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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."
In other news, a professor was denied a grant to research the potential effect of a meteor striking earth, because he had failed to provide sufficient evidence that the theory of gravity was correct.
Why do my serious comments get modded "funny"?
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.
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!
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.
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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]
Great idea. But how exactly would you "prove" intelligent design?
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.
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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.
There's this funny thing about the scientific method. Ideas start as a hypothesis, but to even be called a theory, the scientist must be able to at least prove to himself that the hypothesis is correct, scientifically. It only becomes theory once it is able to be independently verified and repeated, scientifically. ID cannot be proven scientifically, so no, I don't think gov't grant money should go toward "proving" this hypothesis, because it is asking to prove the unprovable.
If proving the existence of (a) god(s) was as simple as having a government throw some money at a bunch of researchers, it would have already happened long ago and there would be no cause for debate today.
I will grant anyone who provides the well documented scientific methodology that they will use in order to produce proof of a ID as a scientific theory.
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).
There is proof, right?
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Obviously, somebody been watching too many Wile E. Coyote & Road Runner cartoons for their scientific education.
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overwhelming ammounts of evidence
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
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.
Theory doesn't apply to unobservable things. So God is not a theory, it is just something you believe. Of course there is no reason someone can't reconcile them, by simply saying that the universe works the way it does because God made it to work exactly that way. But, fundamentalists don't like to change their way of thinking at all, so you still have the wackos out there clinging to ancient dogma.
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.
Belief in God is not a theory, it's not even a hypothesis.
Where as Evolution was a hypothesis, moved onto theory, where it is tested and predictions are made.
Point in fact, the debate is around theory of evolution through natural selection. Evolution is accepted.
So if you want to believe in God, then fin but it is NOT a theory. If it was a theory, thenfaith would no longer be required and independent will comes into question.
Of course if you believe in God, then you must beklieve in ID.
Or does your god just hang around and not effect ther universe in any way?
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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 ..
You do understand those who rejected the grant are in all probability unelected folks and probably went to college?
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.
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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?
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/
And it seems to me your argument holds true for evolution and the big-bang "theory". Neither of these "theories" can be tested and reproduced and therefore should not be considered "theory" or "fact". However, the science community somehow has no problem deviating from the "scientific method" when it continues to call evolution and the big-bang ideas "theories". A bit hypocritical?
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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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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Absolutely not. Believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster for all I care. But if you want to put fantasies on the same level as a scientific theory, some proof is required.
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!
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Perhaps it would more accurately be called a humorous coincidence? Albeit fairly disappointing...
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.
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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.
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Actually, it's interesting that they require sufficient "proof" that the theory is "correct".
Why?
A theory is, by definition, unproven. "An assumption based on limited information or knowledge; a conjecture."
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
He has nothing to worry about, right?
There is proof, right?
In the eyes of a fanatic, nothing is proof. Any piece of evidence to support evolution could be shot down and dismissed as phoney or put their by the hand of God as a test of faith.
Think of the moon landing hoaxers. No shred of evidence would make them turn away from the stubborn belief in the incredibly unlikely. Show them photos, they must be fakes. Show them video, it must be shot in a movie studio. Show them rocks, they must be stolen from somewhere and made to look like moonrock.
You just can't win.
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
An omnipotent, omniscient God is capable of utilizing laws of physics (which he, of course, would have put into place) in order to create a starting condition that will use evolution to create precisely what he wants.
Kind of like playing the game of Life. Gliders are for chumps, though, at this scale :D
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I never stated belief in God was a theory if it appeared that way I apologise, is just that.
I haven't investigated ID enough to say if it falls in line with my personal beliefs, but then again I don't think my beliefs would be very useful in this thread.
Regardless the grant was to basically investigate the socal issues of ID and how it damages the acceptance of evolution, I believe this is valid research, in addition a grant should, however, be granted to someone that wishes to investigate the positive socal aspects of ID or how it can be brought in line with evolution. TFA didn't appear to be about proving a theory but instead to investigate social issues.
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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
If you have to pay some mortal man to prove the intelligence of your god... Well... Then he isn't much of a god, now is he?
But seriously, if you are going to pay a theologian money to prove creationsism, to be fair then you've got to pay a Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, FSM, and whatever other religion comes along to prove their god's version of creation.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
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.
Our intelligent designer has never created an animal that we couldn't improve by strapping a bomb to it.
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.
As a scientific term of art, 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."
Seeing that these people are scientists, I'm going to assume the type of theory they are referring to is the repeatedly tested and wide accepted kind of theory that can be used to make predictions about natural phenomena.
What?
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.
Stupid people hate smart people.
Taking my cue from Vonnegut, it gets worse than that.
Really stupid people are too stupid to know there's such a thing as smart, and thus think smart people are insane for "believing" in facts.
Or, alternatively:
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is a paranoid schizophrenic.
KFG
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?
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ID assumes a certain amount of micromanagement on the part of the creator. At least as far as I understand it.
My understanding of God, which is that of the ground of being or source of all that is, is a very creational energy, but not so much the kid with the chemistry set type god that the IDers seem to propogate.
Let me take this a step out toward the anthropomorphic and attribute to God a little personality. It's still possible that the creation happens as a natural result of the proto-existance of the God and God simply interacts with what comes up.
So no, simple belief in God does not equate to a belief in ID. It requires a belief in a particular sort of god.
The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.
Or does your god just hang around and not effect ther universe in any way?
Not so. I can, and do believe that God caused the universe to come into existence with a set of laws that would eventually allow us to come into existence. It's rather like an extension of the Antropic Principle: we observe the universe to be as it is because if it weren't, we wouldn't be here, and God made sure it was.
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So should they provide such money to any nutcase trying to prove their personal religion?
Just because a lot of uninformed people believe the same thing, does not make it ANY more valid.
The FSM people should get upt there and get a grant to study how we were all formed from the "Great Sauce".
Christians are so damn arrogant, like they are the ONLY other possibility.
In some ways I'd like to see Christians start to win these things. It'd be great to see the ten commandments in the front of a court with a giant brass Budah sitting on them and Vishnu pointing the way to truth with his many hands.
First, there is no such law. We have yet to prove exactly how life began but we know that before life was only nonlife (think binary states, either there is life or there isn't). Second, evolution is a theory and thus does not have all of the loose ends tied up. Otherwise it would be law. Third, if by some stroke of luck someone proved definitavely that evolution was 100% false it does not prove ID true. ID is currently more conjecture than science. Further, true ID does NOT eliminate evolution as a possibility for the method of creation. Only Creationism does that. For the love of Pete if you are going to argue a point of view you should learn its key points first.
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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.
Repeat after me...
Intelligent... Design... Is.. Not.. A.. Fucking.. Theory.
A theory makes predictions which can be validated or disproved via experiment. A theory is able to be tested. There is no test for ID. You can't climb up a mountain and say "hey God, did you design this thing?" More importantly, unless God starts talking to every person on Earth - there can be no independent confirmation.
Evolution is still happening today. We're a major cause of it, both from planning (selective breeding) and by accident (deforestation). Such things can and *have* been tested in the lab. Hell, I managed to evolve a population of bacteria to be penicillan resistant in high school biology (we then carefully disposed of them, to prevent the spread of those plasmids).
While the big bang is not reproducable (at least with current technology and for the forseeable future), the results of the big bang ARE observable. THats one of the major differences- the Big Bang theory makes predictions about things, and those predictions are testable. So far, several expectations we'd have fromt he big bang have been observed. Its just like relativity- we can't change gravity and see how it works, but we can observe its effect on distant objects like light from another star.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
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.
If we had to give a grant to a branch of pseudo-science everytime someone did legitimate scientific research, we'd have to give out grants for investigating perpetual motion machines and free energy (in violation of the laws of thermodynamics) every time we gave out a grant for any study into legitimate studies of alternate energy (solar, wind, hydrodynamic, etc). Do you propose that as well?
And HALF of them are even DUMBER than THAT!
Man, you really need that seminar!
It's not just about being able to reproduce events or perform experiments in a laboratory to prove a point, it's about evidence. While we cannot reproduce the Big Bang except for a simplified computer simulation which is based on evidence we already have (and therefor cannot really "prove" anything, as you'd be running in circles), we can find evidence in our universe, figure out what it means, prove or disprove a theory, move forward, come up with a new theory, and so on. The Big Bang and evolution are the results of hundreds of years of scientific observation and research. One by one, we've ruled out many other possibilities, and these theories remain as quite viable. This is why they are still theories, however -- while we can disprove many other hypotheses, we cannot prove the Big Bang. Evolution is a little bit easier to prove, but we still have doubts about specific details.
24 beers in a case, 24 hours in a day. Coincidence? I think not!
Look, you stupid fucking dumbass. Science isn't kindergarten sports where everyone gets a cake and a medal no matter where they finish. Sience isn't about being fair to all viewpoints, it's about being correct. Creationism isn't even a coherent theory, it's wild guesses based on a 2000 year old book written by middle-eastern tribesmen. It is not science, and thusly, real universities don't bother with it.
I wish I had mod points for you, sir.
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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.
Fair enough. What qualifies as proof? There were hundreds of people throughout millenia of history that personally witnessed miracles and still refused to believe them.
Faith is a matter of the heart, not the mind.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
Hello Tommy:
Thank goodness that Einstein thought the Newtonian theory of gravity was incorrect, and came up with general relativity...
Not every publicly acknowledged statements are correct, and in the academia, sometimes you do have to prove those statements. For something such as evolution vs intelligent design, which is still under debate (regardless of whether the debate should continue or not), from the academia's perspective it still warrants some good evidence. The fact evolution is established in the mind of the public means that the job for the prof is easier.
Cheers.
B. Pascal.
$40k for "a study into the detrimental effects of intelligent design on Canadian academics and leaders"? Seems a little extravagent.
Exactly! And so just labeling something "scientific" makes it true?? That's absurd, but all you staunch evolution believers act that way. Oh wait, I forgot, all that fossil evidence and carbon dating and blah blah blah "SCIENCE" proves you to be correct, right?! Stupid me.
But oh wait, that's called studying the past by relying on the present to prove your hypotheses about the past. I personally think it's quite retarded for both the ID'ers AND the Evolutionists to believe that they have a complete 100% correct answer for everything in the distant past that we 1) have ABSOLUTELY NO WAY of recording because we either a) didn't exist, or b) were still apes with ape brains; and 2) assume all behaved the way we currently measure the earth and life on it to behave according to physical laws of nature. Either way you can't definitively prove Intelligent Design or Evolution.
Get over yourselves and let's learn about both viewpoints. I wonder just how many people that think Intelligent Design is poppy-cock also think Christians are hypocritical for not accepting other religions to be as valid as Christianity. Seems rather hypocritical, don't you think?
This would be a more accurate assesment of what the Vatican does and doesn't say about evolution.
e s/schonborn.html
http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0601/articl
Traders throughout the world discovered the origin of spices a long time ago.
Did you read the summary? This person is looking for a grant to study the sociology of how promotion of a particular religious belief can lead politicians and other people to publicly reject the entire body of scientific work on a particular subject. He is not trying to "prove evolution" he is trying to find out what makes people ignore scientific research. He's proposing a scientific study of why people reject scientific studies and he was rejected because the scientific research that was his subject is being ignored by the decision makers.
Intelligent design proponents can try to get grants as well, provided they actually propose a valid scientific study, not try to find arguments in favor of something. This person proposed a scientific experiment. If someone wants to propose one to validate or falsify ID I'm all for funding them, but that is not the same thing as, "trying to prove creationism or intelligent design" and is not material to this person's research.
I realize you're probably trolling, but I thought it appropriate that you interpreted the parent's idea of banning ID to "banning religion." I thought the ID people were desperately trying to promote the idea that ID was NOT religion but "real science". Not that I think that ID should be banned (rather it should be openly debunked as the BS it is), but I glad to see a proponent admit that ID is "religion."
Momentarily, the need for the construction of new light will no longer exist.
Found it. Read it all if you have time, or scroll down to the last paragraph for the crux of it.
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.
A bit, so here is what the solution can be: present both "theories" to students, along with the evidence, and teach the students to think logically. Instruct them to analyze the evidence (in all classes, not just biology) and arrived at their conclusion based on evidence, not preconceived notions.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
went to college = 4 year vacation
Wow, now that's a ringing endorsement of the scientific method. Please tell us all about Darwin's theories.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
If I'm wrong, nobody loses anything. If I'm right, you lose for eternity.
Be careful not to trip over that middle you've excluded...
-30-
Why can't more people think like you do? And by think, I mean actually think about it as opposed to just blindly following what they're told by their religion.
What I've never understood about ID is why they believe that God wouldn't be smart enough to use evolution. Compare evolution to what's described in the Bible and evolution is much more "intelligent". It's a system that's capable of adapting to almost any challenge thrown at it without any intervention on the part of God.
Which brings me to what I've always wondered about Christians/Catholics...why do they have such an insistance on believing in a literal interpretation of the Bible? To me, the Bible seems to be more of a historical political document aimed at unifying the Roman empire, rather than an exact historical accounting. As such, the events/stories/wisdom contained within it are delivered in a fashion that facilitates internalizing its messages, lessons, etc. Yet to suggest this to people who are deeply religious usually results in a response equivalent to if you had told them that God does not exist. I've rarely seen anyone capable of separating the bible from their faith in God and Christ.
Can anyone explain why the two are so inexorably linked in most people's minds? Why are most people incapable of believing that there is a God, who created all of us by an ingenious method (evolution) and sent his son to Earth to impart the teachings necessary for us to live together peacefully and with a common morality. That is really the core philosophy of Catholocism/Christianity, not the literal events of the Bible.
(thus endeth the rantings of someone who was raised Christian but could never fully express his faith until he was able to look past the inconsistancies of the bible and recognize that the bible was written by men with agendas and that true faith in God comes from within, not without).
"Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos!"
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. :(
The problem is that intelligent design is *not* a competing theory. It is religion masquerading as science. For scientific purposes, the board has no duty to offer a "fair" perspective regarding the "debate." There is no meaningful scientific debate here. Intelligent design fails every single test for what constitutes science. 1) It has to invoke an agent in order to explain phenomena that *can* and *are* explained on natural terms alone. 2) It is not predictive - this is fundamental. In order for a proposition to be accepted as a theory it must somehow predict observed phenomenon. 3) Intelligent design "theorists" aren't hypothesizing or theorizing. They are asserting that the intelligent designer exists and then looking for evidence to support the idea that the intelligent designer exists. They are manipulating and selecting evidence to prove a hypothesis. In science, it is the hypothesis that must be flexible, NOT the evidence. A true scientist has no attachment to his hypothesis and so will not be compelled to manipulate or alter evidence but to adjust is hypothesis to reflect the evidence. Intelligent design beliefs therefore do not conform to the stipulations of the scientific method. Even when science encounters a boundary on what can be known it will REFUSES to hypothesize a deity or intelligent designer because this is by definition an UNTESTABLE hypothesis. The uncertainty principle, the event horizon, - all positions of science . However, if it is suddenly discovered that you CAN know the position and momentum of a particle at the same time with complete certainty, they will have to abandon the uncertainty principle. Similarly, there is so much evidence that evolution DOES explain supposedly "irreducibly complex" structures that ID theorists (if they were true scientists) should abandon their hypothesis that an intelligent agent designed life forms. However, they choose to cling to their hypothesis because they feel that their faith RESTS on it. (This is absurd for other reasons, but I will not go into them because the topic here is science, not religion.) Many scientists do believe in God. But they are scientists precisely because they know when to leave their personal beliefs out of the picture for the sake of being better scientists.
How can that be a law when it is unproven? 1,000 failed experiments cannot prove that it cannot happen. You can prove statistically that the probability of it occuring during the next experiment will be low, but you can never prove that it cannot happen.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
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.
Or is it because there are fundies in Canada, maybe?
It seems like a national pasttime up there to blame all of their problems on us.
Um, ID started in the US because of fundie creationists. And yes, there are fundies in Canada. There are fundies in Britain and Oz, too. There are even some fundie groups in South Korea that were originally started by American fundie churches. And now they come to the US as missionaries. Talk about coals to fucking Newcastle!
Similar to the upcoming US election results
"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.
Of course faith is a matter of the heart. Which makes it completely useless in the realm of science, or anything else having to do with reality for that matter.
I'm glad you caught the inherent dichotomy. Intelligent design CANNOT be either proved or disproved, as it depends on invisible sky fairies for its basis. Hardly in the same league as science on ANY level.
While there is evidence to support the theory of evolution, the theory has not yet been proven.
I think what the board wanted was proof that evolution is true, and proof that ID is false, which he stated in his papers as such. While there is antibiotic lifeforms, there are other explinations as to why they are antibiotic, and while evidence for evolution they are also evidence of other theories as well. Evolution is more of an estimate than a proven theory because it lacks vital evidence to support it. Mutation for example, could be caused by intelligent design, or maybe a mutation theory, or perhaps a theory of change, or in the case of microscopic life forms maybe it is a part of asexual reproduction in which the parent cell divides and grants its immune system to the child cells. In the case of humans and mammals, maybe the mother passes on her immune system to the baby via blood shared by them. There are many explinations to explain evidence collected besides using evolution, yet that evidence cannot exclusively be proven to be only possible via evolution.
Clearly this researcher falsified proof on his paper and got caught, and was later asked to prove it after a peer review failed to prove his claims. Which is, of course, part of the scientific method, the peer review.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
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!"
Ah, the smug self-satisfaction of someone who thinks they've got it all figured out. I can't wait to see the look on your face when you realize that all the evolutionists, atheists, "baby murderers", and godless commies ended up in the same place you did after death, because [god/life/the universe] isn't some petty game of punishment and reward, but rather something much more complicated and beautiful than a fairy tale concoted by mortal theocracies to scare children.
Conclusion: the Empire squashes the Federation like a bug. Accept it.
"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.
Being Christian DOES NOT equate belief in ID. Many devout Christians don't believe in ID and even the Catholic Church in Rome discourages the teaching of ID. If there's one thing IDers need to learn it's to speak for themselves instead of proclaiming that they represent all Chrisitans -- or are you saying that Christians who don't believe in ID aren't "real" Chrisitans at all? If so you're way overstepping your bounds since, by the tenets of your own faith, only God has the right to make that judgment.
I dream of a better world... one in which chickens can cross roads without their motives being questioned.
Agreed!
"Which brings me to what I've always wondered about Christians/Catholics...why do they have such an insistance on believing in a literal interpretation of the Bible? To me, the Bible seems to be more of a historical political document aimed at unifying the Roman empire, rather than an exact historical accounting. As such, the events/stories/wisdom contained within it are delivered in a fashion that facilitates internalizing its messages, lessons, etc. Yet to suggest this to people who are deeply religious usually results in a response equivalent to if you had told them that God does not exist. I've rarely seen anyone capable of separating the bible from their faith in God and Christ."
:)
Woah, woah woah. Don't be blaming the Catholics on this one. It's those damn born agains and fundamentalist baptists that spread this stuff.
Leave the Catholics to their Virgin birth story!
FYI Catholics don't follow a literal interpretation of the bible. Hell alot of them don't follow what the pope says.
Go figure.
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!
First define "love", then we can decide if it exists or not. Until then its just a mouth noise.
And "God created scientists" is simply circular reasoning. Something I've noticed subjectivists are particularly good at.
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'm an atheist, but I'd welcome anyone who'd do that. Of course personally I'm confident that any study into the viability of a theory like that would crash and burn. Exactly because of that I think the scientific establishment ought to encourage the ID nuts to submit papers on their "theory" since they insist they're so scientific.
I doubt anyone would take the bait, though, since the ID nuts are very aware that their strength is sowing doubt about science that most people don't understand - the moment they start submitting any research for peer reviews their arguments against peer reviewed science goes poof out the window, and any failure to present credible arguments will cause a barrage of attacks against them.
At the moment they are tough to attack because their "theory" is nebulous at best and any attack is met with a barrage of "we're not saying X, we're saying Y" or the opposite because they are not a homogenous group.
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.
The problem wasn't that he couldn't come up with the proof--modern day biology is founded on the theory of evolution--it's that some people just can't be persuaded with reason. And it seems like you might be one of those people.
Science is empirical. Faith has no place in science whatsoever.
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 . .
the Catholic Church in Rome discourages the teaching of ID.
The Catholic Church are many things, but they are not stupid.
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
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!
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This is called Pascals wager, and it's flawed for a long list of reasons:
In other words, you're trying to rationalise your belief based on assumptions that you have no basis at all for making.
Personally I take the view that if I'm wrong (I'm an atheist) and I find myself in front of some deity after I die and that deity is unable to accept me for what I am, then that deity is a fascist bastard and certainly isn't worthy of being worshipped - there's no way I am going to be bribed into behaving a certain way to appease some hypothetical oppressive sadist being. I live my life the way I do because I believe it is the right way to live, not looking for rewards.
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
Um, ID started in the Great Britain because of backlash against the atheist misinterpretation of Darwin's theory, which was published there first.
:-P
There, fixed it for you.
Basic knowledge of the history of the subject you're discussing is your friend.
...it's really a sad day for America when we require a goddamn ACT OF CONGRESS to make our DVD players work properly. ~
"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 . .
The word 'theory' is used in a multitude of ways by different people. It might mean a hypothesis that nobody is commiteed to but has been proposed tentatively, it might mean a body of knowledge like "group theory" that is a 100% rock solid branch of proven mathematics, it might be something like "String Theory" which is a whole slew of ideas in physics that have a common thread but haven't yet been tested, let alone 'verified', or it might be used in a phrase like "theory of evolution" or "theory of electromagnetism" to mean a body of knowledge about the natural world that nobody who works in the field disputes. The word 'theory' is probably best understood as one of Wittgenstein's "family resemblances" than through a definition.
It certainly isn't used in the way you suggest it is and most important of all, very few conclusions should be drawn from the fact that a body of knowledge has been called a theory. After all, calling "the theory of evolution" by the name "fact of evolution" would just sound silly.
"The White House is not an intelligence-gathering agency," -- Scott McClellan, Whitehouse spokesman.
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...
Thor did not create the universe.
Bacchus did not create the universe.
Lord Ganesha did not create the universe.
Not all gods are viewed as creator gods.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
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.
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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
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
Hello Blaise:
It's good to hear from you again, since the math books don't quite footnote your greatest accomplishment in life - the Great Wager.
It would seem the only real evolution occuring these days is in the hearts and minds of those scientists who purposefully choose to ignore the structured world around them. Furthermore, it's with great sorrow that I report back to you that these same "scientists" rely on innacurate radio dating techniques to gauge and base their new religion on. Yet, amongst all the evidence mother earth has presented to us yet, it's own history seems to be willfully ignored in substitute of manufacturing their own. We have thousands of reliable eyewitness reports testified and verified by their peers, countless compiled documents spanning some 6000 years with archaelogical evidence in supportive agreement with those same biblical transcripts (via excavation research), and both written and spoken tradition which attests to God's design and fulfillment of man's purpose by the death of his son who rose again from the dead in 3 days. And the only question left is why not who. Some cannot see it, but not all men have such insight or understanding when they stress the first I in intelligence over U, which when properly substituted is what they unfortunately suffer from. Oh, the urony of it all...
cya real soon in 30 or 40. Peace!
Love is a measurable biochemical process.
Faith/Belief is -probably- a measurable biochemical process.
God is not measurable, weighable, etc and is thus NOT IN THE REALM OF SCIENCE.
Science is about what you can observe/measure- what you can predict from your measurements/observations.
Just so stories about an invisible being does not fit that definition.
Science does not PROVE god does NOT exist either. It doesn't prove Thor, Shiva, or the Spaghetti monster do not exist either.
Science doesn't really "prove" most anything- it only collects observations and makes predictions-- tomorrow we could have a new prediction that invalidates everything known to date. But as a body of work builds, it's extremely rare that happens so it is -effectively- proven for common use.
The Theory of Gravity is used to calculate the movements of objects every day- even tho it -could- change tomorrow.
The Theory of Evolution is used to make predictions every day as well.
Intelligent design does none of these things. It is not a theory. It is not science. It's not even really religion. What it is is a bald face lie told by people who should not be knowingly lying to protect their religion.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
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.
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intelligent design is not science, as all hypotheses must be falsifiable.
there is no way to prove that god (or the "designer") does not exist.
that is, there is no conceivable evidence that intelligent design advocates
could not simply answer with, "Yes, that looks like intelligent design.", or
"it was designed that way."
since it can't be disproven, it is impossible to be proven true or false, and
is hence irrelevant.
Science isn't about viewing the past, it's about predicting the future. The only reason we look at the past is to make sure the math checks out. Anything beyond that is history, which is half science and half general curiosity. Not to bash general curiosity, of course, as it keeps life interesting.
...it's really a sad day for America when we require a goddamn ACT OF CONGRESS to make our DVD players work properly. ~
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.
It is a theory, it's just not a scientific theory... or one that demonstrates any rational thought in the slightest.
The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
Goddamnit! I just used up all my mod points...
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I'm here from PAOMWF (People Against the Overuse and Misuse of the Word "Fascist"). You have just used the word inappropriately.
A) Fascist describes a government, not a person or in your case a god or God.
B) Fascist is not the same as authoritarian.
C) Fascism refers to how a government operates.
Stupidity is like nuclear power, it can be used for good or evil. And you don't want to get any on you.
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.
'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
Every scientific theory makes testable predictions. For example, the theory of relativity predicts that gravitational fields bend light and that time slows down for someone moving relative to a stationary observer. Both of these outrageous predictions have been tested multiple times and have found to occur exactly as the theory predicts.
What testable predictions does intelligent design make?
Insert witty sig here.
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.
So your argument is the same, "we'll just see who's right when we're dead!". You have done nothing to further your point but agree with him. And due to Slashbot group think you've been modded high (so you *must* be right).
nana nana boo boo.
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.
The definition of theory does not require it to produce a testable prediction. A theory may produce a prediction but it can also just explain a fact. The testable result is the universe we are in. Theory: a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world; an organized system of accepted knowledge that applies in a variety of circumstances to explain a specific set of phenomena; "theories can incorporate facts and laws and tested hypotheses"; "true in fact and theory" http://wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
I'm eager to hear you answer the question yourself, so I don't have to draw any conclusions without first hand evidence. So let's skip the bullshit and get back to the question: Do you believe in Creationism or not?
-Don
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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!
Darwin was a devout Christian at the time he developed the theory of Evolution. You're starting with a lie.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
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 I should believe in Santa?
I've been publishing QUESTIONS, not claims, and the questions are still going unanswered. The New York Times published the so-far undisputed claim that Rosalind Picard signed the Anti-Evolution petition, and that is frequently cited by promoters of intelligent design in support of their theory. Do you dispute that?
So why are you STILL not answering the questions?
-Don
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Wow. Just wow. Such an expected non-answer answer. I'm not gonna get into a semantic mud wrestling match. It would seem you cannot define love, therefore proving or disproving its existence is an exercise in futility. We might as well debate the existence of a gakejrer. But thank you for pointing out the complete lack of logic in your position. It frightens me that people who can't think their way out of a wet paper bag can vote and drive.
I ask again: Do you believe in Creationism or not?
Thanks for making such a big deal out of avoiding answering this simple question. Your evasive responses have dragged the argument out, and perfectly illustrated my point.
-Don
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
So what i got 4 wifes? They all get a turn.
Then you stand in direct contrast to the examples that IDers provide. The most famous is that the eye could never have evolved, it had to be designed. They say that the set of laws that currently exist could not have have generated an eye. So, if your creator set things in motions, whose creator designed the eye? Since you stand opposite every example IDers have and your arguments are the exact arguments that disprove ID (that these things can come from natural proceses), doesn't that means that you are an evolutionist (at least when speaking of the most recent 15 billion years)? BTW, evolution makes no claims about what happened before the big bang.
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.
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Thank you for the correction. I apologize. Here I see I began with false premise. I do still hold my first point however, which is that ID has received so much ridicule from the scientific community. I understand that there are many people who blindly say ID is the only way. But I believe there is a lot of evidence which supports ID. My original point is that if it is generally acceptable to hold an opinion which required an insane amount of chance to occur, why is it not acceptable to hold an opinion which requires that an intelligence like our own, only greater existed outside our notion of time and place.
Well, with all due respect, science is about being fair to all viewpoints. Notice all the people upthread judging ID by the same criteria they judge evolution? Can't get more fair than that.
Last post!
Of course I do. To quote a friend, "ID is just Creation Science with the serial numbers ground off and Creation Science is just Cretionism with the serial numbers ground off."
ID is a stupid pseudoscientific "theory," used by luddites that can't admit they were always wrong and always will be. My point was that it's possible to believe in both God and evolution. Please not that there's nothing in what I believe that claims that God set things up so that we'd look exactly like we do. I simply believe that he set up the universe so that inteligent life could eventually evolve and left the details to chance and evolution.
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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.
Example: dogs ( cats, horders, fish and many other species ) have been breed for hundreds of years for specific traits that just randomly 'happen'. The dogs of 100 years ago can be compared to the dogs of today and people do notice that these dogs have changed. Changes include, changes in size, colors, ear shapes, etc. Is god making these dogs change? No its man and nature adapting. To me this is proof of evolution but not proof of any god. THEY ARE EVOLVING. They are changing to adapt. So are we. People today are using more of their mind then they used to. 150 years ago, people were burned at the stake for being a witch if they used medicine to cure someone. Today most modern societies would think that was cruel and stupid. Our thinking has evolved and changed.
Also look into fish. Goldfish are essentially carp. Occassionally they throw a mutation like double fin or short body. Does this benifit the fish in the wild? NO they actually are more detrimental. It can make it harder for the fish to swim and thus make them more of a target. So, in nature they get weeded out. Man however has taken these mutations and worked with them over hundreds of years if not longer and now we have orandas ( fancy carp ). Is god behind this? NOPE!
Typically a theory starts with a hypothisis. I'm guessing your hypothisis is there must be something controlling what mutations happen? Then the theory is it must be god, because my bible told me so?
Guess what. Every primitive culture had 'gods'. The Mayans, the Egyptions, the aztecz. You must read this 6th grade http://www.internet-at-work.com/hos_mcgrane/creati on/cstorymenu.html/ study. It goes over various creation stories by different cultures. Why do you think your god story is right and these are wrong?
The reality is that ID is the religious right trying to shuve THEIR religion in everyone elses face. If you want to believe in ID, go ahead, but I don't think I should have to be forced to believe in god. Especially in a country that says it has freedom of religion. Freedom of religion ALSO means freedom FROM religion, or the freedom to be an athiest.
ID is a religious concept.
Why is it that people who belive in ID and the creation story rarely believe that we have an effect on our world and can't believe in things like global warming?
Explain to me this: If there was a god, why are there cripple people born every day? Why are people being born with malformations? Just the other day there was a show on about a kid born without a face ( no joke it was about his operations ).
Only 'flamers' flame!
Does slashdot hate my posts?
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
"you must be new here" :-p
Yes, most of the slashdotters who've jumped on the "it got turned down, those canadians must believe in ID! Looks what's it's doing!" etc etc are jumping to conclusions that are just as stupid, idiotic, and UNINFORMED as ID itself.
The hypocrits.
The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
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.
Perhaps, but from what I can see, a main problem is that it doesn't add anything usefull (from a scientific point of view) to our understanding of the world around us.
Imagine you're a lab rat stuck in a lab cage. Imagine that you get water (or similar) from this device at apparently random intervals. I'm in the cage next to you, and I say to you that I have a theory about the device: The device is controlled by a researcher. However, this researcher can't be seen, because he is hiding from us, watching us, but cannot be observed.
Now, armed with my "Theory Of The Device", are you any closer to knowing when you will get water next?
Perhaps there really is a "designer" which does things to the world around us. But unless ID can predict the designers actions, it is useless as a theory: it doesn't bring anything new to the table.
I agree that all life on this earth adapts. I do not wish to see a society that requires anyone to hold any one opinion. I am glad we live in a free country where we are not required to believe in evolution or intelligent design. Intelligent design does not say evolution did not occur. It leaves room for both possibilities. With both theories, something had to exist first. In the case of evolution it is matter. In the case of ID it is God. All I am saying is that ID makes sense to me. It is logical. It gives existence a purpose, which is an unpopular notion in some groups. I don't wish you to be forced to believe in ID, but it certainly explains one major whole in evolution, what got it all started.
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.
What it brings to the table is an answer to the one thing evolution can't give a better answer to. What started it all. From there we can ponder, why did this being start everything. Human beings do not design something without a reason. Even if that reason is merely entertainment there is still a reason. If there is a reason for the design of the universe, what is it? You are right, this logic leads to religion. Some of the oldest documents known to mankind mention God, I think it is naive to discount the possibility when there is so much evidence.
It's a fine theory, but it's a religious theory, and I have no problem with anybody's belief in it.
My problem is that it isn't science. There's not even a remote bullshit shot in the dark chance that it's science. It's religion. And I wouldn't have any problem with it being taught in school, were it being taught in a religion class. However, my issue is when it's put in the setting of a science class. It's most definitely not science. That's my gripe.
-=-=-=-=-=
I'd rather be flamed than ignored.
Sorry, misread your post. I thought you said you believe in ID, but after re-reading I see that you made the point that you believe in God, but not ID.
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.
You are simply wrong. To imply that the universe we are in is some kind of "testable result" of intelligent design is misinformed at best, pathetic and dishonest at worst.
And you are wrong about theories. A theory absolutely must make testable predictions. A theory that does not make a testable prediction is unfalsifiable. By definitition a scientific theory must be falsifiable.
What you need to understand is not some concise definition of theory but a comprehensive definition of falsifiable. This snippet from Wikipedia's definition of falsifiability will start you on the right path:
Falsifiability, or defeasibility, is an important concept in the philosophy of science. It is the principle that a proposition or theory cannot be considered scientific if it does not admit the possibility of being shown false.
Thanks for playing. We do have some lovely parting gifts for you.
Insert witty sig here.
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.
From what I gather from the article on falsification, it appears to me that theories consiste of falsifiable statements. I do not know what falsifiable statements make up the theory of Intelligent Design. If there are none, then you are indeed correct it should not be labeled as a theory, but instead maybe some soft of a guess or hypothesis. As far as I can tell, there is little better we can do to presume what happenned to start the whole universe ball rolling. I still do not see from the article on falsifiability why we need a prediction to come from the theory. Are there not generally accepted theories which only attempt to explain the reason something is the way it is. We are talking about something that is past tense, so how can a prediction be made. What is the testable prediction made by the "Big Bang" theory? That is how I see ID.
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?
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]
We read a diary of someone long dead. The diary gives vague descriptions of where the person lived as a child and says that they buried money under tree. We make a guess as to the location described, and we find a tree there. We predict that we will find money buried under the tree. If we do find money buried under the tree, it supports our guess as to where the person lived.
As for the Big Bang, we can make predictions of future discoveries. We can predict speeds and locations of objects that we haven't yet studied, based on our guess as to when and how the Big Bang occured.
What it brings to the table is an answer to the one thing evolution can't give a better answer to. What started it all. From there we can ponder, why did this being start everything. Human beings do not design something without a reason.
But these are philosophical and religious issues, and are thus totally irrelevant in the context of science. Unless it gives testable predictions about the start of the universe or whatnot, it's not adding anything to the scientific table. If proponents of ID would fall back and say "yeah, ok, so it's not a scientific theory, it's not a contender to the theory of evolution, it's a philosophical/religious idea", then I'm fairly sure it would take a lot less heat, if any at all, at least from the scientific community.
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....
Again, at the risk of sounding like a robot muself, I repeat: I'm asking questions, not making claims. Why are you so afraid of answering a simple question? This wouldn't have gone on for so long if you or Picard would answer direct questions.
Do you believe in Creationism? Tell us! Does Picard believe in Creationism? Ask her! Tell us what she says!
-Don
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
...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
:"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.
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
The Big Bang theory predicts that the early universe was a very hot place and that as it expands, the gas within it cools. Thus the universe should be filled with radiation that is literally the remnant heat left over from the Big Bang, called the "cosmic microwave background radiation", or CMB.
The existence of the CMB radiation was first predicted by George Gamow in 1948, and by Ralph Alpher and Robert Herman in 1950. It was first observed inadvertently in 1965 by Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson at the Bell Telephone Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey. The radiation was acting as a source of excess noise in a radio receiver they were building. Coincidentally, researchers at nearby Princeton University, led by Robert Dicke and including Dave Wilkinson of the WMAP science team, were devising an experiment to find the CMB. When they heard about the Bell Labs result they immediately realized that the CMB had been found. The result was a pair of papers in the Physical Review: one by Penzias and Wilson detailing the observations, and one by Dicke, Peebles, Roll, and Wilkinson giving the cosmological interpretation. Penzias and Wilson shared the 1978 Nobel prize in physics for their discovery.
The rest of the story is at NASA's Cosmolology 100 site.
For a fascinating and very readable book-length account read Big Bang: The Origin of the Universe by Simon Singh.
Insert witty sig here.
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.
Well first you have to make an arthropod.
Add primitive flowers millions of years later- the first arthropods were see dwellers.
Then add millions of years of the flowers adapting to the bees and the bees adapting to the flowers. Throw in tiny variation to all bee's so that no two are exactly alike. Throw in an occasional drought or ice age to stress them so badly that 99% of them die off and only the most efficient ones survive.
And voila... instant bee.
The great thing is that, like most science, it's PROVABLE and the measurable facts are internally consistent. RNA and DNA share appropriate similarities to other arthropods. Arthropods share certain commonalities (like wierd vision frequencies starting with the chelicerates which were the common ancestor). The expected rates of mutation of the DNA/RNA vs the mitochodrial dna support it (and even FIT that bee's mutate a little faster because of the way they breed).
Bee's adapt and there is clear fossil evidence that the first bees were similar but not the same as modern bees. (The same fossil evidence that hangs together for bee's by the way shows that they are MUCH older than humans... dating back to the cretaceous period... and that humans did not exist for millions of years.)
While we can't build a Bee yet (and once we do, ID'ers will simply move the bar like they did when we figured out how Bee's fly), we will probably completely map their DNA soon.
---
None of this proves anything about whether gods exist. It is just a bunch of -facts- about bees that you could collect yourself given the resources and time. Because scientific measurements can be -repeated- by -ANYONE-.
You have have missed it but it has been pointed out that any scientist alive would LOVE to debunk evolution and find the new theory that fits the huge web of supporting information (geologic, taxonomic, genetic, historical, archeological, etc). They would be FAMOUS. But their new theory (just like Einsteins work) has to FIT the facts not IGNORE the facts like ID does.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
I got carried away a bit there...
It's not PROVABLE-- it MAKES PREDICTIONS that would falsify it if they were found to not be true. You can't prove science- only collect a huge overwhelming pile of evidence that could still be shown incorrect by new evidence (like flipping a coin 100 times and it always comes up heads so you conclude it is an unfair coin but the next test has a reasonable mixture of heads and tails).
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
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!
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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.
Thank you for the apology.
To say that evolution requires an insane amount of chance to occur is to misunderstand the mechanism by which evolution is currently thought to occur. I understand why you would say this, since superficially it appears that evolution says that 100 dice were rolled, and they all came up sixes. To carry the analogy out, natural selection is like rolling 100 dice, setting aside all the ones that came up sixes, and rerolling the remaining dice, continually removing the sixes and rerolling until no dice are left. Thus, over enough rolls, they all end up sixes, with no more than normal chances for any dice to come up six.
Okay, it's not a great analogy, but it's a fair illustration of the idea.
ID gets ridiculed by science because it acts like science without being truly scientific. It fails the basic test of falsifiability that the empirical method requires. Positing an intelligent designer is like adding a wild card: To answer the question "why is that like that?" one ultimately ends up saying "because the designer made it so." All the examples of irreducible complexity (like eyes or the bombardier beetle) get plausibly explained or demonstrated in intermediate forms, contrary to the claims of those scientists pushing ID. The IDers point to the lack of an explanation for a particular form as evidence of a "the designer made it so" explanation. Logically, though, absence of evidence for a contrary explanation is not evidence for a particular explanation.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
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
So the human heart is unreal? Interesting hypothesis. So scientists would state, with certainty, that love doesn't exist?
The human heart is a blood pump. If you want a scientific answer for things like altruism and love, neurobiology would seem more applicable.
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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.
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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...
Um, ID as an idea and a movement was started by the Discovery Institute, which is Washington state. You may be thinking of creationism or literalism, but ID got started as a nutty American thing, and is still based in the US. Anyway, I don't see that it matters except to you and the GGP. Despite the repeated denials, the Brits and the Aussies are just as nuts as Americans.
Similar to the upcoming US election results
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?
You won't. Ever.
Actually your being wrong means that a lot of people lose. They lose hours and days and weeks and months of their lives, wasted in prostrating themselves before an imaginary deity. People who believe out of fear lose their courage -- it's the first thing that goes. People who believe out of fear deliberately stop themselves from asking difficult questions of themselves, their communities, or their leaders. They lose the freedom of thought that might answer the real questions humanity needs answered. They lose the ability to ask questions that might make others uncomfortable.
You really haven't thought this through if you believe out of fear. You have made an implicit assumption that it's safer to believe in a fairy tale that is very readily demonstrated to be the fictional construct of a group of mere mortals. You've decided you don't have the time, energy, or courage to imagine that the universe is anything other than the echo of the most popular religion in town, despite the fact that you know there are numerous competing religions whose beliefs all differ, some of them quite drastically.
The equation I have used is first to postulate that there is only one true way the universe is. All of the religions of humanity are attempts to describe that one true way, and every one of them eventually is found wanting in some detail and superceded by another religion -- or supplanted by a scientific finding. You can think of knowledge as a vast circle, and of human knowledge as another, much smaller circle. The two form sort of a Venn diagram. Religion used to claim that it represented everything we needed from the vast outer circle. Science has been expanding the circle of what we truly, factually know for about five continuous centuries. This has meant that the circle of knowledge that religion can claim through ignorance has gotten smaller and farther away as science has advanced.
Ultimately, religion has had to give up on several fronts entirely. The shape, size, and age of the universe is now a description almost entirely covered in the circle of science. The age we know to a relatively accurate degree. The sequence of events following its creation we think we've got covered, down almost to the very first instant. The size we are not totally sure of, but we do have some upper limits. The shape is in dispute but not as much as it once was. The local area of our universe is much more accurately described and we know for certain that many of the religion-based assertions regarding the Earth were completely wrong, having actually explored some of those areas ourselves in person.
The whole point of this is; every time science has advanced, religion has retreated. This tells me that religion ultimately has nothing of importance to say about life, and being that I was raised without much of it, I find I can safely dispense of it entirely. I had no trouble concluding that it was just a bunch of stories made up by people who didn't know any better. That people still buy into it in this day and age is a sign of their lack of courage and imagination.
One day I feel I'm ahead of the wheel / the next it's rolling over me / I can get back on / I can get back on
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
You've just described my beliefs pretty accurately. ;)
Oh yeah, I should have mentioned that you're brow-beating the wrong crowd. Like Oh_my said, most catholics DON'T follow the literal interpretation. Heck, even the pope himself came out and said that the bible wasn't meant to be taken literally and that there's no reason catholic faith and evolution should disagree.
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...
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.
This assumes that God would want us to have lives free from pain and discomfort (be it physical, social, emotional, etc.). We figure that if God loves us that He would intervene to keep us from earthly harm. But perhaps this is not God's purpose. If we are really spiritual beings (a soul in control of a mind and body) then God knows that what happens to us here does not harm the soul (our "true" self).
In my belief system, we are all living in the ultimate virtual reality. It is so good, that we don't even realize it's virtual. Our true purpose in this reality is to gradually come to understand who we truly are; to really self actualize. I also believe in reincarnation, as this process is too big for one lifetime. We move this process along through our experiences. So a spirit may choose to come to this life with a disability, to have that experience and all that comes with it.
This is also why God does not intervene to stop war, injustice and all the other terrible things we choose to do to each other. He gave us this place and a free will to exercise in it. So if we don't want pain and suffering in our world, then it is up to us to make different choices. It would be rather hypocritical of God to give us free will and then tell us how to live. For this reason I don't believe in sin or hell.
Anyway, that's my take on the eternal question of why bad things happen to good people (or why some people are born crippled). I hope I have given you something to think about. Or perhaps you will think what I believe is silly (you wouln't be the first! ;-)). Either way, the fact that we are free to believe in God or not is entirely the point.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
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.
Founder: OxbowSEO.com
Science is methodology and Religion is theology. Both can be taught at the same time as they are different subjects.
Twinstiq, game news
I frequently use porn = there is no God
I feel bad about using porn = there might be a God
Porn is bad = there is a God
I was addicted to porn but now I am not = I believe in God
I see no problem with porn and it's not addictive = there is no God
I'm a porn fanboy = there is no God
Belief is based on lifestyle, of course. How you live is the manifestation and proof of what you believe. Just like "you are what you eat", it is true that you "live you what you believe"
The above equations are excellent sociological facts.
Founder: OxbowSEO.com
ID started when the Supreme Court of the USA told the schools that they couldn't teach Creationism in the Public Schools. The fundies had to come up with a new name, so they could put it in 'Of Pandas and People', I believe. That way they can deny that ID is religion, when the Judge in Dover saw right through the scam. One other thing about 'Of Pandas and People' is they were dump to keep the first draft of the book which had Creationism (ID) and God (Creator) so you can is it not Science in anyway.
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
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
Good work on pulling those snippets of phrases right out of the context in which I used them. The better explanation that you are looking for is that to claim that science OR faith based understanding can provide a 100% understanding of truth is completely ridiculous. And so when I refer to the evolutionists that like to call "hypocrit" on the Christians who won't accept other religions for potentially being an alternate pathway to God, it is because I view those evolutionist's claims (that somehow THEY know better than those crazy Christians how to be tolerant of other viewpoints) as proved false by their own equal reliance on the correctness of Evolutionary theories over any kind of "Intelligent Design" theories - and so much so that they are afraid that teaching such additional theories somehow constitutes non-seperation of church and state, reliance on faith, etc. Noooo, it's just as simple as teaching an alternative theory about the origins of the universe; which, like I stated before, none of us can empirically measure and prove.
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.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascals_wager
Many a true word hath been spoken in jest -- mod funny posts "Informative".
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
In any case according to your belief system then, murders and pedofiles are all part of 'gods' design. IE: they were designed bad and then they act on that bad design as a result of thier free choice. According to some of them they can't help their behavior. What kind of god would design people with murder feelings?
Only 'flamers' flame!
Does slashdot hate my posts?
This implies that there is a genetic predictor or predisposer for murder or pedophelia. I don't think this is the case. In my understanding pedophelia results from sexual abuse or some other trauma in childhood. So the pedophelia is caused by people's choices, not by God's design. So too with murder. People kill other people because of their desperate circumstances, or their greed, or what have you. Not because of their genes. It is the result of a series or aggregate of choices.
Our choices in this world are what determine the course of our lives and our history. God is not doing it, we are. So when we ask, "Why does God allow so much suffering in the world?" we should really be asking, "Why do we allow so much suffering in the world?"
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
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.