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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?
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.
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,
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*Art
Don't call me back. Give me a call back. Bye. So yeah. But bye our, well, but alright we are on a shirt this chill.
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.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
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.
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.
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 got a BS in Astrology. What are you implying?
Your ad here. Ask me how!
... 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.
Fire ruled "Not cold."
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 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 law of gravity is just a theory. If you don't like it, feel free to go jump off a cliff.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
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 $Holy_Text is wrong, then they are going to realize the magnitude of some of the inexcusable things done in History.
I think some day it will happen. We will come out with concrete evidence that exposes the whole mythology, something so observable that religion can't adjust to it. Who knows if we will accept it and become better people, or deny it and kill each other. Again, I just don't know.
What was there before the Big Bang is unknown
The statement doesn't really make sense. There was no length before the big bang, there was no width, or depth (dimensions 1-3), and there was no time (dimension #4). To ask the question requires time to exist when it didn't.
Fortunately we don't need to invoke God for every scenario where quantum reality is non-intuitive to beings whose ancestors were being chased around by dinosaurs for snackage just a cosmic handful of years ago.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
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?
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.
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.
Claiming that you have an opinion regarding Evolution is like saying you have an opinion on Gravity.
Doesn't matter if you don't like the idea or not, you can't get away from the fact they exist.
The schools don't force an opinion. Science, by and large, isn't an "opinion". Get your head out of your ass. To put science and faith on the same level is insulting to scientists everywhere.
People talking to invisible men who live in the sky is an opinion... a wrong one.
I don't respond to AC's.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
Let the Kids decide
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.
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.
No. Evolution is a "theory" as the term is used in science, that is, it is a proper scientific hypothesis (an explanation which makes predictions which are empirically falsifiable) which has withstood attempts at falsification.
Intelligent Design is a "theory" only by one of the looser definitions in common conversation, a a conjecture that does not make predictions which are falsifiable even in principle. Its nothing more than "that looks really hard, so God musta did it."
Attempts to equate the two are equivocation.
he only exists in your mind
Im assuming that such an objective, clear-headed individual such as yourself as some empirical evidence of that?
The reason I ask is because (and I speak as one of those unwashed masses I think your post was aimed at), all of the scientific theories Ive heard for the origins of the universe sound just about as implausible as the idea that a god of some sort created everything. My uneducated understanding here is that those scientific theories tend to work (sort of) mathematically, but there's not a whole lot of concrete evidence in support of any in particular.
Likewise, in my limited experience here (less than 3 decades), it has seemed to me that people will pretty much use anything to keep them in line - material or imaginary - but that a combination of guns and an economic stake in your way of existing seem to work far better for keeping people in line than religion does.
I havent seen any evidence of god that I cant explain with math or science, but I certainly havent seen any math or science that preclude the idea....but...since you're so sure of yourself...maybe you have some? It would certainly help me settle of couple of bets with my other uneducated friends.
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
...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.
What you've done is restate the handwaving used to justify the Prime Mover being the end of the road. Perhaps if there were some evidence on hand for the Prime Mover's properties, then we could get somewhere, but there isn't. It's simply a made-up rejection of the logical consequences of insisting that causality somehow holds firm prior to the Big Bang (if the phrase even has any meaning at all).
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The fundamental basis of the scientific is repeatability.
All the evidence that underlies evolution is repeatable - without having to reproduce 3 billion years in a laboratory the size of the entire Earth.
When you understand how this can be true, you'll be a lot less stupid - and you'll understand what "repeatability" means in the scientific method.
I never have frustrations, the reason is, to wit:
If at first I don't succeed, I quit!
Ah, stupid design!
But, I wanted socialized health insurance!
That's a nice argument.
Where is the Undo button for my life? Not to mention the Esc key.
Intelligent Design is not a theory, it's a conjecture. So not only do you not know science you also don't know English.
Theory - "A set of statements or principles devised to explain a group of facts or phenomena, especially one that has been repeatedly tested or is widely accepted and can be used to make predictions about natural phenomena."
Conjecture - "The formation or expression of an opinion or theory without sufficient evidence for proof."
Note that a theory explains facts and is repeatable and/or can be used to make predictions. A conjecture is just a guess...
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.
This is not an example of actual evolution - there was no change to the gene pool. This is, however, like the industrial era moths, an excellent example of natural selection.
Evolution is any change in the relative frequencies of alleles in the gene pool. Natural selection is the process which drives that change.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
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.
"...has their 'science' cured cancer yet?"
No, and neither has library science.
"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."
Buddhism is not a religion. It's a philosophy based on reason and experience. Which is why most Buddhists, most notably the Dalai Lama, embrace the findings of science. EVEN if they have to revise long-held thinking on something. I don't have the exact quote but I remember reading about the DL visiting some research laboratory and making a comment to that effect.
"Meanwhile, those of us in the real world will use science to improve our lives."
Which is what most, if not all given the chance, philosophical Buddhists do every day. Those practicing folk-Buddhism intertwined with local religions, superstitious traditions, ancestor worship, etc, such as in Laos and Cambodia, maybe not so much. They've got bigger problems though. Like getting clean water and food.
Bloody hell it's hard to know where to start you are so ill-informed.
"Gold still represents the ultimate form of payment in the world." - Alan Greenspan, 1999
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
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PGP Key ID 0xCB8FF658
what many would claim to be absolute truth based only on
There are no absolutes in science. What we have is the best model so far, based on observable evidence. The model will continue to change, and parts of it will be modified, thrown out, and refined. That is how the scientific method works.
"Creationism" or any religion-based "theory," and I use that word very loosely, are not built upon observable evidence over time. Creationism is not based in fact, and it is not continuously refined and retested. There is a reason why people refer to religion as "faith."
Please try not to view those of us who accept evolution as doing so upon faith. It is simply the best model that we have at the moment. If the model changes, based on new, factual evidence, and it can be retested with the same results, then our understanding of evolution will change right along with it.
I don't know about you, but I like my explanations of the things around me to be based on fact, not largely fictitious prose written two-thousand years ago.
"We may face a scorched and lifeless earth, but they're accountable to their shareholders first."
To quote wikipedia on the matter:
Signatory Dr. Steve Brill of Rutgers University has stated, "To be called a scientific theory, Intelligent Design must be at the very least, disprovable. Since there is no way for Intelligent Design to be disproved, it fails the simplest test of scientific theory."
Now, ID can still be a theory, it just can't be a scientific one.
sigs are hazardous to your health
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".
"Absolute truth" isn't what science is about, and "extrapolation" isn't as important as you would make it; inasmuch as it is relevant at all, it is just in coming up with hypotheses. Once you have a proper scientific hypothesis you then, by definition, have empirically falsifiable predictions you can test to validate the hypothesis. If those predictions fail, your hypothesis is wrong. If they do not, your hypothesis is a viable theory. That doesn't mean it is right: a more parsimonious or powerful theory may displace it because of the greater utility it provides, or additional predictions may be later derived from your hypothesis enabling new tests that may fail. No proper scientific theory (though some things popularly labelled theories are untested hypotheses) rests on extrapolation alone: if it is properly called a theory (as evolution is) it has testable predictions with have withstood testing.
Science isn't about giving answers that are some kind of Ultimate Absolute Truth. It is about refining models that have explanatory and, more importantly, predictive power.
"Creationism isn't science because you can't replicate it in a laboratory."
:-). I agree with you 100%.
I have been having that problem with black holes too. You happen to know anyone with an enormous quantity of superdense matter for sale? Ideally someone local to Los Angeles - courier charges for something that heavy would bankrupt me.
Just poking fun
- sarcasm is just one more service we offer -
So, you're saying this god entity is a programmer? He/She/It sure left a lot of bugs! *swats another fly*
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
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.
Are you serious? If you are, then what you missed is grade-school science.
Gravity is a theory. Newton described it pretty well, but then Einstein came along with the general theory of relativity and blew it away. Even so, we know that Einstein is also wrong and scientists are searching for a better description still.
None of this changes the FACT that if I drop something, it will fall to the ground.
Evolution is similar. Darwin described it pretty well in the end, but the theory has changed quite a bit since his time. The mechanisms are still being discovered and theorized.
None of this changes the FACT that organisms have changed over time, and in response to changes in their environment.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
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
Scientific method: a body of techniques for investigating phenomena and acquiring new knowledge, as well as for correcting and integrating previous knowledge. It is based on gathering observable, empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning, the collection of data through observation and experimentation, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses.
You might say that a real scientist is always a practitioner. What you think you know based on what you heard from someone else (even someone with a reputation as a "scientist") is in some part based on faith. As you put it, "tied to the limits of their scientific knowledge." Faith in science, yes, but still faith, until you have verified it yourself.
The proper scientific attitude is "I don't know, let's check this out for ourselves, what happens when we do this?" which is, coincidentally (?) also the proper attitude recommended by Buddhist teachers. In the Kalama sutra, the Buddha said:
I always thought it was really interesting to see a 2600 year old tradition which teaches, "don't accept something just because it's in the scriptures -- check it out for yourself!"
include $sig;
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I love how everyone who has a crackpot theory thinks they're Galileo. The truth of it is, if there had been a real scientific community around Galileo, they'd have agreed with him. His evidence was sound.
There is zero evidence for ID. None. The only arguments I've ever heard in favor of it were arguments against "DE" as you call it, or Evolution as the rest of the world refers to it. Darwin wouldn't recognize much more than the shell of it, these days. He laid the groundwork, but there has been a lot of building since then.
Basically all ID arguments come down to the following: "Evolution doesn't explain X. X is either irreducible or too complex to have come about 'by accident'. Therefore ID is correct, and God exists."
This is not proof. This is not science...It's actually a fallacy: the argument from ignorance. In many cases, the ID objection isn't even rational. ID has no falsifiable hypothesis, it has no positive evidence supporting it. It's not science, by any definition of science I have ever heard.
I always ask, "Do you have any rational, positive evidence to support ID?" And the answer is always no. I have never heard a single thing that wasn't either negative, or trivial. Maybe this will be the first time.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Many of the advancements to science can be considered outside of what is considered "science" at the time.
I don't think that's accurate. Those advancements were outside of what science people wanted to hear (like the earth going around the sun) but they were still perfectly within the realm of science. Science has nothing to do with majority rule, personal preferences, or what sounds reasonable. Science is about testable theories; theories that help us predict the future. Even if every scientist in the world hates a new discovery, it's still science if it is a testable theory with the ability to make predictions. This is why science is fundamentally different than religion. It's a subtle but critical difference that nearly all ID proponents fail to grasp.
Cheers.
Athiesm IS the safe bet.
OK, lets suppose you believe in a god. Which pisses your god off more, not believing in any gods, or believing in one of his competitors?
Now place your bet. Which god are you going to believe in? Now, if you're like most people you'll choose the one you were indoctrinated to believe in. In the history of the world, far more people have not believed in your god than have. Even right now more people don't believe in your god than do.
Better do your research. You'd better read up on all the gods that have ever been worshipped to make sure you pick the right one. Assuming you only choose a single one and that there is only one god, rather than a pantheon, your chances are probably about 1 in 10,000 you'll get it right. You'll waste a good fraction of your life on this fruitless search. That's pretty high stakes in this bet.
You would think that an all powerful god would make the choice obvious. If you think the choice is obvious, feel free to stand on a box in St. Peters Basilica, at the great mosque in Mecca, at the temple of Tirupati, at the Wailing Wall, any of the thousands of temples to the god you didn't pick, and explain to them why they picked the wrong god. If you picked the right one, I'm sure he will protect you. After all, there are no true believers in a foxhole, because what would a true believer need a foxhole for?
Since the choice isn't obvious, more logical assumption is that either there isn't a god, or he doesn't give a damn who you worship or even if you worship.
Read Kissing Hank's Ass for an alternative look at Pascal's wager.
Support SETI@home
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!
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."
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
The government isn't declaring that Intelligent Design isn't science. The courts are recognizing that the disproportionate volume of ID theory is due to active politicking by Christian organizations, not its relative stature within the scientific community. In other words, the courts are giving public policy weight to the collective judgement of the scientific community, which is as it should be.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
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
Awesome. So guess my theory that there are unicorns somewhere in this galaxy is probably true because it isn't very disprovable.
So ID is true until proven false but any other theory is false until proven true? Is that how this works? ID proponents can just sit back and claim ID is true with every one else has to do the actual scientific legwork?
I wish I had you for a science teacher. I could make up any theory and it would be true by default... as long as it wasn't disprovable! And I wouldn't have to do any actual research. I'd just tell the rest of the students to prove THEIR theories to be true. And if they couldn't do so to my satisfaction, I'd get an A!
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
Mongrel News all the news that fits and froths
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
Seriously, though, this sort of thing should be important to libertarians. People keep trying to get ID into classrooms, and because it's basically dressed up religious apologetics, they are (rightly) taken to court (or at least challenged in the policy making body) over it. They defend their idea by saying, "It's not (just) religion! It's also science! Lookie here at this book that used to be a creationism tract but now has the words 'Intelligent Design' in it!" An argument ensues over whether it's really being introduced based on scientific merit or whether it's just a lame trick. Typically, ID is (rightly) tossed on its ass. Libertarians should not be afraid of this process because the alternative is the slow decay of science education brought about by people who would rather have their preferred deity pushed by the government than confined to churches and private life.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
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
sigs are hazardous to your health
I predict there are fossils all over the place demonstating the gradual change from pre-human to human. Oh - that prediction failed? Hello punctuated equalibrium.
See - DE is not disprovable either.
I agree that ID isn't disprovable - but only because it is a fact that you can witness in labs around the world. You can predict and then observer one higher species creating another, be it a weather resistant tree or a chess playing computer.
Oddly enough this is exactly what the ID lobby want to do, except they want to proselytize (as outlined by their 'Wedge strategy' .
ID is not just a crackpot theory, ID is part of a political agenda invented after the 'creationist lobby' lost Edwards v. Aguillard to Quote wikipedia Wikipedia
The overall goal of the intelligent design movement is to "overthrow materialism" and atheism. They believe that society has suffered "devastating cultural consequences" from adopting materialism and that science is the cause of this decay into materialism since science seeks only natural explanations. Science is therefore atheistic, they claim. They believe that the theory of evolution implies that humans have no spiritual nature, no moral purpose, and no intrinsic meaning. The movement's proponents seek to "defeat [the] materialist world view" represented by the theory of evolution in favor of "a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions".
Anyway publicially debating the crackpots is quite a good way of spreading critical thinking and scientific knowledge to a public who to be honest don't really care.
You are aware that the fossils do show a relatively "gradual" change over time, yes? Just not uniform change, which is what punctuated equilibrium deals with. If you think about it in terms of the stability of a system, it actually makes quite a lot of sense.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"