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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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"...study how the rising popularity in the United States of 'intelligent design' - a controversial creationist theory of life - is eroding acceptance of evolutionary science in Canada."
$40,000 was saved from being wasted on a useless study. Too bad that doesn't happen more often.
Don't take life so seriously. No one makes it out alive.
This researcher was on CBC radio this morning and one of the fun things that came out was that by denying his application the funding board simultaneously saved $40,000 and actually proved the central hypothesis of his research; obviously ID is having a detrimental effect.
-- If it isn't broken, you haven't let my users have a crack at it yet --
I'm holding opinion until we see what the actual criteria for rejection were. I could see this as a situation where the letter said something along the lines of, "We found that you did not do sufficient work to establish your definition of evolution when surveying the people." The researcher, of course, would like to have a groundswell of earnest defense from reactionaries, so he rephrases it to sound like the government is advocating ID. In all the noise and hubbub, the government cuts its losses and pays him off rather than spend tons (metric tonnes, I'm sure) of money defending themselves.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
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.
"What happens if a big asteroid hits Earth? Judging from realistic simulations involving a sledge hammer and a common laboratory frog, we can assume it will be pretty bad." -- Dave Barry
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.
The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter. Winston Churchill
The Raven
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?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
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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Coding with assembly is like playing with Legos. Coding an application in assembly is like building a car with Legos.
The SSHRC (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada) is not a backwaters school board stacked with religious fundamentalists. It is a mainstream, government-monitored agency that hands out almost $300mm per year of social sciences funding. Only 40% of applications get approved. In this case, it looks like they were justified in rejecting his application. Indeed, it looks like Alters is being a bit of a publicity-hunting suck. From another source:
Eva Schacherl, a spokeswoman for the council, said Wednesday the multidisciplinary committee was not convinced the proposal's scholarly approach was sound or that it would provide objective results on the question.
"I just want to underline that it is not correct to suggest that the funding proposal was not accepted because the council or the committee had doubts about evolution," she said.
"We understand the way the committee's comments were transcribed or written down or summarized could have misled him and we really regret that the note sent to him gave the impression that the committee had doubts about evolution. That was really not what the committee intended."
Schacherl noted the council has funded other research projects on evolution and gave $175,000 to Alters last year for a three-year project on concepts of biological evolution in Islamic society.
In short, just because you have the right idea doesn't mean you automatically get funding for a flawed study.
When you have nothing left to burn you must set yourself on fire
Since when is Intelligent Design/Creationism a "theory"? It doesn't even deserve the reputation as theory. Theories are rational, testable and predictive. ID/Creationism is fantasy. Evolution can offer predictions about the natural world. What can ID/Creationism "predict"?
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Science is "The observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of phenomena" - Answers.com. At no point has intelligent Design been observed or tested, only speculated. The Bible is not a scientific journal and cannot considered a legitimate source of observational data.
A theory is "A set of statements or principles devised to explain a group of facts or phenomena, especially one that has been repeatedly tested or is widely accepted and can be used to make predictions about natural phenomena" -Answers.com. At no point has Intelligent Design been tested so despite being widely accepted it has not been accepted by science.
The only purpose of teaching Intelligent Design in school would be to make teaching it in church optional. This fact means one would be supporting church in schools, but this cannot be allowed in the US because of the separation of church and state. Good luck Canada.
What else is there to argue about?
- John Smilanick (http://www.johnsmilanick.com/
Whether Darwinists want to admit it or not, there are gaping holes in the theory of evolution you could drive a truck through. Even Darwin himself admitted this. He freely admitted that evolution could not explain complex organs like the eye.
Fortunately evolutionary science didn't stop with Darwin.
The enemies of Democracy are
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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Well, there was that one puppy, but he is all better now.
This is all Bush's fault! Oh wait... this is in Canada. Well it's STILL Bush's fault, dammit!
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
It's just as easy to turn scientific theory into dogma as it is to accept the words of clergy, no? Either way, it runs counter to science when any scientist refuses to question his own store of theories and facts from time to time.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
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
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.'"
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Traders throughout the world discovered the origin of spices a long time ago.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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
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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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
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The debate isn't about if ID is a possible explanation, it's about if it's science or not. Science isn't about if a theory is "viable" or not, it's about if it's predictively useful. ID is _never_ predictive. Therefore, it is NEVER science. Therefore, it's validity in a philosphical sense isn't relevent in deciding if it belongs in a science class or not. Nobody in science would care if ID was some kind of cultural religious movement - it's the IDer's who want it recognized as science that are sirring up the kettle.
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
ID claims that humans, the Earth, the universe, etc are much too complex to be the result of one or more accidents. Such complexity could only be the result of the intervention of a master architect or intelligent designer, if you will.
The problem with this is that it only pretends to solve the question by introducing an extra level of indirection. The logical followup question is never asked: how did a being as complex as the one that designed the universe come into existence?
If life, the universe, and everything are too complex to have come into existence by accident, then almost by definition, the designer, which is at least as complex and most likely even more complex than his/her/its creation, could not have come into existence by accident. And so by applying the principle of ID (complexity above a certain level requires an intelligent designer), we unavoidably come up with the notion that our designer has a designer of his/her/its own. Applying ID again, we see that our designer's designer has a designer of her/his/its own. And on and on we go ad nauseam, resulting in an infinite number of intelligent designers.
Ain't ID fun?
So-called intelligent design is a belief in creationism opposed to knowledge about evolution. Thus, ID is fighting against knowledge which is why their arguments are of the form "but the eye is too complex, prove it evolved. oh you can't and btw where's the missing link?". So how do you fight belief? By mocking it of course, hence the "flying sphagetti monster". Both approaches are similar in that they basically just insult the other side's core principles.
If you really want to fight their belief then come back with an equally compelling belief of your own. For example, argue with IDers that our universe is a mere simulation contained in another, greater one. "God" is a computer. This should be particularly infuriating because it actually makes more sense than "big bang" -or- christianity because it gives you an appeal to authority that is completely consistent with science. When they say "well science can't even explain gravity, what causes that? or explain quantum physics then?" you just say "it's part of the simulation duh". It just is, and covers for science's "problem" of not knowing everything. Plus you get to look as insane to them as they look to you, and by being finally on the same level of discourse some progress can be made.
Incidentally I think a Finite State Monster would be far more terrifying...
One doesn't have to be a Christian to be in favor of telling fairy tales to school children.
Every culture has its myths, including secular beliefs that eventually prove to be misconceptions.
The history of science is full of paradigm shifts, including many that are still underway.
If we want to attack myths, how about attacking myths about regulatory structures that claim to yield order, predictability, and stability (rather than chaos and instability).
I daresay that most people blithely adopt the widely-held secular belief that rule-driven systems are inherently stable, orderly, and predictable. School children are not only taught this, they are obliged to adopt this belief as our prevailing secular religion.
The mathematical truth may be a bit jarring, but the problem is that most people don't have enough math to understand why rule-driven systems are likely to be chaotic and unpredictable.
What's even worse, most people don't have enough math to understand how to design a functional regulatory structure that yields the stability lacking in rule-based architectures.
Poincare and Lorentz notwithstanding, this isn't a new idea. One can find this same idea in the Story of Adam and Eve.
The Orenda Project -- Community Soul on the Right Path http://www.musenet.org/orenda
Obviously, he got his answer to the question "Are American ID fanboys affecting the conduct of science in Canada." It's a resounding YES. And he didn't spend any government grant money to find out.
Edith Keeler Must Die
'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.
It's not just the existence of God that people are arguing for. Christian fundamentalists would be horrified to be told that God exists but doesn't intervene in human affairs, for example.
What's at stake, according to the fears of the ID/creationist crowd, is the specific idea of a God who deliberately created humans as they are and who issued a set of documentation with them which constitutes morality. In other words, it's about the nature of humanity, which they see as distinguished from other animals by a spark of divinity. Chimpanzees, they might say, are amoral -- without resourt to the supernatural, how can we logically require animals 98% similar to chimps in their DNA to obey a code of morals?
Before you can use reason you have to address fears. You could try pointing out that humans were decorating graves and writing theCode of Hammurabi long before the Bible was written and won't suddenly revert to animalism if they abandon the 20th-centruy movement to take the entire Bible literally.
I can state without a shadow of a doubt, it's an absolute fact that I have two testicles.
You're only saying that because you know we're not going to ask you to prove it!
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.
Sure there are darwinists. I am a darwinist who is not a biologist. There are also biologists who are not darwinists.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
The Evolution of Eyes
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.
But I don't think it's necessarily true that the physical creation of man and the spiritual creation of man are one and the same. Did every early hominid have a soul? Who knows. It's certainly possible that event took place 6,000 years ago, with Adam and Eve, where the chronicles begin.
I'm a little rusty on this, but in Genesis, doesn't Cain run off and join "the others"? Seems to suggest that there were hominids already running around by the time A&E left the Garden.
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.
>> Well, the problem is, you're wrong. :-)
Not at all.
Well, no, you actually are wrong. You said ID is something, as opposed to something else, and you were wrong, as I showed by quoting an authoritative source on ID.
It's one thing to say that ID != creationism. But to say that ID excludes creationism -- or at least, is so dissimilar from it that it excludes a literal interpretation of the Gensis account -- is, simply, false.
When you say "creationism is not ID" you are clearly talking about your own definition of ID. But most people, including most proponents of ID, do not use your definition.
I divide ID into hard ID and soft ID.
And then there are those who believe in the literal Genesis account and in ID, which fall into neither camp. Many ID proponents believe in a 7-day creation. Putting your fingers in your ears and closing your eyes won't make the Discovery Institute go away.
And beating up anti-ID people for taking the Discovery Institute at its word is also fruitless.
Hard ID stipulates most of evolution, but claims that the so-called "ball rolling uphill" mutations are not adequately explainable with evolution, and proposes an outside agency which messed around with evolution to bring about the world as we know it. If phrased correctly, this is a testable hypothesis, and so can be falsified and worth at least a study given the large number of people believing in it.
Well, no, it is neither testable nor falsifiable. (Not that I care about those things, as they are rather stupid ways to go about solving the demarcation problem.)
Well, OK, it is testable in theory, but not in practice. We'd need an oracle or some other relevatory device. And it is not falsifiable at all, any more than the existence of God is falsifiable.
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.