ignorance and refusing to be educated)
"The government grants you rights, not the other way around."-- beav007. Yes, these people really exist...
The old saying "bullshit baffles brains" is what this is all about.
The religious nutcases (The Taliban of America) still trying to bullshit their way into control of the America.
But the Judge, a Republican appointed by Bush, in the Dover case - ruled:
Creationism is I.D.
How many tons of bullshit do you guys have stored away? You'll need it for the next election in the USA.
He freely admitted that evolution could not explain complex organs like the eye.
I don't know why everybody keeps pointing to the eye as some organ that had to be intelligently designed. It is easy enough to show how the eye developed from primitive structures that were only able to sense general light levels, with each slight improvement giving a minor competitive edge to that organism. MORESO, there is one GIANT flaw in the eye that it seems no logical, intelligent being would have designed..... the blind spot!
Common engineering sense (is that an oxymoron?) would dictate that you put the neural connections in the BACKSIDE of the retina instead of running them through the front, creating a lovely small patch of blindness in each retina.
Once I saw an ID video that was offering "evidence" of an intelligent designer by showing how well bananas were designed. that they perfectly fit in the human hand and even had an "easy open tab" just like a soda can. He stated that there is no reason we would think a soda can formed by chance, so why should we assume that this banana formed on its own?
Anyone who actually bought his argument should have their debating rights permanently taken away. First of all, soda cans do not reproduce. Secondly, fruit having that form are easier for us to each, which is EXACTLY why they're more likely to reproduce in accordance with natural selection because they spread their fruit through the feces of animals that ingest them. Thirdly, guess who else eats bananas? APES!
Finally, my whopper of them all... did anyone notice how they didn't use coconuts as an example?
This single sentence shows that the spin on the rejection is correct, and exemplify the damage done by the id movement.
And if you don't see the problem with the above sentence in a rejection from a scientific committe, you also exemplify the damage.
Just like you shouldn't need to justify why the kind-of-round Earth theory is correct, and the flat-Earth theory is pseudo-science, when doing an scientific application.
Science builds on science, and some level of scientific literacy, including which theories are part of the scientific consensus and don't need to be defended in an application, must be expected by the people who grant such applications. Without such an awareness it would be impossible to write any scientific application.
With either interpretation of the sentence, the committee members demonstrated that they are unqualified to serve in the committee.
The stated reason for the rejection. There are plenty of good reasons to reject the study, but that the applicantion didn't justify that evolution is correct and id is pseudoscience is not one of them.
These two statements in the linked article, only a few lines apart on the first page, don't jive: "I think SSHRC should come out and state that evolution is a scientific fact and that intelligent design is not." "...the scientific world's understanding of life 'is not static. There's an evolution in the theory of evolution.'" According to Oxford: fact: (noun) actuality, certainty; truth, verity, gospel. antonym lie, fiction. "Current theories" of evolution will be discarded as time goes on. Darwinian evolution is passe, so theories like Punctuated Equilibrium and the like "arise" to deal with the growing set of "facts" that make older theories obsolete. So, any theory of evolution cannot be a fact per se because we don't have all the facts and can't say for sure at all how it works. Evolution is a theory and not a fact. Evolution will always remain a theory because it can't be proven empirically in the most rudimentary scientific fashion. Given enough time, though, we should be able to prove evolution is true. For now, it's a theory grounded on the limited powers of our observation. This is growing too.
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Science is methodology and Religion is theology. Both can be taught at the same time as they are different subjects.
Twinstiq, game news
What terrifies me about this sort of thing isn't the purile level of argument, it's the vindictive pettiness. God's final plan for the world amounts to a big ol' spate of vengeance on people who didn't toe the line properly, for them. They congratulate themselves on knowing so. That pettiness seems to have become the great truth of their lives, and it has basically nothing to do with Jesus except so far as he's a sort of golden idol they worship.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
No, I did read the article and I am still satisfied with everything but my spelling. I don't get distracted by the smoke and mirrors. The reseach proposal is a political troll, not a meritorious poposal of study. So the entire "debate" is artificial. Evolution serves as the perfect vehicle for the secular liberals to pick a fight. Sometimes I think they believe it is "their" theory, rather than a vehicle to promote deeper understanding.
I think SSHRC should come out and state that evolution is a scientific fact and that intelligent design is not.
This is a revealing statement that suggests these social scientists don't understand what theory is. Evolution is a prominent principle of biology that explains much about the succession of fauna. Having said that, it is quite stagnant, has little predictive value, and after 150 years is not formulated mathematically. As a physical scientist, I have never been very impressed. Compare evolution to general relativity, quantum mechanics, classical mechanics or any other theory that has predictive power. Although each is amazingly successful, debate on their deficiencies is not a taboo subject. The bar for their improvement is awesomely high, but no one goes around calling them facts. Simple minded people equate dissatisfaction with the state of evolutionary theory with support for ID, which is not the case.
an ill wind that blows no good
... with that quote. We've all tried democracy, theocracy, monarchy, anarchy, etc. What we need to do now, is to try to form a type of government that doesn't include ANY sort of religious speech or mannerisms, but in lieu of those missing religious statements, includes scientific proof to back up what we do know, PLUS we need something that (sadly) invalidates one's own beliefs. I'm as much for free thought as the next free-thinking person, sadly, there are millions still enslaved to their faith and oppressive beliefs, not their education which would state otherwise.
There is a nice hitch to all of this, however. Eventually, I forsee a rational government/scientific structure evolving that will absolutely refuse to acknowledge that which has no proof, and will seek to learn how such things work as they really are, without the fallacies of belief.
If only.... *sigh*
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
God did not create evil. Your equation rests on the assumption that evil IS something and not the LACK of something. Much like there is no "thing" called darkness--there is only the absence of light. Just as God is good and created all that is good, he gave us the option to reject him which would equal our definition of evil--I.E. The absence of God.
The proponents of Intelligent Design are a tiny but vocal minority, who have virtually no influence on real science whatsoever. Intelligent Design might be a stupid idea, but it certainly is not the most dangerous or widely accepted stupid idea going around nowadays.
Most of the attention on Intelligent Design comes from people posturing against it.
And seriously, if you are gonna get money for studying Intelligent Design, then you should be reasonably able to refute it.
Okay I didn't spot your UID number there. Simmer down son, you don't want to get a troll mod this early in life. You aren't dealing with the response I gave, which is that in the commonly accepted format, darwinists vs creationists (there are no punctuated equilbriaists movements, if only because it sounds like something you suffer from in your later years due to a lack of fibre in the diet), there is no darwinist movement. There are religious nuts, or creationists, and biologists. Savvy? Given your UID (eh I may be wrong, maybe you have been lurking since 98, but I don't think so) I expect a rash and abusive response. Think it through, breathe. You'll last longer that way.
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
But you can keep it. I don't pay much attention to people who say things like
u m
"there are no punctuated equilbriaists movements"
Enlighten yourself
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punctuated_equilibri
"There are religious nuts, or creationists, and biologists."
And there are people who believe something else entirely happened. Or some version that isn't either of the above, but has elements of each.
Your post very much reminds me of a 4 year old stamping their feet screaming "NU-UH! NU-UH! NUUU-UHHHH!" You overstated your position, and when called on it chose to retain the patently ridiculous assertion that there are only creationists and biologists.
But you're still wrong, no matter how many times you ignore the evidence, and no matter how often you stamp your feet and hold your breath. Reapeat the same incorrect assertion all you want, it won;t be right no matter how loud or how often you spout it.
As for the UID crap, what a colossally stupid thing to pay attention to. Are you some kind of UID bigot, that you actually look at the UID and make judgements based on it? That's really sad. (lurking since 99, and you'll never know if it's true or not)
"The government grants you rights, not the other way around."-- beav007. Yes, these people really exist...
>God did not create evil.
Obviously, since God never existed.
> Your equation rests on the assumption that evil IS something and not the LACK of something.
No, it does not rest on that assumption at all. You clearly do not understand the proof at all, while you arrogantly believe that you do. Your claim is directly contradicted by Axiom 3.
Why do you christians lie so much, like you did just now? Or did you actually believe that you understood the proof?
Kim0
PWN them!
This article summary and the article itself have some subtle and not-so-subtle bias that takes the form of unfair presumptions. I'd like to list a few examples:
"Ironically, the grant was for a study into the detrimental effects of intelligent design on Canadian academics and leaders."
This isn't ironic at all. In fact, I find it highly likely that the funds were denied precisely because of the nature of the study.
"Jennifer Robinson... said the university has asked the SSHRC to review its decision to reject Alters's request for money to study how the rising popularity in the United States of 'intelligent design'...is eroding acceptance of evolutionary science in Canada."(emphasis mine)
If this is indeed an accurate description of the research, then it is operating on a foregone conclusion. That's bad research. They aren't trying to determine if this is happening, they just want to show to what extent it is happening. I think they ought to address the "if" first.
"- a controversial creationist theory of life -"
Whether or not Intelligent Design is a "creationist" theory of life (and really, it should read "theory of the origins of life") is the very heart of the debate over its teaching. It is pretty glib for the reporter to simply declare that it is conclusively "creationist". I expect that many people will reply to tell me that "there is no debate at all -- among people whose opinions matter", but if there were no debate, there would be no problem.
I wish that my inferiority complex were as good as yours.
-RenderHead
Axiom 3 is the exact point of point of the assumption made. I am saying that what we call evil is the absence of God. If this is true, then your equation is rendered irrelevant. If you were to try to disprove the idea that evil is the absence of God with that equation then you would end up arguing that God created the absence of himself.
> Axiom 3 is the exact point of point of the assumption made.
No, it is not. I can read the proof and see for myself that you are wrong.
Others can also read the proof and see for themselves that you are wrong.
And further, I wrote the proof, and thus know what it says, and it is not
what you claim it says.
Why do you lie so much? Who are you trying to fool? Are you really so
stupid that you believe that you can fool the author of the proof when
you lie about the proof? It certainly seems like that.
> I am saying that what we call evil is the absence of God. If this is true, then your equation is rendered irrelevant.
So, if my equation is true, then it is irrelevant, according to you.
Kim0
What is science if it can not critique itself. When a scientific theory gets to the point where it can no longer be challenged, it ceases to be science and becomes a religion of its own. I think this is the university's fault for setting unreasonable guidelines for the experiment. Scientific fact can only be reached through observation and experimentation. That is the core of the scientific method. For the university to ask the professor to provide "proof" is unreasonable because, while the percieved "results" of Darwin's theories can be observed, we can not experiment and observe it happening. Even if you could prove natural selection, you can't prove it is responsible for the origin of species.
Explanation: Rainbows are caused by the separation of light, due to the fact that different frequencies of light travel at different speeds through media other than a perfect vacuum.
Miracle: Some people survive a plane crash, while others don't.
Explanation: Due to their position in the plane, the survivors were not hit by flying debris, were far enough back in the plane that they did not take the brunt of the damage, were close enough to an exit that they could get out before they were overcome by smoke, etc., etc.
In other words, they survived due to chance, not a "miracle".
Miracle: The creation of the universe.
Explanation: OK, this may actually be a kind of "miracle" (although not a "common" one, since it has happened only once (as far as we know)), but there is no reliable documented evidence that it was caused by a "supreme being", or that this alleged supreme being takes any interest whatsoever in the day-to-day activities of humans (e.g., listening to prayer, saving people from plane crashes, etc.).
If your position is that none of the above are miracles, then please list some miracles, and I will explain them to you.
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
The real issue is not the distraction of Moulton's trolls, but matter of Picard's signing the Anti-Evolution Petition.
Moulton works with Picard, and presumably knows what she really believes. He lept to her defense when I pointed out the undisputed facts that she voluntarily signed her name as well as the good name of MIT to the Anti Evolution Petetition sponsored by the Discovery Institute, and that Intelligent Design proponents regularly refer to that petition in support of their so-called "theory".
Moulton's accusation of "maligning" presumes that implying that somebody supports Intelligent Design (based on their own words and actions, giving them the benefit of the doubt that they're sincere about the documents they sign their name to, and are smart enough to perform due dilligent research into the institutions behind the publicity campaigns they endorse) is inherently offensive.
I'm not accusing -- I'm asking! Picard made the issue of her religion a topic for public discussion, by signing the petition (and in many of the other things she writes). The New York Times writes that Intelligent Design proponents publically cite her name in association with MIT as supporting their position, so there's nothing wrong with asking her what she really believes. She won't answer, so I'm asking Moulton (who works with her, and came out of the woodwork to "defend" her from my "accusations") to ask her for me, and report back what she says.
My questions: Does Rosalind Picard believe in Creationism? Does she support the Discovery Institute's position and tactics?
Of course the answers to those questions will raise many other questions (stimulate interesting discussion). I wonder why she doesn't want to answer -- who knows?
On the oxymoronic IDEA Center web site, which lists Picard's name as a supporter of Intelligent Design, they say that if you know that any information on it is false, to contact them immediate so they can correct it. If Rosalind doesn't actually support Intelligent Design and the Discovery Institute, then she should certainly write in and tell them to remove her name from their web site and petition!
-Don
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
Now the idea is the proposal was rejected because it didn't prove anyting? Don't you do the study after the proposal?
I have to imagine this story was incredibly confused in the internet game of "operator" before it got posted.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
I hope you don't think the conversation is stale. I get a little slow witted sometimes but I have been giving what you said a lot of thought. There are some gaps in evolutionary theory. I wouldn't bother but peer review is important :). The theory itself is sound but the process by which it occurs has always been a matter of contention. Darwin thought evolution proceeded by passing on genes to offspring. Wallace thought it was from the passing on the will of the parents. Today there is debate over whether "punctuated equilibrium" might explain some aspects of the process.
One interesting corollary is the ratio of extinct species to relatively unchanged ones i.e. some species of sharks and crocodiles. I suppose in those cases a spectrum could be said to exist rather than a series of gaps in the fossil record. Those simple changes such as size could be explained by microevolution. Anyway, I don't think we have much of a chance.
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.