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Texas Science Director Forced To Resign Over ID Statements
jeffporcaro writes "Texas' Director of Science Curriculum was 'forced to step down' for favoring evolution over intelligent design (ID). She apparently circulated an e-mail that was critical of ID — although state regulations require her not to have any opinion 'on a subject on which the agency must remain neutral.' 'The agency documents say that officials recommended firing Ms. Comer for repeated acts of misconduct and insubordination. The officials said forwarding the e-mail message conflicted with her job responsibilities and violated a directive that she not communicate with anyone outside the agency regarding a pending science curriculum review.'"
does one perform a scientific review of religion? either believe or not, there is no science. that's why they call it faith.
Since ID is not science, it is not an issue she should have remained neutral on, because it has nothing to do with the board.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
How can you remain neutral on such a topic? You either believe one way or the other.
It's nice how they call it "design" implying that there is actually some science behind the whole thing.
I drink to make other people interesting!
Most rational people would not want creationists at a government agency endorsing their position. So it makes sense to squelch any formal debate, even if it means offering up a sacrificial lamb, so to speak.
Just callin' it like I see it.
How is that possible? Next we'll be hearing that someone has been fired for favouring gravitational theory over the possibility that apples fall to the ground merely because they love the ground, want to be near it, cherish it, and make friends with it...
What a stupid bunch of primitives...l
and he is now my personal hero. When people make a sacrifice for what they believe in, that's real courage.
...just as important as the Theory of Intelligent Falling.
What can Americans do to get officials like that fired? Where does their job come under review, and how can they be sacked & sent to the dumpster?
'The agency documents say that officials recommended firing Ms. Comer for repeated acts of misconduct and insubordination.
They neglect to mention that the reason she was fired was because she refused to certify "Ow My Balls" as a required reference in Anatomy classes.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
I think this is another huge signpost that even in our modern era, ultra-powerful empires fall prey to their own delusional spin and slowly disintegrate into a drooling heap of superstition. This is the dying of the US as a superpower..
Heroes die once, cowards live longer.
She was fired for having an opinion. Amazing. Correct me if I am wrong, but does it not require an opinion on a matter to better a system, to move forward so that we do not stagnate?
I mean, someone at some point had to assert an opinion to put (un)intelligent design at the top of the chain. Was that person fired?
This whole country is going right down the shitter because of policies like this. I also believe that draconian enforcement of this ilk is what causes people to be even louder and more obnoxious about their perspectives. This is a one-upmanship power struggle.
What was Leia's comment to Tarkin?
Chris Comer is, according to TFA, a woman, not a man.
Ian
It's called "The Texas Education Agency."
Timmy! I told you to stop petting that dinosaur!
The first thing that must change in the US is the taxation and funding of churches. What I find scary is that there is this extremely right wing close to fascist political movement that is having a lot of influence on people that go to very well funded churches often for all kind of reasons but surely not political. Does the leadership of that movement really care about ID or is it just a probe to see how far the influence of their propaganda goes?
The rest of the civilized world is laughing/wondering what the hell you are doing. Please stop this now.
yes its fine to BELIEVE god created everything your more than welcome to any delusion you want.
DON'T CALL IT SCIENCE.
ID belongs in the church, Darwin belongs in the class room.
I'm not pisses because stupid people believe stupid shit, I'm pissed because these same stupid people want to teach that stupid shit to our children as the way the world really works.
It's ok for people to believe what ever they want, but this was about the teaching of science and ID has no place in it.
Not according to TFA.
Now one might certainly deduce that she wasn't enamoured with ID, but she did not "apparently" criticise ID. She announced a talk by someone who probably does, though. Which is not the same thing as stating it was her opinion.How anyone can argue with a straight face that ID is anything but "Creationism in a new suit" is beyond me. Every single ID proponent was, and I'm sure still is, a Creationist. Their literature has been shown to be creationist tracts with a search-and-replace applied.
A major difference in scenarios is that if a science director was parading ID around (a most unscientific theory) people would expect them to be fired based on the fact they are in a job they are not qualified for. Firing someone for doing their job and supporting what is theory by science over what is purely faith based is why people are up in arms about this.
If you wanted to rail on slashdot posters about this story you could have nit picked and pointed out she was fired for not following policy and that said firing is not really about her favoring evolution over ID, at least at the outermost level.
and all the people commenting on this thread will be shot.
I remember watching a TV documentary years ago about how prisons have to make reasonable accommodations for the religious beliefs of prisoners. Some warden was talking about the bizarre religions and religious practices that the prisoners try to get away with, like the guy who said he belonged to the "Church of Filet Mignon" and needed to eat filet mignon every night for dinner. That was a contrived religion crafted for nonreligious purposes.
Intelligent Design is a contrived scientific theory crafted for nonscientific purposes. It's the scientific equivalent of the Church of Filet Mignon.
They can believe anything they want to believe. However concocting some bullshit scam to teach religion in science classes in public schools is unacceptable and unconstitutional.
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
we can't seem to find you anywhere..
"Intelligent Design" (ID) has no credibility or place in any society anyway.
Keep in mind that "Intelligent Design" has already been exposed and refuted as religion in a new disguise, carefully crafted by lawyers.
Need proof? Remember the case in Dover, Pennsylvania?
No? Refresh your memory then, citizen:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/id/program.html
(Don't care about production values? Read the transcripts.)
Can somebody please explain what the heck is going on? I do NOT mean to offend any Americans, far from it (and if I offend someone, I offer my sincere apologies), but something lite this could only happen in the US, or some other country where religious fundamentalism is prevalent . It would be nice if the human species could mature enough to finally cast away superstition and belief and embrace empirical proof and verifiable knowledge. We are not little children. We are grown-ups who have functional and rational brains. And we are naturally tolerant. At least most of us. "Intelligent Design" is a belief, or a rejection of the legitimacy of logical thought, not a science, and not verifiable in any way. In my opinion it should therefore NOT be sponsored by any government body or public institution or policy.
Beauty is in the beholder of the eye.
Dover!
but what would Jesus have done?
I remember how shocked I was as a kid to learn about the way great minds like Galileo Galilei were once prosecuted for showing signs of intelligence and not accepting stupidity sold as the word of god. And how relieved I was about the progress humankind had made since. Little did I know that I would live to see the day when talking chimps rule the world, or at least the USA, and anyone demonstrating signs of intelligence is suspect again.
Apparently not, if they're still debating ID. And how can an agency that supposedly oversees a science curriculum remain neutral about this absurd and obvious political\cultural attack on science?
If the leaders of The Texas Education Agency understand the nature of science in the least, they would be able to dismiss ID with a cursory review. The people of Texas should demand a whole slew of resignations from these embedded political hacks protecting ID under the guise of bureaucracy. Of course they won't do that.
FAQs are evil.
There's a scientific method - you can apply it to religion - if it doesn't work you get to call religion 'bunk'
ID may be a hypothesis - it's allowed to be that - but the people who put it up need to come up with some experiments to prove their hypothesis if they want respect of other scientists and if they want their hypothesis to be taught as 'science' - otherwise it's just an idea that hasn't been proven
The problem of course is that approaching religion like this upsets a lot of religious people - largely I think because this sort of approach has tended to upset apple carts over the centuries - doesn't mean you should stop doing it though
I can hear the cheers already. Some people really need to accept that it's okay for others to beleive in ID, and let them. Should this employee have been sharing opinions on the subject with co-workers? Probably not.
From the Austin-American Statesman: Forwarding an email to several coworkers with "FYI" hardly fits your hysterical description.
Intolerance?
Any person not believing in the basic scientific principles which are the underpinnings of evolution is simply NOT QUALIFIED to hold any position which is in charge of establishing the curriculum to teach said principles.
In your example, the person in question most certainly should be fired as they are not qualified to hold the position -- just as you would fire a salesman for disparaging the product he's been hired to sell. If you believe science is a bunch of hooey, you shouldn't be in charge of how children are taught science. That's just common sense.
In the REAL situation, however,someone is being fired who is perfectly fired -- even suited -- to the job in question.
In short, your comparison is stupid.
Let's be clear. What I'm "railing" on is the elitist position that posters take over people beleiving in ID/creationism. "God does not play dice." But you know, all creationists are idiots.
There is the truth and there is fairy tales, shiver for the darkness in the cellar all you want, but keep your pathetic childhood fantasies to yourselve and out of real life.
ID is idiotic, even as an insane theory it contradicts itself, lies and just plain does NOT make sense.
Believing in ID is like believing in fortune telling, tarot cards and all that mumbo jumbo. Believe in Santa Claus all you want but I do not want you in a position of leadership of any kind if you do.
Does anyone really want say a president who believes for a second that Santa Claus exists and you could therefor fix your national debt by being nice all year? Offcourse not, yet we have had leaders who consulted "the stars" for their decisions, or worse listened to "god". Fine, meditate all you want, but the moment you claim to hear actual voices, it is time for the men in the white coats.
Evolution is a theory, but ID is bunk, a fairy tale for those who can't accept that we are so much walking meat. Believe in god all you want, some fine people (and lot more crazies) but stop trying to fit science into it. It don't work, pure common sense makes it impossible.
Would you also fire this person if she dared to question wether Santa Claus was real. Ssssh, better not tell anyone that the easter bunny don't really exist. Keep your demented ideas out of my real world.
Tolerate your kind? Sure, like I tolerate the crazy who walks through the city muttering at everyone. You are free to life, just don't try to influence a single aspect of my life because you are insane.
And if this sounds trollish or like flamebait, try to picture just how serious this is. The above poster SERIOUSLY believes that the earth is a few thousand years old, that dinosaurs and man lived happily together, that dinosaurs weren't meat eaters. Do you REALLY want someone that delusional in a position of authority?
Change GOD and Jesus Christ and all that with say Greys and Area 51. While it may make for some intresting stories, do you REALLY want someone who truly believes in that to run your life?
I am NOT talking about someone who thinks their might be alien life, just the same as I am not talking about those who believe in a god, I am talking about people who absolutly believe the most insane theories regardless of evidence or common sense. Would you really want a future leader who reads tarot cards or thinks horoscopes should guide national policy?
Remember that story about the single crossing of the bering strait a while back? That deals with a far longer timespan then ID allows, do you really want to defend a person who was going "LALALALA" with his fingers in his ears to ignore that story?
He asks for tolerance, ask yourselve what you are being tolerant too. It is one thing to do "yes small child, there really is Santa Claus" and quite another to say "Yes Mr President, there really is a Santa Claus".
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Presupposing she wants to keep her job, Comer sounds like she made at least two tactical mistakes - using the "company's ink" on "company time". The article appears to make clear that she was in a highly politicized environment. She should have used her own computer (or own wireless), preferably at home. This sounds like a poisoned work environment, where the little local powers that be were watching for any pretext to attack where she had been given some kind of warning before. It will be interesting to see if she really plans to fight dismissal and whether it is to be restored to her job or, "incidentally", just be paid off and move on. These things get pretty ugly.
Director of Science Curriculum believing in Evolution over ID = Good
Director of Science Curriculum believing in ID over Evolution = Bad
Just as churches would get pissed if people started demanding that Evolution was taught in sermons, it has no place there.
"must remain neutral!!???" Such typical bureaucratic American idiocy...
ID is nowhere nearly acceptable as evolution. It's like saying that astrology has to be on a par with astronomy...Seems Texas is indeed heading back to the Middle and/or Dark Ages. Will she be confined to her house, under house arrest for her scientific belief that the Earth is not the center of the universe, because RELIGION says it can't be so? Just let me know when the witch-burnings begin...
Bumbling, incompetent, scientifically illiterate bureaucrats, who unfortunately, have been given power by other bumbling, incompetent, scientifically illiterate, intolerant, ID bible thumpers.
And you wonder why watching the U.S. fall is like watching the Roman Empire fall? This is an EXCELLENT example of why areas such as Asia are eventually going to give you your well deserved lumps.
Don't take it bad, but it seems that the USA has peaked as a "nice" country. Nowadays obscurantism looks like it 's gaining. In this case it's in the name of "freedom of speech", but it looks like that freedom is less and less respected too. Now, I've never been to there and that's all from an very external point of view. I'd really like someone shows me I'm wrong, as USA are still the most powerful on earth (the rounded species).
Interviewer: So as a 9am creationist, you believe that the world was created this morning, just after breakfast?
me: Basically yes, expect that I believe the world will be created tomorrow morning, 9am.
That's because "beliefs" and "faith" aren't science. The whole point of science is to explain the world around us by making observations and gathering evidence. Unless you have some observable evidence that an invisible, all powerful spirit made the universe, it doesn't exist as far as science is concerned.
By all means, believe in "intelligent design" if you want to. But it's not science, and saying it is makes you look like an idiot.
We need to be cured of it.
Subject: NOTICE OF REVOCATION OF INDEPENDENCE
To the citizens of the United States of America,
In the light of your failure to distinguish between the scientific method and imaginary invisible friends in the sky, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective today.
Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchical duties over all states, commonwealths and other territories. Except Utah, which she does not fancy. Your new prime minister (The rt. hon. Gordon Brown, MP for the 97.85% of you who have until now been unaware that there is a world outside your borders) will appoint a minister for America without the need for further elections. Congress and the Senate will be disbanded. A questionnaire will be circulated next year to determine whether any of you noticed.
To aid in the transition to a British Crown Dependency, the following rules are introduced with immediate effect:
1. You should look up "revocation" in the Oxford English Dictionary. Then look up "aluminium". Check the pronunciation guide. You will be amazed at just how wrongly you have been pronouncing it.
Generally, you should raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels.
Look up "vocabulary". Using the same twenty seven words interspersed with filler noises such as "like" and "you know" is an unacceptable and inefficient form of communication. Look up "interspersed".
2. There is no such thing as "US English". We will let Microsoft know on your behalf.
3. You should learn to distinguish the English and Australian accents. It really isn't that hard.
4. Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast English actors as the good guys.
5. You should relearn your original national anthem, "God Save The Queen", but only after fully carrying out task 1. We would not want you to get confused and give up half way through.
6. You should stop playing American "football". There is only one kind of football. What you refer to as American "football" is not a very good game.
The 2.15% of you who are aware that there is a world outside your borders may have noticed that no one else plays "American" football. You will no longer be allowed to play it, and should instead play proper football.
Initially, it would be best if you played with the girls. It is a difficult game. Those of you brave enough will, in time, be allowed to play rugby (which is similar to American "football", but does not involve stopping for a rest every twenty seconds or wearing full kevlar body armour like nancies). We are hoping to get together at least a US rugby sevens side by 2011.
7. You should declare war on Quebec and France, using nuclear weapons if they give you any merde. The 98.85% of you who were not aware that there is a world outside your borders should count yourselves lucky. The Russians have never been the bad guys. "Merde" is French for "sh*t".
8. July 4th is no longer a public holiday. December 1st will be a new national holiday, but only in England. It will be called "Indecisive Day".
9. All American cars are hereby banned. They are crap and it is for your own good. When we show you German cars, you will understand what we mean.
10. Please tell us who killed JFK. It's been driving us crazy.
Thank you for your cooperation.
Sure, the Church of Filet Mignon is bogus - nobody's going to argue with that, I'd imagine.
That said, say I believe there are 3 gods, and to honor those gods I must sing melodic song in their praise every morning at sunrise. Not too far-fetched, I hope.. however, I can't identify with any of the major religions out there. So if I were to end up in such a prison, they'd go over the list of 'recognized' religions, say mine's not on it, and tell me to stfu when I do my singing.
Remember the 'Jedi' religion answer on census inquiries in the UK, Australia and other countries? There was fairly massive response from that, with Jedi ranking -above- Buddhism and Hindu in New Zealand in a census poll. As it was a census poll only, that didn't automatically make it a 'recognized' religion - but be darned if any of the reports from the time mention how one might actually do such a thing. I can't even find where one might apply for 'recognized' religion, what the minimum requirements are, or anything of the sort.
But even without having a 'recognized' religion - who is to say my religion is less valid than e.g. Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, etc.?
I myself was educated by an order of Catholic Brothers"(a bit like monks) in Scotland. There were an impressive list of eccentrics, as one would expect, and some eccentric beliefs to match (anyone for a procession of angels?). These were people who had sacrificed a lot for their beliefs, you know vows of poverty and chastity and obedience.
However when it came to Science they were bang on. The closest they ever came to ID was Brother Francis (The Biology Teacher) when if pressed on evolution would say that he would like to think that perhaps there was room for a little Divine nudge, but that this was not in the curriculum, and not in the Science of Biology and would never be included in the classroom. In fact I remember in the morning religious knowledge period the Biblical creationist theorem being taken apart, and really discarded.
It is of course a great irony that Charles Darwin himself was a theology student, but he arrived at the theory of evolution via Scientific method. Religion and Science are not incompatible, they just dont deal with the same areas.
To sum up, the creationists are an embarrassment to both religion and Science and should get some education.
To: Glenn Branch
From: Glenn Branch
Subject: Barbara Forrest in Austin 11/2
Cc:
Bcc: [redacted]
Dear Austin-area friends of NCSE,
I thought that you might like to know that Barbara Forrest will be speaking on "Inside Creationism's Trojan Horse" in Austin on November 2, 2007. Her talk, sponsored by the Center for Inquiry Austin, begins at 7:00 p.m. in the Monarch Event Center, Suite 3100, 6406 North IH-35 in Austin. The cost is $6; free to friends of the Center.
In her talk, Forrest will provide a detailed report on her expert testimony in the Kitzmiller v. Dover School Board trial as well as an overview of the history of the "intelligent design" movement. Forrest is a Professor of Philosophy in the Department of History and Political Science at Southeastern Louisiana University; she is also a member of NCSE's board of directors.
For further details, visit: http://www.centerforinquiry.net/austin/events/barbara_forrest_inside_creationisms_trojan_horse_lecture/
Sincerely,
Glenn Branch
Deputy Director
National Center for Science Education, Inc.
420 40th Street, Suite 2
Oakland, CA 94609-2509
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
What she did - as a government employee - goes right against the 1st Amendment, but her right to do it is enshrined in that same amendment. What will be interesting here is whether her freedom of expression is justifiably restricted in the interests of allowing the citizens of the state she works for the same rights of freedom of expression, thought, and to make their own opinions.
:)
After all, you can't say evolution is proved, any more than you can say no intelligence had a hand in the creation of life on Earth. You have to take both sides. You have to TEACH both sides.
Going into detail like "fossils are God messing with us to prove our faith" and "the world is 9000 years old and was created in 7 days" is just bollocks, this isn't intelligent design, this is the Christian Bible. You could sum up Intelligent Design by showing a Star Trek TNG episode ("The Chase") which is a wonderful exponent of the intelligent design principle. But it doesn't involve God, it doesn't involve Bibles.. and it's a perfectly valid theory of the origins of life
As a director of SCIENCE curriculum, I would have thought it was part of her JOB to have an opinion on this issue, and if her opinion was in any way supportive of ID then I would question her suitability for the position. For $DEITY's sake why must the 'agency remain neutral'? How can a neutral position on this issue by an educational authority be defended? Religion may have it's place in some schools, but that place is certainly not the science class. It's one thing to debate e.g. the place of prayer in a classroom. But it's ridiculous for science teachers or science curriculum developers to be forced to undermine sound scientific theory for fear of offending some religious nuts.
If you want to believe in ID, that's great, you're welcome to it! Just don't try and promote it as a legitimate theory in classrooms. It is I believe, verging on child abuse to push this propaganda in schools.
Sorry for the rant. It's just hard to believe that this issue is still an issue. It's proponents should have been laughed out of town a long time ago.
As a student in Texas, I'm appalled at this. The Director of Science curriculum shouldn't have to stay neutral on a subject when one side is science and the other is pseudoscience (if that). The Texas education system has been going in the shitter for years now, with the state lowering the bar every time students can't jump it rather than teaching the students to go higher. I guess now we can just forgo teaching evolutionary theory and replace the textbook chapters on it with the book of Genesis!
For $DEITY's sake why must the 'agency remain neutral'?
It's the "politically correct" crowd's favorite underhand tactic for silencing any opposition. Where have you been the past 5 years or so? God, no wait, Heaven, no wait, HIGHER POWER forbid that anyone have an OPINION about something anymore. Apparently using your brain opens you to being labeled as a bigot. Anyway, enjoy your Christmas umm Holiday umm End of Year festivities.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I don't know about the US, but here, something like this is supposedly in charge of finding out whether something is supposed to be taught and if, in what way. Else, if they cannot make that decision, what the heck are they supposed to be?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
What ID is - very very clever marketing with all the glitz and pizazz that goes along with it. It's a sad state of affairs if people are taken in by this kind of thing, but then again you just have to look at how successful some of the big advertising campaigns are.
"Anonymous could not immediately be reached for further comment." - International Business Times
The trouble is that ID is not a "perfectly good theory" - at best it is a hypothesis. A theory is a hypothesis with evidence to back it up. Michael Behe's debunked arguments notwithstanding, all the evidence from the history of life is consistent with an evolutionary past, and ID makes no predictions at all. Whatever evidence you find is consistent with the "Well, God wanted to do it that way, and you can't say otherwise" principle.
Sean Ellis
Follow OfQuack's antics on Twitter.
"She apparently circulated an e-mail that was critical of ID -- although state regulations require her not to have any opinion 'on a subject on which the agency must remain neutral.'"
She wasn't sacked because she published an anti-ID opinion. She was sacked because she published ANY opinion.
While the merits of such a policy are certainly questionable, this isn't necessarily about evolution vs. ID.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
If people RTFA they would find that there is something else that is conveniently overlooked in this thread:
"The memo condemns Comer for giving a presentation and attending an off-site meeting without prior approval and for allegedly saying that then-acting Commissioner Robert Scott was "only acting commissioner and that there was no real leadership at the agency."
So essentially she was attending a meeting (aka off doing something else) while on the company clock without permission. Quite honestly, I would myself expect to be fired if I was on the clock and not on my job - off somewhere not related to my specific job duties, without the supervisor approval. What makes her so special in this matter? Because she happens to favor evolution? Or is the "Fundie ID'ers are crazy" a smoke screen to cover her apparent bad behavior (on more than one occassion). Bad mouthing the boss (no matter who he/she is) also to me shows an air of arrogance. But I guess you have that if you feel like it is ok to walk off the job without permission.
Really, her firing seems to be her own doing, regardless of her agenda.
I was taught evolutionary theory in school, as far as I'm concerned it is well established as fact. Forcing someone out of their job for agreeing with somthing that is considered to be fact is unthinkable. What kind of a backward nation are you guys living in?
I only buy pepper spray that's been tested on anti-vivisectionists.
The Intelligent Design drivel belongs right besides witches, a flat earth, gnomes, ghosts, and the tooth fairy. Science has nothing to do with it at all.
As with rome and many other great cultures its fairly evident now that the US is in for a quick spiral down into self destruction. No country has ever been ran successfully when in complete disregard of reality and head stuck deep down in the sand.
HTTP/1.1 400
the United States is the laughing stock of the world...
This is both funny and scary at the same time. If it happened anywhere except in the most powerful nation in the world it would only be funny.
I don't see how anyone who thinks it's a good idea to treat christianity as "science" and make policy based on it could complain about states that make policy from other religions, such as sharia law.
R.I.P.
Plus, people who believe in ID are too dumb to reason with, so her email was pointless anyway.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Take your imaginary friends and get off of Slashdot. If the Church of Filet Mignon isn't 'good enough' to be real, then I don't see why we shouldn't laugh at your crazy showtune-loving deities.
All hail Beef. In the beginning, now, and as it shall forever be, it is what is for dinner.
Why dont I ever hear ID called a Theory? I dont think it even merits being called a theory but supporters just call it ID as if it was already proven.
I suppose as soon as you call it a theory it might imply god is also?
And I have yet to see one test of this theory. Get those reverends off the pulpit and into the fields.
Makes no sense to me. A director of science can't say what all scientists agree about - that ID is scientific nonsense (or, more precisely, not science at all).
There are things where an agency that has "science" in its name does not "need to" or even should be "neutral".
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Texas is run by a group of ultra-conservative, literal-minded Bible-thumping Jesus freaks who were brain-damaged at rebirth. This kind of shit happens *ALL THE TIME* here.
FTFA: "Ms. Comer's e-mail implies endorsement of the speaker and implies that T.E.A. endorses the speaker's position on a subject on which the agency must remain neutral,..." the officials said.
There in bold is where you have it. Politics. What the Texans need to do is back this person up.
I live here in Cobb County GA (Stickers on the science books telling kids that there's alternatives to evolution - remember?) It was folks who live hers who went after the school board and made them look like th hicks they are. And you know what? It was this one load mouthed religious kook who started it all. She was a lawyer by training, which, I guess helped her in getting
Government
schools to do her biding.I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
No it must not, the agency has a moral obligation to support what is true ie science. Science (hard science at least) is not opinion, it's proven fact. When you land a spacecraft on the Moon you prove that there are rocks in space, you don't just opine on their existence. Neutrality does not imply that one is expected to give equal status to unfalsifiable claims. ID and creationism should never reach the brains of students through taxpayer's money.
If governments start using the school bureaucratic apparatus to teach what I believe are byproducts of malfunctioning brains then this will mean that our societies will have entered a new dark age. The last dark age existed for more than 1500 years, so if you allow this to happen again then you will share responsibility for causing your children and future descendants to suffer in a mad society.
Actually, it's only unconstitutional for the government to promote ID.
Schools can teach it all they want, as long as they don't receive federal funding for it.
When it comes to bullshit, big-time, major league bullshit, you have to stand in awe of the all-time champion of false promises and exaggerated claims, religion.
No contest. No contest. Religion.
Religion easily has the greatest bullshit story ever told. Think about it.
Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man....
an invisible man, living in the sky, who watches everything you do, every minute of every day.
And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do.
And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, and suffering, and burning, and torture, and pain, and burning, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever 'til the end of time!.........
But He loves you.
He loves you, and He needs money! He always needs money! He's all-powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing, and all-wise, but somehow, He just can't handle money!
Religion takes in billions of dollars, they pay no taxes, and they always need a little more. Now, you talk about a good bullshit story. Holy Shit! ID my ass
People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.
Every religious person in the world should be lined up and repeatedly punched in the face until dead. Some say this view might be a little harsh. I think it's too good for them. And I'm serious.
Neither state nor federal funds can be used for these purposes and this is all about public schools and state employees.
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
If it was a muslim country doing this the people'd be all, like, "Glass parking lot, it's the only way".
No sig today...
I sent a message to them this morning and then sent an email to thirty people who will likely also contact them. They can be reached here and it would be great if they received a whole lot of well-thought and considered messages from all over the world (either in support of their decision or against it--I'm not here to say which way you should lean).
In my message I complained that neutrality is a strange term in this argument since it's not an either/or thing. This is a case of apples and oranges.
Now, if someone wants to put up a scientific theory counter to evolution, well, then I'll listen and wait for someone to test it. As for Creationism/ID, the Kitzmiller v Dover Case took care of that for me.
Yeah, I'm as old as my UID would suggest.
Of course, "neutrality" is a code word "supporting ID/creationism without admitting it," since Don McLeroy, Chairman of the Texas State Board of Education, has made openly pro-ID statements. Yet merely informing people that a major player in the debate is giving a talk constitutes taking sides. So much for "teaching the controversy" (which is really code for teaching ID/creationism).
Of course, ID/creationists are terrified of Barbara Forrest, because she has meticulously documented how "intelligent design" is merely a rebranding of "creationism." She has become even more dangerous to them since the Dover trial, since discovery gave her access to early drafts of the key "intelligent design" textbook "Of Pandas and People," which revealed how it started life as a creationist textbook, and became an "intelligent design" book by a simple search & replace. Hilariously, at one point, they botched the replace, and "creationists" became "cdesign proponentists."
You mean somebody like Don MacLeroy, chairman of the Texas State Board of Education?
A standard introductory biology experiment is to stick your petri dish under a UV light for a bit (15 minutes) and proceed as above, though you can use traits such as antibiotic resistance or enzyme function that give quick, cheap assays without sequencing. The UV light is analogous to many naturally occurring mutagens (e.g., the sun's UV, other radiation, defensive compounds (venoms, plant 2ndary compounds) -and it will save you lots of time.
If everyone would do that, it be easier to find the pro-ID comments, they'd be limited to the ones starting with USA.
:-(
Man this kind of bullshit is the reason I'm going to ditch my Scientific American subscription. The fact that they even have to waste editorial space for this kind of nonsense is pathetic: it's the 21st century for f***s sake!! The last straw for Scientific American by the way was an article about choosing sexual abstention over birth control. bwwwggh
It often strikes me that the U.S. religious zealots have more in common with the Iranian ayatollahs than with any group in the western world.
Is "New Scientist" any better by the way?
It's not an elitist position, it's an educated position. ID is not science. It should not be taught as a science, in a science classroom. Scientists should not hold it up as an acceptable alternative to evolutionary theory.
all creationists are idiots.
The ones that try, and fail, to pretend creationism is science certainly are.
There is no essential difference between micro and macro evolution. They both use the same basic mechanism.
"Micro-evolution" refers to changes within a single population.
Macro-evolution is the just the micro-evolution of two isolated populations to the point that, if the two populations were to merge back together and try to interbreed, they would be unable to produce fertile, viable offspring. The two populations have diverged too much, and will continue to diverge from then on.
The issue is that she was forced to resign because of "repeated acts of misconduct and insubordination". The topic could have been Peanut Butter vs Jelly for all I care.
Not sure where you found anecdotes to support the definitions you've invented, but the Macro. v. Micro. gain v. loss is BS. I've never heard that in all my undergrad. or graduate studies in Biology and there are lots of counterexamples.
Intelligent Design owns YOU. Why does George Bush never sit down - because he was bitten by Intelligent Design while on his way to church.
How many beans make five, anyhow ?
Here's the challenge, post right and here and now (the challenge I have given more than once on this slanted forum (pun intended)) one empirical fact or verifiable fact that shows evolution between kinds has been proven.
All the evidence in the world could be heaped on nutjobs like you and you'd still divide by two. Want a link between species A and species C? Fine, a species B is found. But then you demand a fossil link between species A and species B. Rinse, wash, repeat.
And Hope follows Intelligent Design. While Charity is a long way behind.
How many beans make five, anyhow ?
What happened is she walked off the job to attend a presentation not directly related to her job duties.
Of course it wasn't for opposing ID, just like Wal-Mart has never fired anyone who's tried to organize a union. When a company wants to fire someone but their reason is illegal, unpopular, or actionable, they can be very creative in finding other reasons to terminate you.
Would they have asked her to resign if she had criticized evolution instead of ID ?
That right there is the only defense she needs in court.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
They say all societies are insane in their own way but modern western societies are uniquely insane. Perversely, since they would like to say they promote "ultimate" truth, evangelicals have always been well positioned to understand that what is taught in school, what is seen on TV, what is preached on Sunday, what has museums built to promote it _IS_ TRUE.
I don't think we have intellectuals in North America who have come to grasp this situation we have found ourselves placed into by modern media. People like McLuhan and Chomsky have just been too darn "rational". The French philosophers from Foucault to Baudrillard got it. On a societal level there isn't a "real" anymore to point to. It isn't that media are covering reality over in an opaque virtual layer of goo. The "virtual" and the "real" are intertwined in cause and effect to the point where there is no practical discernment between them.
Equally true in the political sphere. A staged show like Colin Powell waving his pencil around on TV becomes the _cause_ of the "real" effect of a war. That war is simultaneously real and unreal. It's a war "about" Colin Powell waving a pencil around. And sustained by any number of "reasons" each worn out in turn and replaced by a new reason.
Who can say what is real? Perhaps a hundred or two hundred million Americans "saw" Colin Powell wave his pencil around. How many words of what power does it take after that "experience" to convince people that there were no WMDs? After all, people "saw" Colin Powell wave his pencil around. As people say today, "You have your sources and I have mine."
The same with Evangelicals. They want their "Colin Powell moment" where a hundred million people will just "see" that intelligent design is "true". If they work as diligently as the Neocons have for decades to shape the political sphere, they will probably get it. Will liberals and the rational "get it" before they do?
I've just read your post twice--unsuccessfully--and come to the conclusion that science education in your county is the very least of your schools' problems and that your English teachers need to be sent to the gulags.
Apparently, she deliberately violated the scope and definition of her job. How is this any different from the consequences in any other job?
I realize that it's tempting to try to make a buck off the "evolution vs. ID" false dichotomy, even when you know clearly beforehand it's a false dichotomy as you speak of it, but still. She violated the terms of her employment.
Firing seems relatively minor as life event, anyway--isn't she expecting to be inevitably and permanently "deselected", soon, anyway?
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
Good for her ... should make it easy for her to find some emplayment that doesn't put her in the midst of fundamentalist idiots.
I don't know if it deserves to be modded down. I'm from Utah and have spent considerable time (living, mostly) in NYC, Chicago, Portland, San Fran, Los Angeles, Austin, Nashville, and a whole smattering of places in between.
Basically, outside of the major coastal and midwestern urban areas the whole damn nation is uneducated white trash, eating, drinking, sleeping, and living the Bible, the small print on Wal-Mart labels, and little else. They're about as different from a New Yorker or a San Franciscan as a microscope lens is from the bottom of a beer bottle.
They probably shouldn't be allowed to vote, much less raise their own children.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
I'm sorry but I can't help but laught at you americans. Nowhere else in the modern world is this kind of utter idiocy possible. I sure hope you guys haven't got nukes in Texas or anyone from texas in control of the launch button.
To complicate things, if anything we observed cannot be explained by science, in light of the irreproducibility of whatever the "miracle" was, the scientific approach _requires_ us to presume that our observations or records of the relevant data were mistaken, biased by an invalid assumption, or else simply incomplete. At best, any "miraculous" incident that ever was actually accepted as having been an actual historical event in the first place would be labelled as "unexplained" due to a lack of sufficient scientific data.
Therefore, even *IF* genuine supernatural miracles ever could or ever did happen, regardless of how often they might occur, they could never _ever_ be accepted as such by any scientific analysis.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
New scientist is a _little_ bit better in the area you are talking about, but on the other hand you have to cope with the fact that half the magazine if classifieds for scientific jobs in the UK and not actually about science.
"Civis Europaeus sum!"
In Andrew Revkin's dot earth blog, Hansen lists some responses to the use of that metaphor http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/11/28/averting-our-eyes-james-hansens-new-call-for-climate-action/.
One of those responses objects to his use of the word "creation": To me, it seems that scientists should reclaim the word. The biosphere renews itself through on going acts of creation. By defining creation as life on Earth as we know it, it seems to me that ID loses some of its power to persuade those who feel that science does not connect with their religious reading.
"All grues are pink" isn't a negative. "There are no pink grues" is a negative, and subsequently you can't disprove it, because you can't search every location in the entire universe. You CAN construct negatives that can be proven, such as "there are no elephants in this shoebox," because you can look in the shoebox.
On what philosophical foundation do you stand when you say that God is wrong to kill?
The only one with authority to kill is the creator. Is it wrong for you to delete code you wrote?
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
An Reuters report today makes for depressing reading. Here's the link. http://uk.reuters.com/article/lifestyleMolt/idUKN2922875820071129?sp=true Poll finds more Americans believe in devil than Darwin Read the article and weep. Expect more such Texas type-incidents in the future. What with the debate on immigration, growing xenophobia, and a siege mentality since 9/11, immigration of fresh, bright new minds into the US will start peaking in the next few years. After that, it's going to be downhill. In about 50 years, the US will be a land of troglodytes. Pity GWB didn't wait another 50 years -- he would have fit right in. On second thought, he seems to reflect the current zeitgeist. No offence to the millions of perfectly rational -- and reasonable -- Americans, including all of my dear friends. But they are hopelessly outnumbered. It's going to be a losing battle.
I call this Doing A Full Dawkins. It would be nice... for some of us who aren't strongly tribal and don't like rubbish talk and silly ideas. Niceness has as little to do with Evolution as being a genius does. Despite their overwhelming analytical "stupidity", more people have survived by cooperation than by exercising any other trait.
Until rubbish talk, silly ideas and tribalism become negating factors in evolution, or being "mature" becomes crucial for humanity, you can keep wishing. You, I, and Dawkins will be dead one day and rubbish talk, silly ideas and tribalism will still be going strong. (Cue sarcasms about the InterWeb.)
There reason to conjecture that the sort of "maturity" that you describe is in the cards for our species. As long as we are what we are here and now, this maturity is a long way off. We're still in the cradle, surrounded by the things that are familiar and strange by day, and frighten us at night. The fact that religion is still with our species must mean it's with us for a "reason". It's a strong meme.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
Obviously, the flaming POTUS bush is an indigenous protected ID (Freudian) species in Texas.
Dogma affected never reason effective, in Texas or anyplace. (%~0)
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
The problem is that Sci-Am (and science generally) is damned if they do and damned if they don't. If they don't respond to the pseudo-science, the pseudo-scientists take that as evidence that Sci-Am supports them, or at least can't find anything wrong with their "theories". If they do respond, everyone else thinks they're taking the pseudo-scientists too seriously, and the pseudo-scientists don't buy what they say anyway.
-Mike
I'm sorry; I don't know what I was thinking!
1. God isn't smart enough to design evolution. 2. Mortification of the mind is so more convenient than mortification of the flesh.
It's not bad and there's no point in fighting it. We'll just move science education particularly life science education offshore to other countries. There's no reason that the US has to be a 'brainy' country. For a few years at least we'll still be good at engineering, physical sciences, math but that too will eventually leave to other countries too. I really don't care either way.
I don't understand why Intelligent Design and Evolution have to be mutually exclusive. If I were blessed with infinite wisdom, you bet your ass I'd create something that could withstand the test of time by evolving on it's own... something I didn't have to baby sit and tweak every few million years.
It's pretty obvious, especially to the slashdot crowd, that "intelligent design" is an oxymoron and has no place in a science classroom.
That's hardly the point of the article.
The interesting discussion is what the heck is going on in Texas (and the US in general), that a person charged with developing a science curriculum is first muzzled and then fired for suggesting that colleagues have a look at a presentation that discusses how "ID" is nothing more than creationism with a new label.
Shouldn't this person's job be to develop science curriculum? Shouldn't that include making sure junk "science" is prevented from getting into the science classroom?
The US is in a pretty bad place right now, in no small part due to a failure of the public education system to produce large numbers of science and math literate students. The US economy supports one of the highest standards of living in the world today, and it seems to me that it's been able to do that because of just three things:
* An educated population (or at least a significant subsection of the population)
* A free market economy
* A relatively uncorrupt political process.
Those of us sitting outside the US and looking in, and whose livelihood depends in large measure on the health of the US economy, see these factors fading away:
* Junk like "Intelligent Design" or "Ebonics" or other crap designed to appeal to special interest groups at the expense of the education of the general population is big business in the education system.
* The government is increasingly corrupt (think recent federal elections, political interference in climate change science and elsewhere, etc.).
So far, I think the free market economy is still there, but something like half of all economic activity now happens in the public sector.
BS like "intelligent design" is symptomatic of a general decline, rather than an isolated problem.
What's to be done? Is the process reversible? These are interesting questions. Not simply affirming that "ID" is dumb. Of course it is, but really - the earth is round and the sky is blue. That's hardly noteworthy.
- Anon.
one is religion, one is based on th scientific method. I fail to see why you believe religion should be taught as science when it is most clearly not anything of the kind. In your example, that particular director was peddling intelligent design as science, that's an act of incompetance and at the least lying. Intelligent design doesn't make any predictions, it isn't testable and is based on religious faith not evidence. It is not a scientific theory, just arguments [poorly made ones] that to the ignorant support the idea of a GOD. Evolution explains a series of facts and makes testable predictions about the changes in the evolution of species over time. The same exact thing would happen in your example as would a science director that tries to peddle intelligent falling over gravitational theory- tolerance is no defense for ignorance.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
Depends if the sexual abstention was dealt with in a religious manner or not. If you're looking at it logically, then no sexual penetration = no babies, of course, which means purely statistically abstention will cause lower (i.e 0 ) unwanted pregnancies versus contraception. However, what we all know is by degrading condom use we are promoting the rise of std infection rates etc. Of course when religion is involved, then we get into muddy water :P
i know not what weapons the next world war will be fought with, but world war IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
A good test for ID: Put an empty sealed jar on a shelf and wait for God to put something living in it.
Ed
But you know, all creationists are idiots.
Yep, at least you got one thing right.
I don't see why this is so damn hard for people to get straight. ID is a topic for sunday school, and 6,000 year old literal biblical creationism is just plain silly.
Now there is a great deal of contempt for religion here on slashdot. I fathom this is for two reasons-first, the frequently embarrasing and damaging conduct of people who boisterously proclaim their faith, and second, a complete and utter ignorance of how religion and faith in God has been entirely necessary for our current civilization to arise. The former is obvious and explaining the latter to the religion-ignorant people on this website is beyond my scope. I just want to point out that maybe you shouldn't be so f*cking proud of how smart you are for thinking all religion is rubbish.
Let me start off with some bait for pretty much everyone in this thread- though it might get less tasty if you read on.
I believe God created the earth and everything on it.
There! I must be a knuckle dragging creationist, right?
But wait! Here's the rest:
I believe science is our best bet for deciphering how He did it.
We live in a cause-and-effect world, God or no God. He's not in the habit of miracle'ng our asses out of tight situations, or populating entire continents with new species over night. He lets good people get cancer, bad people go free, and little boys get raped by priests.
Why? Because, given a belief in God, the only way existence makes sense is if there are defined, unyielding physical rules and free will.
So the only way God could have created anything in such a world is if He set up the initial state and the 'rules' from the beginning to reach a certain endgame- the last 6,000 or so years of recorded history, if you will.
That, however, is a philosophical stance for which I can offer no evidence. Taking that particular stance neither detracts from nor adds to our understanding of the unyielding, physical laws that govern our daily lives.
The purpose of science is to discover and utilize the laws of nature. Saying "God did it" is all fine and dandy, but I want to know how God did it, given the cause-and-effect, physical rule based world we live in.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
flowchart
My experience with most pregnant 16 year olds (in the E.R. not as a causative factor) was that it WAS usually a miracle that they became pregnant.
them - "But I ain't had sex with NOBODY!"
me "O.K., is your name Mary?" (they usually don't get the joke - if they said yes, then I got a psych consult).
Apparently the scientific formula of (Groin + Groin = Baby), was lost on them, and subsequent births were miraculous. The level of denial was fantastic! My futile attempts at education and discovery usually went like this.
me "Do you have a boyfriend?'
them "Well yeah"
me "Did you two ever get naked together?"
them "Yeah"
(medically graphic parts not repeated due to Slashdots juvenile contingent )
them "Yeah"
me "Well, then you've had sex/"
them "But I ain't had sex with nobody!"
One time I did encounter a kid smart enough to realize that the double negative usage was a positive, and she admitted it to me in private- LOL.
..........FULL STOP.
Let me get this straight. Are the Intelligent Design advocates trying to suggest that ID is a scientific principle or at least a scientific theory? If so, what is in fact their theory? From what I can tell, Intelligent Design, is a foundation in which religious people hope to expound upon to devise a scientific theory. Or more to what seems to be a reality, it appears to be more of an idea they hope to use to force science teachers to discredit evolution as a plausible theory.
.... now if only I could come up with a similar theory which would deal with the ethics of cloning and stem cell research.
Using the same process proposed by the ID advocates, since I'm am a pragmatist, atheist or not, I would instead offer a counter postulation which offers that if a supreme being did exist, and an ID style concept were needed, it would suggest that this supreme being of unlimited power and intelligence that existed before everything else would in fact have planned and executed the big bang knowing evolution would occur. Now, if I were a religious person, I would simply feel this made more sense since it would then explain everything, not just what was crammed into a 3,700 year old book written (or at least transcribed) by poets and political leaders.
So, in order to satisfy the need of a bunch of fundementalists in order to make progress towards teaching students science, I would jam Occum's Razor down their throughts (which happens to be the only "scientific" theory they seem to ever agree with) by just saying :
What makes more sense, God, a supreme being that has existed through infinity (meaning trillions and quadrillions of years) rushed through making the universe (apparently something he loves more than anything) in only 6 days, even went through the trouble of simulating events that scientifically are easist to describe by progression over millions of years, created creatures such as dinosaurs which apparently lived and died in such a short time, that in the 10,000 years since the planet was made, they appear now to be the source of oil, burried premade diamonds until millions of tons of rock that would eventually make diamonds on its own anyway... or God spent a few billion years (a millisecond on his time scale) planning a single centralized event that would create an entire universe that would explode from a central point and eventually (billions of years later) produce life and a massive well planned multi-billion light year wide universe and ecosystem. And if he did give you the bible, it was to convince a primitive society incapable of understanding science with a set of rules and guidelines to help them through some rough times, it would be no different than telling your kids to be good or santa will give them coal in their stockings. But when they grow up, you let them have more control over their own fates and stop feeding them white lies to train their consciences.
The best part is, the whole god made the big bang happen thing makes it possible to back them off of the science education thing since in public you'd say "We'll admit we don't know if God made the big bang or not, if there is a God, it seems logical to assume he did." but when teaching about the big bang and evolution in school, you'd be able to focus on the science and leave the religion at the church. In fact, I believe it's our responsiblity as intelligent people to lead the sheep by giving in a little to them to accomplish much greater things.
The acronym ID still represents "identification" (or "identify," etc). I'm concerned that using an acronym for intelligent design might give it more credibility, which is NOT what we want.
So..I consider myself religious, and I believe the God created everything just like the bible says....However I don't know everything, I refuse to get into debates about it because science is not really my strong suit. I also believe evolution is wrong, and 50-100 years from now, someone will bring this up and laugh about it. Maybe not wrong per se, but flawed. The church needs to realize that it isn't always right about specifics. Evolution is our eras flat earth, or earth-centric universe. The church (most of it anyways) has excepted that the world is round and we circle the sun. Evolution or whatever it becomes as science and technology progresses, will become more of a law, and we will have that much more understanding. Then they will find something else to bitch about...cloning perhaps...
Creationism / "Intelligent Design" / "God Did It!" isn't science.
The world will be a much better place once the big three (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) are held in the same regard as the old Greek and Roman pantheons.
"The fight for freedom has only just begun." - Geert Wilders
There's a couple of critters I know about, the arctic tern and a California salamander, that are "ring species". They have ring-shaped geographic ranges. Each local population can and does breed with its neighbors, but diametrically opposed sub-populations are not interfertile. They hover on the very edge of becoming multiple species. In fact, if some external event broke the ring in two places, they would instantly become two species.
Then of course there's all the Endangered Species Act engendered legal but not biological species. But that's another tale for another time. Arizona, observatory, squirrel.
--
phunctor
I read TFA and she apparently got fired for passing along an email about an upcoming presentation by an apparent Anti-Creationist author.
Since TFA doesn't include any reference to the actual email it's hard to tell if the email was "professional" in that it merely alerted recipients to this presentation w/o taking "sides" or if the Director included language meant to show her position on the matter.
Before I go further I should say Creationism and ID are a load of crap. However, if the school board wants to have a policy of "not publicly taking sides" that is disappointing, but not killer (though I haven't seen the Texas Biology Curriculum). I believe, in principle, that the former director could have done something that was against this "don't take sides" directive. (For all the article states, the Texas School authority could be in favor of Evolution, but want to appear at least "neutral" so as to appease that fraction of their voter base who prefer ID.)
What I'm getting at is:
a) if the email was just something to the effect of "here's an upcoming presentation that may be useful in our discussions on this topic", that seems like it should be allowed even by this goofy "don't take sides" attitude of the Texas School authority.
b) it would be nice to have an alternate reality machine to see if they would have fired her if she wrote a similar email about an upcoming presentation favoring ID. I bet not.
Bah! You're not even wrong!
--
phunctor
If we look at a DNA sequence, how do we tell the difference between a evolved and a designed sequence? If we look at the functional parts, we probably wouldn't be able to. But, say, I was the "designer". Me, I wouldn't be able to resist leaving some signatures behind. To "watermark" my design. For two reasons: one: to label it to "other" designers as /my/ work, and two: as a puzzle, an easteregg, to see if those little humans would be able to figure it out.
... Something that stands out as being purely artificial and not being "evolved" or having any kind of function.
... long enough for not being a product of chance, finding the same species back in different species that would - according to darwinian evolution - not be related, and finding different sequences like CGCCGCCCGCCCCGCCCCCG ... in species that would be more related (say like god A designed the horse, but god B designed the donkey, or gorilla vs chimp), then I would be scratching my head and I would see two possibilities:
...
So, what would I use as watermark? You can't simple write "God was here", because the chance that those little humans would understand your language would be rather slim. But even they would share our language (Hebrew perhaps?), you still must encode it in a sequence with only 4 symbols A, T, C and G. Even if we can assume those little humans would understand the concept of encodings in base 4, we hardly can assume that our "ASCII" table would be the same as theirs. So, what would be a good sequence?
I would use the same kind of sequences we would be using as a clearly artificial signal we would be sending to aliens, for example: prime numbers, or a binary sequence like 101001000100001000001
So, if we would find in DNA something like the sequence ATAATAAATAAAATAAAAAT
1. Those animals are genetically manipulated by humans, and closer investigation shows that not _all_ horses and donkeys have the same watermark
2. Maybe horses, donkeys, gorillas and chimps really were designed by some "intelligent designer", whether that be some aliens or a god
Just my thoughts,
Tristan
Sorry, but anyone who believes in religion and god(s) is an idiot.
This is always my response to the Pascal's Wager crowd.
They think that you might as well bastardize your intelligence and believe because there's no risk to believe, but there's a huge risk to not believe (potential hell). I point out that there's no way to know if the risk is the _other_ way, that all people who believe without reason will experience the greatest suffering, and if they follow that line, I continue until I get to something like your response.
Not only the problem of _which_ god is supposed to be the correct one to wager on. Some people think it's just safe to believe in a "general god". That doesn't make sense for another reason: all major religions that preach hellfire also preach exclusivity. So if you don't believe in exclusivity, there's no reason to even participate in the wager, because there's no reason to believe in hell, either. You could of course create your own possibility where you have to believe in a "general" god in order not to go to a wonderfully contrived punishment, but then that falls to your equally-validly-contrived example.
I think most people in modern times (where we can observe the diversity of reliigous opinion -- in the old days everybody you knew were of the same religion) are secretly religious -- and raise their kids religiously, due to the illogic of Pascal's Wager. If more people knew how unsound it was -- coupled with the wonderful explanatory power of evolutionary and biological thinking, more and more people would find no more need for religion.
And perhaps, just perhaps, people would stop being religious. As Christopher Hitchens says -- religion (god-ones as well as Marxist-Maoist-Leninist or NAZI dogmas) are the major ways to make a good person act truly evil. We'll never truly get world peace without an end to _all_ dogmas. Think of it as a call to arms against dogma.
Hey Yawn, I certainly understand your position. Science is king, but be careful what you call science. The scientific method requires that you observe something, come up with theories, and then collect facts that support the theory. So far macroevolution is stuck at the "come up with theories" phase and desperately trying to collect facts. So far the facts are for a different theory which is microevolution which is small changes within the same species which generally degrade the DNA (loss of information) and has NEVER shown that DNA information is added. So after a hundred years of intense study, macroevolution has actually had more evidence to indicate it is not viable. In fact because the original falsifiable statements by Darwin where proven to be false, which is lack of transistional fossils, the evolutionary proponents change their ground rules and came up with the Cambrian explosion of kinds and that actually has a very "insert miracle" aspect to it that no one is able to explain. Neither of us will convert the other, but I hope you can step outside your box of questionable logic and take a true scientific method approach to macroevolution and see where it takes you, you might be surprised. I have ...
I suppose it really doesn't matter if one only aspires to a career of flipping burgers or welding truck frames. But lets see just how many potential candidates for entry into top scientific or medical colleges are willing to wear the 'flat earther' badge.
Have gnu, will travel.
Hypothetically, the difference between a smart human and a dumb one to god would be the difference between a smart cockroach and a dumb one to us.
"Fossil rabbits in the Precambrian."
Very nice people. But their understanding of non-religious things is wrong and strange.
At some point they were talking about a new testament biblical passage that dated from around 1900 years ago. The writings referred to the society of the day, which was fairly advanced. And then one of the guys said, "And when I went to school, they taught me that was the caveman days! Ha ha! Jerks!" He then shook his head and rolled his eyes. Everyone at the table save me nodded and laughed about how ridiculous secular teaching is.
This is something I see so often with Christians: they have a lack of knowledge, spend very little time thinking about a topic, and yet have absolute conviction that they're right. Sure, that's a common human flaw, but it seems most pronounced in the Christians I know. Even if you're a young-earth creationist certainly you should know that "cavemen" are not generally claimed to have been around 1900 years ago, but much earlier. I don't think anyone ever taught that the Romans were cavemen. Even if you think the earliest people were from 6000 years ago, you should be able to understand that society changed a lot from the time of Adam to the time of Jesus.
And even if someone did tell him there were cavemen in 100 AD -- I don't know -- wasn't there a whole world beyond the Mediterranean on which the Bible says nothing? Even if there was a developed society in that area, isn't it conceivable that there were people living a sort of "caveman" life elsewhere at that time? It just bugs me how little thinking goes into the average Christian's position, and how it's usually driven by a desire to support their belief than by a desire for understanding.
Of course this is just one small group of people with wacky misunderstandings of the world and secular education. Most Christians aren't this confused. But most people who lack critical thinking abilities are drawn to fundamental Christianity for some reason.
Anyways.
Haven't we been through all this before? Yes, we have. The Dover, PA trial of 2005 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dover_trial]
Check this PBS/Nova production called "Judgment Day - Intelligent Design on Trial"
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/id/program.html
It's a very well done documentary on the ID/Evolution trial up on Dover, PA. This issue has been decidedly beaten to death (verdict:ID is absolute hogwash) in a court of law.
SD
There's a good documentary about the Dover Evolution Trials online at NOVA. If a conservative judge appointed by Bush can see through the sham that ID is, then it's amazing that anyone's still trying to push it through.
Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
Their is no place for religion in modern society. Nobody should expect their irrational fantasies to be taken seriously. Dressing up a bunch of myths and calling them religion does not make them valid. To see blind faith as a virtue is insane. Religious faith should be viewed as evidence of an inability to reason.
Not quite. First, most religions provide a social and moral framework that has (in most cases) survived, adapted, and proven workable over timescales of at least a century. From an evolutionary standpoint, that's progress not trivially to be thrown out. (Track down a copy of David Sloan Wilson's Darwin's Cathedral; reading Pinker's The Blank Slate first might give further perspective.) Second, even blind faith is a survival virtue in some cases. The absolute delusional conviction that you CAN get out of a mess without dying leads one to keep trying, even when the chances are incredibly slim and when lying back and dying would be easier. Religious faith in the sense of acting 100% certain on questions when substantial doubt does exist or the proposition is fundamentally untestable (such as "Does our existence have any higher purpose?"), while understanding that doubt does exist and the answer may be "no", is the moral equivalent of a mathematician specializing in math where the axiom of choice is affirmed.
That said, I would agree that far greater skepticism should be shown to tenets unique to particular creeds (such as the need to eat filet mignon) than to those that nigh all creeds share (such as variants of the Golden Rule); and furthermore, that blind faith in the face of overwhelming contradictory evidence -- such as cdesign proponentsists show about Evolution -- is evidence of either inability or unwillingness to reason. But for socializing small children and other simple sociopaths, religion isn't the worst tool out there.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
It's good to know that we CS people aren't the only flavour of geek represented on Slashdot. Way to represent the biology folks! *applauds*
Such as a driver's license or permission to use an artists work. We weren't granted our independence by anyone, we claimed our independence, we fought for it, and we earned it.
I read Slashdot for the headlines, because the headlines, unlike the articles, are usually original and never duplicated
The problem is that ID closes down scientific inquiry, it doesn't expand upon it. It is a proposition unto itself with no scientific proof and even no way to research it. The Theory of Evolution came about by looking at the natural world and noticing something peculiar, then trying to reason why this occurred. ID simply says "We don't understand how this occurred, so a supernatural force must have done it." If ID were really trying to be a scientific theory, it would try to explain what the designer is, why it did what it did, when this occurred, and how the designer implemented his designs.
1 - What designed us? What scientific methods would you use to research this? The only theories I know of are religious and come from books written thousands of years ago with no evidence to support them. This exposes ID as a religious theory and not science.
2 - Why did the designer make us? Well, without any evidence that there is a designer or knowledge of it existing, how do we learn anything about its motivations? This exposes ID as a religious theory and not science.
3 - When did this occur? They don't attempt to explain the fossil record or use the scientific methods of radioactive dating (or come up with their own) to show when this happened. They don't explain why there are fossils in the record that are so much different than our own. Did the designer make some mistakes and kill off those creatures? The only thing proponents of intelligent design say here are religious quotes from the Bible. This exposes ID as a religious theory and not science.
4 - How did the designer implement his designs? ID proponents don't even attempt to explain the scientific origin of the designer's designs. The designer couldn't have just "designed" them, they had to actually be created some how. Oh wait, we can't say that word because that exposes intelligent design as being the same thing as creationism. Any scientific inquiry into ID would try to explain the forces at play that made the first molecules come together into the first human being though. Did the designer use magnetic forces to draw atoms together? Did it it use a laser? Here again we have nothing from ID proponents on the issue except for quoting from the Bible. This exposes ID as a religious theory and not science.
THESE are the four areas of research that ID "scientists" should be focusing on. If they could come up with a single published scientific paper showing actual research into any of these four questions, maybe ID could start to be seen as a scientific theory. Meanwhile there has been vast amounts of research over the last 150 years into evolution and natural selection. THAT is what scientists do. They come up with questions and research them, they don't just posit logical theories and rest on their laurels.
I love newton as much as the next guy... use him every day... but he was wrong, plain and simple.
Only if everything we know is wrong.
Newton's laws are correct. They are also not universal.
They are completely correct, except at extremes-- extreme velocity, extreme mass, extreme distances. This is no different that standard chemistry, which is correct at non-extremes (say, 0 kelvin, or plasma temperatures, or extreme pressures, or.... ). This doesn't make our chemical models of crystalline quartz any less correct.
They are tools that model our universe sufficiently to be useful. That is all we have-- tools to model our universe. Either the tools are useful ("correct"), or they are not.
To say they are not "correct" is to say that we have no knowledge whatsoever. Almost every single physical law we know today is bounded by constraints. There is no single formula, no single concept, no single universal model that works from one end of the spectrum of extremes to the other. At the moment, you can't use our understanding of the forces that hold an atom together to explain galaxies. That's why physicists are so interested in a single Grand Unified Theory. We desire the simplicity of a single description of the universe, rather than this hodge-podge of formula and concepts that work within their own realms, but fall apart outside their bounds.
Hell, we don't even have one single clue about the state of the universe in the first few femtoseconds of existence, so extremes of time also matter.
That certainly doesn't make our current models, including Newton's laws, less correct.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
There's not really that big of a difference, only in scale. That's like saying gravity is different when it applies to an apple falling on Newton's head and the planets orbiting the sun. You may wonder why humans have 23 chromosomes and other primates have 24. Well, chromosomes have special DNA on their ends called telomeres. When we look at chromosome 2 from a human, we see that it not only has telomeres at the end, but in the middle as well. There is also special DNA in the center of chromosomes that we can detect, and there are two copies at 1/4th the way from either end on chromosome 2. The point is so obvious that I shouldn't have to say it, but it appears that sometime in our genetic history we had 24 chromosomes and two of them merged into one.
Christians still believe that God breathes life into each human embryo, giving us a soul. But does he do that to animals and bacteria as well? We know the biological process that goes into replication. A human is created from a single egg cell containing half the mother's DNA and a sperm cell containing half the father's DNA. This single cell multiplies and forms all the different cell types in our body. Other creatures work the same, and similar organisms replicate themselves. We also see evidence of chromosomes combining, it's not too difficult to imagine them separating either. We know DNA can be added to chromosomes and that they contain multiple copies of many genes. We know that they can mutate, and that a single letter change can make a gene start at a new location and produce a completely different protein.
So we know that all of this can happen. We can also create a map of mutations, additions, etc. to completely transform C. Elegans DNA into our own. I don't see how they can claim that "Macro" evolution is impossible when it is a logical result of multiple repetitions of "Micro" evolution. That's like saying "Of course an apple would fall from a tree and hit the ground, but I doubt an apple that fell from a cloud would ever hit the ground."
I know a guy trying to setup a new astronomical observatory for schools in New Zealand's high country. He's a devout christian yet claims to be a scientist and astronomer. In reality he's a christian high school science teacher.
He also dismisses the Big Bang and Evolution as "just theories". A guy who worships deities and idols and cannot differentiate between conjecture, hypothesis and theory is planning to teach children about astronomy.
The icing on the cake? There is already an astronomical observatory for schools and community groups in the same area he is planning to setup his own. What's the difference (besides not being run by a nutjob)? It charges no fees. The christian scientist plans to charge a lot of money for his brand of christian astronomical education. And he may well get it, by exclusively targeting christian schools.
Direct observation is not the only way to support an hypothesis. For instance, we've never directly observed a black hole, though astrophysics suggests they exist. We have, however, seen the indirect evidence via orbits of other stars, and X-ray emissions, which was predicted by theory.
Same with extra-solar planets. We have yet to observe an extra-solar planet directly, yet we know they exist. How? By the variations in orbit of the parent star. How do we know that method works? Because that's how we discovered Pluto, through orbital variations in observable planets.
So. That brings us to evolution.
The theory of evolution results in many predictions that *are* observable. Most of the predictions weren't even known in Darwin's time, or for many years after. One is genetic divergence. If evolution were correct, animals that were closely related would have similar genetic code. This includes introns, or "junk DNA," DNA that has no influence on the genotype of a species.
More importantly, this also includes mitochondria.
Mitochondria are a part of the cell, but they have their own DNA. In sexual reproduction, the zygote gets its mitochondria, and the mitochondrial DNA, from the female gamete (the egg).
Now, if evolution were correct, and all species are related to one another by varying degrees, the closer species would have more similar mitochondrial DNA, while those that are more divergent would have less-common mitochondrial DNA.
With me so far?
Good.
As it turns out, species that have been mapped by evolutionists to be closely related (such as pigs and bears) have fairly similar mitochondrial DNA. There's divergence, but it's fairly small. Animals that are *not* so closely related (such as bears and humans) have a greater divergence. And animals that are not closely related at all (say, bears and salmon) have even greater divergence.
It's these sorts of predictions that support the idea of evolution, and more importantly, *of speciation.* (This is where the IDers and evolutionists really diverge.) So, there's your evidence for evolution, taken directly from the theory, without formal observation of speciation.
This is just one prediction that has proven true. There are many, many others. Basically, modern medicine is based to a large degree on the *assumption* of evolution.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Next question, what are your thoughts on the remarkable coincidence described here? I know that it could have been magic, but it also appears to be a very strong indication of common descent.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
If you are going to fire someone on religious grounds at least be smart enough to make up a good excuse... She is probably going to sue them now for religious descrimination and win a hefty settlement. Probably two suits. One in state court and one in federal. This should be fun :)
For the speciation argument, check out this discussion of the evolution of corn as we know it today. Another story I can't find at the moment listed 3 gene mutations that caused corn to go from a small seeded multi-branched plant that resembled wheat to what we today know as corn. One gene caused multi-branch to become a single stalk, a second enlarged the seeded area and a third increased the grain size. They're all present in the still flourishing ancestor grass teosinte, but it requires all three to produce the corn we know today. The presence of the single stalk gene was enough to create slightly larger edible ears of corn, and selection beyond that brought out the other two traits.
All in all, very interesting.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
discussion of the evolution of corn.
odd corruption.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
11. On the 1st January 2008:-
Dates written in the internationally accepted format.
12. On the 1st. February 2008:-
All electrical switches in the new Dominion rewired to conform to the convention of the rest of the Commonwealth. Current flows when the switch lever is Down.
13. On the 1st. March 2008:-
Local planning and building laws changed, so that it is possible for everybody to walk to work.
14. On the 1st. April 2008:-
All school children learn the rules and methods of playing the game of Cricket.
15. On the 1st. May 2008:-
Electricity rationing introduced. 9,000 kWh per family per year. All domestic air conditioning turned off as a consequence.
16. On the 1st. June 2008:-
All military activity ceases. Overseas bases abandoned. Uniforms burnt, weapons converted into ploughshears. Taxes reduced in proportion to the savings made, and you notice that the value of the New American Pound begins to rise exponentially. All ex-military officiers inducted into the teaching profession. The term 'Fossil Record' explained in schools nation-wide.
17. On the 1st. July 2008:-
The New American Dominions adopt the ISO standards for domestic measurement, screw-threads, data storage format, and printing.
18. On the 1st. August 2008:-
The right to bear arms revoked, the entire nation goes on holiday.
19. On the 1st. September 2008:-
Return to work and school. School-day extended until 4:30pm to allow time to teach the meaning of the words 'Scientific Method', knitting and other crafts. The words 'Jersey', 'Guernsey', 'Cardigan', and 'Jumper' enter the vocabulary as items of warm clothing. All heating thermostats set to 18 degrees Celcius.
20. On the 1st. October 2008:-
All cars with engines larger that 1.25 litres crushed. Commuting in private cars prohibited. It's noticed the the level of CO2 in the atmosphere falls 15%.
21. On the 1st. November 2008:-
Charles appointed Governor General over the New American Dominions.
14 November established as a nation-wide holiday.
22. On the 1st. December 2008:-
Savings made by permanently stopping military activities allow for the formation of Nationwide Health and Housing Services. Broadband established Nationwide.
23. During 2009:-
Utah disestablished, Darl McBride escapes to Ulaan Baator.
24. The New American Dominions formally join the world-wide Family of Nations.
All in Jest you understand, but many a true word spoken therein.
It appears to me that some Christian groups rejected an educated clergy some time ago and are now rejecting education in general. I think evolution is just the soft target for these groups that are really about anti-intellectualism. It is sad that they then get to make descisions influencing education in an entire state. I think give it a few years and some of these groups will have views diverging as far from the churches with an educated clergy as the early Mormons diverged. Remember the churches with an educated clergy accepted evolution decades ago or in some cases or up to a century ago. The people that think the earth is 6000 years old should read the second half of their book, paticularly what Paul said about how God percieves time.
A scientist will follow the precincts of science and ID being a philosophy (based in faith not any form of review) can not be scientific. It will be highly remiss for a scientist to not question anything based of "bad science", in fact asking a scientist to do so questions that person or persons understanding of the constitution. Its is a shame because the more the US government pushes the fools cart called ID upon its own people the more the rest of the world views them as being the clown in the room.
I wouldn't want anyone in this job whose head doesn't explode as soon as they are told they have to be neutral about ID.
If every science department is required to offer ID on a level playing field, then every church should be required to give equal time each weekend to the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
I'm from Texas, and I now hang my head in shame... sorry everyone - hope we can improve.
ID is proposed as a negation of evolution because that's its entire raison d'etre.
Modern evidence and discussion of Evolution from the likes of Stephen Jay Gould and Dawkins have made the subject far more accessible to the point where even schoolchildren can "get it".
Until ID, the only thing that Creationism had in its armoury was repeated assertion that "we're really sure that it was all God." They realised that this was inadequate in the withering light of accumulating archaeology, molecular biology and evolutionary theory.
Hence ID ; it moves aggressively into the area that is most dangerous yet most vulnerable. The only defence against archaeology is to claim hoaxes or to pretend that carbon dating is wrong in ways that violate the observed laws of physics. There's no point arguing evolutionary theory with someone "whose job depends on them not understanding it" - they won't engage because they know they can gain no traction in an arena where one side is providing arguments and the other is just saying "you're wrong because God did it".
ID moves into an area where there are enough gaps in the knowledge to exploit. All the "evidence" they do present is of the same form ; "hey look at this, it's so complicated that it's just not possible it could have evolved!". This strategy can enjoy a measure of success for quite some time to come, simply because the field is complex, and experimentation is difficult. The argument may seem credible to many because these structures genuinely are complex in seemingly irreducible ways.
I myself feel that ID will find itself more and more pinched for space as computing power improves and starts to reduce some of those "irreducibly complex" problems. Subsequent applications of Occams Razor should reduce the ID crown back to the tried and trusted yelps of "But we're SURE it was God!",
Evolution is based on a concept of common ancestry, and that speciation occurs in the branches, where organisms can no longer interbreed. This means that you can build a tree of life that is untangled between major branches, with minor tangling of the twigs within a branch. (theres quite a bit more to evolution, but these are the parts I'm using).. So a reptile can mutate to get hair, passing the trait to its progeny. Eventually those progeny have a vast array of variation in their hair. The hair becomes more advanced (hollow hairs in the case of the Pronghorn). Now this bit of evolution is a pretty advanced piece of work.
Now to disprove Evolution we need to show that this trait shows up in another major branch of life IE find a tangle. So if we can find a plant with these kinds of hairs, or a bird that has the same kind of hair, were golden. Now since we classify all things with hair as mammals we might never find a bird with hair. So we could look for something more useful from birds in mammals.
Birds have a four cycle lung which is more efficient than the mammalian 2 cycle lung, because it vents nearly all the waste gases in each breath. If we found a mammal with a four cycle lung, that could also be evidence that something is wrong with our theory of evolution.
So then there is the platypus, a mammal that lays eggs, is that evidence? Since we're pretty sure that reptiles were the forbearer's of mammals, then mammals can still have the egg laying apparatus from the reptilian side. So the branches haven't been crossed.
So to disprove evolution you need to find highly evolved traits which don't appear to exist in a common ancestor, but are copied nearly exactly. (so birds and bats flying doesn't count, because the wings aren't even close to being similar)
Storm
p.s. for you ID advocates, happy hunting. Find where the designer is cutting and pasting at the top levels, and you have a way better case...
I though New Zealand had draconian immigration policies. Do they like over-educated biophysicists with killer publication records?
Just callin' it like I see it.
They should try some.
"Giving money and power to governments is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys." - P.J. O'Rourke
Comment removed based on user account deletion
There is no god, no creator, no divine noodle and not one single scintilla of evidence exists to the contrary. There seems to be, given the murderous fervour of religious belief across the globe, some innate propensity for superstition in the human animal which should not be mocked or baited.
The fact is none of us actually know. We must respect other people and their beliefs however ludicrous. Faith is important to so many people, even if I had a silver-bullet argument I'd be loathe to rob them of what gets them through the day. Perhaps I even envy their credulity - wouldn't life be so much simpler? Beliefs hurt no-one - only actions should be curtailed.
Science will eventually render these arguments moot, perhaps that is why it is under attack. Within a few generations we may cure death and become immortal ourselves. We have already created new species. We may yet become gods of virtual worlds and create intelligent life ourselves. Humanity may be on the brink of extinction. Will the petri dish bloom or will the colony die?
This ruling infringes the director's rights and devalues educational standards. We should be able to accommodate various views without hampering scientific progress. Some eminent physicists can suspend their god-belief long enough to conduct experiments, or conduct them anyway hoping It won't interfere. If you truly believe then why censor in this way?
Keep religion away from science and both away from politics.
ID is a religious belief and has nothing to do with science. A science teacher writing favoring evolution over ID is like a math teacher favoring Pythagoras over Fallout Boy. What's the relevance?
Well, you have to look at what this argument is *really* about -- this debate and all others that have come before and will come after it have nothing to do with science. They are 100% religious arguments. On one hand you have traditionalists, the bible belt Christians. On the other hand you have modern age fanatics using science as a guise for their untestable belief that no god exists. What are you going to do tomorrow if Jesus floats down from heaven? Science not only allows for the *possibility* of such an occurrence, but it largely *doesn't care* about such possibilities until they can be tested one way or another. The people who do care are people who want to use science for something that it isn't: a system of belief, i.e. religion.
Science is not atheism, atheism is not science. Once you learn to accept that, you will have joined the real scientific community. Until then, you are actually no better than the people you put down. See, the lesson to take away from this story is that, if the teacher in question had written a paper on evolution, there would be no problem. The problem is that the teacher had written a paper comparing science to religion, and there's nothing scientific about that.
Good for Texas, fire a person in the science department that thinks that ID is unscientific. Like 99.9999 percent of scientists. There is one in a million crackpot scientists, just like in the general population. Now students from Texas will be handicapped even further. Soon we should have some even dumber people than W (who could have thought?) coming from the laughing stock state of Texas.
It's actually a literary argument, which makes it very difficult to talk about science/ID. The actual grounds of the debate are taboo to those who are using biblical exegesis as a lab manual.
The problem is one of authority. The authority over the scientist resides in previous results and the judgement of peers (ideally, ignoring corporate/political strings). The authority in the creationist resides in -- theoretically-- G-d's word, but in actuality, in the exegesis of scripture, and the agents of heaven on earth.
So, in arguing about creationism, you aren't really allowed to talk about the origins of the bible, because calling into question its formation as a politically motivated process under Emporer Constantine, and the dealings at the table at the Council of Nicaea, and the authorship and dates of the new testament, and subsequent monastic editorializing and translation, and the change in historical context and thus meanings--calling any of this into question subverts faith that the bible is the Word. Suggest that it's grossly misrepresented by its advocates and you've picked a fight with a devoted christian (or muslim, etc.).
Since faith involves wrapping one's identity up in a flag of belief, attack on that faith is a kind of deadly attack on someone's sense of self. You may think they're arguing on behalf of God but they're fighting with life and death instincts. You want to kill their personhood, ruin their eternity! Since the contradictions of faith can be so extreme, the effort to deny those contradictions becomes extreme as well.
The exalted literary critics known as preachers~priests~theologians are using the bible as social code, and taking the power offered to those who define the terms of discussion. The question of how the bible is interpreted as text is at the core of the ID debate, as with most social discussions involving the People of the Book (muslims-christians-jews).
Damn those pesky terrorists
You are providing a perfect example of why a little knowledge is dangerous, and have stated several fallacies. Again, your contention of 'genetic material' never created is rubbish. Copid gives a perfect example in his anagram (below). One way to get that is through polyploidy, which like most mutations is 99.9999% of the time detrimental, but nor always (look it up on Wiki, I'm not going to repeat it here). All natural selection needs is billions of individuals times trillions of generations. Again, it tell you, this statement is utter crap: 'You have to understand that no genetic information is ever added in any case of Microevolution. ' Back it up or shut up. Also dogs are all the same species, and this quote, "in Microevolution, we are less perfect than our ancestors! " shows total ignorance. Unlike your faith-based approach, evolution does not lead to greater organization or perfection, it's f'n -RANDOM. What maddens logical, thinking people, is realizing I just wasted 10 minutes responding to an AC who will ignore all of the facts and continue to spout idiotic lies. Good day you worthless sack!
Instead of talking about ID and evolution, can we talk about how much Texas is utter shit with shit people and a shit government?
I am stuck here for another 17 months, and I want to die.
Both camps would cry foul if there is proof of that one, and if they do, they will keep it secret, Nights Of Templar and Free Masons anyone?
A god that treats us like play toys or pets is a joke... you have to be psychotic mentally insane to believe a muddled down and politically skewed bible that has missing items and misinterpreted items.
So either admit it, 100% evolution with zero interference by 3rd parties and zero god, or 100% fairy in the clouds ID.
Or a combination that is ID by ET changing DNA.
At least all the mistakes and inconsistencies can be attributed to ET's , rather than the perfect God. ET's can make mistakes, and their creations can back fire too.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
ID is fundamentally incompatible with any faith based religeon. The ID supporters are attempting to dress creationism up and call it science. However, any scientific theory requires proof, must be tested, and must be subject to disproof. That is the opposite of faith. Let those Christians who don't believe their God should be taken on faith stand up and declare their support for ID.
As for the dismissal, I should HOPE that any curriculum director would show interest in a presentation relevant to that curriculum. Supposedly, we are an advanced society that long ago stopped punishing people for heresy, yet here we are. God forbid a director of science curriculum should want to restrict that curriculum to science!
Easily done:
Step 1) Hypothesis: Someone, somewhere, somewhen, created everything.
Step 2) Create an experiment to prove said hypothesis. Uhh, can't.
Verdict: It's unprovable crap.
DONE.
A "proven theory" is the closest thing science has EVER come to "fact" (good scientists don't believe in "facts", because everything has at least SOME chance of being false).
Ah, but you forgot the one true scientific fact: Rock attained perfection in 1974!
Someone smart, born in a coal mining town in West Virginia isn't going to stay there. There's no tech sector there, no research labs, no Silicon Valley.
So smart people have to work in a sterilized research lab or in a clean room in Silicon Valley? West Virginia along with the rest of the Appalachians is a great lab all of it's own. It's great for ecological research for one.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Texas is one of the largest buyers of school textbooks. A strategy by the ID'ers is to influence the content of the textbooks, which will, in turn, set the tone for the other states textbooks.
And here I'll just point out that Judaism, Islam and Christianity are simply branches of the same sect, all three of which base their religion on the "Old Testament"/Torah/Tawrat.
One professor I had put it this way, paraphrasing, "Judaism is the law, Christianity is an interpretation of the law, and Islam is the practical application of the law." Of course Christianity adds and changes some as does Islam. But then again Judaism may of borrowed from Zoroastrianism the idea of the Dualism between good and evil. Darn, I thought I read an article along this line in the magazine "Tikkun" but I don't see it on the website.
FalconShould there be a Law?
And what reason is that? And does it apply to Intersexuals, those born with an ambiguous sex?
FalconShould there be a Law?
What I do have a problem with is teaching inhuman logic in a human science class. The world works according to certain rules, and trying to inject extra-worldly concepts isn't appropriate.
Same here, I don't mind if religion is taught in school. Where I have the problem is when it's in science classes. Teach it in history, or what some do in the name of their religion. Teach it in social studies classes, it can be taught in philosophy as well but in this case give each religion some tyme to be learned, without bias.
FalconShould there be a Law?
That's the worst misunderstanding of ID I've seen yet in this discussion.
ID isn't science. It's philosophy of science. You'd think that the average geek would understand the difference, but here on /., every time ID is mentioned, someone goes out of their way to say that it's not science.
Okay, Captain Obvious, we get it. ID is not science. But the fundamental premise of ID is that it is not mere random changes of evolution which gave rise to the diverse features of living things, but rather, an Intelligent Designer. (Okay, now I'm Captain Obvious, but bear with me here...) ID doesn't say anything about who this could have been - it could have been aliens, for all we know. (Though I must admit that religious types often think it means God, but such an interpretation is not strictly necessary). What ID most effectively addresses is the problem with the biological sciences is that even today, the intellectuals in biology are not doing work on evolutionary theory. The intellectual rigor is just not there. Typically, evolutionary theory argues from the same a posteriori perspective you mention:
ID'ers have grown sick of the circular reasoning which so-called scientists have used to defend their pet theories. Nothing of this sort could ever get past peer review in physics or chemistry, yet we routinely see each and every interesting animal trait, (and even human behavior!) attributed to evolution, in spite of the fact that no evolutionary theory has ever correctly predicted the traits which specific environmental pressures would favor. It's akin to the old double-standard, A.) When times are good, God is blessing us; B.) When times are bad, "He moves in mysterious ways..." The truth is a little bit of both, but mostly it is a way of disguising the speakers ignorance. But the universe does have some semblance of order, and if biologists would get off their collective asses - and learn some logic and math - we might actually be able to make progress in our understanding of evolution. As it stands, evolutionary theory is at about the same state Astronomy was 2 millenia ago, with a bunch of intellectuals gazing at the universe, but not able to say anything very intelligent about it. Every variation in behavior is somehow, magically explainable by evolution, yet no biologist can explain precisely how. None involved in evolutionary theory actually go so far as to make predictions, let alone accurate ones, about how global warming will affect the evolution of species. Will it favor warm or cold blooded animals? Our purveyors of evolutionary theory simply don't know. Contrast this with modern astronomer who can predict - with a substantial amount of certainty - where the Earth and Moon will be on any given date.
But... ID does make some good points, and has made science better in the process. A little healthy skepticism never hurt anyone, you know. And ID has some much, much stronger mathematical and logical underpinnings than a lot of theories which pass for science these days. Evolution (that is, what happened before history) is pretty much mere speculation. Just like ID, it's not a falsifiable theory - that is, there's no set of conditions for which one could say, "Well, that proves evolution didn't happen..." There's a lot of alternative explanations which would be supported by the same data we know today. To argue about what happened in the past -
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ID - as articulated - could mean that life on this planet was not the result of God, but rather, intelligent space aliens. Thus, it was not simply Creationism warmed over - which was more a tool for evangelism than anything else...
One need not give up atheism to accept ID. That's how.
Think of it this way: Atheism is for those skeptical of God. ID is for those skeptical of evolutionary biologists. In both cases, the skeptics are trying to convince others that some unseen magic is responsible for the current state of the universe. Just as the proponents of ID can't predict the next actions of the Intelligent Designer, neither can evolutionary biologists predict how evolution will change life in the future. The difference, however, is that ID actually improves science by pointing out the flaws in evolutionary theories, where evolutionary biologists pointing out the flaws in ID will only kill it. In a religious sense, ID is the holocaust offering made for the revelation of truth and improvement of science. Without it, biology would be stuck in the intellectual dark ages.
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Is that Darwin's original theory of Natural selection was mathematically sound. The theories of evolution which sprang from it, unfortunately, were not. It would be another 100 years before mainstream biology would recognize that "random chance" was just another way of saying, "And magic happens here..." Even today, Darwin's original theory of Natural Selection is still the only testable major evolutionary hypothesis, which says a lot about the dismal state of evolutionary theory today.
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Hey Copid, Objective evidence and you have numbers? Not sure what you mean by the numbers thing, but the concept is simple. When you look at the DNA for a single-celled organism compared to that of a fish, you will find a fish has a lot more DNA information not present in the single-celled organism. So if the only letters you have to write a book with are A through D, you can only have that much variation to work with. A fish by analogy, has the letters A through M and there are no observable methods or transistional forms to indicate where the extra letters could come from - in fact observable microevolutionary changes to DNA have always show a deletion of letters or duplication at best and never the addition of more letters. I don't know how to make it any simpler. What numbers are you referring to? This article may help address what you are asking: http://www.answersingenesis.org/Home/Area/feedback/negative_10September2001.asp As to the remarkable coincidence, this article covers this quite nicely and thoroughly. A very short summary would be that having similar DNA simply means a designer uses the same building blocks for similar things, but does not definitely indicate that one species evolved from another. In fact, it is not consistent in that other primates do not have the same coincidence so evolution seemed to have burped really badly ...
http://www.answersingenesis.org/tj/v14/i3/pseudogenes_genomes.asp
The article you referred to simply makes an assumption based on 20-20 hindsight. Kind of like making a prediction based on previously known information - well I guess I could do that to. The real test is the one Darwin himself indicated - transitional fossils should abound for macroevolution and if not he would be wrong - guess what, he was wrong.
Would that be on Turtle Island?
FalconShould there be a Law?
Now then, what was the question again?
Falcon
Oh, Thanks for all the fish.Should there be a Law?
Even if tomorrow we discover that horses were roaming around on earth before fishes crawled out of the ocean, totally demolishing the theory of evolution
This wouldn't destroy evolution, instead evolution would be modified to take this into consideration.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Um...Texas is not the same as the United States of America...
Saddly i dont see us reaching a resolution any time soon relying on healthy debate alone.
...... movies?
I propose we test both proposed scenarios for a limited period of time, the quality of the outcome informing our policy making from this point on.
First up One month without religion:
Election campaigns will be tediously fact oriented.
Sorry the holiday season will be rendered somewhat anemic,
and a bunch of expletives will loose their impact.
next up, one month without science:
i hope my hunter gatherer techniques are sharp, a month is a long time to last without using a can opener.
lights out at the ER?
dont even think about turning the key in that hummer!
what are the ramifications of temporarily decommissioning gravity?
on the upside there wont be any cell phones interrupting my movies.....
Pastafarianism brought up a great point when they requested 1/3 class time for teaching about the flying spagetti monster. ID doesn't deserve class time if we don't give class time to every single creation theory from every religion. But at the same time, I take issue with evolution being pushed as absolute truth.
I believe in macro and microevolution. We can prove microevolution, but Macro is a bit trickier. The problem with macro evolution is that to create a new speicies, a really new speicies (something as different from the 'root' species as we are from Homo Hablis), takes long, long periods of time. We can't prove Macroevolution yet (Yet being the key word), but it is pushed as the final and only answer. Just because we don't have any better answers doesn't mean its right. It also doesn't mean we shouldn't educate students using it, but they need to know this is our best guess and prove beyond a doubt.
(You might be able to trace a series of species from, say, T-Rex to a chicken, but who is to say the sweeping genetic changes were not the result of the Flying Spagetti Monster changing the genetic code with his noodly appendages?)
I simply think they need to address 3 issues when teaching Evolution
1) Evolution has been shown to create small changes in the same species.
2) We have no hard evidence of Species X evolving from Species Y, but this may be because the transitional stage was been too short or otherwise left no fossils.
3) There are alternative theories that believe life is too complex to be the result of an unguided process, but they are unproven.
a) If you don't respond to these people they take it as a sign that they're right - you don't want to engage in debate because you'd lose.
b) If you respond then they take it as a sign that the "debate" is real and ongoing - ie. that they might be right.
Damned if you do, damned if you don't, as you said.
I think option (a) is best because you don't waste your life tackling an infinite supply of religious baboons. Or at least, you can focus on the people who count.
That this happens at all in a so-called enlightened society is shameful.
My only response these days is to ask them whether they believe in Zeus/Thor/etc. When they say "no, of course not" I tell them that I don't believe in their god, and for the same reasons.
PS: It's best to use olde-worlde gods like Zeus/Thor. If you mention Buddah/Mohammed or anything like that then they just put on their +5 blinkers-of-blindness.
No sig today...
Wow! Such a short article, void of any details, gets all the Slashdot "scientists" lathered up and attacking religion. Me thinks there is a lot to this story that wasn't in the article. After all, it's the NYT. They'll never pass on an opportunity to make religion (except Islam) look silly.
3cx.org - A truly bad website.
You star spangled banner is being torn in front of yourselves by none other than your fellow citizens!
Lamarck and Darwin both had different meme sets. The meme which Lamarck is known for is the inheritance of acquired characteristics, but he believed in other beliefs, like the great progressive chain of being.
Darwin actually believed in the inheritance of acquired characteristics, since it was commonly accepted in his day. It wasn't until Gregor Mendel's experiments were applied to evolutionary theory that people definitively realized that "genes" were the main pathway by which characteristics were acquired. Up until then there was always debate. Turns out the non-inheritance of unfit genetic code was the main driver of the qualities of inheritance.
Darwin didn't know about genetics. The Modern Synthesis is the combination of the ideas of natural selection and inheritance by genes, but that happened well after Darwin's passing.
From beyond the borders of the USA, of which I know little, can I just say that the rest of the world would like the USA to keep right on "thinking through all of the fringe theories", and we wish them luck with the lottery approach to scientific progress. Can I recommend looking for the hole in the North pole that gives entry to the inside of the planet, checking out some of the early patented perpetual motion machines, and examining the psyche of the Intelligent Designer to get insights into cures for cancer? Meanwhile, the rest of us will proceed with Real Science (TM), which involves building the best testable hypothesis for what we can see, and testing it. The more tests it withstands, the stronger it becomes. Guess which one has produced the best results in the years since the Enlightenment?
the one with the worst hellfire, of course.
... one that threatens you even before death?!
Given that, atheists should get together and decide that they're going to tell all the religious people that if they keep believing in religion, they'll send them all to an eternal hellfire where they keep their brains going indefinitely with a new drug that prolongs life indefinitely. The hellfire will be a pain amplifier. No, you will not be given mercy if you later renounce your religion.
None of it has to be true, but if they can come up with a _secular_ hellfire, then maybe they can be effective converters given the kinds of people that fall to the illogical wager of Blaise Pascal.
Because, after all, the religious seem to mostly want to scare you _after_ death, when it doesn't matter anymore. What's more of a wager -- a religion that has to wait until after you can no longer change your mind before presenting hellfire, or
Perhaps not. It'd only start an arms race where the religious now feel the need, as happens all too often, to punish people in this lifetime, not just the next...
What I wonder is why people need to try to convert people when the religion is supposed to be personally revealed? Every time I use logic to destroy people's arguments about religion, I get told that it's just personally revealed to them. I guess they think that I'll miss his attempts to directly communicate with me, so if they don't properly prepare me, I might miss out on my chance to see the gastronomic halluciniations^W^Wproof they all have.
The entire damn thing was stupid to begin with (because ID isn't science, and she damn well should have an opinion against non-science being taught in the science classroom), but this takes the cake. Where's the "critical of ID" part? So in Texas, letting someone know about a conference that (presumably) criticizes ID is the same as openly criticizing it yourself?
As a matter of fact, this is precisely what one of the ID proponents attacked. There existed certain biological mechanisms (such as the flagellum(sp?) rotor) for which evolution had no satisfactory explanation. There was no intermediate series of steps which would have produced a useful structure; it either had to be produced all at once (which would have involved an astronomically improbably coincidence of molecules), or created by an intelligent designer. While this particular example has been shown evolutionarily plausible, some other parts of the biological world (such as the formation of amino acids) are still a long way off. With what we know now, it is much more plausible that amino acids were formed by an intelligent agent than a serendipitous series of random events. Perhaps some mechanism will be discovered explaining the initial formation of amino acids, but at the current time, it is just not plausible.
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Well, information is usually a very quantifiable thing, and creationists love to bandy it about and even invoke information theory, but they never seem to be able to explain how it's actually measured in the context they're using. Even the amazing Bill Dembski, for all of his mathematical bluster, can't seem to calculate the amount of "information" as he sees it in a couple of DNA strings. All we get are hand waving analogies like the one you provided. I strongly suggest that you stop referring to "information" because you're not referring to information in the sense that any information theorist would use.
Yes, that's quite true. And mutations can create significant chunks of DNA, which by any reasonable measure, increases information in the genome.
The problem is that you've made it so simple that you've made it wrong. Information-wise both the fish and the unicellular have 4 possible symbols (or "letters"). One just has more than the other. The fish genome almost certainly has more information than the simple organism does, but that says nothing about whether mutations create information or not. Simply adding a random nucleotide to the unicellular creature's genome will increase its information content and cause it to creep closer to the fish's genome in information quantity. Do something drastic like copy a long chunk of DNA and you've created even more information by any meaningful measurement. That's why I'm asking for a quantifiable definition of information--without it, creationists tend to say, "Well, that's not what I mean by information." By all appearances, they want "information" to mean "A quantity which increases that mutations cannot cause to increase."
Well, in theory, when you say information "decreases" there's almost certainly a quantity associated with that, yes? It's not like love where I can say, "I love you more than I love ice cream" but be completely unable to quantify it. For example, if I give you two DNA strands:
AGCTTAGGT
CCCTAATGC
Which one has more information in it, by your calculations?
As to your reference, it looks like Spetner wants to use thermodynamic entropy and Shannon information. That's fine, and it's a perfectly good measure of information. What is clear from a basic examination of mutations and entropy is that mutations can and do (often) increase information by that measure. And of course, there's the article asserting (from nowhere, as far as I can tell):
The quantity "specified complexity" is, for want of a more polite term, complete crap. Nobody has ever calculated the amount of "specified complexity" in any string, much less proved the probability of mutations increasing or decreasing it. It's a quantity that, as far as I can tell, exists only in the minds of creationists. This assertion is not
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
I hate people that think you must be religious to have morals, like that youtube kid that says "If you believe we come from monkeys then why not act like one?" It's not courage to kill yourself if you believe that will lead to eternal happiness, that's selfishness. If you require the threat of an angry God to be an honorable person then you are weak. Why are religious fanatics the ones to bomb abortion clinics and send death threats to people that don't want ID taught in schools? Not very Christ-like...
But it's better than claiming you know for a fact that a group of aliens stole the dinosaurs and put them in a zoo on the far side of the moon because you read it in a book written thousands of years ago. It couldn't possibly have been an asteroid impact because I personally know an asteroid that big never hit the earth. And I know that was just 6,000 years ago in the garden of eden when salamanders grew to 50' tall before the only man on earth ate an apple from the wrong tree because a snake spoke and made the only woman do it first.
Fundamentalist religions - not just Xtianity. "Critical thinking" in it's many and varied forms is normally banned, to the point of excommunication, banishment, torture or death in theocracies for precisely this reason. "Theocracies" includes pretty much all "Western" societies prior to 1600 (+/-, we've no need to get picky about calendars). That must make life pretty fraught in the developing theocracy of Gilead, for you poor people. but don't worry, I'm sure that your authorities are carefully preserving your online writing, so that you can be tried appropriately for your crimes, as they will be defined.
One minor quibble : you say "And even if someone did tell him there were cavemen in 100 AD -- I don't know -- ". Well, you can rest fairly well assured that there were still "cave men" within any reasonable definition in 100AD :
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Some Evangelicals may be Protestant but I don't believe they all are. Catholics aren't Protestant either, and most definitely Muslims aren't either. Muslims protest Jesus was the last word sure, Mohammad was, but they're not Protestants.
FalconShould there be a Law?
When you look at the DNA for a single-celled organism compared to that of a fish, you will find a fish has a lot more DNA information not present in the single-celled organism.
An amoeba has more DNA (by molecular count) than homo sapiens. It would appear as though you have not thoroughly researched the subject on which you speak.
As to the remarkable coincidence, this article covers this quite nicely and thoroughly. A very short summary would be that having similar DNA simply means a designer uses the same building blocks for similar things, but does not definitely indicate that one species evolved from another.
Please explain the mechanism by which the "designer" implemented the alleged "design".
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
I guess you missed the point, I am pointing out the amount of information contained in the DNA. Some estimates, using your scenario is on order of a magnitude in difference between an Amoeba and a human in terms of DNA information content. DNA of amoeba: 5 x 10^8 bits of information Human: 6x10^9 bits of information Information is a generalized term related to the specified complexity of the DNA. Mutations of the DNA in the lab have shown a loss of information most of the time and never an increase in information. And information isn't just duplication of the same DNA, that is similar to make a copy of the same letter on the copy machine - no new information, just the same information twice. Tests have never been able to show where information is added - which leads to dramatically different species/kinds. Not sure what you mean by the mechanism that the designer used, but you raise an important other point that evolution cannot explain. We all agree DNA exists and contains the blueprint for how any living organism grows and is fashioned into what it becomes. DNA by itself does nothing, it is the blueprint, you still need the "computer" if you will that interprets that information and causes certain chemical interactions to occur to produce the expected result. Where DID that computer come from? Kind of like a chicken and the egg problem for evolution, but not a problem for ID. God created the computer and the DNA.
I tried something like this -- it was called a hundred sided die and it had the considerable drawback that the damn thing never stopped rolling. I guess that makes it a better representation of reality, but it means it sucks as a means of determining outcomes by random number generation.
Some genius must have been really, really stoned, picked up a golf ball, and said "let's make a die out of it!"
Mal-2
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
I guess you missed the point, I am pointing out the amount of information contained in the DNA. Some estimates, using your scenario is on order of a magnitude in difference between an Amoeba and a human in terms of DNA information content. DNA of amoeba: 5 x 10^8 bits of information Human: 6x10^9 bits of information Information is a generalized term related to the specified complexity of the DNA.
Perahps you can actually explain these numbers rather than just asserting them. How do you measure information in DNA? Be specific. A previous poster offered two strings of identical length and asked for an evaluation of which contained more information; you have not responded to that. Why?
Mutations of the DNA in the lab have shown a loss of information most of the time and never an increase in information.
This is where you reveal that you haven't actually done research. Mutations typically change information rather than remove (or add to) it -- unless you are using a different definition of "information" than a typical geneticist would use when discussing "information" as it relates to genetics; if so, present your definition so that it can be evaluated. Mutations can also add information through gene duplication; while gene duplication itself merely replicates existing "information" such that the same information occurs twice where it once occured only once, further point mutations on one of the duplicates will result in an increase in the total information in the genome. See here, and at least try to explain why the information contained therein is false rather than dismissing it outright without bothering to address a single detail (as so many creationists often do when dealing with information from Talk Origins).
And information isn't just duplication of the same DNA, that is similar to make a copy of the same letter on the copy machine - no new information, just the same information twice.
True, but when a gene is duplicated changes to one of the copies do result in new information, because the result is a net increase in the total information.
Tests have never been able to show where information is added - which leads to dramatically different species/kinds.
This claim is just false. Have you actually done any research?
Not sure what you mean by the mechanism that the designer used,
You assert that a "designer" is responsible for patterns of similarity in genetics across species through "code reuse". This implies that a "designer" of some sort exists and that this "designer" used some mechanism to put DNA in place across individual species. State the mechanism that this "designer" used.
I fail to understand why my request could be considered puzzling.
but you raise an important other point that evolution cannot explain. We all agree DNA exists and contains the blueprint for how any living organism grows and is fashioned into what it becomes. DNA by itself does nothing, it is the blueprint, you still need the "computer" if you will that interprets that information and causes certain chemical interactions to occur to produce the expected result.
Are you referring to RNA and ribosomes?
Where DID that computer come from? Kind of like a chicken and the egg problem for evolution, but not a problem for ID.
You are incorrect. The theory of evolution addresses the emergence of extant biodiversity from common ancestry. The process requires extant life at the "beginning" to occur. How that original life came to exist, while a subject of interest to biologists, is not itself a part of the theory of evolution and never has been.
God created the computer and the DNA.
Interesting. Major ID proponents, like Michael Behe, have claimed that "Intelligent Design" need not involve a "God", and that the "designer" need not be a deity or supernatural in origin. This claim has even
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
... and it was just earlier this year that the governor of Texas appointed a creationist to lead the Texas Board of Education. Things are going downhill here in Texas lately. :(
The way you ask your question begs for a rhetorical blessing such as:
Wouldn't "control" be the relish of a punishing god, as opposed to a (for)giving one, and wouldn't then such disasters be simple reminders of its influence and wrath?
It's only human to want, if not need an explanation, one that is possibly as grand, reaching or mysterious as the emotions that we encounter as we taste the meat of life, be it pain or awe; the further distanced from empirical reality one is able to conceptualize, the less contradictory the answer need be, while when less is derived or known, the easier it is to wave/explain (these) away.
However, in the case of such disasters, one's ability to cope as an individual and perhaps even as a group is not limitless. I would rather think that the more a region is under (un)natural duress, the more difficult it may be for the populace as a whole to move beyond mere spiritual survival, and thus the likely continued prevalence of (or reliance in) any given system of beliefs.
Since god is everywhere and in all things, etc., I once got a rather motivated room mate to admit that therefore, he was god!
It took the good part of a half-hour of running around in circles, after which I simply started selectively agreeing with a bunch of his hallmark-approved claims or conclusions until, in the end, he had nowhere to turn, he was cornered by his own words, and then I asked the question, and not being an idiot he knew it was coming, and so he immediately answered with "Yes!"
He had no choice but to admit (humbly?) that he was god.
I have to admit that at this point I did smile, nevertheless, that was the last time I ever felt the need to prove that point to myself, and I don't mean to (dis)prove the possibility of a god, but rather, to end the debate according to their own verbiage.
The reasons go all the way back to the original design and creation of mankind by God. Man and woman were created for each other as distinct and complimentary persons so that they might learn through their relationship who God is and what his plans for mankind are. Anything outside of the traditionally accepted 1 man + 1 woman relationship was and is frowned upon in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Contemporary problems such as the one you bring up are created by people that don't adhear to tradition; they simply weren't issues in Christ's day.
And you realize that Einstein, when he wrote this, did not mean a Christian god, or anything like a diety at all, right? He believed in the "god" of Spinoza and used the term to describe a sensible universe built of physical laws. At best he was a deist, but not a creationist by any means. All creationists, in the scientific contexts, are idiots. As would be bankers who promoted monopoly money, or historians, who based their history on episodes of Dr. Who, or mathmaticians who decided that feelings should replace numbers. It's just dumb, dumb, dumb to promote non-science as science and to respect anyone who does so seriously, whether it's creationism or the sun made of molten gold.
Professor of Astronomy, Author of Spider Star & Star Dragon (Tor)
The reasons go all the way back to the original design and creation of mankind by God.
I don't believe in any Supreme Deity whether "God" or not. Nor do I have any religious beliefs. The closest I've come is I used to have spiritual beliefs however I no longer believe them.
Man and woman were created for each other as distinct and complimentary persons so that they might learn through their relationship who God is and what his plans for mankind are. Anything outside of the traditionally accepted 1 man + 1 woman relationship was and is frowned upon in the Judeo-Christian tradition.
Even Judeo-Christians had in the Bible Intersexuals or eunuchs. Interexuals are those born with sexual organs that could be either female, male, or hermaphrodite. That's a medical fact not a matter of how a person acts. Isaiah 56:3-5 says "Nor let the eunuch say 'See, I am a dry tee.' For thus says the Lord: to the eunuchs who observe my sabbaths and choose what pleases me and hold fast to my convenant, I will give, in my house and within my walls, a monument and a name Better than sons and daughters;"
You may say that Isaiah is Old Testament, however you did say "Judeo-Christian". The New Testament's book Matthew, 19:10-12 says Jesus "spoke of those who were born eunuchs".
Finally "Deuteronomy also forbids eating shellfish, mixing seed in a field, or blending fabrics." Yet many Christians do one or of these.
FalconShould there be a Law?
I never said scale didn't matter. The parent I replied to claimed there were two different things, macro evolution and micro evolution. In reality the difference is between a camp fire and a forest fire, not the difference between chemical burning and nuclear fusion. There is no difference between the claimed micro and macro evolutions. So-called macro evolution is merely many steps of micro evolution occurring after each other in order to effect a large enough change in the genome for us to see the effects. That is like saying I know that gravity makes the planets revolve around the sun, but it would be impossible for that to happen more than 100 times. If it happens 101 times, then God just moved the planets where he liked them to be, gravity didn't cause them to move there. You can see that ID fanaticists don't actually believe in "micro-evolution" even though it has been observed in the lab, but that they just switch the conversation to "macro-evolution" to confuse the issue.
It's like me dropping an apple 100 times in front of an ID believer, and him saying "Whatever, even if gravity does exist, I'll believe it only when you drop that 5 ton boulder over there." It's like me pedaling a bicycle and showing them that if I pedal 5 times the bike will move 10 meters, but they don't believe that I can keep pedaling the bike all the way to my father's house 45 miles away. God created my father over there and me here, etc...
The first reference to the 10 Commandments is in Exodus 20. Lets take a look at it shall we? Note the strongs numbers, so you can look up the Hebrew lexicon yourself.
Exo 20:16 "Thou shalt not bear (Strongs 6030) false (strongs 8267) witness (strongs 5707) against thy neighbor (strongs 7453 )."
H6030 = Speak, give account
H8267 = Untruth, lie, deceit
H5707 = Witness, testimony
H7452 = brother, companion, friend, lover
Your view, while admirable, is incorrect really. Sorry.
Do not confuse Roman Catholicism with Christian fundamentalism.
Let's review some of the larger differences:
It is particularly unsettling that critics of Christianity will deride it for not embracing reason; yet, when Christians do so, their arguments are rejected a priori, because they are Christian, not because they are flawed. Which leaves observers with the impression that the detractors of Christianity do so simply out of some deep-seated emotional problems or hidden agenda. Should it surprise anyone that the public in general is distrustful of scientists when the prominent members refuse to enter into a logical debate with Christians? Shouldn't someone skilled in the use of reason be able to roundly and quickly win such a debate? Yet, more often than not, those prominent in the sciences dismiss Christian positions without any reason whatsoever. People can tell a hypocrit when they see it, and this, I think, is why science has such a bad reputation in the US. It's not because a bunch of fundamentalists are brainwashing people.
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the current Roman Catholic position is more in line with Theistic evolution
Yea, Pope John Paul II acknowledged evolution.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Science is Science and God is God and n'er the twain shall meet.
May I offer a peace treaty?
Science attempts to explain how things happen. Religion attempts to ascribe meaning and purpose to situations and events. As rational as we are we cannot escape our humanity and the fact that as humans we all do and think things which are less than rationally optimal. Irrational Jealousy. Sex and Love. Alcohol and drug addictions. Fatty food. Hatred of others. Bad decisions. Marriage. Birth. Death. To try to ram all of human existance into a purely rational perspective is to create a punishing and ultimately meaningless reality. You are no longer a human being, you are a robot. And you'll miss a lot of fun, for example, because the sex act is not meant to undergo rational analysis. It's another realm of experience.
So it always bugs me out that we are trying to reconcile these two things in the same contexts. There are different parts of your brain that are meant to employ both but neither is meant to rule over the other. It's one of the mysteries of being a human being and you can't stamp that out. As soon as you say one is meant to rule over the other: try to build an airplane using only the bible as a reference (you will fail), or try to lead a community in which all quote unquote "irrationality" is forbidden (you will fail).
So everybody leave each other alone. Do your scientific jobs at work and when your loved ones die and you get cancer and you're wrongly condemned for something... well its up to you how to react to that. And if you're a preacher, do your thing during the day and don't forget to give some public credit to the people who invented your microphone, car, your iPod, etc.
But first and foremost everybody stop trying to do the other person's job!