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Intelligent Design Ruled "Not Science"
blane.bramble writes "The Register is reporting that the UK government has stated there is no place in the science curriculum for Intelligent Design and that it can not be taught as science. 'The Government is aware that a number of concerns have been raised in the media and elsewhere as to whether creationism and intelligent design have a place in science lessons. The Government is clear that creationism and intelligent design are not part of the science National Curriculum programs of study and should not be taught as science.'"
It's not really religion either.
God demands faith. God does not provide proof, because proof kills faith. If you see something that you think is proof of God's existence, you're wrong. He's ineffable. That means you can't effing figure him out.
The arrogance of the goddamn literal read types is just astounding....Anyone else would look at evolution and go, "Damn! That God guy is hella fricking smart! Look at this crap! It's a system for self-improvement built into self-replicating creatures! It's awesome!" but a literal-read weenie will look at it and say, "Don't say nuthin about that in da bible. You must be wrong."
The worst thing that can be said about the literal read types, is that they have nothing to look up to. They know all there is to know about god and everything. So very very sad.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Will someone in the US government please do the same?
About damn time.
I really can't wait for the end of the world, mankind doesn't deserve to live
Isn't evolution *also* pretty much just a theory at this point, like Intelligent Design?
it's a European contry, isn't it?
(In Soviet Russia, the theory establishes you!)
Very pleased to hear the government come out and and state what by far the majority of the country would assume anyway, nice to have it made official.
May as well teach crystal healing in heart surgery if your going to allow RE into Science classes.
Error 001
Security Scan and Virus Detection do not work with your operating system.
I can't believe it is such an issue in the USA. People don't seem to even understand the definition of science. While I won't diminish the importance of religion or spirituality in life, science is based on reason and logic and is therefore a very practical and useful way to understand the natural world.
Personally, I don't see any conflict between the world being created by some God, even in 7 days, and its being formed over billions of years by natural processes. One is a faith based way of experiencing the world, the other is a sensory based, practical, and logical way. They are both useful.
What isn't useful is to deny children understanding of what, very practically and falsifiably, is the way our reality works.
Thank God for that!
No, wait...
So.. it has come to this
Except for the "Intelligent" and "Design" parts, you mean?
If you open for the far fetched possibility of the universe being created, there's not only intelligent design to consider, but by logic you must also open for stupid design, intelligent accident and stupid accident. Because there's nothing that points to either intelligence or design being the only possible factors of a creation, unless you beg the question.
Regards,
--
*Art
I maintain that origins aren't terribly important, neither to creation, nor evolution. Certainly they aren't important to young children. Even to adults that aren't specifically engaged in the study of the origins of all things they aren't much more than a temporary fancy; jibber jabber to be made over dinner.
Serious theologians and serious scientists have cause to study the matter further. These people are well beyond their primary education. Let's have our youngsters study something more material. There are plenty of topics to choose.
Later,
Jason C. Wells
Oh Lord. Don't look at those sinners in the United Kingdom.
Enjoy looking at us in the US, please?
We love you so much we do everything in your name.
Come to church friends and lets pray for less WMD and more enforcement of DMCA.
So God will get so much love from us that he can ignore that hate from the UK.
George W Bush will tell us how much God loves our prayers and how desperate we try to look better in churches than the rest of the world with all our singing and praying.
Simply put...god doesn't exist. He's an imaginative figure branded into people's minds to try and keep them in line. For those of you who are ignorant enough to believe in him, he only exists in your mind, I apologize for the awakening.
The Ministry further clarified that teachers planning to cover climate change were not permitted to substitute "An Inconvenient Truth" with "Evan Almighty".
The Big Bang theory doesn't say what happened before. The Big Bang says things only about the progression of the universe after its beginning. The difference between the Big Bang and a literal reading of Genesis is that the Big Bang is based on natural laws that have been discovered.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
Of course, the interesting part of the big bang theory is not what came "before" the big bang (which many not even be a meaningful statement.) What came after the big bang is the "answer"; it helps to provide a nexus between, for example, our understanding of galaxies and of protons. It is true, though, that the big bang doesn't provide an answer to the metaphysical question of first cause (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_cause), although it can probably motivate answers. However, science is not directly concerned with metaphysics.
Well, one is based on observation and the other is based on a book with unknown authors,
so i'll choose the one based on observation.
The difference is, Intelligent Design teaches specifically that certain structures found in biological systems are too complex to have come about through macro evolution. They point to things as varied as the eye, flagella on bacterium, and a number of other things which they call "irreducibly complex", meaning that they would have no function if broken apart, and so supposedly cannot have an evolutionary pathway leading to their creation. ID has nothing to do with explaining the origins of the universe. It's an attempt to prove the involvement of a deity in the development of life on Earth.
Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
The Urban Hippie
Could you list the sources where you got your definition of Big Bang cosmology? I'd love to know what hoakey craphouse you got it from. Big Bang cosmology neatly explains:
1. the red-shift of distant galaxies.
2. nucleosynthesis
3. the black body radiation that can be found every in the universe
ID, on the other hand, explains nothing. It's an empty statement that is designed to
a. fool judges
b. make such vague statements on the origins of the universe and life that everyone from a Young Earth Creationist to a Theistic Evolutionist are supposed to be friendly and consequently overthrow the evil secular forces of public education in America.
My recommendation to you is to
a. go read something on the Big Bang by actual cosmologists
b. go look up the Wedge Document to find out what ID *really* is.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Evolution != Big bang theory. One is theory in biology and the other is a physics theory. You are right that they both are peer reviewed evidence supported theories.
While this is indeed a win, the watering down of the sciences in the UK is horrifying. I've written an article about the physics exams to try and bring some attention to this topic. On the biology side, I was shocked by the most recent GCSE paper on which the last question described an experiment on lab animals and the effect exposure of a hormone had on them. The students where then asked: ''How does this experiment contradict the theory of evolution.'' Also they are asked questions like ''Who would oppose contraception'' and they get a mark for writing ''Certain religious groups.'' It's really sad.
Silver Clipboard: Time Management Tips
Account 1: "Nothing existed. Then something inconceivably complex existed. That something willfully created us, specifically."
Account 2: "Nothing existed. Then through sheer logical necessity, everything else existed. Everything. Those parts of everything which were capable of contemplating existence posted on message boards. The rest were not aware that they should be doing so."
Why do you feel there should be an explanation for what caused causality?
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
...I don't see any place for Intelligent Design in public schools, either.
Then again, I don't see any place for public schools when it comes to my (eventual) kids or the kids of the families I financially support. Personally, I'm a fan of Intelligent Design combined with evolutionary and old Earth science, but I would in no way force my opinion on others -- as the public school system does. Evolution? Creationism? Who cares -- if you as a parent don't work to teach your children, don't expect the public school to do a better job, regardless of what they're teaching.
What I find disturbing about the whole issue is not the disagreement as to whether ID is science, but the rigidity with which governments and opponents of ID are trying to define science. Many of the advancements to science can be considered outside of what is considered "science" at the time. An attempt to limit scholarly inquiry by excluding it from scientific discussion will only discourage diversity in the scientific community. ID is unique (I'm not talking about young earth crap) because it really is not straight philosophy as it has too many ties to empirical data, it shouldn't be religion because (at least the reasonable arguments) don't actually argue for a "God," and yet it doesn't fit very nicely into the current definitions of "science." I don't think it is fair to any argument to preclude it being reasonable based on the fact that it doesn't really fit into current frameworks that have been set up.
Massive difference.
Have a go at reading Richard Dawkins "The God Delusion" for a nice description of why this is so.
The Big Bang is supported by evidence. What was there before the Big Bang is unknown. Saying "we don't know what was there before the Big Bang" is a lot different than saying "God was there."
For all we know, maybe God created the Big Bang. Maybe the Big Bang spontaneously appeared out of nothing. Maybe the Big Bang happened after a Big Crunch, and maybe the Universe has been creating and recreating itself forever. Maybe the Big Bang started when Great Green Arkleseizure sneezed. As soon as we have some solid supporting evidence for any of these possibilities, they will become Scientific Theories. Before then, they are just hypotheses. However, with no real way to test them, they are not particularly interesting hypotheses.
Us intelligent design theorists were so close to getting tenure providing untestable theories for the last 8 years.
Everyone knows that everything in the real world is already figured out anyway, it is time for my kind to provide people who can't (or chose not to) understand all those quarks and photonamajiggers something to believe in.
Besides, who doesn't like envisioning their enemies burning for all eternity in a lake of fire? Eh? Eh? Come on you know you want some of that.
The words in bold, by the way, apply to scientific reasoning but not to religion. So the big bang and religious creation myths are "the same" only if you completely throw out all the successful predictions and agreements of cosmology, and focus on one particular question that the big bang theory was never intended to answer.
In a more general sense, science never claims to give your life meaning, or to answer the "why?" questions. It merely provides predictive models, or in other words answers the "how?" questions. Science and religion are very different, and pretending they are the same is rather disingenuous.
... how do you explain the fact that your finger is exactly the right diameter for sticking up your nose?
Even worse, you enter a logic trap when you insist that things require a Prime Mover. If the universe requires a Prime Mover, then the logical extension to that is that the Prime Mover also does, and you enter an infinite regression of Prime Movers. The standard answer by those who insist on causality all the way down is that their Prime Mover is exempt. At that point, an application of Occam's Razor states that unnecessary entities should be removed, and so if the alleged Prime Mover requires no lower-level Prime Mover, then why can't the universe exist without the need of a Prime Mover.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Sir Fred Hoyle had problems with the British scientific establishment also.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
Big Bang Theory makes predictions that have been experimentally verified. The same can't be said for Intelligent Design.
You appear to be ignorant about the big bang theory. I haven't read anything in big bang theory which describes about what existed before the big bang. It's extremely presumptuous to say that there was "nothing".
The big bang theory is our best fit model to explain the expansion of the universe. Yes, it is not comprehensive. It doesn't explain everything about everything. Nothing in science does. But, to date, it does hold up to all cosmological evidence that we have.
Please stop trying to make the big bang theory something that it's not. It's not a theory for the creation of the universe.
how open minded "science" has become
Fire ruled "Not cold."
I've been saying a very similar thing for years. We all believe in some greater order/power/whatever to the universe, we just don't all agree in how to classify it.
That's nice but what does the Big Bang theory have to do with evolution?
The Big Bang is about how the universe started and evolution is about how life in earth started about 10 billion years later.
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Now, can we add some physics to the physics lessons, and chemistry to chemistry lessons and make the science lessons about understanding the nature of the universe rather than waffling about why we "must" replace coal power stations with windfarms, and teach kids how to make chemicals that are fun to make?
I don't think I've ever heard someone say that there was nothing before the Big Bang, except you creationist nutcases. Clearly there was something there before it, and clearly there is probably no way for us ever to see what that was. That doesn't mean there was any sort of design by any sort of intelligence.
That you can go out of the house expressing views like that without being horribly embarrassed is amazing. Or maybe you just never leave your mom's basement.
Just in case you were wondering, all the matter that there is or ever will be has always existed. It floated around in space and through literally countless collisions due to the inherent physics of everything (that have also always existed) they eventually came together into stars and planets and on some of them, such as Earth, life evolved and here we are. Whether or not this explanation is true (it likely is similar to the truth) it sure as hell seems easier to believe than some desert sky daddy or whatever nonsense you believe.
The Farewell Tour II
With no explanation and both starting with a hypothesis, which one is more 'scientific'?
Here is a hint: it's the one whose proponents are willing to entertain evidence to the contrary, and, should evidence not fit, adjust their theory accordingly. You know, the one that follows the SCIENTIFIC METHOD!
The Big Bang is a theory, and not a particularly satisfying one. The people who back it are quite aware of where it falls short, and are constantly looking for ways to test it, refine, or even refute it if independently reproducible tests can determine something better. That is the fundamental criterion of what qualifies as science, and therefore why evolution is science, and creationism/intelligent design is not.
If you put forth a hypothesis, and are unwilling to consider any evidence or produce any tests to challenge your hypothesis, you do not have a theory. You have dogma. God bless the UK for understanding the difference.
Science can't explain everything. That's not the point. Intelligent design is not science and tries to explain things in a way which contradicts science where the scientific method has led to verifiable theories. You can believe in intelligent design if you want, but don't pretend that it is anything but veiled religious belief. "Science" is a defined term, not just a fancy vocabulary and a labcoat.
I for one, see a bloody huge difference between Intelligent Design and the Big Bang theory. Mostly in part due to the evidence that the Big Bang theory presents in relation to what Intelligent Design tries to explain.
Just to start off with, there's some reading you should do http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_bang and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_Design
Now once you've read both of these and understood the points on both sides you can see that while Intelligent Design is one of the more intellectual ways of arguing your faith it's pretty much inherently flawed. Because even though you can argue for days that a creator designed everything we know it still poses the greatest question of all: Who created the creator?
Answer me that!
The Refined Geek - Technology, Finance, Space and everything in between
There you go. How can a person, or a "God", be responsible for the creation of something as complex as the Universe? It is a total non-sense! I mean, the Big Bang is the beginning of a series of events that created the Universe and its laws. It's physics. You just cannot have someone who decided all this. And why explaining human beings and all living creatures with creationism? It is not a creation, it is an evolution. As far as you can go back, there always was an ancestor before you. Up to a point where life (organic compounds) spawed off inorganic precursors (Miller-Urey Experiment.
Anyways, there are so many obivous flaws in the creationism that it simply loses all its credibility as a possible avenue to understanding our complex world.
iTx Technologies: Open source development in Montreal
Would the conclusion that a particular teacher shouldn't present it in their own class, based on this ruling, be a plausible inference, or an empirically-verifiable fact for that classroom?
How do I get the scientific answer here? Replicable, quantifiable suggestions only, please... and preferably a little more solidly quantifiable than reliance on nebulous constructs like "government", "declarations", and "politicians".
Help me out here.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
Part, the second: Physics doesn't permit a nothing to exist. There is no such thing in science as "nothing". There are no "perfect vaccuum"s, except in adverts. There is a quantum foam, which consists of pairs of virtual particles whose sum total of mass and energy is zero. This is not a cheat, it is an inevitable consequence of the inescapable laws of thermodynamics which underly ALL other laws of the Universe. Besides, there's a possibility it has been observed in experiments on the Casmir Effect.
Now we get to the third part. Relativity requires that space/time curve under gravity. If you backtrack time towards the Big Bang, time bends inwards. The closer you get, the slower time subjectively is. You can never reach time zero. It's flat. The gradient is zero. There is no point from which the Big Bang erupted. Time is parabolic that early on. If there is no origin, then there is no need to explain what happened then. (This was why Professor Hawking was nervous about talking to the late Pope John Paul II - the Pope said it was ok to explore the universe, just not talk about how it originated. Hawking's talk earlier that day had shown that there was no origin to talk about.)
Next, we get to part four. Testability. The Big Bang is a verifiable hypothesis - we can create the conditions needed to create a virtual energy density necessary to inflate a bubble universe, and that has been known for many decades now. I'm not saying anything new here. Creationism and Intelligent Design is unverifiable, short of God appearing on Larry King Live, and strangely I don't see the Creationists begging Him/Her to do so. Odd, that.
(I have nothing against faith, but many who claim to have faith have nothing of the sort and I do have a great many problems with abuse of faith.)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
The Sky is Blue and Pie tastes good. Thank you Government of the UK even though I live in backwards America. Thank you for point out the obviousness of sections of OUR Governments stupidity. I hope all the Intelligent Design people back off here in America now. Yah right and next pigs will fly out of my ass....
The Big Bang theory is scientific because it makes falsifiable predictions about what the universe ought to look like. It is the explanation most consistent with our observations of the universe. It accurately explains the red shift of distant objects, and the observed structure of the universe, and the cosmic background radiation, among other things. Creation isn't scientific because it isn't testable. The explanation for everything is always "Wizard did it." There is no way to falsify "Wizard did it."
Although really unrelated to this argument, One can show that Creationism is actually the more complex explanation, and therefore, according to Occam's Razor, more likely to be false. Creationism presupposes god, or some equivalent entity. God is, by definitions used in philosophy and theology, greater than the whole of the universe. Therefore, Creationism, by presupposing the existence of god, an entity more complex and powerful than the universe, who then creates the less complex universe, is a more complex argument than the Scientific explanation, which merely presupposes that the universe can come into existence. In order to be intellectually honest, you have to explain god, and how god comes into existence.
Like heliocentrism, the theory of gravity, the theory of relativity, and set theory, Evolution is just a theory!
As we all know, the conjunction of two sets is determined by God and depends on how God feels at the time.
The Flying Spaghetti Monster is not going to be happy to hear about this!
Both ID and evolution are theories, or they wouldn't have the words "The theory of" before them. I think it's important to remember that the best either camp (scientists and theologians) can offer are just theories, both with their own supporting evidences. It's sad, though, that kids can't be taught both (that is, taught an ID where the goal is to show the probability of some greater power, not necessarily any religion's god) and then be left alone to make up their own minds about which they will choose to believe. Because, when it all boils down to it, you have to have faith in something, be it science or religion. The fact is that some of those who vehemently flame ID have just as much (or more) faith in the current scientific paradigm (see: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn) compared to their religious counterparts.
The big bang as other have said only says that at some point the universe exploded forth from a single small immensely dense and hot thing. Thats all it claims to say essentially but it does so in excruciating methametical detail with evidence from observations and models supporting it. It is irrelevant who that small dense thing came into being, it could have been god or a drunk frat student sneezing in another universe (really weird universe where sneezing pops new universes into existence). Since we by many account cannot know how that initial point came into being it is irrelevant.
As for your second explanation? How did god create the universe? When did he do it? What state did he do it in? Had he further influenced it? If so are these influences predictable or verifiable? Well? I'm waiting.
Church leaders around the world have called for the shee^h^h^h^h Christians to shun all science. Their exact words are "Shun all science, it is of the Devil Satan. He is controlling the minds of the evil Atheists. We must fight this evel now! Kill all those who oppose us!" All people believing in such superstitions are now agreeing with their religious leaders in the call to eliminate all that believe in the so-called "evil science" They were immediately confronted by Freethinkers and the worldwide killing spree was brought to a halt before it ever began.
"Since you believe all science is evil, get rid of your weapons since they are made through science. By the way; all the food you enjoy, the beverages you drink, the water you need, the clothes you wear today, the transportation you use, and the computers you use were all created through science. Are all you religious sheep going to kill yourselves through dehydration and go without clothing as eveything is created through science?" was a phrase created by a collaberation of two Freethinkers, Bill Gates and Linus Tovalds. This phrase was repeated by all freethinkers around the world.
This caused all people from all religions to looke into it and agreed and found out their respective bibles were really created with science. Word have it quite a few people of all religions became Freethinkers that day and the rest decided to commmit suicide from all of the madness.
From the mysterious future.
This just in, the worldwide crime rate, subtance abuse, and poverty is at an all time low. It is now near zero. With no religion in the world today the world is now enjoying peace and prosperity until all life comes to an end on the Earth. A major breakthrough in the cure for cancer has revealed all diseases can and will be cured since there is nothing blocking the research. Microsoft has finally agreed to open their source code and all of their file formats since their is no need for money. Alternative energy sources such as solar and wind will be in full implementation by the end of the week.
What ID really was was an attempt to slip creation in under the door. This is because Creationists can't stand the following phrase. "I don't know."
Here are some things that do need to be understood.
1. Evolution does not disprove the existence of "God" but it may undermine the myth of Jehovah. That is to say, the creationists are afraid that if we get so much evidence to show that the religions of Abraham are false, or the world doesn't work the way they say it does, that God becomes impersonal and Alien to us. Which is a sane argument really. The creator of the Universe caring about what happens to us is like us caring about what happens to some Ant hill somewhere.
If that happens, then all our wars, and churches, and institutions we built up to serve religion will be for a "God" who is disconnected and we will have built these social institutions for the sake of ourselves. Alot of powerful people don't want that.
2. Our understanding of Evolution is incomplete. That is to say, we can see the trees, but not the entire forest. We aren't that far ahead. There are going to be errors we make in our determination in how evolution works. The creationists are going to come back and say "see! see! you screwed up! but God makes everything perfect!"
3. If you want to know the truth of whats out there, I'd imagine religious forces in this world would seek to prevent it, or cover it up. A lot of these religions created by Abraham revolve around the idea that Man is at the center of everything. If we discovered Alien life elsewhere in the Universe, at first everyone religious would panic. Gradually, Religion would change to accommodate the Aliens. But you damn well bet there would be people saying "Jebus died on the Cross for Humans/Terrans/Earthlings" whatever.
So, as an Agnostic, who isn't sure whats out there, I'd like to know, but I can't be sure until the technology exists for me to explore this universe in much greater depth. I'm very curious. But I feel comfortable saying "I don't know right now." The hard core religious people can't afford to be wrong. If their $Holy_Text is wrong, then they are going to realize the magnitude of some of the inexcusable things done in History.
I think some day it will happen. We will come out with concrete evidence that exposes the whole mythology, something so observable that religion can't adjust to it. Who knows if we will accept it and become better people, or deny it and kill each other. Again, I just don't know.
The Big Bang and "[that] God spoke the world/universe into existance" are very different. One predicts (post-dicts?) the past behavior of matter travelling through the Universe. The other assumes that something (a God) used speech to generate the Universe in unknown ways.
By Physics 101, I could follow the trajectory of a football through the air. I knew where the football was at time t=31 seconds. I determined where it was a time t=3 seconds, using Calculus.
Replace "football" with "planet" and "trajectory" with "really hard Astrophysics" to see how the Big Bang is scientific. The Big Bang never states that "there was nothing, and then suddenly everything exploded into being.". We just look back until we reach a very small dot of matter.
It IS scientific to define a God, speech, and Universe. Then, show how this God uses speech to create a Universe. This God will fall far short of the ideal of Allah.
What was there before the Big Bang is unknown
The statement doesn't really make sense. There was no length before the big bang, there was no width, or depth (dimensions 1-3), and there was no time (dimension #4). To ask the question requires time to exist when it didn't.
Fortunately we don't need to invoke God for every scenario where quantum reality is non-intuitive to beings whose ancestors were being chased around by dinosaurs for snackage just a cosmic handful of years ago.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
The UK government has ruled that water is wet, the Pope is Catholic, and that bears do indeed shit in the woods.
This is typical Abrahamic religion thought, and not common to all religions. And to make it worse, the fact that it's a typical argument in Abrahamic religious traditions, doesn't make it an essential feature of them.
Which means that you're carrying out a strawman argument, since you're not engaging the actual claims and beliefs of any actual adversary, only those you project onto an imagined one, and which just happen to be very conveniently weak.
Are you adequate?
I would be very interested to hear their arguments. Last time I looked it wasn't trivial to distinguish science from pseudoscience... Yes, I am a scientist...
Both start with a hypothesis, but only one is based on data, observations, and analysis like readings from deep space instruments, physics calculations, etc. I guess that one would be more scientific. The other one is based on oral and written histories. The last time I checked, oral and written histories are not science.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Because, when it all boils down to it, you have to have faith in something, be it science or religion.
Bullshit. Don't water down science as something that people must have "faith" to believe in. That's is 100% false, and that is purely rhetoric to make science sound like something that is debatable. By and large, it is not. It's not always right, but it is right a hell of a lot more often than not. Religion and science do NOT intersect. In fact, they're polar opposites.
I don't respond to AC's.
Despite the contrary, all systematic views of the Whole Thing(tm) require faith (philosophically known as a "world view"). Science is no different in this regard. Science has two basic articles of faith: First, that mankind has the mental capacity to reason out the universe and can do so through independent, verifiable testing of mankind's understand of the universe. Second, that despite not understanding currently everything, eventually mankind will figure out the Whole Thing (tm).
The first article of faith has shown repeatedly that there is no need to call in anything supernatural. Time and time again, when confronted with things (i.e. miracles, magic, etc), science has shown through testing that non-supernatural answers (or no answer) has been found. There has never been a proven case that science was left with "boy, no matter what, it seems God is working that."
The second article of faith has shown that many things that were labeled as unknowable or only in the realm of the supernatural were eventually solved with non-supernatural, testable, verifiable understanding; thus, one can conclude that while we do not have an explanation of the Whole Thing (tm) now, it seems some day we will.
Remember, there was a time when most people only accepted that the world was flat. A few people did tests and realized that their tests and the laws of math for a flat earth did not jive. Many people through away the differences because "how can you explain a round Earth when I clearly see flat land and the sun and moon revolving around us?" It took a long time of gathering evidence to recognize that it was *our perspective* that was flawed.
The Big Bang is merely our current understanding given the view of all our evidence. It is not the first proposal. An early proposal was Steady-State universe. Like any good theory, it gave predictions of other things we should observe, but they didn't hold up to testing. The Big Bang has. Does this mean that Big Band is The Answer (tm)? Of course not, because it doesn't (yet!) explain what came before it; however, that may be a meaningless question.
Paul Davies has been trying to marry Quantum Dynamics with Cosmology has the interesting suggestion that the idea that there is such a thing as time may be very misguided. I can't do justice to his work here, but the short version is that time is just another direction in QD. The QD works irrespective of time and the suggestion that perception a past and future comes from how we view things in a macroscopic view; in other words, our perspective is likely wrong.
What makes Science scientific is that scientific theories present something that is testable and is rooted that everything we need to observe exists within the universe. Intelligent Design coached in statements that sound plausible to the layman, but it is flawed because it makes claims that cannot be tested. It's faith is based on lack of proof. Science is faith based on proof.
Bel, the mostly sane.. "Of course I can't see anything! I'm standing on the shoulders of idiots." -- Me
Alright. One important difference between the big bang hypothesis and a creation myth, is that the former has been posited to attempt to account for things we've seen and measured in the universe around us, and is as successful as its ability to predict these measurements. But the latter is a story that someone wrote (for whatever reason), whose success purely rides on the number of people who have learned and accepted it as fact.
Ah religion: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fY8nD236xw
Science is based, even moreso, on the scientific method, which, sadly, doesn't seem to be taught in schools in the U.S. It may be mentioned once or twice in ten years of education, but it's not taught, such that kids graduate from high school actually understanding it well enough to explain it to someone else.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
Unless the Flying Spaghetti Monster lives in that pond, and blesses us all with his tomato sauce covered tentacles.
I'm tired of hearing about the E/ID debate, and I'm sick of seeing news about it. Can I PLEASE have a filter that explicitly excludes these kinds of discussions from my RSS feed? Preferably either one on my /. account or one that plugs into aKregator? I neither have the time nor the inclination to care even that much about this topic, and I'm quite busy evaluating for myself which side has more assholes and who is less worth listening to. At the moment, both sides are losing, in my estimation.
You're all lunatics.
grey wolf
LET FORTRAN DIE!
Sad that there only exists 1500 people in England.
Especially if that number is supposed to represent the view of her people.
For those afraid of following the 'evil ways and teachings' of the USA.
Last I checked, we left England behind to do our own thing.
Has ID & C ever really been an issue in the classroom?
It's just another viewpoint 'theory', sure we may have evolved from pond scum, apes, etc.
But I really haven't heard about many apes/monkeys/etc. emerging from the jungle and joining the rest of civilization.
evolution is not about how life started.
once life of some kind existed (by some unknown method) then evolution applies.
I love broken car analogies so here is one.
Steering requires a moving car like evolution requires moving life.
Steering a non-moving car does nothing like evolution applied to non-living stuff does nothing.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
That is how I have always argued it. The argument seems so simple, and so obvious. Yet not only do people not think of it themselves, they twist their minds into pretzels trying to figure a way to deny its validity. It is absolutely frightening what religion does to people's brains.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
The universe could be caught in an infinite big bang/big crunch loop. The big bang could happen when enough of the black hole formed by the big crunch had evaporated away (hawking radiation) and could no longer sustain itself (explode, big time). As the debris flew outwards the relentless force of gravity would eventually win (assuming the correct cosmological constant) and cause the big crunch.
Hey, just a thought. I expect that there are an innumerable amount of holes in it. Even if there were not, it's not like anyone's every going to get around to proving it.
... that the only science of intelligent design ... IS the science of evolution.
The reason IMO, even as a staunch defender of intelligent design theories, that this is the correct move, is because the only real science (currently) for intelligent design, is the exact same science as that of darwin's evolution.
I.e. the only way to prove evolution is to design a repeatable experiment, whereby the experimenter designs the environment of the experiment (e.g. with fruitflys), and then evolution occurs before the naked eye, as organisms adapt, or are selected by fitness, and ultimately evolve in the controlled confines of this scientifically reproducable experiment.
Of course, the irony is that this simultaneously proves both evolution, and intelligent design. Because without an intelligent designer of the experiment intervening and subverting nature, there would be no results and no new life forms to witness.
That's nice but what does the Big Bang theory have to do with evolution?
Both theories are repugnant to those who have a deep seated need for something, anything which is in control. The idea of a chaotic, unplanned and meaningless universe scares the crap out of them. For me, that just means that nothing bad is certain either, that my plans are potentially as good as anyone else's, and I can give the universe whatever meaning I like.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Let the Kids decide
God demands faith. God does not provide proof, because proof kills faith.
Yet if "God" demands belief, faith, without proof in "It" to go to heaven instead of hell then "It" is sadistic.
I used to believe but after I "survived" an accident I lost the beliefs I had. And yes, I used and meant "survived". I was riding my bike when a moving van hit me. While I was in a coma the docs told my family it would be a miracle if I lived. If I were to talk to those docs now I'd say they were wrong, my life has been a living hell since.
FalconShould there be a Law?
God gave you the gift of REASON so you could recognize Satan's work and avoid it.
Satan gave you FAITH so you wouldn't!
BillyDoc
Many of the advancements to science can be considered outside of what is considered "science" at the time.
You're confusing prevailing beliefs held by scientists with the scientific method itself. You're right, at any given time some portion of the best-believed scientific knowledge will be wrong, and other scientists will eventually find evidence for other theories. This will, however, be done using scientific principles. It will not be done by examining scripture.
ID is unique (I'm not talking about young earth crap) because it really is not straight philosophy as it has too many ties to empirical data, it shouldn't be religion because (at least the reasonable arguments) don't actually argue for a "God," and yet it doesn't fit very nicely into the current definitions of "science."
ID simply does not use the scientific method. To do so, it would have to generate a testable hypothesis which is disproveable. It is inherently not proveable to show that the earth was made, in some way, by a deity. As Wolfgang Pauli once put it, "That's not right. That's not even wrong!" His point was that, for a theory to come under the purview of science, it has to be disprovable. ID is not. ID takes a specific belief and carefully skirts around existing evidence in a way that it avoids making a testable hypothesis. As such, ID does not belong in science curriculum. There's also the notion of "why the Christian religion?" If they get equal billing with science, surely Mayan, Greek, Norse, Phoenician, Aztec, Zulu, Persian, Flying Spaghetti Monster, and other creation myths should be taught in science class, right?
An attempt to limit scholarly inquiry by excluding it from scientific discussion will only discourage diversity in the scientific community.
We're talking about what should be taught in high school science. Textbooks contain the best available knowledge at any given time, and that's what should be taught in PUBLIC schools. The vast majority of scientists have examined the available evidence and mechanisms and concluded that evolution is almost certainly responsible for the existing biodiversity on earth. No one, however, is preventing a group of people from conducting research into ID or anything else, or of teaching it in parochial schools not funded by taxpayers. So no one is attempting to limit scholarly inquiry.
Many (if not most) advancements to science are made by those exploring unpopular theories, but no one denies that what they're doing still qualifies as "science" (as opposed to Astrology, ID, etc.). Can you give an example of one advancement (or more) to science that can be considered outside of "science"? I'll allow outside of "science at the time" as long as you stick to time periods since the scientific method was created.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
"I mean, when both the explanations can't tell me really what where there before everything existed...I can't say one of them is more believable than the other one."
It doesn't matter which one is more "believable". The question was only evaluating which was scientific and therefore worth teaching in science classes.
Believe what you like. That doesn't mean all interpretations are scientific or equally plausible.
For most people, seeing an expanding fireball of debris would be more than enough evidence to be convinced that an explosion had just occurred. They wouldn't have to witness the first fraction of a second of the event to make that interpretation. Likewise, although the evidence for the Big Bang isn't quite the same as a regular explosion, the evidence for expansion is still pretty compelling, and predictions have turned out to be pretty reliable (e.g., the cosmic background radiation temperature). There are plenty of questions left, but there isn't any doubt the idea is scientific (even if it might turn out to be wrong). It simply has limits to how far back observations can be made and hypotheses about it tested. The fact there is a limit does not negate or diminish the scientific interpretation of everything that happened afterwards.
The question of whether or not God or some other omnipotent designer was involved at any stages isn't a scientific question (because it can account for *any* evidence), so how can that interpretation be "scientific" in any sense? If it can't be shown to be wrong, ever, then an idea isn't usually regarded as scientific.
The difference between the two ideas is that one of them doesn't presume anything about a "designer's" involvement or non-involvement, while the other one does. The Big Bang hypothesis is negatable. Observations did not have to match predictions. But did God trigger the Big Bang? Did He have His hand in everything subsequently? How do I know? There's really no way to tell one way or the other. That's because it's a philosophical/theological question, not a scientific one.
I don't understand the insistence that there be an explanation for what was "before" the Big Bang. Maybe "before" never existed because time did not exist, so there was no "before" to explain?
Maybe it's kind of like asking what you were thinking about before you were conceived by your parents -- a nonsensical question, because you weren't thinking at all and did not exist yet. To extend the analogy further, what if you decided to believe you were conceived by some divine process in the beginning? Why not? Neither you nor I were there to witness it. I'd say go right ahead and do that, just don't claim such a belief is scientific and deserves equal attention in biology class.
It's quite possible to believe that God has a hand in every event, past or present. It is only a few people that think such beliefs are also scientific, although I don't quite understand the motivation. Most people just have faith and leave it at that.
Just tell them that the schools will offer to teach ID as a fact when the churches teach evolution and Darwinism as a fact.
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Do you have insurance? Why do you need insurance, if God will protect you?
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Do you have a job? Isn't it written "Ask and you shall receive."
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Any kids? After all, there's less than a 100% chance that their kids will believe, so they have a chance of increasing the number of people condemned to hell. Shouldn't you be practicing birth control instead of making babies?
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Is incest still okay? Adam and Eve's kids must have practiced incest.
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Do you have more than one wife? King David had 300, and he was "a man after god's heart". the lech. and Solomon had 700.
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Is slavery still okay? After all, God commanded his people to enslave their enemies, and even Jesus never condemned slavery.
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Is racism and genocide still okay? After all, God commanded his people to kill off those who were not true believers.
Gee, that "Intelligent Design" doesn't look so intelligent any moreKevin Smith on Prince
Cause Al Gore's movie is pretty unscientific and showing it 5 times to one student in 5 different classes is getting old!!!
and so if the alleged Prime Mover requires no lower-level Prime Mover, then why can't the universe exist without the need of a Prime Mover.
That's assumming that the alleged Prime Mover shares the same properties of the universe and therefore requires a prime mover itself, too. But God, if he/she exists, is non-material, then he/she/it/whatever did *NOT* require a prime mover because all the objects in the universe we can see are material and you simply can't extrapolate their properties into God.
Your argument is a very good attempt at reductio ad absurdum, but unfortunately it's based on a false premise.
You go smite those god damned literal bible types.
AAAAHHHHHMEN!
Deleted
Just to point out. In the bible it says God created the world. However it doesn't say how he did it. For all we know he created the world through evolution. Fact is, no one will ever really know for sure. Anyway just something to think about.
while i am a firm believer in evolution, i find it rather ironic that the creationists' ideas have evolved into intelligent design, but the evolutionists' ideas have not evolved into anything new.
as new evidence comes to light, the scientific argument should change over time to adapt to the information available. in other words, evolution should evolve the way that creationism has.
sarcasm:
-noun
1. harsh or bitter derision or irony.
As a matter of probability, as a matter of history, as a matter of precidence, ID is emminantly more probably than a Darwinian Evolution.
Consider probability. Knowing the age of the earth and the probability of evolution to have occured - whether gradually or through the punctuated equalbrium method - is near impossible. To suggest that somehow there is a hand of God guiding evolution despite mathematical improbability is directly contrary to the extreme anti-faith positions of DE's advocates.
Consider history. The more ignorant among followers of DE will try to point to the process of 'natural selection' as evidence of DE and try to confuse the two very theories (though NS is clearly beyond the realm of theory.) There is no record of DE occuring. No observable examples. No fossils or DNA showing actual evidence of evolution occuring.
Consider precidence. As of now, humans have used their own 'intelligent design' to create new species and variations of plants and animals - such as crops that are immune to insects. Here we have a real, witnessed example of ID actually occuring, including all of the mechanisms involved in it. Can you say the same for DE?
What is so very sad is you attempting to smear a valid scientific theory. The same nonesense occured during the enlightenment when someone suggested that the Earth revolved around the sun. But the truth will out.
I would say that DE may have occured, in some fashion - but not on this planet and not in the 10 or so billion years this planet has been in existence. Elsewhere, maybe, over a much, much longer period of time.
Presumably whatever was before the Big Bang must be the same as whatever was before Genesis 1:1, that is, just before 'In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth' - so what was before the beginning?
"ID is unique because it really is not straight philosophy as it has too many ties to empirical data"
OH PLEEAAASE! what empirical data ID has? that the human eye is so complex that it could not evolve by itself? Please show us a site where empirical data that verify ID are posted.
"it shouldn't be religion because don't actually argue for a "God,""
Yeah right. Can you say 'hypocrisy'? "intelligent designer" means "creator of the universe" i.e. "god".
It's a well-thought out comment.
I'll subscribe to Slashdot when I see a month without a dupe, a typo, or an article the "editors" didn't read.
there is evidence that we can all see, whether it's in the Bible or in the environment around us
Where is this evidence? I haven't seen any evidence of any supreme diety. Nor for any soul or spirit.
FalconShould there be a Law?
They should teach Religion, Intelligent Design, and Creationism in a new class. They could call it:
Bullshit 101
The fundamental basis of the scientific is repeatability. Without it, we are just guessing.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
As usual, the "sophisticated" science crowd crow over their religion beating another (ha ha!).
Darwin's theory of evolution has many components, some of which fall under science (e.g. there is random genetic mutation) and many which fall under metaphysics/religion (e.g. there is a god called survival of the fittest that drives evolution, science is good, good is good, you are right, this is important for humanity, all religions are false). Frankly, there hasn't been one comment here that can't be easily argued through to either it's metaphysical nature and/or the self contradictory way in which the believer lives compared to what would be a logical lifestyle if his beliefs were true (seems to happen a lot to us humans).
if you any of you are brave enough to listen to logic and reason, head on over to http://onecosmos.blogspot.com/ read from the beginning and learn. There are many like this writer if you can look outside of your cubicle.
Go ahead, mod me down.
It took a Christian Europe and her colonies (particularly England and her colonies) to bring a democratic form of government into being that is conductive to the growth of the economies by application of the science to benefit the most of their citizens.
Wish I could provide a reference, but I read about a simulation that showed that a fully working eye could evolve in a pretty short span (well, still many many generations, only much faster than most would guess).
The theory goes something like this; that it may have been advantageous to detect light or maybe from which direction light comes, specifically sunlight, maybe for navigation - don't recall what the study said. From simply feeling heat on the skin, to a part of the skin being more specifically sensitive to light, to start detect variations in light, to starting to "see" contours, to a rudimentary eye, the steps were all quite logical, although I am now extrapolating from a vague memory...
It's all about if something provides an advantage for survival and therefore reproduction - if it does, and well enough, it may yield fantastic results, like the eye. Conversely, bad designs that doesn't really affect survival to any large degree may often be left untouched forever - a good example is our shared throats for breathing and eating/drinking, which is a pretty half-assed design, causing discomfort and problems, even death at rare times. It's just that it's so rare that it actually affects someones survival that there hasn't been an evolutionary need to get rid of it. Still might happen in the future.
Not that this actually proves anything, just shows that it's quite possible to find reasonable, logic explanations for incredibly awesome things like the eye as well as incredibly stupid designs like the shared throat.
Spine World
What you're describing as ID is really Creatonism. There was nothing; then something. God did it.
Intelligent Design is IMHO insidious Creationism. Creatonism isn't science but some of its more political supporters don't like evolution. (Just as one example: the bishop in Kenya suggesting fossils should be removed from public museums because they might "corrupt" people because fossils contradict the young Earth model.)
So there's an attempt to counter evolution (science) in scientific terms. Life's complicated, the universe is complicated and they'd like to think there's was an Intelligent Designer. I.e. not "God" (although this is what they mean).
The rational response is that the "evidence" to support ID is weak and inconsistent and not worthy of comparison with real theories (where this word actually means something). The IDers response is "teach the controversy!" in a further attempt to elevate this fiction to be scientifically worthy.
Evolution is science; creationism is religion. ID is fabricated nonsense to distract from science, which may lead to a godless universe. It's a shame really: rational science would eventually find god if He existed. The IDers don't appear to want to take this risk.
another point is that there are only so many hours and days in the school year, and we already constantly make choices - as you point out - about what does and does not warrant precious class room minutes.
Science is essentially a process of knowing about the natural universe. Now a big part of that is that scientific theories must be falsifiable, that means that they must be stated in such a way they can be tested to be proven false. This is key, science is only about testable thing. If you can't test it, it isn't science. That's why there's objections to calling string theory a theory, it isn't. It's a nice bunch of math, but currently it doesn't make testable predictions and thus isn't a theory, it isn't in the real of science, but rather math and philosophy. If such a time should come when it does make testable predictions, then that is the domain of science.
So when you understand this, it is pretty easy to see that ID isn't science. The reason is that it invokes god, which is the ultimate untestable. It is perfectly possible that there is a god guiding evolution with an invisible hand, and there's no way to detect it, but that doesn't matter to a science class. Since you can't test it, it isn't science. If the ID people want it accepted as a scientific theory, they have to make testable predictions.
Thus this ruling is a correct one. Regardless of if you believe ID to be right or wrong, it isn't science, it can't be. You can't have an untestable supernatural component to your idea and have it be science. Doesn't mean it is wrong, but it can't be science.
Crunch.
There are some eight 'styles' of calling upon God in a specific situation, each being somewhere between a cognitive fallacy and a hedge against exhausted despair.
Forget deeds a moment. God can't even *communicate*. How can you draw on "faith" in some truly horrible situation if you can't even buy an ice cream cone and ask God to share half.
Christianity is like medicine leaves mixed up with denaturing stalks. You know something promising is in there somewhere, but they refuse to extract the medicine from the actively sickening camoflage.
Still not convinced? Tell me why God has the best IT department in the world but no email.
Consider an old, weathered rock in the desert and a wheelbarrow in the yard. The wheelbarrow exhibits properties of intelligent design while the rock does not. There are properties of each that allow us to classify them as "intelligently" designed or not--along the lines of "I know it when I see it." I think that a cogent philosophical/scientific exploration of these properties would be useful to science. Such an exploration might help us to decide whether a certain physical phenomenon is the result of some intelligence acting or simply an unguided application of physical laws.
Imagine a scientist trying to explain how a wheelbarrow came to be via a sequence of unguided applications of physical law.
It is possibly the case that some of the astrophysical observations that we make today are of phenomena that are the result of guided application of physical laws rather than unguided. Attempts to incorporate the unrecognized "guidedness" into our scientific theories (which are biased towards unguided processes) may warp or even invalidate them.
The real problem at the heart of the whole controversy is state controlled education. In a nutshell, it is impossible to educate without instilling values of some kind. Since the state controls the curriculum, it largely controls the content of the values being instilled in children during their formative years. This is the very crux of the problem.
People disagree with each others on the subject of basic values. Essentially, there can be only two options as to the who has the right to select the values to be instilled in children: it's either the state or the parents. Since strong opinions of any kind tend to be controversial, children educated by the state are taught watered-down values, because the educational infrastructure prefers to avoid controversy at all cost. The only strong values taught are acceptance and conformity; in other words, submission to the primacy of the state.
The state should be a reflection of the values of the electorate and their values. It should not select nor be in a position to select the values being inculcated in the children of the electorate. Simply put, if you want your children to be taught real values, of whatever nature, you must have the right to do so and not subordinate that right to the powers of the state, in the form of a state controlled educational system.
Intelligent Design is so much window dressing around an irrational rejection of Evolution. That should be self-evident to anyone with any form of intellectual integrity. But the fact remains that parents who believe in the ID voodoo have the right to have their children educated with an ID curriculum, as long as the children remain minors. Conversely, parents who reject the ID fallacy have the right to keep their children's education free of such nonsense.
In short, this subject can only be controversial and command such public traction when we are debating who should control the curriculum of a state controlled education. In a sane society, there is no controversy, since parents control the values being instilled in their children.
Which is why you should reject state controlled values and support school-voucher programs.
"Man is nothing without the works of man" -- Helvetius
...presenting the most common ideas as theories and letting the student choose what they want to believe? I can understand not elaborating on something such as creationism other than defining it since there isn't much to say that isn't religion specific; just let the churches handle the specifics. Evolution is a good solid theory with a lot more proof than creationism, not that there is much proof of creationism beyond "Look around!" (that IS the meaning of faith after all.) I just don't see the point in trying to drive even the presentation of the creationist idea from schools. I believe I'll bring it to a halt here before I dig myself into too deep of a hole here. Just think about it, what's wrong with letting someone believe in a higher power? Isn't it their right as a person to choose what they want to believe? Just my 2 cents.
"God demands faith. God does not provide proof, because proof kills faith. If you see something that you think is proof of God's existence, you're wrong. He's ineffable. That means you can't effing figure him out."
This is, of course, your belief system talking. Who really knows? If there is a God (and I hope that there is) one can not really know anything about him from reading any book or listening to any story handed down though the veil of time.
Unless God speaks to me directly I can't be sure what he thinks or wants. (And even if he does it may mean that I'm just crazy.) All we have are many, many books that other people claim are from God. Maybe they are, maybe they aren't but just because one of those books says that God demands faith doesn't make it so.
Off topic. I have recently started to see the monotheistic religions from the Middle East, i.e. the so-called Abrahamite ones, as younger variants of the Zoroaster, which is the first focussing on a single god. While I don't believe in that either, I still find it likely Zoroaster is also is the source for many of the candid tales found in other large religions.
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This is nonsense. There's not a drop of science of any kind in ID. ID does not argue that "God set the evolutionary process in motion", or "God guided the evolutionary process". It flat out argues that "some things (i.e., the eye, the bacterial flagellum, the bombardier beetle, the tongue of the green woodpecker) are too complex to have evolved gradually. They are 'irreducibly complex', meaning that if you take away any one part, the whole system fails (which means that they could not have evolved gradually). The existence of such objects is proof of a design and proof of a designer.
This is NOT science, and is the very OPPOSITE of science for at least four reasons:
1) Appeal to the supernatural to explain natural phenomenon. (Yes, ID *does* quite clearly argue for the existence of a God. It's just a rehashed version of the teleological argument, and if you argue that all things in nature must have had some "designer", then in the end, you need a god to break the infinite regression.)
2) Unlike science which crafts theories from evidence, ID tries to find evidence to match a theory that already exists. (Unsuccessfully. Every example of "irreducibly complexity" has been explained by evolution.
3) It is completely unfalsifiable. The theory goes that "if there is any ONE thing that is irreducibly complex, then that is proof that EVERYTHING is the work of a designer." In order to *disprove* ID, you have to *prove* the evolution of every feature of every creature that has ever lived.
4) The whole purpose of science is to tear down barriers and to *learn* things. ID encourages ignorance and says, as a famous comedy bit once said, that a "magic man done it".
As scientists know, ID has absolutely no place in the science classroom or in science itself. It's unfalsifiable pseudoscientific garbage that produces no useful predictions whatsoever. Leaving it open as a possibility within the realm of science makes no more sense and is no more useful than allowing for the possibility of Zeus's invisible hand being responsible for lightning bolts.
If philosophers are convinced by such a bankrupt "theory", they're welcome to it. Despite what you claim, there is not a SHRED of evidence to support it.
...has their 'science' cured cancer yet?
No? Call me when they do and I might convert.
Religion is for people who want to believe in fairy tales, live in trees, eat berries and die of the first trivial infection, anything else is hypocritical. Meanwhile, those of us in the real world will use science to improve our lives.
The trouble as I see it is, the religious types feel free to enjoy the moral high ground of being 'enlightened', but are still perfectly happy to enjoy the advancements of infidel science. Hypocrites.
As a matter of probability, as a matter of history, as a matter of precidence, ID is emminantly more probably than a Darwinian Evolution.
ID is not science and therefore should not be taught in science classes. Evolution on the other hand is science and belongs there. I wouldn't mind having ID taught in public schools however as part of a philosophy curriculum. If so though then other beliefs of the origin of life need to be taught as well. Such as the Apache Creation Story, Navajo Creation Story, and the Zuni Creation Cycle.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Intelligent Design does not rule out evolution in the sense you described. Programmers use "genetic" or "evolutionary" algorithms all the time - and that is an example of intelligent design.
Brusselsprouts! There goes the SETI program too - one of my favorites.
you don't know the truth or the lies but you believe in one of them!
No, that is not at all what the Big Bang says.
:-).
The big bang says "At one point all matter & energy was compressed into a singularity. This singularity exploded, creating the universe as we know it". It never makes any claims as to what may or may not have existed prior to the initial event.
It specifically does not say "there was nothing, then suddenly everything exploded". It just says "at one point, everything was squeezed into a really small space...then it exploded".
The important difference is that the big bang is a testable hypothesis. We can set up experiements such as "IF there was a big bang, then we would expect to see a spectral shift in the frequencies of light observed from other stars / residual background radiation / uniform age of distant galaxies". And we can test these hypothesis.
This can't be done with ID...which is why it is not science. Once we bring in the idea of some sort of omnipotent (or beyond our understanding) creator, then any hypothesis start to fall under the "cause the designer wanted that" type explanation.
The ID people attempt to make their theories pseudoscientific by providing hypothesis such as "If there was no intelligent designer, then it would be impossible for [insert complex biological process] to have evolved". The problem is this type of theory begs the question. It ASSUMES that the evolution of said process is impossible, then puts that in the conclusion of the hypothesis.
Proof of the impossibility of something is pretty much impossible. I have a proof for this...but this comment box is too small to contain it
Late breaking news:
Intelligent life detected in elected body!
The intelligent design "argument," by the way, is simply a new realization of the age-old argument that Richard Dawkins calls the "argument from personal incredulity." (If you haven't, go read Dawkins' The Blind Watchmaker.) The argument goes like this: an ID proponent might look at a complex biological systems such as the bacterial flagellum and say, "my, that's really complex, isn't it? I can't possibly see how any of those component parts is any good on its own. I can't imagine that such a structure possibly could have evolved through gradual change and recombination of preexisting structures." In other words, ID proponents give up and assume, quite literally, a deus ex machina.
The alternate approach is to actually attempt an explanation. While it's true that biologists haven't come up with compelling evolutionary explanations for every single biological phenomenon observed, the theory of modification and selection is the best one we have to explain biological complexity in general, and I expect that its descriptive power will only grow as we learn more about the details of life. And it's certainly much better than throwing your hands in the air and saying, "that's too complex! There must be a go^H^H^Hn intelligent designer! Hallelujah!"
The general problem with the design argument is that if you require a creator for anything that is complex, then by necessity, there had to have been a creator of the creator, unless you believe the creator is simple enough not to require creation. This is complicated by the fact that creationists cannot conceive of something observable which has not been created. If asked to provide an example of something that has not been created, for comparison with things created, they are unable to do so.
Probably something very similar to what is after. It wasn't "god," I assure you of that.
The Farewell Tour II
Ah, stupid design!
But, I wanted socialized health insurance!
I'll do that when you can prove to me that the sun is a giant mass of nuclear reactions -- that is, reproduce the creation of the sun from scratch, in a lab, and show me that it's possible to create a self-sustaining chain reaction of nuclear fusion with nothing but a large quantity of hydrogen and some gravity. Until then, I'm going to keep believing that the big yellow disc up there is Apollo's chariot flying through the sky.
45% rejected evolution for any living thing
Perhaps then these people need to contract a drug resistent strain of TB, like the one that guy had who was flying across the pond. Or perhaps E coli or avian flu.
FalconShould there be a Law?
If I shoot you in the head, some impetuous folks would jump to the conclusion that this event caused your subsequent death. However, they are just guessing, since they can't repeat the experiment.
I am the one true god. However, as an atheist, I don't believe in myself. I guess I have a self-esteem problem.
Would you mind answering that question without being insulting (not you, Skreems, in particular, just the other 99.9% of /.)? Seriously guys, there are plenty of people who are open-minded enough to listen to the arguments you make. When they (we) raise questions, you need to answer them instead of being insulting. If I choose to take the Bible on faith, that's my prerogative, since religion is based on faith (iow, does not require proof). A scientific explanation, otoh, is not afforded that same luxury. It sucks and its unfair (to the short-sighted), but thems the breaks.
And so you know, no, I will not argue "but every missing link discovered creates two more." I would, however, like an answer to the question you alluded to: If a part has no useful purpose in the current generation, why is it passed on?
the Flying Spaghetti Monster? We won't be able to teach his divine noodly word in the school systems? Baby Spaghetti Monster weeps.
..... thank Christ for that !
As a scinetist, I tend to want a little more than someone waving their hands and saying "God did it" or "Aliens did it".
What I would want is to take a particular stretch of genetic code that coded for a protein in any given ancient organism (say a T-Rex), find a different but similar stretch of genetic code in a modern organism that is thought to have decended from the ancient organism (in this case we could go with a chicken). Put both of these into a supercomputer and have it calculate possible paths from the former to the latter by single base pair mutations. Of the possible paths, find ones that coded for working protiens at each step.
Once you find that, you just showed how evolution could work. Find an organism with one of the intermidiate steps, and you just proved the evolution of that animal.
It's not that this is difficult to prove, it's just that it is hard to find the appropriate genetic sequences and it is hardware intensive.
For your next one, you should believe in neither! You might want to warm up before you try those mental gymnastics, though. You might sprain something otherwise. But it'd totally be worth it for the look on people's faces when you tell them "Oh yeah. I'm an atheist but I don't believe in evolution."
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Those questions cannot be answered. You would have to know the mind of God.
In the Bible, there are few details about creation. The main point is God is the creator. The Bible states that the universe was created in 6 days, but man is responsible for defining the passage of time. Therefore, the actual amount of time for creation is unknown. The point is to have faith that the writings of the Bible are true.
Should creationism be taught as science? No. Creationism is a leap of faith. Should the theories of evolution be taught as fact? No. Over time, these theories will change as new evidence is uncovered and our understanding of the universe expands.
How do you combine creationism and evolutionary theory? Good question...
Here's the original paper.
I was recently watching The Ascent of Man (BBC, 1973). When discussing evolution, Dr. Bronowski says something to the effect of, "Of course, today, almost nobody denies evolution." All I could think was, "How far backwards have we gone that in 1973 the issue was pretty much considered a fact by the general population and now..." It's scary, really.
Intelligent design is one of the most misunderstood concepts circulating. Christians view it as a way to say "See, we can use probability to show that the Earth is 10,000 years old!". Atheists/Agnostics then use the theory to say, "Just religious zealots polluting science with creationism." I am a Christian who helps teach an apologetics course through a local church. Our stance on it is that ID should NOT be taught in schools. It is neither a proven science or a grounds of proof of creationism. It is nothing more than a loose theory of probability to push one's concept of evolution to fit creationism in. Literal Christians will read into the scriptures and say "God created the Earth in 10,000 years using evolution, but he sped up the process." The problem with this theory is that fossils and other aged artifacts are not explained in an effective way outside of saying that God placed those aged artifacts there on purpose. This seems illogical because it seems to show that God deceives us, which is a not a characteristic of God. I on the other hand follow the concept that the Earth is old, as in several billions of years old as far as support for life, yet the probability for such events as solar eclipses, our aged sun, our ability to study the universe, ability to support intelligent life, gravity, and numerous other very unlikely to occur at the same time in the same place phenomena all point to a higher design. The Earth in my opinion was designed beforehand, yet we have no grounds for understanding how we got from point A to point B. God could have made the Earth in 10,000 years and placed aged rocks, yes this could be one theory, but unlikely. The other option is the Earth is old and a god could have designed it either directly or indirectly, but what all Christians and non-Christians fail to understand is this: Who cares? Intelligent design should be a way to get Christians interested in science because as St. Thomas Aquinas points out, science is man's ability to reason in which to understand God, but all the necessary information that is required for any person to have faith in Christ, if that is your faith, is given to us by divine revelation. So in closing, Intelligent Design for schools is not necessary. That should be the role of the church to present this information. If it is, more than one perspective should be given, but evolution/intelligent design should never hold grounds for proving or disproving any god. That was never the intent of God's plan anyways.
Bush-appointed official government scientists have declared Intelligent Design as science and designated Evolution theory as a belief often held by terrorists. Just kidding. I think.
Creationism isn't science because you can't replicate it in a laboratory.
God spoke to me.
I think it must really piss off ID people that between the four choices -- intelligent design, stupid design, intelligent accident and stupid accident -- science has found the most evidence for life being created by "stupid accident".
Additionally there's a trap in a assuming "Nothing Existed" as Step 1, previous to Step 2.
Our understanding of space-time suggest that not only space came into existence at the big bang, but also time itself. Which is why it doesn't necessarily make sense to talk about "before" the Big Bang; if time only exists inside the universe, it's a meaningless concept.
Unfortunately we live in a middle world where relativity and quantum physics aren't part of our daily experience, so this makes about as much sense as Schrodinger's cat does to the layperson.
We already live in a universe where, in empty space, particle antiparticle pairs come into existence out of nothing, attract, collide, explode and generate energy (as a photon) that travels backward in time to provide the energy for the original pair to come out of nothing (as long as everything is done within a unit of Planck time so the universe can get away with this kind of "cheating"). This happens all the time, everywhere, in empty space, and yet we can't conceive of the universe itself coming out of nothing?
Yes, I have taken just enough quantum physics and cosmology to screw me up for the rest of my life.
In your mentioning of the UK, it occurs to me that perhaps there is a project being undertaken by the government here to create God by means of it's omnipresent CCTV network with loudspeakers attached on high, which are used to occasionally talk down to people in a loud booming voice to chastise miscreants for their misdeeds (litter dropping, loutish behavior etc) in a very old-testament style manner.
...
...
"Oi, you! I command thee, pick up that Mars bar wrapper thou hast dropped on the pavement, or face my wrath (of a 20 GBP fixed penalty fine)."
Maybe the government are just worried about the threat of competition and want to nip it in the bud when they they young.
Cue 1984: s/Big Brother/God; s/The Party/Christianity
>> "Does God exist?"
> "Of course he exists. Christianity exists. God is the embodiment of Christianity."
I thought the intelligent design theory was based on the idea of throwing all the parts of a bicycle out a plane, and then seeing a well formed gleaming bike on the ground - taking into account the time taken for gravity to work its magic.
The chance of getting a bike from doing this would be astronomically small, but of course we do live in an astronomically large universe.
I think intelligent design should be taught - but taught as an exercise for debate. Missing out religion from the curriculum also leaves a huge gap in history.
When I was young not only did I have to walk to school, they taught Religious Education in it, but you could go play with computers instead if you so wished - now where are the virgin memory chips I need to sacrifice to the great god of logic.
> To me that ranks right up there explanation-wise with "ok...there was nothing, and then "Bob" spoke the world/universe into existence and set the laws of nature into motion".
...(more others)...
You did not answer the question, you moved it (then waved hand).
Which of the following is not self-consistent?.
1. Who created us? Came from nothing. (evolution)
2. Who created us? Bob. (because of the complex design)
Who created Bob? Came from nothing. (magic/supernatural. faith in Bob required)
3. Who created us? others? (because of the complex design)
Who created others? Other others? (because of the complex design)
Who created others-99? Came from nothing? (possible, because design was less complex)
4. Who created us? Came from nothing. (magic/supernatural)
Note that 1 and 4 are effectively the same.
Note that 3, logical Intelligent Design, is a different kind of evolution.
Logically, Intelligent Design can really only point to life outside of earth. If you assume this life outside of earth is some magical creature, then why bother trying to be scientific for the initial reasoning?
Magical/Supernatural Intelligent Design (2) is not a logical belief.
I believe in creation (so clearly I'll now be disregarded by you) but also believe in evolution. There are things unexplainable by both sides. You're an idiot to believe that the earth is only 6000 years old, but you're also an idiot to believe in mathematical odds simply because they're technically possible. Irreducible complexity is powerful, but so's the fossil record.
Anyway, to this whole discussion: if we're going to have a discussion, let's do so. If we're going to be quippy and shitty to each other in an effort to "prove" our belief, well, perhaps we should all just go fuck off.
I know, I know, my karma will be destroyed by both sides here...
We figured out a long time ago that it's easier to elect seven judges than to elect 132 legislators.
While I am always encouraged to read news of the mystics once again being driven from the science classrooms, I still find it depressing that the need to do so continues to exist.
Before? Before what? There's no before!
but does it run Linux!
IT WAS NOT INTELLIGENTLY DESIGNED AT ALL
pfff, too many caps. that's why the trolls left, i tell you.
Piltdown man
A tooth of a pig drawn into an apeman!
A lie and a fake 5 years by 1927.
Nebraska man
A lie and a fake for 40 years.
By then everyone in the world thought they were from apes.
How did it take 40 years for the scientific community to find it was a clumsy fake?
Javaman (homo erectus)
Discovered by Dr Dubois and he himself declared in 1938 that it was just a monkey (gibbon).
He had found human skulls in the same stratum did not tell anyone for 30 years!
A lie and a fake. He eventually renounced the javaman as a fraud himself.
Peking man
Dr. black discovered it, a tooth and some ashes.
Soon after human remains were found mixed with animal remains. The animal remains were the food of the humans.
Hey but they wanted an apeman! so they grabbed bits of both and made Peking Man!
1972
Richard Leaky
Found a skull that supposedly blew evolution out of the water by 2.5 million years. The only thing left was
Ramapithecus. Just some fragments of jaw bones and some teeth. The same size and shape as a babboon in Ethiopia.
It never has been found and it never will be found a creature that is more than brute and less than human.
Also there is such little evidence for apemen that the amount would not be accepted in any other field of science.
And there's plenty more scientific evidence for the non-existenance of evolution!
(I know this is not what you like to hear, so just score me nothing as usual. Thanks)
I return the favor to other religions. ;)
Inelegant Design
Intolerable Design
Incomprehensible Design
Inebriated Design
Indefensible Design
Indeterminate Design
Make up your own!
And remember you have to be gleeful to mock my religion
otherwise you're just hurting yourself.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
It's a false argument. It presumes the ID crowd's mechanism of evolution, which says a complex system can only evolve by the slow accumulation of all it's parts, none of which had any useful function until the last part evolved into existence. But this simply ignores the possibility that might be other pathways to an irreducibly complex system. For example, what if some of the parts had a different function prior to becoming part of the irreducibly complex set? What if the set wasn't irreducibly complex in the past, but lost some proteins until the set that remained was irreducibly complex?
Or how about this conundrum. What if there was an "irreducibly complex" set of proteins performing a vital function, then some unrelated protein randomly evolved in a way that caused it to be better than one of the existing proteins. This made one of the proteins redundant, which then disappeared ('evolved away') leaving no trace. The remaining set is again "irreducibly complex". By observing the second set, can we now conclude that it was "intelligently designed"?
Gee, this is fun.
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
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PGP Key ID 0xCB8FF658
... Separation between State and Religion ?
In a country with a true separation between state and religion, such a debate wouldn't even exist. Many people abroad are almost as much frightened to see this happening in the US than to witness islamic fundamentalism gaining countries around the world.
If you consider a laic school, kids just learn plain facts and have time as they grow up to forge a real opinion about ID or whatever question which relates more IMO to faith and belief. And such a kid is socialy free to choose whatever religion suits him.
In my humble country whose name I will keep secret (I wouldn't like some fanatic to blow up my Eiffel Tower), we have a lot of other problems but at least I can say that laicism does a fair work in teaching respect of other religions and the associated beliefs. There is a common and sound ground on which most agree : evolution has a strong scientific backing support and many pieces of evidence speak for it (Carbon-14 dating of fossils clearly shows general evolving trends for the past millions of years). Who cares if evolution as we describe it scientificaly was originally designed or if it is simply the result of a singularity in the chaos ?
The explanation of our origins is a matter of personal choice and shouldn't be taught at school.
Or else I will ask to have our theory taught at school: boys are born in baguette and girls in cheese.
Please excuse my poor english.
Isn't it sufficient enough for these science types to believe in god because it is a "safe bet?"
Seriously though, pascal's wager almost always leads to some interesting conversation with Christians and atheists alike. Try supporting it around these types of people if you haven't yet.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Where I get tripped over ID is that when *I* am Intelligently Designing something, such as a software module, there is a process of evolution going on in my head. I start out with the basic idea, do a first try, step back and look at it, make adaptations and enhancements, evaluate it in a test environment, refine it some more, plug it into a larger module and test that out, fix some stuff I forgot to deal with, rewrite the whole thing from scratch a couple times, try out the alternatives, pick one and go with that, do some performance tuning, roll it out to QA and customers, make staged changes based on feedback, roll those out, then maybe go work on another software module with the same process.
So even if ID is true, it's still evolution, it's just moving the venue from "stuff happening on earth" to "stuff happening in supreme space alien's brain".
This is (currently) an impossible step. Just going from amino acid sequence to protein shape is a very hard task. (see folding@home) We don't have any real way of proving whether or not the resulting protein 'works'. Is it structural? an enzyme? is it merely a building block for something else? (protein clumps on ribosomes for example?) The problem is akin too taking random shapes and proving which are parts for working machines - without any real way of knowing just what those machines do or how they work. That and not all mutations are single base-pair mutations. This experiment is far too simple.
T
Laws are horrible moral guides, moral guides make even worse laws.
Do you believe anyone should create educational standards, or do you believe it should be total educational anarchy?
The experts in the fields involved should be the ones to set standards, for instance scientists shoud set science standards, not politicans.
Do you believe that education should be required by law for children? If so, how would you determine what qualifies as "education"?
Yes, Education should be required up to a certain age, say 16, but the way a child is taught should not be mandated so long as they meet the requirement set by experts.
FalconShould there be a Law?
From the hypothetical G being as done in Futurerama: "When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all."
:D
The reality is if there was a proven observable god; you wouldn't need faith you would simple just know and take it for granted. "Oh there goes god again doing stuff..." God turns into a very mundane and run of the mill entity. So I don't think there will ever be an end to the "does god exist?" arguement.
Here's another point I love to make on this topic. Considering that the easiest explanation is most likely... isn't it more plausible with intelligent design that Aliens and not God are responsible for creation? I have to admit, I think it would.
Oops, how did this get here?
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day ruled "Not Night"
Science finds an atom and looks at it harder, it finds sub-atomic particles and looks at them harder and thus our knowledge continues to expand.
You seem to be trying to conflate science with scientists. Scientists are human beings and belief/opinion/ego etc that diverts from a pure scientific method. This has downsides (retarding scientific progression by clinging on to accepted notions) but also has upsides (insightful leaps, often with scant initial evidence). The strength of the scientific method is not that it renders scientists infallible, the strength is that by sticking with it as much as we can it allows us to progress despite our human failures.
Scientists will readily concede that we don't know everything, that models are being refined, that wholly new explanations are being sought, that generally accepted theories are still being tested (at some expense).
That is sciences strength. Science seeks and then seeks some more. It does not say "I dunno, god must have done it". And any 'beliefs' that scientists may have does not undermine the fact that science itself is not about belief.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Please tell me that God at least greased up said Yoda doll before inserting it into your rectum! And yes, it was too intelligently designed. Just not for shoving up your ass. Lastly, are you sure it was God? Because sometimes people like to play with their own asses, but are too embarrassed to admit it, so they make up stories, like how they just slipped and fell onto that cucumber, or they heard that peanut butter was a good hemorrhoid cream, and they don't know HOW that dog got there. It's okay if you did it, really it is. Just ask Bob Goatse, ass-play can be fun! Not for me though, not with my hemorrhoids.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
why do people assume God is male?
:-)
...
Have they seen his penis?
If "he" is omniscient, and the universe is very large,
then he must have a whopper!!
Insert "Big Bang Joke here
Not trolling, just illustrating the absurdities of those
who say "God is Male"
for some it was religious faith that gave them strength of spirit to overcome adversity or to become greater than they already are.
I don't think faith is a bad thing. Blind faith against all proof is a bad thing. Scientologists going off their meds being an example that easily comes to mind; now that's bad. But that's organized religion for you, it's dumb. When we get together and just discuss our philosophies and the nature of humanity that at it's core is good regardless of where you come from. That takes down barriers and brings human nature back into focus. But faith in something that flies against what we know factually is bad.
I'm not a religous guy anymore (but deep down I believe), but that doesn't mean I feel the need to bash on religion in general. That's a bit unfair to those who need religion and aren't in this camp of "My faith vs your science". They aren't all like that. So I'm all on the side against the fundies that try to discredit science with theories like ID but when you trash on religion in general that's a step to far.
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And it was SCIENTISTS not creationists that discovered and exposed the hoaxes.
The belief in a creator god cracks me up:
Who created HIM?
No one, he always existed.
Then why can't we say that the universe always existed?
'Cause I'm not smart enough.
I wonder if it would be considered evidence that God doesn't exist? I mean, that would more or less mean "Creation" (in the religeous sense) had nothing to do with God but rather that it was simply a part of a natural cycle.
As an atheist I do not believe in higher powers so I couldn't care less if it proves God doesn't exist, but I am curious how a cristian (or at least someone who believe in Intelligent Design) would rationalize the cycle, assuming it could be proved.
All I have to do is stimulate the right part of your brain with the right electromagnetic field. It was an interesting experiment, as everyone knew that something was being done to their brain, yet most people still felt that the experience indicated the actual presence of the divine.
One argument I love to refute from personal experience is the "If you ask with an open heart He will show you the way," argument. Well, I have and I got nothing. I'm still an agnostic, but I can only believe based on my experience that any God that might exist must not give a damn whether I believe in Him or not.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
e.g. Then God said, ''Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.'' And it was so. The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening, and there was morning--the third day.
...apples ruled "Not Oranges."
"Strangers have the best candy" -Me
I never heard any mainstream religion explain the cruelties of life on Earth. Wars, natural disasters, disease, genocides and whatnot. What kind of good and benevolent God sits around and does nothing while people suffer every second on this planet? That's why I personally find the existence of a good and benevolent God so difficult, in fact I don't believe God, as described in mainstream religions exists.
The Problem of Evil (PoE) is trivially false. If that's the reason why you're an atheist, well, you should probably rethink your position. While is has a strong emotional grip (which is why it is so popular), it's a *logically* untenable one. There are other reasons to be atheists, but if you consider yourself a rational person at all, you should discard the PoE as the reason. I'll give you a brief argument showing why (and no, I think "God has his mysterious ways" is not an answer).
The PoE argument is this, in a nutshell:
1) God is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent. (I.e., all knowing, all powerful, and all good.)
2) If there is suffering in the world, and God does not stop it, then God cannot be (one of) omniscient, omnipotent, or omnibenevolent.
3) Suffering exists in the world
4) Therefore, God does not exist. QED.
While it looks on the surface like a completely reasonable and rational argument, it is not. There are, in fact, several fatal mistakes in the argument.
The first thing that we must do is dispose of the concept of intervention as being relevant to the discussion. What the argument is actually about is about a flawed creation, in which suffering happens. If God had built a perfect creation, then no intervention would be necessary. Conversely, a creation which needs constant interventions to require it to run correctly (cars having accidents without anyone being ever hurt), is likewise a flawed creation (because it needs fixing on a constant basis). So, interestingly enough, we can completely ignore the question of why God doesn't intervene, and instead simply examine the question of a flawed creation, in which suffering occurs. In other words, the PoE, restated, is "Why couldn't God have made the world a perfect place?"
This exposes the critical problem with the PoE. It is actually, logically, impossible to create a perfect material world.
Any world God could create with people in it has the following constraints:
1) Certain laws of physics
2) Matter, objects, etc.
3) Multiple agents possessing free will.
Actually, take a second here to imagine how you would create a world, you know, if you were God, using the above three constraints. It's a very interesting thought experiment. Build a world.
The logical inconsistencies can be shown from the above, that it is impossible to create a perfect world with all three of those constraints in place.
1) Laws of physics means that certain physical processes will always behave the same. A tooth biting into food to eat (to power our energy needs) can also be used to bite and wound another. Could God create an invincible human? One whose molecules could not be altered by an arbitrarily high level of energy? Only if the laws of physics were not to hold.
2) As long as there is matter, there will be scarcity. It's one of those unavoidable consequences that Star Trek always seems to gloss over. Star Trek claimed that the advent of the replicator made money obsolete (supposedly since there would no longer be scarcity). But Captain Kirk also had one of the only houses within Yosemite. How could he buy or sell that house? How come he could get a super cool house within a national park, but other people can't? While it might be possible to give a person a perfect, worry free life inside something like The Matrix, in a material world it is impossible.
3) While it would be possible to create a paradise for a single individual, it is impossible to create a perfect world for multiple free agents. Many people have risen through the years to become kings and tyrants, and thought th
Where did the useful skepticism go?
That useful skepticism was primarily produced by the left hippocampus, whereas his emotional attachments to his religious beliefs are primarily produced by the right hippocampus. Unfortunately, in most brains, the two are mutually-exclusive; when one is dominant in a thought process the other one is barely expressive (hence the heartless logician stereotype).
Or at least, that is one theory. I think I read most of my evidence for it right here on slashdot. We can perhaps apply that skepticism to this theory as well and just reflect on the issue from a higher-level perspective...
Like, for example, the observation that the mind will seek to preserve the integrity of the core set of beliefs which provide it with a sense of security. Anything that might disrupt that sense is percieved as an attack against the self-structure, and all kinds of interesting psychological self-defense mechanisms will kick in (including, but not limited to, outright irrationality). It takes courage to remain open to the possibility of new learning, and it is far, far easier to just assume that one already knows all the important things. From my perspective, this amounts to little more than intellectual cowardice. But don't say that to a Christian's face...in my experience some of them are not at all hesitant to use their fists as a means of demonstrating just how well they can turn the other cheek.
I used to try to cultivate a high level of respect for the sorts of value-systems that motivate other people. After all, don't I demand similar respect? But in truth all I demand is that I be treated with basic human decency regardless of my beliefs, and so that is all I will give in return. I reserve the right to think a person who can't distinguish between mythology and science, nor between fact and opinion, is injuriously unintelligent and/or a coward.
(disclaimer: believing in fairy-tales about talking animals, magical fruits, and super-powerful beings who threaten to torture you for all eternity is ENTIRELY different from believing that their is more to the universe than science understands. Mysticism is not necessarily the same thing as mythology...it is just common (and unfortunate) that the two are generally associated).
actually i think everyone here is surprised that you didnt get modded flamebait, i would have if i still had mod points. go back and re-read what you said and explain how that is somehow bringing reasonable discussion to this. the fact of the matter is that ID is people trying to say that god created everything without an ounce of proof and forcing this to be taught in schools. thats great if you believe in it but its not a science and it should not be taught in schools, at least not outside of a philosophy class under the guise of "science"
I don't know where anyone gets the idea that the Big Bang says anything about there being "nothing" at any point. It doesn't really even describe the beginning of existence as everyone seems to think, just he beginning of the universe as we know it.
for the USA to advance out of the 19th century on this.
look! it's a bird, it's a plane, it's....a girl? yes, a girl browsing Slashdot on Linux
What else can you say, but "I don't know", to The Big Question "Why?" (the meaning of life, etc.)
FWIW, am also OK with "I don't know", but many people immediately jump to "oh no, what if the answer is; No reason". Lots of people can't handle that and need to fill the void with some explanation.
Ironically, science may provide the ultimate answer to matters of faith, and it may be "some things are not knowable."
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Why aren't people satisfied with their surroundings as their own personal God? I think this is the basis of deism, and I've read its the belief Albert Einstein held.
What bugs me is how someone can look at something they don't understand, and blame it on something they can't understand. If something complex is a product of something else complex, why not form a recursion? Why blame it on God? It may be easier to do, but it takes curiosity out of life.
Your insistence that the Prime Mover necessitates a logical trap is sadly mistaken. You need to more clearly understand "PRIME MOVER" literally connotes the first of movers; and one without need of being moved.
Of course, the opposition might demand how a prime mover can be excused from the normal metaphysical and physical demands of being moved like that of normal subjects, but that doesn't change the fact that the people who employ prime movers in their arguments are using that as their very definition.
I disagree. These two worldviews are constantly battling with each other, and have been for a very long time (note the historical persecution of breakthrough scientific minds for religious reasons). They suggest very different ways of living your life, one way based on evidence and reasoning, the other based on dogmatism and saying, "This much knowledge is enough for me." Which one of these two views is going to provide our next medical breakthrough? Which one has historically driven humanity forwards? I'm not so sure they're both useful.
In the Church of Trinary.
look! it's a bird, it's a plane, it's....a girl? yes, a girl browsing Slashdot on Linux
Serve as a bad example to others.
"Creationism in schools? Bugger that! Do you want to end up like those stupid gets across the pond?"
I think you a Kuhn have made the mistake of not seeing the difference between a belief and an idea.
Proper sciencetific theory envolves no faith. Certainly a scientific mind can have faith, and some scientists have made the mistake of believing in the expected results of an experiment to a point. Usually this is the result of poorly planned thought experiments.
A scientific theory must be dropped or modified when it has been proven false through repeatable experiments. You cannot simply believe in a theory on a matter of faith alone when evidence shows it not to be true. It has been shown that the creation story of the Old Testament while great alegory, is certainly not a true "historical fact" as often toted by those of the many Jewish and Christian faiths.
Basically, science doesn't "plug holes", it attempts figure out what actually is the correct answer when a theory is shown to be in error. Science contiues to experiment in attempt to learn the truth. It does not, if performed properly, does not make excuses for a disproven theory, it should include the new evidence in its ever changing theory(ies).
Just because you can, does not mean you should.
Jesus just told me this is total bullshit.
crap.
Oooh, someone needs to lay of the serious pills. That was a joke, Falcon. ;-)
I went through something dealing with this with a friend. While in college a friend met some guy and quit college to move with him across the country. A couple of years later she returned with his baby and as a "Born Again" Christian after he dumped her. Almost every tyme I talked with her religion ended up in our conversation. Eventually I had to stop talking to her. So I get a bit sensitive at tymes.
FalconShould there be a Law?
I thought The Register had been ruled "Not News"...
If you assume that we are "created" by "others" because we are too complex,
then logically, the "others" who are probably similarly complex, were "created" as well by others2.
And so on, until others999, who happened to be simple enough that the likelihood of evolution was more probable than being created by others.
Of course I use "created" loosely, as it could also be accidental.
In this "Intelligent Design Evolution", there was somewhere in the Universe where life came from nothing.
A planet/moon could break up and send life elsewhere.
But as soon as you have intelligent life somewhere, then the rules change.
How long before humans have created artificial self replicating life? Mechanical or Nano/Biological?
How long before humans create or initiate the creation of computer intelligence?
What is the likelihood of humans sending life accidentally or otherwise to Mars. Compare that likelihood to the evolution of life during the same period.
Isn't anyone here the least bit concerned about the whole government-declaring-what-is-or-isn't-science thing? I thought there were more libertarians here. But I guess most everyone supports giving the government more authority as long as it is pushing through their preferred policy positions.
(I see the core insight of libertarianism as: even if the current crop of politicians are making the "right" decisions, what happens when the next crop of politicians has all the same authority but the "wrong" policy positions? Better off to not expand the authority of government in the first place.)
Teeth. How much intelligence could possibly go into the design of teeth? They suck!
The Spine. I can think of several better ways to go about that one.
Foot arches. If these were designed by God, then God hates pedestrians.
Appendix. 'Nuff said.
Sinuses. WTF! What kind of a MORON bores holes in a skull that do nothing but attract infection?
Nipples on men. Makes perfect sense as a leftover byproduct of an evolved system, but as a purpose-designed feature? Get real!
The list goes on longer than I am willing to type, (did I mention carpal-tunnel syndrome? There's some brilliant engineering) but I think I've pretty well debunked Intelligent Design by a Benevalent Deity.
Either God intelligently designed the world to fxxx us over hard, or he couldn't design his way out of a paper bag, or HE DOESN'T EXIST!
Ted Rall in the Slate: http://cartoonbox.slate.com/tedrall/2007/06/21/
Of course, the interesting part of the big bang theory is not what came "before" the big bang
That's when the Matrix booted up. Obviously there was nutn we'd be aware of before it booted; kind of like we're not currently aware of the Matrix.
"If anything can go wrong, it will." - Murphy
It easy to assert all that, but in doing so it necessarily means the unmoved mover is outside the realm of logical explanation and investigation. It is therefore not scientific. This may be fine for a reverent theist who simply answers the call of faith, but completely scuttles the concept of "scientific" intelligent design. That is, if The Mover can't yield to any sort of investigation by us, his mortal creations, he is outside the realm of science.
So we end up one of two places:
1. Intelligent design happened but cannot be a scientific concept, or
2. there is no intelligent designer.
The real problem seems to be that many people don't understand that science is a way of knowing things based on processes of observation, experimentation, and logical inference constrained by the results of those observations, experiments, along with a handful of basic assumptions.
There may be ways of knowing things outside this framework, such as faith, but if so they're not science. Yet people seem to consistently confuse faith and science. I think this may be due to a lack of effective science education, specifically that most science education seems focused on teaching scientific facts rather than teaching the philosophy of science. We should be teaching science as a method of knowing things, discussing the assumptions of science, the characteristics of a successful theory/model, and the more mundane techniques often employed to expand scientific understanding -- not teaching that science is a compendium of knowledge and offering an abbreviated list of scientific facts to memorize. The latter, without explaining the process why which we know things claimed by science, is effectively teaching faith. Given as much, confusion between science and faith is understandable.
Science is a way of justifying that what we know; it's a method of placing models of things we observe in a basket that, based on past experience with the success of science, we can fairly safely assume are reliable, at least to the extent that we've characterized those models and within their known limitations. This technique ("science") seems pretty effective, as evidenced by things like plastic, ibuprofen, space shuttles, and whatnot. Faith, in contrast, has a less outstanding record.
If anyone has a more useful method of knowing things they're welcome to present it.
Which gets me back to ID: on a practical level it's useless. It provides no model to extrapolate from, no framework to guide further study, and no useful ideas at all to explain any positive aspect of the world around us. So besides failing on simple logical grounds, it falls utterly flat in practice. I believe the fact that it has been tolerated as far as it has is a powerful indictment of the failure of science education.
...the Prime Mover, by definition, is the Mover that doesn't need a Mover. That's why he's Prime, and not just A Mover.
Then, you have no infinite regression. You have finite regression to the Prime Mover.
And you've brilliantly mis-applied Occam's Razor by removing the one entity that's actually required, rather than any of the non-require intermediate Sub-Prime Movers.
There's a joke here about a crash in the Subprime market, but I don't know what it is.
That problem's easy enough to get around by slightly reformulating the premise:
If you can coax them this far along, this is what most religious people (including myself) believe.
(Note that I believe that [whatever] consists of the earliest moment of the Big Bang, and that it's been a dozen or so billion years since [whatever].)
The United States of America: We do what we must because we can.
Maybe you wrote quickly but Monte Verde isn't in Peru it's in Chile.
A professor in one of my archeology classes talked about the controversy. A lot of archaeologists were skeptical of the stone tool evidence that were just river rocks, until they were shown similar rocks with twine wrapped around them, some with handles attached.
Pro Clovis archeologists right?
FalconShould there be a Law?
4. Random mutations occur.
That last one's critical. To add to your point, evolution has even been reproduced with simulated "organisms" on computers rather than with living organisms with remarkable results. It not only makes sense, it works when we try it ourselves. It's the furthest thing from faith I can think of.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
and that it can not be taught as science.
I disagree. While it may be a very very weak theory, it can qualify as science. It is testable as much as SETI is testable (example: Images or math in DNA). Nobody has ever proven that design cannot be identified by works. It may be difficult, but not necessarily impossible. And "proper" ID does NOT assume a super-natural designer. The seeders/fiddlers of life on earth may just be the SETI aliens. Remote chance, yes, but remoteness by itself does NOT make something non-science.
Those who try to rule out ID from "science" via boolean rules of science will fail. It is simply a very weak theory, and THAT is why it should be excluded from school. (Perhaps SETI should also.)
Table-ized A.I.
...because according to her numbers, she posits that there are 0.0000004 planets with life on them in this galaxy. In the movie, she said;
"If there are 400 billion stars in the galaxy, and just one in a million had planets, and just one in a million of those had life, and just one in a million of those had intelligent life, that still leaves millions of planets to explore."
Neil deGrasse Tyson, an astrophysicist at the Museum of Natural History in New York, points this out in his excellent book, "Death by Black Hole". He scolded her for not speaking up when they gave her that rubbish to say, asking if they taught math at Yale, where she got her degree.
I should clarify that I am looking at a version of ID that excludes "irreducible complexity". IC *has* failed multiple tests. Perhaps I should call this "id" (lower-case).
Table-ized A.I.
teach kids how to make chemicals that are fun to make?
Yea, and the next thing you know the Gestapo, er Homeland Security, will be busting down your doors accusing you of being a terrorist.
FalconShould there be a Law?
So, where's the difference?
No other living species has walked on the moon, let alone returned to tell about it.
No other living species is capable of brain surgery for the purpose of healing, let alone surviving the process.
No other living species is capable of organ transplants, manufacture of medicine, and other medical achievements that we take for granted.
No other living species can communicate instantly from one side of the planet to the other.
No other living species can communicate with one another after they are dead (ie writing books and reading books of dead people).
No other living species can control the temperature of their cave/nest to the degree that we can.
Yes, other creatures use tools. But none of them use atomic clocks or combustion engines or computers. The sophistication of our tools is so far beyond those used by other animals that lumping them in the same category is downright insulting.
The physical differences between us and other animals are trivial. The genetic differences even more so. But the intellectual differences are obvious, significant, and manifest in practical ways. We can do things that are of great importance, and that other animals can't even imagine or understand.
If the other animals on this planet survive the supernova of our sun, it will be because, and only because, humans transported them across the galaxy. We may not ever manage to do this...but if it can be done, we are the only ones who have a prayer of pulling it off. In as much as sustained survivability is a universal goal shared by all living things, humans, and only humans, are in any sort of a position to realize that goal.
We aren't just different than animals, we are superior to them.
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/06/0 7/1925250
;)
In about 100 million years, intelligent design _will_ be considered science.
It's only utter bullshit for the _first_ generation.
Ed R.Zahurak
You know, oblivion keeps looking better every day.
I'd like to say that I find the notion of ignoring science fact to embrace fiction (a work of man) totally ludicrous. Now, if the United States would get it's head out of it's educational black hole and remove Intelligent Design from the curriculum, our children just might grow up knowing something valuable other than, "It exists because that man over there said so."
God does not provide proof, because proof kills faith.
ID as stated does *not* assume supernatural life makers/fiddlers. Monsanto is a life ID'er to some extent.
Yes, it is *backed* by the religious, but the truth of a statement does not change depending on the beliefs of supporters or detractors. Otherwise, evolution would turn false if a Darwin Cult formed.
Table-ized A.I.
When it does happen, it is the beginning of existence... and you don't need Stephen Hawking to be present.
I must say, I agree with your statement about God requiring faith. I don't need faith to believe in God because I have "seen" evidence of God. But that is a different discussion. In the same way, I don't need a theory to prove to me that God created the universe or created human kind. If I believe that God is Omnipotent (all powerful), then I have to believe that he's capable of "creating" everything. Think of "existence" as an equation with n variables, where n=infinity Only someone who's "bigger than infinity" can solve it. There is an interesting verse in Genesis which, in some translations, states that God commanded the "Earth" to produce all kinds of animals and plants etc, but it clearly says that "God said: I will create" humans. This to me is a clear indication that (If I believe the literal Bible and God) I am created not evolved. I do not have to disprove evolution to be safe in my faith in God. I think it is a lame argument and leads absolutely no where. People who are looking for proof that God exists to believe, will never find it outside of themselves. By the same token, those who try to "defend" God will always fail because people, in the middle of "miracles" still worshipped animals. But, these discussions are always entertaining, even though at time the sheer ignorance of people on both sides of the argument (it's not a debate) is both frustrating and astounding.
...that prove the theory of evolution (macro, not micro.) That's all--just three things.
I'm talking about repeatable, observable facts that provide incontrovertible proof.
The problem with attacks on Darwinian science is that they are done from the perspective of someone who accepts an ancient text as flawless received wisdom. Such a person assumes that we in the scientific community also accept our received wisdom (The Origin of Species, for example) as flawless. But no, we realize that Darwin didn't have all the facts or all that many fossils, that science builds upon the shoulders of giants instead of believing that all of reality was revealed at some point in the distant past. Darwinism looks at nature and sees it performing the scientific method (experiments, paradigm abandonment, etc.) to achieve its ends, even as it itself undergoes these forces. I wrote about this at length here:
the Authoritarian Model of Information Value
The flag just makes more sense than the constitution. - Judas Gutenberg
Its called faith you stupid jackass. Some people have it and others don't. Deal with it.
I'll give you the benefit of a doubt that you're not merely a troll, but legitimately upset that some people don't believe as you do, and so ask you this simple question: What is it that is "called faith"? That is, what do you mean by faith? The usual meaning I hear is "belief in something without evidence". But I'm not talking about evidence or skepticism at all. Faith of that sort is not always misplaced: for example, I have faith that the person who put together the periodic table of elements in my chemistry class did so correctly. We wouldn't get very far if we didn't have faith of that sort, because it's beyond any of us to build our entire knowledge base from the ground up.
But since that's not the kind of thing I was talking about at all, I'm at a loss as to what you mean by faith and what it has to do with verifiability. Are you saying that acceptance of unverifiable propositions (that is to say, things that don't make any descriptive claims about the world at all) is faith? Cause I don't have any problem with that either: if you say that the sky is blue and water is wet and 2+2=4 and all sleezborgs are foodlebaks, I can agree with you 100%, because I agree that the sky is blue, and that water is wet, and that 2+2=4, and since 'sleezeborg' and 'foodlebak' are meaningless words I just made up right now, you can agree or disagree with that bit and it won't make any difference to me. So if both you and Joe Blow agree that the physical (i.e. observable) world operates according to such-and-such laws and has such-and such history, but you believe that that is the case because an in-principle unverifiable mind wills it to be so, and Joe Blow ostensibly disagrees, you two actually agree on all matters of fact; your point of contention is, literally, an empty statement with no truth-value (neither true nor false), so it makes no difference whether you say that's the case or not. For a mathematical analogy: if you say the measure of something is equal to 2 plus 1 plus 0, and Joe Blow says it's equal to 2 plus 1 minus 0, you're both equally right (or wrong) because you're both saying the same thing, namely that the measure of that thing is 3 - despite your difference in words.
An important footnote here: by "in-principle unverifiable" I don't just mean that no one anywhere ever WILL have opportunity to observe it, as may be the case with events far away in space or time; rather, I mean something like, if you had absolutely perfect instruments of every variety available to you, and a magic device that could take you any place and any time, even in that fantastic case there is no observation you could make that could prove or disprove the hypothesis in question. In short: a statement is verifiable if and only if, were there someone in the right place(s) at the right time(s) with the right sensors, they would be able to tell by observation whether the statement was true or not.
Now the third thing I can think of that you might mean by faith is something of a cross between the two above: where you say "I don't know what the things he's saying mean, but I agree with him 100%". This kind of blind faith is reprehensible. As I said before, I have faith (of the first variety) in my professors, whereby when they say something and I don't know any better I generally trust that what they say is correct. However, when I hear a professor say something that I don't understand (something which has not conveyed any meaning to me, though perhaps the speaker did mean something by it), I don't think "well, I don't know that to be false, and I trust him, so I'll believe that". I think "what?". And I try to ask questions until I can understand what's being said, and then, if I can finally tease out what exactly he means, then I'll either believe it or not based first on how much I know about the matter and then on how much I trust the professor's beliefs on the matter.
As a philoso
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
What is the likelihood of humans sending life accidentally or otherwise to Mars. Compare that likelihood to the evolution of life during the same period.
"Sending life accidentally". That's not "intelligent design" at all. It's "negligent accident".
Are you kidding? Our head of state was placed in power by the grace of God Himself. George W Bush just says that he was.... wait a sec.
30 minutes earlier than when you took it. ;)
The one above, and one other should be modded flamebait, I totally agree. But there were a couple that I thought were very reasonable. Apparently I'm unreasonable. I believe it was my first post that I feel was completely reasonable. It just seems that any post that says "well, perhaps ID has some merit or at least something worth looking at" gets automatically modded as troll or flamebait. I was just getting pissed off that no matter what I said that was either neutral or pro-ID was trolled or flamebaited. I was just looking for interesting conversation and apparently this wasn't the forum.
We figured out a long time ago that it's easier to elect seven judges than to elect 132 legislators.
Yes, it's true that Intelligent Design and Creationism cannot be accepted purely based on scientific reasoning (although there sure is a lot of science out there that backs up the creation theory). Ultimately, it must be accepted by faith.
The same goes for evolution. The first thing I learned in my 7th grade science class was this: Science must be (1) Observable, (2) Measurable, and (3) Repeatable. It seems to me that neither the Big Bang nor Creation fit into any of those three categories.
So, instead of making all this fuss about why Creationism and Intelligent Design shouldn't be taught in the science classroom... you might as well skip evolution, too!
People of faith are innately fearful. And not just innately fearful, but uncontrollably fearful. Not about everything in their lives, obviously, otherwise they would be completely non-functional. Still, there is a certain element of fear that nothing real, nothing scientific, nothing sitting right in front of them staring them in the face could ever get rid of. Essentially, this is a mental disorder, but I digress (or do I?
Religious faith is simply a panacea for the fearful, and organized religion simply provides the means for fear-mongerers to prescribe and dispense that panacea.
Pure Mathematician: 2 + 2 = 4 is true.
FPU: 2 + 2 = 3.999999999999999999990032176
Statistician: 2 + 2 = what the client wants it to be.
My bird wants to be a dog. He's jealous of our dog because the dog interacts with us more. So he makes dog sounds, tries to play with the dog, etc, as if the dog had some "in" with us, the bearers of food and treats.
Meanwhile the dog thinks its a person. This is partly pack behavior but it's pretty clear that the dog doesn't really distinguish us on a social level, even if it does at a physical one.
This is most telling when the dog attempts to enter into group conversations. She tries to talk. It's not growling or attention-grabbing barking... just moan-inflection-babble she interjects. If we're all around a table or counter, she'll paw up onto it and engage us... not because she wants something in particular, but because she feels that she be involved in the social interaction.
Weird, huh?
Animals can want to be other things too given the right stimuli. By examining the majority of society I say that what most people want is actually pretty base and it is not normal to want to be something more, other than well off.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
what the hell does striving to be something greater than yourself have anything to do with whether or not you believe in god or evolution or the happy watermellon god, answer? nothing.
this is an extremely short sighted statement, because the two things aren't mutually exclusive of one another. I can and do believe in evolution. I can still be religious and have faith. And i dont have to think that I know everything or that I am perfect. There are things that are unknowable.
in any event, the belief of the origins of man have little to nothing to neccesarily do with your belief of who you are where you are going and what you are capable of. if you cant recognize that then you just have a whole lot more room for improvement than everybody else. I can't stand how every single person who argues how we need to believe in creation rationalizes the statment by saying "but we need our christian values" "but you need to believe that you aren't perfect and the you can better yourself" "but you have to believe everything i do or you are a sinner"
its such bull. none of these things have anything to do with one another. even the devoid statement "christian values" is a piece of crap. Values such as honesty, trustworthyness, honor, compassion, and etc are common morales of human societies. They exist independantly of any religion and most of them existed long before christianity, so stop trying to tell us how important these things are in relation to one another.
"Jazz isn't dead, it just smells funny" ~Frank Zappa
EdelFactor
Like the UK (or any) government could identify science if it bit them in the ass.
Far from it.
It is more like function Q(a,b,c....x,y,z) has a fitness with many codependancies among the pairwise, triple, quads, and so on.
Q(a',b,c...x,y,z) may be worse. Q(a',b',c...x,y,z) may be better, provided enough a' survives long enough to have descendants with b' that crowd out the a/b.
There may be many base cases. It's not so simple and linear. People who use irreducible complexity-type arguments applied to evolution are like people who do statistical analysis of a word problem that ignore correlated events and then complain when the probabilities don't add up, or don't understand why you should _always_ change your door on Let's Make a Deal.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
as when evolution is the topic. Quadruple the normal response, and halve the intelligence of the average post, and you get an evolution thread (including those supporting, those denying, and those off on their pet hobbyhorses).
Seriously, for a community that prides itself on its geek cred, the illiteracy and overall ignorance in these threads is horrifying.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
The VMWare environment doesn't even have a way of TALKING about anything outside the environment. The memory space starts at 0, goes to 0xFFFFFFFF, and wraps around. It "disappears" when you "shut off" the host, but of course the VM isn't even aware of it... this is the way we want it.
Since we create environments with inner containers, we could speculate about the existance of outer containers. But they have no predictive power, utility, or detectability, so there's little point to argue either way.
This is the position we actually hold. We don't know, we can't know, and there's no way to find out.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
one is somewhat relieved that english fries don't exist, so they can't be renamed faith fries or similar.
You would be genuinely surprised if during an interplanetary voyage you discovered a large, red magic teapot. Let alone a blue one!
I use this argument on understanding divisions theist vs. agnostic vs. atheist and how some people misrepresent them.
Suppose there was an OTB that allowed you to wager on the existance or non-existance of a major deity (or dieties). The minimum wager was $10,000, and the odds are something like 1:10 against existance of the diety.
Theists would take the long bet, because their faith was strong.
Agnostics wouldn't bet $10,000; that's irresponsible and a wasted payment on that new house.
Athiests would take the "sure bet". Hey, easy grand. On the flip side, if they lost (and here's the kicker), they'd know there was a deity.
You'd think people think athiests would just explode into a puff of smoke if something came along to change their minds! You can't just stick your fingers in your ears and shout "La la la". The OTB has your $10000!!!
They wouldn't be athiest anymore after something like that. That's what it means to be athiest.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
What does ID predict? ID is precisely not science because it begins with the conclusion and then tries to find evidence for it. That is, it starts with the assumption that there is an intelligent designer (you say it's not necessarily supernatural, but that is a strawman, since the ID designer IS the Christian God, hands down).
You are confusion something that can be tested with a scientific theory. Homeopathy can be tested and refuted too, but it doesn't make it a scientific theory.
The point that the parent was attempting to make is that other species are designed not to need all this intellectual baggage we drag around with us. They can still accomplish the three prime objectives of life (eat, breed, die), and never waste a moment sitting and agonizing over the wording of their slashdot posts.
/sig
Actually the Big Bang theory says that it's not reasonable to ask the question "What happened before?", because as far as we know there was no time to make the word "before" meaningful.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Yet creationists are the only ones who continue to expose them.
This is quite interesting topic. Most of the present day science is based on some assumptions and hypothesis which are essentially based on some observationed. How to use these sciences for the human cause or advatage is the Intelligent Design(ID), unfortunately this is also based on assuptions and theories. If some body says that there is no science in ID it shows only their Intellectual level or their ingnorance. Of course it is understood that there no science in spirituality but spirituality has science, that human science. Spirituality is for the commonness of the people who are humans. Science for those who want to do some thing else. Similarly every design has some creativity it is left to individuals how intelligent it is are how natural it is. Since our level of science has made us to live far away from nature we may not be able to appreciate or understand the natural designs. To my knowledge Life it self is science, It is an ART - OF - LIVING, everybody needs a loaf of bread, a shelter to live and to be peaceful. This is quite natural. Human has not developed to the level of understanding the INTELLIGENT NATURAL DESIGNS.
The funny part is that last time I discussed with a creationist, his argument was hinged on the claim that genetic mutation could never, ever introduce a beneficial mutation. Guess that's another good example of pseudoscience: Depending on the person, they disagree with different aspects of the scientific approach, but somehow, they always end up with the same competing theory in the end...
I lost my sig.
If you really believed your religion was the truth, wouldn't you consider "The observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of phenomena," (definition of science from the american heritage dictionary) in the context of your religious beliefs science?
If you are a Christian, and you don't take the whole bible as truth, where do you draw the line? If the Bible's depiction of creation is a lie, is Jesus's promise of salvation a lie as well? I realize this analogy is a little extreme, and proponents of theistic evolution would argue that evolution does fit into the Genesis depiction of creation, but I think it is easy to see why a creationist would hold their beliefs as true, and consider the study of intelligent design science. Assume intelligent design is real (just for the moment). If that is the case, shouldn't the study of natural phenomena (science) take that into account? That is the viewpoint of the creationists.
It is clear that the UK Government does not share this viewpoint.
I think when it comes down to it, most creationists aren't as interested in science as they are theology, and they would rather have their idea of creation err on the side of God rather than the side of atheism. After all, when we are all dead, what does it matter if we evolved into our modern forms or God created us? If we assume God created us, but the truth is evolution was the case, why would he hold it against us? If biblical creation is truth, however, and we denounce it, God would probably not be happy that we convinced others of a story of creation in which God is non-existant.
For creationists, their belief is a win-win situation.
One of the fundamental flaws of Creationism and Intelligent Design that I have observed is, quite simply, the sheer arrogance of it; both are rooted in the assumption that the chances of life randomly appearing is so slim that we shouldn't exist, therefore some greater being must have created us.
This fantasy works on the assumption that life on Earth was 100% guarenteed, completely ignoring the fact that we live in - from our current observations - a vast and desolate universe; of course life would appear to be guarenteed to us, for if life never evolved, we wouldn't be here pondering upon the origin of life in the first place. What's worse is that ID has no intellectual worth at all - it tries to browbeat people into accepting that some unknown being(s) created everything with no credible explanation on the process involved nor the origin or nature of said being(s).
Just how heavy is a black hole? (And what would the chipping charges be? ;)
Mongrel News all the news that fits and froths
How does that differ from SETI?
Table-ized A.I.
That's because, in the US, there is a large population (and lots of them too), of people who don't need to learn no science, because science done never did nothing for them. Besides, it doesn't take any science to have 8 kids and live in a single wide trailer.
Mongrel News all the news that fits and froths
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
It's nice to see it's alive and well somewhere. -Joe
Get off my virtual lawn, you damned virtual kids!
Evolution is something that works within the confines of the Laws of Physics. Without the laws of physics evolution would be impossible. The universe is governed by these immutable laws; therefore evolution is a property of this Universe. So what makes the Laws of Physics work exactly like they do??? So far we don't have answer to that one.
What about "Randomness", how can you have randomness within a mathematical universe? Do decimal rounding errors introduce randomness or is the universe a perfect computable system? All that would be required is the Laplace Machine to see that nothing is random and freewill doesn't exists, we just appear to have a choices because we can see the alternatives, but never-the-less always choose the same option. Schopenhauer says something similar in a thought experiment. If you go into a restaurant and look at the menu you're free to choose anything you want, so long as you can afford it. Then there's certain dishes I don't like, will I choose to eat one of those? What about the wife who'll kill me if she finds out I've eaten stake, as I have a heart condition. Before long freewill looks like more like coerce will. We still can't disprove that this isn't a predetermined universe.
So evolution doesn't disproved God, only that Genesis isn't a literal telling of creation. If you ask me they should rewrite part of Genesis and sick in a nice lump of the Selfish Gene give it a generator or two and nobody will know that it wasn't there all-a-long... Sure all they need to do if find some more of those Dead Sea thingies.
The U.K. is becoming more secularized everyday. So, it's no surprise to see their government in an absurd attempt to appeal to their increasingly secularized culture with such meaningless declarations. Personally, If I was a U.K. citizen I would be insulted by such pure elitism b.s., which is clearly sending the signal that you're intellectually inferior.
How is Bill Gates like a diety?
Microsoft's software is full of complexity.
Were all those bugs created by coding errors or were they created by design?
Does complexity and variation require intelligent design in computer software?
Does complexity and variation require intelligent design in organisms?
Newsflash: Reason still survives in the modern world - Government officials have not fallen into the dark ages (yet) - Hopes for sustainance of science in the coming decades!
Future archaeologists and historians will undoubtedly regard the presence of such news stories before the next dark ages as a clear indication of the pathetic condition of science in our civilisation. When confronted with a stupid theory the best course of action is to blatantly ignore it without remorse. Even by taking your time to attack the stupid theory, you are giving it some value (your time).
I have lived in the southern states of the US and have been damn near attacked for my lack of faith by pleanty of bible thumping southern baptists. These people are just completely insane. I've even been told by a 4 year old girl "You'll go to hell for that" when I kissed a girl in a swimming pool. The girls mother said "That's right dear".
So, my latest argument to screw with the religious types is to pretend that I believe in God and say "My God is smarter than your God". When asked to justify my statement I say :
My God created the big bang. He was so smart that unlike your God that seemed to think he should rush everything and screw up the physics so bad that people would have to use "Blind Faith" to believe everything he did actually corresponds in a proper order, my God decided that he'll spend a few billion years designing a locallized event that would eventually expand billions of years later into the universe we know today. What's best is that he was able to figure out how to make human beings evolve all the way from an initial chemical reaction at some point. My God has patience and instead of giving us books that we should force on people at sword point and gun point, he'll give us the universe and the intellect we need to try and understand it. Best part is, my God doesn't ask me to spend considerable percentages of my life praying to him. My God created me as a form of entertainment, so he's more interested in seeing me make mistakes and hopefully learn from them.
This usually pisses more than a few people off, but the best part is, it puts things in perspective. If you want to have a form of "Intelligent Design", then lets' take the almighty and all powerful and give him credit for being able to plan out the universe intelligently. Let's not insult him by suggesting that he did a rushed, sloppy job that requires millions to be wasted in delegation deciding whether or not a relgious belief should be taught as science.
Oh... the alternative is, maybe we should just teach science in science class and leave religion out of it altogether. The relgious fruit cakes should just be told "If your God made it so that science progresses by studying this false belief, then that must be what he wanted in the first place".
Such a model would not be enough to disprove the existence of God. For the universe inside Super Mario Brothers, there exists a scientifically-complete model; it happens to be 40960 octets long. However, when I hex edit a saved state, I am the god of that universe. I can modify the state of the game at will, without modifying the rules. Despite a self-consistent and fully-accurate model of the universe, God exists and can perform miracles.
Similarly, a god of our universe would be able to create objects without regard to the standard rules, and discovering those rules would not disprove her existence.
Note that I'm an atheist. I just want to make sure the logic on all sides is valid.
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
According to the Prophets of WBC, we UKians are nothing more than a "raunchy little group of pagans".
Raunchy pagan? Moi?!
Ker-ching!
The problem with ID is that, above and beyond the mental exercise you're illustrating, nearly all of their poster child examples for irreducibly complex systems can be contradicted with specific evidence. For flagella, the structure is a couple molecules different from that of a structure which sits in the cell wall and controls the passage of lipids or some such molecule. With the eye, as someone posted earlier, there's an evolutionary advantage to every step in the development of the structure from the presence of light-sensitive cells in the brain through to the final product -- that, along with the fact that the eye has evolved independently 2 or 3 times would tend to prove that it's not irreducible.
And, as someone else also posted earlier, it's an appeal to incredulity. I find that people who disbelieve the possibility of evolution tend not to have a grasp of the truly staggering number of organisms that are involved in the process over its total time span.
Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
The Urban Hippie
That, and the eye has evolved independently several different times on Earth. Offhand, I know the octopus eye is from a completely different evolutionary origin than that of mammals and all who share that branch, and I'm pretty sure there was a 3rd unique origin too.
Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
The Urban Hippie
some animals use tools, that's right. they have a set of 1, 2, maybe 3 tools. humans have (at least) millions of tools and keep creating new ones specialized for the particular problem that needs to be solved. that's one of the things that sets us apart.
It's a smokescreen. The UK government has a new 'Academy Schools' scheme. This is a scheme where, in return for a donation of several millions pounds toward the running a school, an organisation gets significant control over the runnin gof the school. These schools do not have to follow the national curriculum, and several of them have been bought/funded by a group backed by evangelical American Christians.
In short, this rule against ID doesn't affect the only schools in the UK likely to teach ID, as they don't have to teach the national curriculum. Classic Blair era spin.
How about because observation clearly shows that it had a beginning ?
It always amazes me how people who claim the universe doesn't have a beginning in order to deny God "believe" (because that's what it is) in the big bang theory that states that the universe DID have a beginning.
Am I the only one seeing a problem with this attitude ? Probably
The point is that "the UK government has stated there is no place in the science curriculum for Intelligent Design and that it can not be taught as science." Finally, this government has pulled its head out of its own politically correct asshole, spoken the thoughts of the vast majority of the people that democraticslly elected them to power and stopped pandering to the small-minded lobby groups. Still, it's all too little, too late. I can't wait until they loose the next election...
I'm looking over the wall; and the're looking at me!
Yeah, I'd agree that Intelligent Design is not science -- though it is as valid a place to start as any theory.
Science is about experimentation.
But that said, (Ayn Rand, back me up), neither are public rulings science. Government can't do science any more than religion. Come to think of it, scientific evidence would seem to imply that government can't do education any more than it can do science, either. And looking at NASA's record, we might also find out that government can't do space any more than science.
There's only one thing government can do well -- strong arming people into the desires of its ruling elite. And it seems that it is doing its best now as ever.
Newsflash: Reason still survives in the modern world - Government officials have not fallen into the dark ages (yet) - Hopes for sustainance of science in the coming decades!
Yep, unfortunately, that *is* news.
Or rather, the news is that the UK isn't run by religious crackpots like the US is.
PS: "sustenance".
Time-serving members of the civil magistracy have ruled only atheism constitutes true knowledge while religion is declared to be mythology and superstition.
self-reflection.
How about because observation clearly shows that it had a beginning ?
...
It always amazes me how people who claim the universe doesn't have a beginning in order to deny God "believe" (because that's what it is) in the big bang theory that states that the universe DID have a beginning.
Am I the only one seeing a problem with this attitude ? Probably
I don't think you are the only one, like other you just don't understand what beginning means in this context. When we look out in to space we look back in time as well and can't see further than a fireball that encompasses the whole universe (the cosmic microwave background radiation, the 3 Kelvin stuff). In that sense you could say the universe started as a fireball or "Big Bang". On the other hand space-time (they are not separate) is part of the universe, this is the crucial bit to understand. So to speak about something before the "Big Bang" loses its meaning. There was no space-time (outside the universe) therefore there was no before.
Note though that there is at least one other serious theory (as in speculative but scientific) about the universe, the ekpyrotic universe. I don't know about the implications of that theory though, it uses string theory of which I know next to nothing.
(Yes I know I cut some corners in the above explanation, but if you are interested in this kind of stuff why not study it or pick up one of the many books about it.)
X(N+1) could depend on X(N), N and how X(0) started. And then, without knowing what N is at this particular moment, you CANNOT make any sort of guess as to what N means or if there is even an X(0).
E.g. at N+1 a value is 10% lower. At N+2 it is 10 % lower again.
Looks linear. Actually, given when you select your points and when N is, you have a sin(x)/x function that fits this small sample. And what is sin(x)/x lim x->0? Oh, undefined in numerical terms...
If it were only "nearly immune" to *all* antibiotics, it would have been wiped out by now.
We're asking that such belief, since it is intensely personal (you can't share YOUR belief) that it isn't science. Just because you do believe in God doesn't mean I have to, nor does it mean he really does.
The Big Bang did not create the Universe. Matter already had to exist at that point for it to be concentrated intio the singularity which ex/imploded. The Big Bang began the Universe's expansion. Nothing more.
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
When did religon become science in the first place. If i could kill them all i would.
"My bird wants to be a dog. He's jealous of our dog because the dog interacts with us more."
So, the bird doesn't want to be a dog, but simply wants what the dog has. Not the same thing.
"She tries to talk. It's not growling or attention-grabbing barking."
I hate to be the one to ruin your well crafted anthropomorphic fantasy, but that's exactly what it is and you know it. She did something, you reinforced it, behavior continued. It's not nearly as weird as you seem to think.
This is why I rarely get involved in these types of discussions. As a professional in the field, analysis like yours is all too common, and is wrong every time. It's nice to pretend that your dog "thinks it's people" but that's all it is, you pretending.
I do love the assertion you made that it's not attention seeking, especially since there's no way in hell you could know that, and more importantly, because it's clearly not true.
It is with math that you can define pattern recognition, therefor efficiency which uses pattern recognition to come to an easier smarter more productive end would classify this as a Math problem.
If we tought more efficiency instead of letting people come up with it on their own....we would have a lot more ikeas around the world.
Nothing with an iota of intelligence, especially a God, would put hair around an arsehole.
DogDude,
While I absolutely understand your stance on science and evolution, I challenge you to consider this:
Do you even remotely entertain the possibility of the existence of God? If so, if this God is, as most religions claim, an all-powerful, omnipotent God, then could it be within of the realm of possibility that this God could, in fact, actually create what we know as the universe? I ask this because people so often impose "human limitations" on the perception of God simply because we can't understand or comprehend the notion of true omnipotence. We see the world through human eyes, yet if there is a God, isn't it possible that God's perspective and capabilities fall outside of our human limitations and perceptions?
Obviously, there is no scientific "proof" for God, so when viewed through the eyes of pure science, scientific theories and explanations simply must not nor can not account for God. And that is why this debate will probably never be resolved as long as there are those who believe in God, and those who hold to pure science.
So I challenge you to consider this possibility. I'm not asking you to believe in it, just to entertain the possibility. If nothing else, it may help you to understand why those who believe in God can so easily accept a Creationist perspective without the total exclusion of science. While it may be cliche, many "believers" hold to the idea that "God created everything, and science explains how He did it." Is that notion provable? Probably not. Is it "wrong"? That continues to be the debate.
Thank you for listening. I look forward to your response.
The scientific ommunity no longer searches for truth. If the logical conclusion of data leads to an intelligent designer or other being greater than ourselves, that should be the accepted answer. Rather the philosophical basis of the scientific mindset has presupposed that no such being can exist, therefore any conclusion that posits such cannot be true. Shame on scientists for abandoning what they purport to seek--truth.
But I was SO RELIEVED when I saw the tag "duh" on this article. Really, it gave me a sliver of hope for humanity.
Internet: Serious Business
If Intelligent Design is to be accepted as science, that opens the nature of God to public discussion subject to scientific rigor. Honestly, do any of you seriously propose putting the definition of God in the hands of the scientific community? Think about that before you lend your support to Intelligent Design.
You say that you believe the Bible to be wholly true. What about the contradictory parts? The parts where one or another part can be true, but both cannot?
For instance Genesis I, 24-27:
So in Genesis I God makes Man and Woman at the same time, after making the plants and animals
Then in Genesis II, God takes a little rest on the seventh day and is bothered by something:
There was not a man to till the ground? What happened to the Man and Woman God created back on Day 6? Did God roll over in his sleep and crush them or something? I'm not sure, but the Bible says they were not around. Well it says there was 'not a man to till the ground', I guess we guys still do that kind of thing. You know we become real scarce when there's work to be done. Of course that would mean that God is not omniscient if it were so easy to skip out an him.
Oh, also notice that God in Genesis II is creating Man before there were any plants? In Genesis I God creates all of the plants on Day 3 and Man (and Woman) on Day 6. In Genesis II God creates Man (just man no Woman yet) first and then creates plants.
It cannot have happened both ways. One way or the other, but both cannot be true. The Bible cannot be wholly true. Which came first Man or plants? Only one order of events can be true, yet the Bible contains both versions. There is the possibility that neither accounts are true, but it is impossible for the Bible to be, as you say, 'wholly true'. The Bible is self contradictory. You must decide which part is true. If one of these accounts is true, then the other is false.
So, continuing with genesis II, we get to the part where God gets around to creating Man...
(Plants after Man)...
The God I believe in the same in Christianity and Islam. The total adherents of those two faiths accounts for more than 50% of the world population.
That may be true.
However.
Christians can't even agree on which God they worship. Is it the angry God of modern American fundamentalism? Or the Jehovah's Witness' God who makes Gods of his followers? Or the polygamy-loving God of the LDS?
So many people call themselves "Christians," and yet obviously do not believe in the same God. I'm not saying they can't all call themselves "Christians." I'm just saying, they can't all be right.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
"I once attended a symposium where this lead astronomer from Harvard (I think it was) spoke. It's been so many years ago. Anyhow, he lectured on some molocule discovered and how if not for this single thing there would never have been life on earth. He went on to discuss the near impossibility of it existing by chance, and then went on to admit it had moved him, for the first time ever, toward a theistic belief."
But for some reason, this Harvard scientist has never bothered to write a paper and submit it for peer review to detail the particulars of this miraculous molecule. A solid piece of science that The Discovery Institute and other pseudo-science myth shops could publish and trumpet as real science.
But he failed to do so. Probably because, as an astronomer, he doesn't really know squat about miraculous molecules. Just another meaningless anecdote.
I personally believe in an existing or potential higher power, and The Tao. I do not, however, make the claim that my belief is in any way scientific. It isn't. Science is based on fact and human understanding of what those facts mean. I believe the ways of a higher power are greater than human understanding, and don't believe we will find their plain writ in the physical world.
Maybe one day, if we don't wipe ourselves out, we'll evolve to the point where we are more in tune with the higher power and can actually understand it. I don't claim to know.
Until then, my motto is to live according to the desires of my heart, using the tool of my mind. And not delude myself that I have all the answers of Creation, or that those answers are in a book scribbled by barbaric goat-herders or modern navel-gazers. What I believe (heart) and what I know (brain) are two different arenas. I prefer not to confuse them.
Fundamentalism is a crime against humanity
I propose the theory that all people are fucking idiots.
Thanks for your support!
I have no problem with what you say and I think I even agree (albeit, a bit harsh). As for the scientist (astronomer) or whatever. I'm not going to pretend to understand all about publishing scientitific stuff. It was for extra credit or something when I was in college (like, 20 years ago), and that's about the best I can remember. What stuck was how he suddenly went off on a theistic tangent. I'm sure whatever molecule he was discussing was published simply because I know he was referencing materials. I think he said someone else discovered it....
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
Intelligent design is nothing more than a philosophy...
I believe this is untrue. Intelligent design is an assertion derived from a metaphysical/ethical text (the Bible), but is itself not a philosophy.
Science, however, *is* a philosophy, specifically an epistemology. That's why you get a PhD after attending Evil Doctor school for 8 years.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
I doubt many scientist would see any competition between the two, it's like comparing mathematics with dance.
Oh, like this?
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
"and that koko has been reading picture books to herself at bedtime just like a school kid would do, it's only imitation."
It is. I'm glad we agree.
"that she has the wish to express herself via paintings and drawings, that's no sign for intelligence."
You're right, it's not a sign of intelligence, it's a sign of YOU anthropomorphizing an animal. SO this point speaks dircetly to your failings.
"and that she invents new words is a sign for... what?"
Nothing.
"you, as many others, suffer from delusions of grandeur regarding human capabilities..."
And YOU as SOOOO many others, suffer from delusions that animals who engage in behavior similar to humans do so for REASONS similar to humans. Again, this says far more about your inability to reason than it does about koko.
None of which means koko doesn't use language. It only means that the reasons YOU think are definitive are meaningless and trivial, and that you don't have the mental processes necessary to realize it.
I, for one, welcome our new bug-picking, poo-throwing overlords!!
Some people may. Most people, even people who understand science and properly pragmatically apply it, have beliefs that extend beyond the scientific. That some people may have a quasi-religious belief in some of the things that are contained in evolutionary theory does not change the fact that those are scientific propositions that have withstood empirical scrutiny, while many other things (like creationism) that people may have religious or quasi-religious faith in are not.
The people may have a faith in the Invisible Hand of the Market that goes far beyond what is justifiable through the valid scientific results in economics does not make the real science done in economics any less real, even if the fervent proclamations often obscure the real science of economics. Similarly, if there are people that have an extra-rational faith in elements of evolutionary theory that goes beyond the science, that doesn't invalidate the science of evolution, nor does it make it make alternative religious explanations that are not empirically testable into scientific alternatives.
I hate to drag this discussion through the mud, but this viewpoint comes from the same place that strong nationalism, racial supremacy, and religious zealotry comes from: The characteristics that are unique to my group are those that are possessed by the superior group, because they are the characteristics that are possessed by my group.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Quite a huge obvious one: Even if the universe is caught in a big loop of time, why bother with all that instead of not existing at all? State A may be caused by State B and state B by state A, but that doesn't explain why /both/ state A and state B exist. Your idea is simply a restating of the Necessary Being argument: "God must exist in order for Absolute Good to exist!" -> presupposes absolute good exists. "The big crunch must exist in order for the universe to exist!" -> presupposes that the universe exists.
The universe, as a whole, fundamentally, exists because nobody told it not to. Through strict (and liberally asshole-ish) reading of the first bits of Genesis, this is consistent with Jewish/Christian tradition.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
I normally avoid these types of conversations but I'm going to step in this once and offer that you may be misunderstanding the term "irreducibly complex" in this sense.
Irreducibly complex means that an evolved system is interdependent on its coexisting parts. Simply put, a system could not have evolved in small steps if more than one part of the system is codependent on other parts for proper functioning. A circular dependency is created.
Evolution is the key to this point, not the system in its current form. Removing your head is not the point - your system will cease to function, and your head can be "reduced" more or stand alone as a separate part, but it speaks nothing about evolution (for this point).
If you want to study more about this, "Darwin's Black Box" is a well known and interesting read.
why is this funny? It could very well be so. If someone were to look at all the modes of human transportation from chariot to bentley to jet fighter does not one see gradual changes occuring? If there was Intelligent Design, wouldn't it be quite likely that the earth was the testing ground for designs of increasing complexity and sophistication?
Is that not how all intelligent design is done? The final product can only build upon previous ideas of lesser sophistication.
If you stumbled over a volume of the Encyclopedia Britannica while hiking through a forest, would you say "look at this naturally occuring book" or would you say "I wonder who left this here for me to stub my toe?"
According to the scientific community, a DNA molecule contains the equivalent instructions, in terms of volume, as a volume of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Do you say "look at this naturally occuring, random chance molecular structure" or do you say "Wow, the Grand Creator created this and my toe?"
Consider this, DNA requires protein, and protein requires DNA. Energy spontaneously tends to flow only from being concentrated in one place to becoming diffused and spread out (The second law of thermodynamics). In a universe of chaotic forces, why would random atoms coalesce instead of diverge? This question applies to the initiation of a lineage as well as the initiation of the universe.
We homosapiens share our biosphere with other species. Does it make sense that commonality exists?
It's hard to explain to /others/ what is meant by "nothing existed, then everything existed". What is really meant is: "everything existed", which sounds like "oh, nothing caused the universe because it always existed", which is not only not what /I/ mean, but is fallaciously causal, and pretty fucking stupid.
/I/ exist, there are plenty of things which, even with the option of existence available, still are in the realm (at least from our perspective) of not-existing. Therefor, they also exist.
The problem is thinking of time as a unifying all-encompassing axis through which all possible states exist. There's a separate two-point axis of "existing" and "not existing" which presumably is one that exists purely as a logical construct. They could be thought of as disconnected states with no axis between them, but in summary:
State 1: Non-existence. Rules do not exist here. This would be chaos, except that doesn't exist here either.
State 2: Everything.
Existence springs forth spontaneously from non-existence. The interesting part, to me anyway, is that while at least
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
They also don't alite onto couches and watch the boob tube in a stupor. It's not just my dog that does this, many indoor dogs will do some of these things.
Whether you believe the dog thinks it can be a person (or be like a person), or whether it is reinforcement learning is a dubious distinction.
To return to the original example, as a human I should believe that if I try really hard to do something I can make my dreams come true (which is what the grandparent is essentially claiming makes us different than animals). This reinforcement learning is delivered to me by Disney, elementary school, my parents, etc. They show me a story of an exceptional person who overcomes adversity and is happy. I should be like that. I get praise when I overcome adversity.
So why is what the dog does any different? Just trying to fit in and do things it believes are good and to her future benefit?
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Uh, people tend to look at athiests as Athiests where they strongly believe in the non-existance of god. To a point where even if they'd lose that bet, they'd still refuse to believe, and just move the goalposts back, saying that whatever it is that the OTB considered to be a God is infact a natural phenomenon and therefore nothing special.
But presumably the Athiest wouldn't take the bet unless they believed that the discriminator would actually have a chance of proving the faithful wrong in a decisive way (otherwise they'd be just throwing away $1000). So if it swung the other way, if they actually were rational then they'd have to accept that counter evidence and presumably they could no longer be "Athiest".
Essentially, what I'm saying is that Athiesm is still a conditional belief. It can have varying levels of certainty but that's dependant on how much philosophical soul searching you've done, or how much exposure you had to alternate belief systems at a young age. Agnostics tend to feel that only they hold a conditional belief, and that somehow makes it a "safe" position. But in fact what they really feel is that they are on the fence; just as someone stuck between Buddhism and Christianity or Islam or whatever.
If you ask an Agnostic whether they think there really is a God, and the answer comes back "probably not". Then you're not Agnostic, you're actually athiest.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
The issue with ID is that we don't have any reasonable basis to work from. If they were to suggest some mechanisms and properties of the designer, maybe they'd have something to work with (or at least look for). Until then, they're stuck. The best they've managed to do is the following gross generalization: 1) Life looks like a machine (I think that this is idiotic, but I'll grant it for the sake of argument). 2) People make machines. 3) People are intelligent. 4) All machines we've seen are made by intelligent people, so life must be made by something intelligent.
The problem here is that if you grant life the position of being "like a machine" life still makes up the vast majority of "machines" on this planet. Intelligent agency would be known to produce only a small fraction of the complexity around here, so how on Earth can you come up with a rule like "all complex outputs require an intelligent creator"?
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
Your sig is frightfully offensive. Your post indicates that you're a thoughtful person. Did you go off and leave yourself logged in again? Get a better sig. Do it now. Copy one from somebody else if you must, but get rid of the one comparing nerd karma to breasts.
Consider Xen on a paravirtualizing processor.
Each container can contain a container with a hypervisor. Turtles... all the way down. Does that construct speak to a higher intelligence, even if each layer is a complete cast and abstraction of the next, in both directions?
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
It doesn't matter. The point is that an induction argument with steps (where each step is only dependant on the last) is not a good example.
So let's say N is a vector of "current time" arguments. So N_1 is parameter one, N_2 parameter two, and so forth, and X(N) is the fitness function of this generation.
Y(N) is a fitness function of a different, symbiotic species under similar conditions.
X(N) could be dependant on X(N-1), X(N-3), and Y(N-10), but only if Y(N-4)+X(N_1) is greater than Y(N-1_2)... mathematical induction is to simple an analytic argument to apply here.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
I feel for you, dude. There is no reason for a flamebait mod, especially when other peoples replies have shown their housepets attempting to imitate behavior of other animals, including humans.
I, too, think it is a very ignorant statement, and would like to see the peer reviewed study that demonstrates that dogs just want to be dogs, chickens chickens, etc. I would wager that an animals thought process is a hell of a lot more complex than most people want to give them credit for, and I wish people would stop considering them dumb animals. Without vocal chords or opposable thumbs, of course it's going to limit the ability to communicate; but it certainly doesn't mean the thought process isn't there. It certainly doesn't mean that a dog hasn't looked at a flying bird and said to himself, "Wow, that looks pretty fucking cool. I wish I could do that." Until we can actually communicate with other animals, we should stop being so ignorant to assume they can't.
Our dog has specific attention-seeking behaviors.
* When she wants to play, she finds a toy or personal item and tries to lure us away from whatever we may be doing
* When she wants food, water, or to go outside, she barks noisily and with increasing alarm until someone attends to her. If we're not otherwise occupied, she will sit by the door or her food bowl without barking.
* When she wants someone to just keep her company, she will insert herself in front of that person (pushing a book away if you're reading), snout-push them in the legs, lick them, etc.
The growl-talking is a behavior we only see if we're having an animated conversation. She finds a visible but unobtrusive position (i.e., not trying to be the center of attention), and then tries to join the discussion.
OTH, if she actually wants attention because the conversation is growing very long she will paw-up onto someone and pull them away from it for 1 on 1 time.
I really don't see any reason for her to do this other than to try to fit in. Dogs are social animals and you should expect to see behavior like that, but it's not far off from what _people_ do in similar situations and that's where I have the problem with people making such vast distinctions.
There are other things that she does that seem abnormal, and she does them even if no one is around:
* Watch TV on the couch.
* Catch fireflies (specifically)
* Is cogniscant of her collar, bandana, and leash. I.E. she won't leave them if you forget them if req.d
* Closes doors behind herself. Here I'm sure she's just copying us, but it's bizarre.
We didn't train her to do this stuff. She just took it upon herself. I'm not about to speculate as to "why" she does these things but take that for what it's worth.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Hello all:
This discussion reminds me of a joke about a sculptor pointing at a block of marble and said, "There is a human head inside." Then, he proceeded to sculpt a human head from the marble. Is there a human head in the block of marble? Certainly. Is it necessary that there is a human head in the block of marble? Certainly not.
It is my humble opinion that both evolution and the various versions of creationism try to fit what's readily observable in nature into an imaginary framework. Creationism is based on an imaginary framework that an Entity started everything. Evolution, though more supported, still has an imaginary element to it, in that it is based on interpretations of what're observed. The supporting evidence for evolution, once again IMHO, does not necessarily exclude every interpretations but the right one, the truthful one, and the real one. In short, both of these point to a block of marble, which is nature, and make claims. Then, they proceed to interpret what's observed in nature conforming to the claim.
I would dare say that all scientific theories are creations of someones' minds. Therefore, we should approach all theories, including evolution, with a dose of skepticism. Though many in here would treat evolution as an objective FACT. I would regard it as a well-defended theory at best.
As for creationism I only have one question: is this a search for the truth, or a movement for public indoctrination of the creationists' ideals? If it's the former I think creationists have a lot to learn from scientists about methodologies. If it's the latter, then, it is sad. I understand that the creationists' ideals are really the Christians' ideals. I understand that Christians are commanded to spread the word of God, and that Christians honestly promote Christ out of sincerity. However, arguing the creationists' case under veil of science do nothing but encourages discord; it won't change any lives for the better and that is, supposedly, motivation behind it all...
Cheers.
B. Pascal
Despite the fact that you believe what you're saying, that doesn't matter.
The process of determining "motivation" in an animal is extremely complex. It usually involves long stretches of observation in specific settings, followed by more long hours of testing to elicit responses to stimuli. It is the kind of process, which when undertaken by a professional who is talented, observant, and qualified, can give great insight.
It IS NOT ever done by an amateur with any accuracy, unless that amateur has very specific training and instructions. You do not.
Asking you to accurately describe why your dog does what she does is similar to asking me about particle physics. It is not my bailiwick, and any answers I have will be of suspect nature.
When I said what I said before, I think you missed my point. You, unless you have some education that you're not sharing, CAN NOT have the toolset to accurately assess your dogs behavior. You can't. It is not possible. The main, and simplest, reason is because of exactly what you have already displayed, a tendency to assign human motivation to a non-human. This should NEVER be done without extreme caution. Simply watching what your dog does and assuming is not good enough.
I know, for a fact, 100% certainty, that given a sufficient amount of time, I could give you a reason for every single one of your dog's behaviors. And none of your assumptions would be correct.
I suggest you look into types of conditioning. You will gain a great insight into why everyone (humans, animals, and everything else) behaves the way they do.
Sadly though, your illusions about your dog having "conversations" will be shattered.
I consider myself lucky that religion has not harmed me directly in my life. No bad childhood experiences: parents were agnostic, and encouraged me to make up my own mind.
Growing up the only problem as related to religion I recall having was experiencing and seeing rulers applied forcefully to children's hand for not saying the pledge of alegiance with "under god". Though my mom was Catholic she was pretty much non practicing and encouraged me to study other religions as well. After reading about Buddhism I considered myself Buddhist, which is why I didn't want to say "under god". Through childhood and early adulthood my beliefs kept evolving. Several years ago I came to the realization I was agnostic, without a belief in the existence or nonexistence of a supreme being. And now I don't even believe in a soul or spirit, I am agnostic in this as well as I don't believe in the nonexistence of them either. But I really want to know.
FalconShould there be a Law?
knock on your door every other week ... isn't that obvious enough for you? hahahahahahhaa.
How about because observation clearly shows that it had a beginning?
"... clearly shows..." that's news to me. Besides, I neither denied nor confirmed a beginning, I merely stated that the postulate that there was a creator in order to explain the observable universe is unnecessary.
Repeat after me, "Everything is a theory."
I'm not saying it's not conditioning.
But who's to say that what _we_ do that makes us think we're special isn't conditioning either?
That was my point. You might have noticed my flippant and sarcastic tone describing the behavior.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Sam Harris has an amusing definition of Faith: (paraphrased) "Faith is the permission religious people give each other to deny evidence."
i\hbar\dot{\psi}=\hat{H}\psi
This ID stuff is nothing more than another attempt at injecting religion into government by persons who cannot correctly interpret the true meaning of the Bible. One stand-out memory I have of faulty interpretations over the years is several religious coworkers claiming the earth and the universe are only 6,000 years old. In response to my rebuttals, they found some passage in the Bible they interpreted to support their contention. When asked to explain fossils millions of years old and carbon dating, they called it the work of the devil. I gave up with a chuckle...
They're especially biased toward things that look like signals that we produce. Essentially, they're looking for life forms whose behaviors mimic (at least, very loosely) our own. The world of intelligent design is populated by a designer whose properties and mechanisms are completely unknown,
But one could look for paterns familiar to humans also in life, such as math in DNA. You are not saying that SETI aliens *must* use human-like technology/patterns, but merely that SETI is searching for only those patterns (as if they had a choice). One could filter for low-hanging-fruit (stuff humans recognize) either way.
4) All machines we've seen are made by intelligent people, so life must be made by something intelligent.
No, that is not necessarily part of the assumptions. Perhaps some brands of ID have that as a base assumption, but it is not necessary to test for intelligent *intervention* (regardless of original) in Earth life.
Table-ized A.I.
You keep using words like "test" when describing ID. Can you describe what such a test might be?
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
I didn't mean it was unimportant in terms of survival value and passing on your genes. What I meant was that it is completely unimportant in terms of "Are we better than animals?" and other such intelligent questions that direly need to be answered to satisfy the people who have an ego problem. In reality, I've come to the conclusion that warm fuzzies are the only meaning to life. Everything else is moot. After all, why attempt to find a girlfriend? Warm fuzzies. Why help other people at all if it isn't to your direct benefit? Again warm fuzzies. Why do we want to believe that we are better in some way than animals? Once again (and finally) warm fuzzies.
Of course you can think of rational reasons to justify the warm fuzzies, but you also have to remember that the things that trigger the warm fuzzies are triggers for a reason. They probably help with survival value (and thus passing on your genes*). Anyway, you organized religious folk keep enjoying your fairy tales, just don't kill any more people or waste more of my time. Those two activities really play havoc with my warm fuzzies.
*or the genes of the community as the community might select for some of its members to be self sacrificing to better the rest.
We can make inferences 99% of other animals can't.
We can make moral judgements, I wonder if chimps, elephants or dolphins can.
We can transmit culture and knowledge, modify it and improve it. Chimps can't, or at least not at the same pace, most other animals, please, don't make me laugh.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Your plants example is flawed. The plant doe not chose to release chemicals, they are just programmed to do it.
A moral being in a dangerous situation would make reasoned value judgments and sometimes may decide not to warn fellow beings.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Sorry, but to compare Picasso's oeuvre to that of a monkey can be done only by somebody mentally deficient or deeply ignorant.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Why do children all over the world, sometimes speak of previous lifetimes or in other languages than they have been subjected to?
Why have I myself seen the electrical-fluid like field that is surrounding my own body, on several accounts?
Just because the physical world is very familiar, doesnt mean that it explains the whole of reality. Especially when you start to tune in to more subtle phenomena, sometimes bordering with the physical plane. As kids, we do this all the time, but are scolded / taught to stop fantasizing. But sometimes, kids DO NOT fantasize, they SEE ghosts / other beings / light, etc. But we also want the love and affection of our parents, and they make us forget how to tune in, and how to function in the physical world.
Maybe this sounds like nonsense to you, and youd like to start critizising me for saying something that doesnt bring any meaning to you. But ask any of my friends, I have a Very rational mind and do not believe something just to escape reality. I am interested in reality and investigate it, and what I have found is that there is much more to it than meets the eye, and I am only beginning!
I challenge you to practice yoga, meditation and breathing techniques for a month, and investigate for yourself! You will definately not regret it, and if you do, you have direct experience with it to speak from.
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
We have trebled our population in less than 80 years.
If the bugs are winning, your definition of winning is a very strange one.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Chimps have been stuck with twigs as the height of technological advancement for 6 million years at the very least, and they are the closest to us.
Clearly our intelligence is unique in the animal kingdom, no matter which way you want to spin it.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
"so then you might elucidate us as to what the reasons are that humans use language, and which of those reasons are so human-spcific that they cannot be found in animals?"
No actually I won't. It's not my field.
"koko has the vocabulary of a roughly five-year-old and is using it to the same extent"
Inaccurate.
"she understands spoken language and can even read a few written words."
Inaccurate.
"she names things by herself by combining words intelligently"
No, she most certainly does not. This is the most inaccurate statement so far.
"she never saw another kid reading a book to itself"
She HAS, however, seen adults do it.
"she might not be smart enough to follow this discussion or understand the subtle insults (thank you for not using the same rude language you are using in other recent posts) you are directing against me but neither are 99% of the american population."
This makes no sense.
"i'm not anthropomorphizing,"
That is a patent falsehood. You are assigning human traits to a non-human. Regardless of whether it is appropriate or not, it is the VERY DEFINITION of anthropomorphism. How can we discuss this when your base claim is false, and you refuse to admit your irrefutable anthropomorphism of koko.
You illustrate my point nicely. Rather than examine my criticisms, you respond by reasserting that you are not doing something that you are, in fact, doing the textbook definition of. You are so attached to your pre conceived notions that you flatly reuse to even admit you're doing something that is clear in black and white.
THIS and people like YOU are why I generally avoid these topics. It is simply futile to argue with a zealot who denies their actions in the face of incontrovertible evidence. Like you have done in this post.
We can continue this if you choose, but you'll have to examine your opinions more carefully. I have no desire to waste my time trying to educate any more zealots.
"So you are just rambling about something you admit you don't have knowledge about. Fine."
No, my background is behavioral psychology, not language acquisition. This is the kind of logic that got you in trouble in the first place, and made you think you were right when in reality you're just too stupid to know how wrong you are.
"No, I'm not. I'm assigning CAPABILITIES that are present in humans to a non-human."
Which is exactly the definition of anthropomorphism. I'm glad you admit it.
"Please, oh please, I want to learn, badly. Tell me more about my mistakes..."
Speaking, breathing, I pray I'm wrong, but breeding. Sharing your opinion, and commenting on a subject you're clearly not qualified for.
You're wrong, and you're (now) deliberately misrepresenting data to support a point that has been discredited for years.
You want to learn? STOP BEING A FUCKING TWAT AND ASSUMING THE ARTICLE YOU READ IN NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC IS TRUE.
It just makes you look even more like an ignorant slut.
Mutations may occur in one generation and only be expressed in another, or depend on activation by many later, "innocent" mutations. Or they may only have minor effects on fitness but in aggregate cause a later drastic change in fitness.
Sometimes the stability and success of a population in a changing ecosystem (where other independant variables are evolving) cause delayed external effects. The extinction of a prey species, for example, may not initially put pressure on a predator until many generations later when an unrelated shift in resource competetion causes a second, competeting predator to follow a herd of an unrelated prey into the area now vacated.
Nothing is linear and independant. The variables in the system are many, sometimes correlated, other times not, sometimes visible and evident, other times not. The complexity is only "irreducible" if you choose to use a naive, inapplicable model for the system.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Assumption: A human can be more than a human.
Fallacy. All humans are human, no matter what they do. Being "more than human" is more an expression of a want to deviate from a norm.
Counterpoint: The attributes of trying to be something outside an expected 000norm is not unique to humans.
Assertion: An animal in social situation 'A' exhibits deviant behavior not characteristic to all dogs (in a similar situation it might not exhibit this behavior). Whether or not this is an accident or conditioning or whatever is not argued and is irrelevant.
Conclusion: The animal is no different than an exceptional human. This is not a human trait.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
No, my background is behavioral psychology, not language acquisition. This is the kind of logic that got you in trouble in the first place, and made you think you were right when in reality you're just too stupid to know how wrong you are. Thanks for calling me a "cunt". A behaviour really fitting of a psychologist, isn't it. But let me guess: you only started to study psychology but never finished, otherwise you would be calling yourself a "behavioural psychologist", no?
So I'm now thinking you are acting out your inferiority complex by insisting that animals must be sub-human in each and every regard. Hmm, given your way with assigning animal names to people I should remove the word "complex"... "No, I'm not. I'm assigning CAPABILITIES that are present in humans to a non-human."
Which is exactly the definition of anthropomorphism. I'm glad you admit it. Let me spell it out for you: "Anthropomorphism is the attribution of UNIQUELY human characteristics and qualities to nonhuman beings, inanimate objects, or natural or supernatural phenomena." As we have seen, speech and rational thought is not unique (or common) in humans. Thus, no anthropomorphism. "Please, oh please, I want to learn, badly. Tell me more about my mistakes..."
Speaking, breathing, I pray I'm wrong, but breeding. Sharing your opinion, and commenting on a subject you're clearly not qualified for. No, you're right, my PhD in physics doesn't make me qualified to comment on the subject. But your excellent handling of foul words makes you the top-notch specialist on the matter, whose words should be taken without proof or doubt. You're wrong, and you're (now) deliberately misrepresenting data to support a point that has been discredited for years. Discredited? Well, as long as it hasn't been disproven... Being discredited doesn't mean it's wrong. It means that somebody wants to get rid of it but hasn't any rational reasoning or legal means... You want to learn? STOP BEING A FUCKING TWAT AND ASSUMING THE ARTICLE YOU READ IN NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC IS TRUE.
It just makes you look even more like an ignorant slut. Let me make another educated guess: you didn't have good sex in a looooong while. Otherwise I cannot explain your abundant abuse of words describing female genitalia. Maybe you could share some light on that matter for all of us?
So does this mean that there's no chance of Pastafarianism being taught in UK either?
"Sorry cunt, but I have no time for idiots like you"
I didn't read any of your post, because you had already proven you're not worth wasting time on.
Read that until you get it, or better yet, have someone smarter than you read it to you and explain it.
DNA is a totally different thing that doesn't look at all like something humans designed except in that it stores data digitally. Much noise has been made about doing math on DNA to figure out if it is intelligently designed, but nobody has managed to pull it off.
Nobody has managed to find anything with SETI either (so far). Does that make it "non-scientific"?
It's not hard to figure out why that is. We don't have anything to compare it to.
We could look for bitmaps, statistical anomalies (lots of one of the four bases), encodings of Pi, etc. True, we don't currently do this, but we don't broadcast lasers into space nor build Dyson Spheres, yet SETI or SETI-like programs have considered looking for those also. Thus, the "we do it now" criteria is excessive, or else we flunk those also.
More on this:
http://www.geocities.com/tablizer/dnaid.htm
Table-ized A.I.
Then jump on it. What, specifically, do you suggest we look for? I'll grant that pi would be a very interesting result. How about X adenine molecules in a row? How do we know what value for X wouldn't be produced naturally but might be produced by a designer? The answer is, we really don't (or at least none of the ID camp has bothered to figure it out and make the proposal) because nobody has proposed anything about who the designer is. What were/are its mechanisms? Its goals? Its methods? If you want to propose a designer who tailor made DNA and had a fondness for pi, you have yourself a hypothesis to test. You've done more in one slashdot post than all of the "giants" of the ID movement have managed to pull off since they renamed creationism so many years ago.
The SETI people are looking for life like us. They ask themselves, "What do we do now and what might we do if we had the technology?" Those simple tests will find ET intelligence that thinks like we do and has similar communications methods. The key in all of this is that they've proposed properties for the ET life. That's what I was getting at with my "we do it now" criterion. They've characterized the system and they know what to look for. They have a description of the nature and the methods of what they're testing for. If the ID camp can simply do that, they'll be on the map in my opinion. Until then, they're just creationists under a different name who do no meaningful work beyond regurgitating old creationist canards and trying to get them into schools so they can dupe the next generation.
I do biometrics for a living. All of biometrics simply boils down to one thing: classification. We know what the genuine looks like and we know what the impostor looks like, and our goal is to build an algorithm that can classify an unknown as one or the other. SETI does a similar task. They know what naturally produced signals generally look like, and they know what signals that we might produce generally look like. They've build a classifier and they're running it. The ID crowd needs to define what they're looking for and look for it rather than expounding on how it's theoretically possible to build a classifier if you can simply calculate some nonsense quantity like "complex specified information" and not actually doing it. The key though, is to define what "designed" looks like and what "not designed" looks like and build a system for classification. That's what the rest of us have been doing for years, and that's why I'm not going to pat them on the back for pointing out that classification algorithms exist and might somehow be applied to the design of molecules.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
They don't have any proposals as to what to do with it, though. If they come up with a testable proposal, I'll call it science.
Well, okay, let's make a distinction between "isn't science" and "can't be science". Specific forms of ID *are* potentially testable. Testing to see if Mansanto geneticly altered products polluted a farmer's corn is a form of ID test even.
How do we know what value for X wouldn't be produced naturally but might be produced by a designer? The answer is, we really don't
The histogram suggestion in the link proposes a technique. I am sure statistical experts could offer better suggestions that don't rely as much on the visual inspection of histograms. But first it may be better to find good candidates before paying statisticians. Similarly, SETI would probably put more scrutiny into a good candidate if and when they find one.
Table-ized A.I.
Nearly "immune to all antibiotics" -- There's still a couple in reserve which still tend to work.
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
Actually ... it kinda does imply that time does not go back further than a certain moment. I'll grant you it's not entirely proven, but it does imply very strongly that there was no moment in time 14 billion years ago. It just doesn't exist according to the big bang. Like the easter bunny.
Once you get your head around that simple, basic fact, all falls in place and you can lead a happy, positive life.
Or don't, it does not really matter at the end.
Just think about this: if tomorrow planet Earth was obliterated Jesus, Hitler, Beethoven, Julius Cesar, Picasso and Alexander the Great would be completely forgotten (actually they all eventually will be forgotten anyway. in 10 million years time very few of us, if anybody, will be remembered).
We are nothing, we matter nothing, there is no reason for anything.
Simple but true, but the enormity of the truth scares most people, specially because our genes makes us see this as counterintuitive (we are always trying to preserve and reproduce ourselves, no wonder the emphasis about sexual conduct in most religions).
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_inductio n
Note how induction can be used to probe stuff for n != 0
But in any case, biological phenomena are not probable by mathematical induction, so although your comparison is interesting it holds no water.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
We have transitional forms. Plenty of them. Any person with a subscription to National Geographic would know that (and why they are so, most importantly).
The origin of life itself is not part of evolutionary theory, I don't know why you bring this topic here (nevertheless educated guesses can be made: we know how Earth's atmosphere was back then, the composition of the early seas and what may work as a catalyst for organic compounds to become more complex).
There is plenty of evidence about how simpler life has branched out as you call it. Specialized organs in our bodies have cells that behave like unicellular organisms with similar characteristics, but with the added cooperation characteristics that make them function as fully functioning organs.
Your analysis can't be objective if you lack such vast track of knowledge regarding the topic you are trying to discuss.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
To be ignorant about something, as you clearly are, does not mean you are asked to perform huge leaps of faith to accept a scientific sound theory.
The information is out there to anyone willing to go and get ti, the only leap of faith is top expect somebody like you, with such vast ignorance of the topic, to take the time and effort to read about the evidence debunking the nonsense you are ejaculating.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I did the ad-hominem attacks: you are an ignorant.
The other guy beat you nonsense with well reasoned logic until you weaseled out.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Sure, that's reasonable. The key failing right now is that no ID advocates are proposing any mechanisms or properties for the designer, so all possible observations that "fit" the idea of a designer. Which is where Monsanto comes in:
I would call that a serious stretch, but one not unlikely to be tried by the main ID advocacy groups (if they haven't already). The issue at hand is that when testing for Monsanto genes, you know what you're looking for. You know what it looks like and you know what it looks like when the genes aren't present. It's about as much ID as is recognizing the offspring of a wolf and a poodle as having poodle genes simply because you recognize "intelligently designed" poodle features. You didn't recognize intelligent design via some sort of overarching theory of design. You recognized something you've seen before: a poodle.
I have to say that based on the contents of that web site, you're probably one of the world's top ID researchers. Seriously. You've come closer to proposing something worth testing than just about any other ID advocate I've seen. I think that those tests are highly unlikely to pan out, but they're definitely something.
The real issue here, though, is that the tests you propose are still "shots in the dark" rather than testing of something that follows naturally from your theory. For example, here's no reason to think that the designer would put a Fibonacci sequence into DNA. If such a sequence were found, it would certainly be evidence of something strange going on, but not finding the sequence doesn't really do any damage to the hypothesis, unless your hypothesis somehow requires a designer who is fond of Fibonacci sequences. I suppose that's where your classification of "weak science" comes in. It's more data gathering than meaningful hypothesis testing.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
"Sorry cunt, but I have no time for idiots like you"
I didn't read any of your post, again.
Read that until you get it, or better yet, have someone smarter than you read it to you and explain it.
I didn't read any of your post, again.
Read that until you get it, or better yet, have someone smarter than you read it to you and explain it. I'm reading it, over and over again! But still, please, I'm begging you, I desperately need your help! Can you please read it to me aloud? Maybe then I will understand why your use of words describing female genitalia is so abundant.
By the way, what does behavioral psychology say about a situation like this? I feel like slipping into a stockholm syndrom situation here...
"Sorry cunt, but I have no time for idiots like you"
I didn't read any of your post, again.
Read that until you get it, or better yet, have someone smarter than you read it to you and explain it.
How is it possible that someone so sophisticated in the usage of words describing female genitalia is making himself dependend upon answering again and again and thus continuing a relationship that may best be described as stockholm-syndrom situation?
Ah, your psychological background comes from being a patient, not a student, right?
"Sorry cunt, but I have no time for idiots like you"
I didn't read any of your post, again.
Read that until you get it, or better yet, have someone smarter than you read it to you and explain it.
The real issue here, though, is that the tests you propose are still "shots in the dark" rather than testing of something that follows naturally from your theory. For example, here's no reason to think that the designer would put a Fibonacci sequence into DNA.
In computer chips one can often find graffity, logos, etc. Assuming the designers are somewhat like us, then we would expect the same in designed DNA. True, they might not be, but if SETI's aliens don't use radio like we do, then we will also miss them. The Fibonacci example was chosen because it easier to define in an example, not necessarily because it is the best test. Proposed was a battery of tests. I will agree that it is highly unlikely, but some feel the same about SETI (or at least their assumptions). The thing is, DNA-ID is less expensive to test than SETI because it uses existing data (from other research) rather than build new equipment, such as antenna's. Thus, it may be low-probability, but it is also low cost. This is why I feel it is competative with SETI.
but one not unlikely to be tried by the main ID advocacy groups
True. They are looking down the wrong ID road in my opinion. My point is that ID *can* be science.
Table-ized A.I.
Well, you MUST be much smarter than me. Or are you simply not able to explain it to me? That would be a pity...
Yes. That is it exactly. When I wrote the comment, I put tags around the "he". At least, I thought I did. For some reason, it didn't work.
Although, I've been thinking about it. When a human man jizzes into a woman, it is said that he is "laying" the woman. When frogs have sex, the male frog jizzes onto the eggs as they evacuate. So, it could be said that the male frog is laying the eggs.
Write your own Choose Your Own Adventure. http://www.freegameengines.org/gamebook-engine/
"Sorry cunt, but I have no time for idiots like you"
I didn't read any of your post, again.
Read that until you get it, or better yet, have someone smarter than you read it to you and explain it.
So good to see that you still have time to answer my posts... :-)
"Sorry cunt, but I have no time for idiots like you"
I didn't read any of your post, again.
Read that until you get it, or better yet, have someone smarter than you read it to you and explain it.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
Well, at least you had the time to add some bold formatting to your reply. I think we're making progress here...
"Sorry cunt, but I have no time for idiots like you"
I didn't read any of your post, again.
Read that until you get it, or better yet, have someone smarter than you read it to you and explain it.
"Sorry cunt, but I have no time for idiots like you"
I didn't read any of your post, again.
Read that until you get it, or better yet, have someone smarter than you read it to you and explain it.
"Sorry cunt, but I have no time for idiots like you"
I didn't read any of your post, again.
Read that until you get it, or better yet, have someone smarter than you read it to you and explain it.
"Sorry cunt, but I have no time for idiots like you"
I didn't read any of your post, again.
Read that until you get it, or better yet, have someone smarter than you read it to you and explain it.
"Sorry cunt, but I have no time for idiots like you"
I didn't read any of your post, again.
Read that until you get it, or better yet, have someone smarter than you read it and explain it.
Well... That is correct to say Intelligent Design is not a science; as it does not describe a discipline of science per say. It is an idea or concept that can be described by science. Evolution is the same thing. What people seem to forget is that the reasoning that bolsters one or the other would either be scientific or not. Evolution and Intelligent Design are nothing but theories! In any society that values independant analysis and critical discussion, the actions of the UK Government would be deemed Draconian, Authoritarian and just plain wrong.
"Sorry cunt, but I have no time for idiots like you"
I didn't read any of your post, again.
Read that until you get it, or better yet, have someone smarter than you read it and explain it.
Thanks for your continuous share of infinite wisdom. I'm learning from you with every reply you make...