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Louisiana Passes Intelligent Design Law
H0D_G writes "The US state of Louisiana has passed the 'Science Education Act,' a piece of legislation that could allow Intelligent design to be taught in schools. From the article: 'The act is designed to slip ID in "through the back door"'"
...we all know how Christianity feels about slipping things in through the back door.
Watch this be shot down in court like the last one in....
ID is such a piece of bullshit.
-- oldthinkers unbellyfeel ingsoc
Makes sense...after you've experienced the great flood (Katrina), why shouldn't you believe everything else in the Bible?
.. as it also opens the door for the teachings of our noodly saviour
So, when are they going to give equal time to the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
Kevin Smith on Prince
As a member of the Church of FSM, I am insulted. If they are allowed to teach ID in the classroom, then the story of the Flying Spaghetti Monster should be allowed as well. Blessed be his noodly greatness!
priests should do it, but not talk about it?
intelligent design (ID) - the proposition that life is too complicated. Go go Ganesh!
Stop believing, start thinking.
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
they are almost always at the bottom of the list when it comes education in this country or are the butt of jokes about being backwoods hicks.
If they like being laughingstocks, that's no skin off my nose. They have no one to blame but themselves.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
ID is not science. It's not even rational thinking. If we're going to teach ID, why not Astrology and Palm Reading while we're at it? They're every bit as valid as ID.
If I had a kid in the Louisiana school system, I'd start home-schooling (assuming I hadn't already).
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
eh...build a ark.
Disclaimer: So damn funny that stole this from someone else.
All glory to the Hypnotoad!
The Long Now Foundation
Dear Louisiana,
Please do not slip anything through my child's back door. Intelligent design or otherwise.
Yours,
A Parent.
PS: I look forward to a pirate-based global warming curriculum.
Use the Firehose to mod down Second Life stories!
... right where ID belongs.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
There's no need to be a "Bible-belt" politician - a simple politician will do.
It seems that in Louisiana the Bible thumpers have gained some pretty big influence, if the 94-3 and unanimous votes mean anything. A veto would have no chance to stand, so Jindal took the easy way out and signed the law.
However, he might have lost a lot in the process. By not challenging the majority, he just stands in the middle of the mainstream. If he had vetoed the law, he would have stood as a voice for reason. He might have lost the next election, but he's liable to lose it anyhow, since he seems to be indistinguishable from at least 94 other politicians.
are we so afraid that science will lose the fight?
Is it "afraid" to not want my children taught an out-and-out lie, which is precisely what creationism and its bastard offspring, ID, are?
If you haven't been down-modded lately, you aren't trying.
Sacred cows make the best hamburger.
Evolution is both a theory and a fact. (un)Intelligent design is pile of crap sugar coated to look like science. It is not a valid scientific hypothesis because it doesn't have an valid data or methodologies to back it up. I don't know what state or school you were taught in, but in most classes I have attended, the focus isn't on the theory but on how and why the conclusion was reached, it a sad day when politic have driven education to put the focus on the conclusion rather than how the conclusion was reached.
...is not even the fact that Intelligent Design is ironic in its title, but that people actually think it is *valid science* -- it's not even science! At MOST, this should be taught in a philosophy class, and nothing more. I don't care how many people are supposedly of the Christian faith, it is not valid science, therefore should not be taught in science class. End of story...
There are mountains to cross for those that are willing.
Whenever I see or read about religious fanatics of whatever creed do their things to try to stop science, I just watch this video from Discovery Channel:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=at_f98qOGY0
It reminds me that the world is filled with people who love the world just like it is, and who are curious about how it all works, and who wants to do real science.
The creationists and other science-destroying idiots can't win against that, it's like trying to stop children from being curious.
So relax. The ID agenda is just religions resisting change in a world that is slowly but surely becoming more secular. Real science will win in the end, it always does.
Why is the act called the Science Education act while no science at all is involved?
So, I guess we'll finally here the truth from the government on why aliens from Area 51 made so many homosexuals?
Eurohacker European paranoia, gun rights, and h
No, but after fighting the same battles over and over with the same types of losers* for generations, maybe it's time to move on.
* the same "usual suspects" as always - the religious/superstitious who aren't able to convice people using logical arguments ("you gotta have faith" sure isn't a logical argument) want to have unfettered access to promote their agendas in schools. You can have equal access to schools when atheists have equal access to your pulpits and sunday schools.
Fucking losers. Their existence is proof that Intelligent Design doesn't exist.
Kevin Smith on Prince
The problem isn't proving that evolution is true. The problem is that ID can't be proven false. It's like demanding Scientology be taught in schools because it can't be proven false even though most sane people know it's just bad science fiction.
If our youth is educated to think that for every unexplainable phenomenon in the universe, that intelligent design is the cause, then what chance do we have of actually expanding our knowledge of the universe through science? All that this would seem to accomplish is an overwhelming inclination to just throw in the towel for "spooky" phenomenon.
The way I see it, our scientific future is going to be divided amongst folks who want to get to the bottom of things, and those who think I.D. is the cause hence "Nothing more to see here, let's move along people". The world is setup that way already, this would only seem to make it worse.
FWIW, I grew up a Christian and blindly believed the world is as it is because God made it that way. I've since come to the realization, like many others, that although this may be true to a certain degree (if you believe), leave it out of the schools. Let schools teach "the world" and churches to teach "The other stuff". Just my $.02
We cannot trust students to believe the correct things if we allow them to be exposed to ideas that we disapprove of.
We must be alert to the danger that public policy could become captive to a scientific-technological elite. - Eisenhower
Sure, just as soon as you explain how ID is a scientific theory.
No, because the whole point of science is never knowing for sure. You can never stop investigating and experimenting, because there are always things you don't know that you don't know and you have to question everything.
Yes, you can have a significant body of evidence that supports a theory, which can reliably predict outcomes. Classical Newtonian Physics, for instance, works for most things you encounter in your daily life, but is hardly the last word on Physics. Hell, field theory and quantum mechanics pretty much undo it, at least at the microscopic level.
Similarly, Mendelin heredity more or less works, but is hardly the last word on genetics. Even since the discovery of DNA, we've learned all sorts of new things.
Evolution is an observable natural phenomena. Natural Selection seems to explain it, but there could be other things we don't know and so we have to search them out.
Hell, God *could* exist and *could* have intelligently designed the universe. It's highly unlikely, but not impossible. What *IS* certain however, is that the certainty with which ID/Creationist proponents cling to that crap belies any scientific credit that their approach has.
Certainty is the antithesis of science, at least in my view. I'm sure some PhD will come along and bitch slap me down now.
First of all, this is a dupe.
Secondly, while nervous, the ACLU says this bill is not unconstitutional.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
As soon as the ID crowd can provide proof of any sort to move their take on things from fairy tale category to testable theory, then they can begin teaching it in classrooms.
Wonder if I'll be reading about this in 20 years from the prospective that this is what allowed religious fanatics to create generations of religiously indoctrinated Christianized children that jail and execute intellectuals.
What they really want is creationism. Like in Teh Book. If they can't have that, they settle for the next best retardation, as long as it is not that evil Darwinian heresy. It is not really about them particularly hating evolution, its about them still being pissed off because they were proven wrong. They would do the same with Copernicus, if they could.
It's not like I said anything that wasn't known for centuries, either.
You forgot one thing. ID is not science. There's no problem with teaching it in a social studies course. Knock yourself out. But once you teach it in a science course, you've crossed the line into insanity.
You're missing the point, ID is not science and shouldn't be taught in a science class. It's perfect for a class on religion or christianity, but don't even try to present it as some sort of equally plausible alternative to evolution.
When I was a kid in school I had classes on all the major religions, and their creation myths, including christianity. I've read the old testament in literature classes. I've had physics classes that taught about the Big Bang. And I've had biology classes that taught evolution.
Noone is saying that we shouldn't teach everything, but each thing has a place, and biology classes is not the place for ID.
I hear this excuse for ID all the time. "We need to teach both, for the children to have a well rounded education".
I'll meet them half way. Go ahead teach your ID in schools, For The Children. And because we care so much that the children receive both sides of the story, you start teaching evolution in Sunday School. After all, it's for the sake of the children.
While I agree with you, teaching philosophy in science class is not the way to achieve critical thinking.
ID is a philosophy, and not an alternative scientific theory. As such, I have no problem with it being taught - just with it being taught in science class.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Science education in this country is getting ridiculous. We go and try to teach scientific "facts" to kids before we actually teach critical thinking and scientific method. It's the NATURE of science that there are - or should be - no "sacred cows" - including evolution or ID or whatever. There is NO room for dogma in scientific thought, and we are seeing way too many people discount notions of the supernatural simply because it's supernatural. Science should be open to everything - including the unmeasurable and unexplainable.
ID has no "side" in an argument, any more than "It's turtles all the way down" has a side in a discussion about the structure of the solar system.
If you haven't been down-modded lately, you aren't trying.
Sacred cows make the best hamburger.
You obviously learned about "Dawkins" and his theory of evolution from an ID teacher.
The submitter could have at least linked to the text of the bill that was actually passed instead of linking to a piece of alarmist journalism. I really don't think there is anything for us to be worried about here. The act allows teachers to "use supplementary textbooks and other instructional materials to help students understand, analyze, critique, and review scientific theories in an objective manner." Teachers cannot teach ID or creationism. In fact, the law "shall not be construed to promote any religious doctrine, promote discrimination for or against a particular set of religious beliefs, or promote discrimination for or against religion or nonreligion." Additionally, Joe Cook, director of the ACLU for Louisiana has said that the act is constitutional as written. This bill is probably totally unnecessary, but simply promotes objective thinking about all scientific topics. Now that is scientific right?
When decisions made are based not on reason but on faith what actions follow are certainly unreasonable.
Once again the poor public school science curriculum is exposed. If the adults pushing this garbage had been taught what science is, they would not be so easily duped by the snake-oil salesmen posing as modern day prophets.
I don't think you are being fair. Science is a philosophy with a very rigid set of rules. If you want to teach an alternate philosophy, that is fine, but don't try to lump it into "science" class. To do so is disingenuous. It would be akin to legislating a new God into Christianity.
ID is not a "version" of science. It is its own separate philosophy.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
American schools: brought to you by the same great people who created the USPS and Guatanamo Bay.
Give parents vouchers, and let them decide how to educate their children. If we let the government decide what to teach, than we're no better than the system used in the USSR. We cheered when they dumped socialism, yet we've allowed that same system (government control of gritty details) to control our kid's education. Gritty details include evolution or intelligent design. How did we get into such a mess that governments are deciding this stuff?
Free unix account: freeshell.org
How is differentiating science and philosophy censorship? ID fails being testable and then proceeds to use the Watchmaker argument that has been around since the 18th century. I wouldn't go as far to say ID is blatantly Platonic but the idea that there is a master blueprint carries uncomfortable parallels to Platonic forms. ID sounds like a mish-mash of Western philosophy masquerading as "science", no doubt helped by the origins of Western science being found in Western philosophy.
Its not science loosing the fight thats the problem.
science is the method with which you fight its how you (should) reach conclusions based on evidence.
The problem is ID doesn't rely on science - the entire premise whether it's aliens god or David lister on red dwarf is that at some point someone intervened.
There is no way to prove this so it isn't scientific.
There is nothing in science to say that the entire world didn't pop into existence 5 seconds ago as a quantum fluctuation and that the anti earth that also would have popped into existence wasn't just eaten by the sun (see hawking radiation), so long as over all energy/mass are conserved you can do pretty much what you want. I'm not suggesting that this is the case but as with ID it doesn't matter even if it was - we couldn't tell anyway.
Unless ID can create a solid proof as well as solid testable predictions it isn't science, its philosophy.
No one has ever claimed that Dawkins DOES have all the answers.
Also, it's very common knowledge that Science doesn't currently have all the answers. That's more or less the point.
However, we ARE afraid that Science 'will lose the fight', and with good reason; It's happened before, with all the Islamic countries.
http://www.chowk.com/articles/9555
Basically, they had high points of Science and Technology, but their rabid spiritualists tried to force every little thing to be expressed in terms of religion (Just like this bill is doing) until they became what they are today. They were once top in the world, and now they are firmly at the bottom.
It can happen to us too, and will happen unless we fight back.
Perhaps, they feel with the change in composition in the Supreme Court with Bush's last couple of appointments that this has a better chance of standing up that previous attempts.
Shop smart, Shop S-Mart.
E. Keep your religious horseshit out of my child's head.
So instead of focusing on rebuilding your hurricaine-damaged homes, you decide to damage your education system and make it an even greater laughing stock than the Kansas Board of Education. I would normally applaud this because it opens the door for teachings about His Noodley Appendage, but of course, do you really think those right-wing nut jobs are going to let the FSM be taught along-side ID?
If you want to know more about the modern form of ID, read up on the main proponents and creators of this "theory": the Discovery Institute. You'll find that they aren't really a scientific body so much as a political group founded by Reagan-administration bureacrats that are propping up phony scientists.
You'll also find about their manifesto, known as the Wedge. Their agenda is really just to force the Christian God upon all of us. Also, read up on the Dover trial, where one of their main "scientists" had to admit under oath that for ID to be considered science, the definition of science would have to be changed to allow astrology to be considered science as well. Wikipedia's good for all of this.
"...today consumers have been conditioned to think of beer when they see a bullfrog..."
How can you support teaching ID in science classrooms? It's not science. Evolution is science. Science is not about arguments, it's about facts. If it's in a current events or critical thinking class then teaching ID might have merit, but there is no excuse for teaching non-scientific material in a science class. I doubt you think we should reconsider teaching other theories such as gravity, relativity, etc, so why reconsider evolution? Should we also teach a "intelligent falling" to students for those of us that don't believe in gravity?
Both sides of WHAT argument? ID is not an argument to anyone but an idiot. They present nothing testable, just "This is what is, so teach it!"
The question isn't whether or not to teach more than one possibility, but that we only want them to teach scientifically supported facts.
Every aspect of evolution is subject to scrutiny, and incremental improvement as new facts come to light, where as ID is sold as an absolute and infallible truth.
ID is an interesting topic for a philosophy class, not science.
I don't come to your church and try to lobby the idea of atheism, so I respectfully ask that no one try to sell superstition in my kids' science classes.
They are allowing it to be taught on equal footing (I think). That would be similar to allowing an alternate teaching of gravity. Nobody has proven the fundamental reason gravity works, though it has been demonstrated that the effect has certain parameters and is highly repeatable. Evolution has similar backing. Other theories, such as the various stories of creation by Christians, Pastafarians, et alias, do not have the base of scientific review. It is not "science." It should be taught in the appropriate class - i.e. Religion.
If some people want to call parts of science class a sham, that's fine. Science has been shown to be wrong in some cases over time, such as the model of the atom, but science is specifically about updating as new discoveries are found. Don't start teaching religion in science class, or literature in mathematics class for that matter.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
That's the real problem. We need to teach critical thinking so that people can recognize the morons when they see them.
No sig today...
I remember when I was in school (non-US), we had an "alternative creationist theories" lessons, but I remember our teacher saying: "The problem is, there is not much to tell about other theories, because they are ... well, not theories in scientific sense of the word." So we had like half of the single lesson (~ 20 min) dedicated to all other theories (I don't even remember them now :) )
May Peace Prevail On Earth
detect sarcasm much?
neither is there any concrete scientific evidence of evolution, apart from the strong surviving over the week, which can hardly be used to back up macro-evolution.
Dude, you might want to get your facts right : http://www.newscientist.com/channel/life/dn14094-bacteria-make-major-evolutionary-shift-in-the-lab.html
Complexity is a measure of our ignorance...
Richard Dawkins, rabid atheist, doesn't have a theory of evolution. That would be Darwin.
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
You're assuming that there's really an argument where evolution is pitted against intelligent design. This is a manufactured "controversy" from an organization called the Discovery Institute. They purposely created a campaign called "Teach the Controversy" to create this confusion. ID is NOT science and does not belong in a public class room. If you really think it does, then we should allow the FSM to be taught as well. It's just as valid as ID.
"...today consumers have been conditioned to think of beer when they see a bullfrog..."
"life is too complicated to have arisen without the help of a supernatural agent."
Yeah, but what supernatural agent would have created creatures that all poop?
stuff |
Are there any other theories supporting how humans and all the other species currently on earth got here? ID is not a scientific theory anymore than me stating that the extra terrestrials delivered us all here from some intergalactic ark. The problem here is that people don't realize the difference between cockamamie theory with no evidence to back it up, and a real scientific theory. Teaching intelligent design in school is quite comparable to what happened many years ago when people were taught that the earth was flat, or that earth was the centre of the universe, even though all knowledge from the scientific community points in completely the opposite direction. I'm all for teaching children the alternatives if any real ones exist. But just because a lot of people choose to believe something, doesn't make it fact, and doesn't mean that it should be taught in science class.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
So, should we also protect teachers who simply ACKNOWLEDGE the fact that not everyone believes the Earth is round?
A teacher's job is not to tell the children what some people believe, his job is to teach what is known to be the most accurate theory in existence.
As for teaching alternative views, I have nothing against that, as long as they are presented exactly as that: alternative. If a teacher presents the "ID" theory in class, it should be shown why ID is not a reasonable alternative to evolution. Children should be aware that ID exists, because they will find it mentioned outside of class, but they should be aware that a well-informed and intelligent person would have absolutely no doubt that evolution is the correct alternative.
Checklist:
Is the theoretical part of evolution falsifiable?
Yes [x]
No [ ]
Is intelligent design falsifiable?
Yes [ ]
No [x]
Therefore ID cannot be valid in any science.
Besides, why is ID compared to evolution? Evolution has nothing to do with abiogenesis.
Evolution is a fact. The theory element is the historical path, which makes sense (we obviously can't test the past 65M years). Ask any biologist, who work with evolutionary principles on a daily basis, whether evolution is a fact or not.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Proof is in the pudding.
No need. All the Flat Earthers have moved on to ID. With no more FE believers, the earth has taken on a distinct curve so any hurricane waters will simply run off.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/evolution-fact.html Evolution has considerable amount of data to support it, hardly the lack of evidence you seem to believe it is. and lets not kid ourselves, the religious right won't have something as trivial as "fact" to influence their argument or belief.
This is nothing more than a variation of the theory of universal moral equivalence (AKA "let's drag everyone down to the same level").
I don't know enough to argue, but playing the devil's advocate for a moment...
If he's trying to hide his Indian heritage, then why did he keep the name "Jindal"? Also, I just Wikipedia'd him, and he converted way back in high school - you think he wanted to be a politician way back then? It also says that his name is still Piyush, but his family has called him "Bobby" since he was 4 (from Bobby on the Brady Bunch).
It also says he married an Indian woman - an odd thing to do if one was trying to pretend to be white.
So after seeing everything that you said is a distortion, what the heck is your motivation?
- A racist bent on "exposing" this imposter?
- A bent-out-of-shape Indian who thinks Bobby's not Indian enough?
- Someone frustrated with his policies resorting to ad hominem attacks?
Sorry to accuse you of something like that - you could be simply uninformed, or the Wikipedia article could be complete BS.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
That's the problem. ID has already "lost the fight" but is now being propped up by law.
I know more than you drink.
Jindal will do any phony act to make the extreme-right happy, and they have been dumb enough to eat it up. It worked for GWB and his faith-based initiatives, so why not for Jindal?
"...today consumers have been conditioned to think of beer when they see a bullfrog..."
.
The Blind Watchmaker won't ever come into it, it's basically an excuse to have a tent-revival-salvation show in your child's biology class instead of teaching biology.
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
Personally, I don't mind if my kids were taught ID, or astrology, roman myths or Vietnamese Buddhism for that matter, but there's a place for those things, at least in Finland religious studies (and for the non religious, âoephilosophy of lifeâ-classes, yes literally translated). The basis of scientific thinking is, that yes, alternative theories are to be studied, but an acceptable theory must be provable and disprovable. The existence of God(s) are neither, nor is ID. Unprovable theories are for theologists and philosophists, and their respective classes at school The mark of a good scientist is the ability to scrutinize everything, from their own attitudes, to their own theories and to theories of others, and a certain willingness to be converted into a follower [sic] of another theory, a trait lacking in most religious people (which is good, as in many western religions, that's part of the point).
From the bill:
"[...] promotes critical thinking skills, logical analysis, and open and objective discussion of scientific theories being studied, including, but not limited to, evolution, the origins of life, global warming, and human cloning."
I really can't see what is so wrong with "objective discussion of scientific theories".
ID is not a scientific theory and thus has no place in such a discussion. Also if the discussion was really "objective" then the sheer merit of the theory of evolution should shine through.
If a teacher teaches ID side by side with evolution, then parents can still sue or press charges.
Dorothy: "I don't think we're in Kansas any more, Toto!"
More seriously, Intelligent Design is a belief, not a theory, and doesn't belong in school. It scares the bejesus out of some folks, though.
It needs to be pointed out that even the Catholic Church accepts the theory of evolution, and also that ID does not conflict with evolution. Science and religion answer different questions.
There's a /. sig that reads (and my quote is probably not exact) "poop is a wone word argument against intelligent design". But actually as an engineering solution poop is elegant. Cows eat grass, which turns to poop, which fertilizes the grass. It is akin to making a car whose exhaust helps produce gasoline. The laws of thermodynamics make such a car impossible, of course, but God managed to do it with the cow.
Cows are tasty, too. The US's national religion worships a golden one.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Smallshot, you consistently miss the point. Science is a hypothesis that can be proven correct or incorrect, based upon data and evidence.
It is "technically" science if I go outside and say "humm, the sky is blue, it isn't raining" one day, and the next day "humm, the sky is grey, it is raining" and make the hypothesis that the color grey causes it to rain. That is a theory that can be proven correct or incorrect, and it is based on evidence (it is wrong, but that is beside the point).
Saying "it is complicated, god did it" isn't science, because it is based on no data, and is impossible to prove.
Here
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Yeah, I guess Gravity is an unproven theory too.
The fact is that the preponderance of evidence shows that evolution is happening RIGHT NOW, and genetic studies have shown that it happened in the past (unless the Almighty is an asshole and is just trying to trick us). The genetic code is like a book, and each time it is copied, small changes are made. If you compare different copies of the book, you can estimate how long it has been since the two copies diverged.
In addition, one can go further than that, and extrapolate back from a couple of different species sections of code and get a portion of a genome that produces FUNCTIONAL PROTEINS, from DNA that no longer exists in nature.
This means that the ToE makes predictions, and those predictions have proven accurate EVERY TIME that they have been tested (read--a lot). ID makes no predictions, it's just a pile of garbage dressed up as a scientific theory. Believing in that is like believing that underpants gnomes are responsible for electricity (it obviously couldn't be electrons, those are just WAY too tiny to do the stuff electricity does, right?).
Basically, you folks believe that there is no such thing as emergent complexity, but that very phenomenon is perfectly observable in nature. ID is a fairy tale, and has no place in the scientific classroom. Get over it.
How about certainty in science? IMHO, it's not hypocritical. It is our nature to be belied by magical thinking - perhaps that has something to do with the evolution of intelligence. So science gives a method of accruing knowledge, that does a good job at cutting through cognitive bias.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
How do you propose science does that, exactly? Do you know what science is or how it works? Were you "educated" in Louisiana?
I'd love to hear your ideas on how to scientifically test something you can't measure. Even better, tell me how science should pursue the unexplainable since, by definition, it's unexplainable (according to you).
Once upon a time people couldn't explain why or how illnesses were passed on, but science came up with the germ theory of disease. Would you prefer that we just continued to think of it as unexplainable or attribute it to demons and hating Jesus?
Alas, I am becoming a god.
As a Louisiana Dad of a 5 year old and a believer in the FSM, here's my worry.
When my little one takes a science test with the following question:
1) Which of the following are probable regarding the creation of the Earth:
a) Earth was created through billions of years of natural processes
b) Earth is 6000 years old and was created by God
c) Earth is a town which split off from Delcambre (inside joke for Southern LA people)
d) Not enough information to determine.
I have taught my daughter to believe A. With this law, the teacher could mark A as wrong and set D to be the correct answer.
No offense, but there are enough stupid people in Louisiana. We shouldn't be making more of them and showcasing them to the world.
Is Darwinism so sacrosanct that it can never be questioned?
No, it can't be "questioned". It's science. It's fact. You can't question fact. While Darwinism may not be the be-all and end all, until someone PROVES that something very similar to Darwinism only with a little twist we hadn't thought about is correct, Darwinism stands. Why? Because it has been PROVEN. It's a fact of life, just like gravity.
There are questions that Darwinism can't answer. Yes, Darwinism cannot explain quantum physics, for example. Darwinism isn't too good at predicting price levels in supply and demand situations. And Darwinism really sucks for wiring your house.
Now if you fail to grasp that - it's ok. You don't HAVE to be a rational person. But there's a place for people like you. Go back to your church where you're free to contemplate your navel and convince your neighbor that your sophisticated bullshit is right and his is wrong, and stop pretending to know anything about real science.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I really hate my state sometimes. The foods great but a lot of the people really suck.
Freedom yes - but selling ID ideas as if they are science - no. Call it whatever you want, teach it to whoever listens, but if you insist on calling is science, and that catches on, then scientists will simply need a new word for what they currently call science. That's because ID is *not* science, no matter how you dress it up.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
I'm a Christian, and I don't beleive that the 7 days of the creation were earth days at all... considering that an earth day is the time that earth takes to spin in itself and that earth didn't exist until the second day makes the first day unmesureable.
Didn't the bible mention that for God a day is like a millenium and a millenium like a day?
I don't think that the bible is meant to be taken literally, it's meant to be studied and interpreted by the guidance of the Holy Ghost.
I also don't beleive in ID, the God in the bible is clearly a God of order, he prepared the humanity for the first comming of Christ for millenia, if God style was just to puff stuff out of nothing, Christ could come and die for the humanity just after Adam and Eve just commited the original sin; instead God prepared the world, choosed Abraham to form a nation, raised David to be king, etc. etc. etc.
I don't see why God couldn't had created evolution, it makes a lot of sence that if you create a world that changes (seasons, odd and even years, ages) that you populate it with life that is able to change itself and adapt. However I don't think that evolution is *random* at all, but thats just a minor point.
For the point that that would mean that human body came from the apes, I don't really care about that, I do care that my soul is made in image as God's. Clearly God doesn't need a body to interact with the universe (not talking about Christ here in this moment), I don't think that God have kidneys or a panchreas, but I do beleive that my soul is an image of his soul.
If you beleive the bible as 100% literal, the book of Revelations must look very very interesting to you. Take in mind that the target audience when the bible was written was very different from today's in the aspect for education, for them a value of Pi as 3 was a workable aproximation.
DON'T PANIC.
This is just an instance of willful stupidity. Go visit talkorigins.org for a nontechnical discussion of evolution and its evidence.
I will if you will. Unfortunately, it's their gullibility which makes them susceptible to IDiots. Children have to be guided and protected from stupid ideas for the same reason that you have to keep them away from open flames.
Honestly, evolution and science are the least of religion's problems with education. History and geography are probably more responsible for a loss of religion than science. The moment a child learns to imagine how their convictions would have changed had they been born into a different culture, religion is doomed. As soon as you realize that Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus and Christians (to name a few) have equal evidence and firm convictions for their beliefs, it is impossible to take that sort of voodoo seriously.
The problem is is that ID ISN'T science. It's like having Harry Potter being taught in History class. It's retarded.
Hey, if there is another theory for how life came to be as it is today that meets basic criteria to be a true scientific theory and that has ample and rigorous evidence to support it - I'm all for teaching it alongside evolution in science classrooms. Intelligence design, however, does NOT meet those criteria. It is NOT a scientific theory. It does NOT belong in a science classroom.
Part of the problem is that we don't teach what a theory actually IS, so it's easy to think that every hypothesis, every idea, is (or can be viewed as) a scientific theory. If we did a better job of teaching the process of science maybe it would be obvious to kids that ID isn't science, whether they believe it or not.
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
There are questions that Darwinism cannot answer. Intelligent Design is about a search for the answers to those questions.
Really? Because as far as I can tell, the answer is "some intelligent being did it. End of story." You had the answer before you even started formulating the question. So is it *really* science?
Magic doesn't work in my presence. My power of disbelief is too strong.
Trends in fossil remains are another matter though, and definitely make it likely that it is evidence for large scale evolutionary processes. Does that mean that a designer couldn't have started things off or gave things a little nudge periodically/continuously no. Both are possible, but IMHO only one is testable. After all most ID statements boil down to creationist claims (God made the world the way he wanted it, evolution doesn't happen period), or God made the world and then lets evolution happen or guides it. The last two options claim that evolution happens, the first one is the one that most agnostics have problems with I think. It is kind of hard to observe something not happening :) and prove that it never/can't happen. Where as one could see a species change from one variety to another over a bunch of generations.
Normally, I don't feed trolls, but here goes just once...
Proofs exists only in the abstract world of mathematics and logic. In the real world there is no such thing as a proof... only very, very compelling evidence, and theories that spot-on predict experimental outcomes. And of course, evolution being an intractable algorithmic process, you by definition can not predict the exact outcome of any evolution. But again, if you have ever bothered reading anything on evolution, you would have known that Darwin and evolution is not about the "why" or the "where to" question. Only about the how...
Complexity is a measure of our ignorance...
And then go on to prove black is white and vice versa. But be careful on zebra crossings!
I am appalled at the acrimonious nature of so many posts when a subject like this comes up. Is Darwinism so sacrosanct that it can never be questioned?
Of course not. It's a question of authority. Evolutionary biology is questioned hundreds of times per day in the relevant literature and amongst the professionals who spend their lives working in the field. The salient point is that now the way is cleared for the theory to be questioned ignorantly by lawyers, elementary teachers, and others who raise inane and simple objections that are quickly rebutted by any specialist. I strongly oppose science education curriculae set by those with little or no science education.
There are questions that Darwinism cannot answer. Intelligent Design is about a search for the answers to those questions. Intelligent design theory does not say that the universe is too complex to be explained by evolution.
I think that's exactly what it says. ID, and its adherents, are not interested in a "search" for the answer. They are committed to asserting the solution to questions about unknowns via postulating unknowns (what is the nature of "intelligence", anyway?). If they were *really* interested in the questions, they'd be doing science.
Many things are very complex. A pile of sand is complex, for instance.
In what way?
And a pile of sand might evolve if more sand were dumped on the pile every day. What separates one type of complexity (such as a pile of sand) from another type of complexity (such as a living organism) is that one type seems to require some kind of intelligence.
There is far more to the idea of "complexity" than this arbitrary and shallow distinction. Natural phenomena are perfectly capable of generating complex behaviors and structures. The onus is on the IDer --- what about the complexity of living things places them outside the *possible* domain of natural laws?
In that respect, the universe and a good book seem to have more in common than a sand pile has to either of them.
What a crazy argument. The Universe is surely more subtle and wonderful than we can presently understand, and maybe possibly understand. The only avenue for understanding the fundamental workings of the Universe is science.
The problem with intelligent design is that there is no theory there. Evidence against evolution is not evidence for an outside force. Even if evolution is totally wrong that is in no way evidence that intelligent design has any validity whatsoever. Just because 2+2 doesn't equal 5 doesn't mean it must equal 6.
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
Since this seems to be a forum for rehashing the ID debate and since it appears to be very polarized over religion... Here's a Christian who agrees that the ID camp has not been able to produce a valid example of irreducible complexity.
You don't know for a fact that it's gravity holding you down right now either. See you on the moon, I hear they have pools there now!
Science never claims to have all the answers, but somehow religion does? The whole point of science is to search for answers, not make them up. Show me where religion has been right about anything? I have not found one single passage in the bible that accurately explains the world we live in.
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
What I find weird about these first few comments is that Catholics have nothing to do with intelligent design. It's a born-again thing, and they utterly hate Catholics.
In order to be a legitimate scientific theory you have to be able to create tests that prove a theory as false or inaccurate - not tests that establish the theory as fact.
Once you beat the hell out of a theory from many different angles over a period of time, AND you can begin to accurately predict the outcome of your tests before you execute them, you get CREDIBILITY. It still isn't a FACT. In fact, it's still referred to as a theory by scientists.
The only facts are the results of your TEST.
Now, develop one falsifiable test on a theory of life that has ALL of its function wrapped up in the abilities of an Omnipotent, Omnicient, Omnipresent entity that does not present itself but only lets itself be known to those who demonstrate "faith"?
Now tell me why an Omniscient, Omnipresent, and Omnipotent entity needs a fucking plan? A plan gets you from state A to state B while minimizing risk and maximizing efficiencies. What part of that is needed by something that can do DO ANYTHING, KNOWS EVERYTHING, AND IS EVERYWHERE AND WHEN?
I am so sick of people spouting off "God's plan" like they have any fucking clue as to the mindset of a being as powerful as a true god. I'm no Atheist, I believe in a god, but not this anthropomorphic piece of social control zealots seem to know so well.
Science and god don't contradict one another, Science and RELIGION do. Its the one thing that religious nuts know and hate. You don't want the truth, you want your story to BE the truth.
ANY argument based on an idea that only becomes credible if you choose to accept DOGMA as truth lacks any understanding of how ANYTHING works. This becomes even more apparent when that DOGMA is focused on humans telling other humans what an OMNIPOTENT, OMNICIENT, and OMNIPRESENT beings's motivations are.
You lack the fundamental ability to even comprehend how such an existence would manifest itself, much less be able to map its quantity and depth of perception to your measly five senses (which happen to be temporally and locally bound).
And before you start ranting on how can I know a god with all this being true, let me say I can't. What I can do is immediately tell anyone who tells me that they know what God wants, or what God was thinking, that they can go fuck themselves.
Interestingly, one of the best known "intelligent design" textbook was created by doing something along these lines:
$ sed 's/creationism/intelligent design/g' creationist_textbook.txt
I am officially gone from
"You might want to check your reading level, even the sub title says "EVIDENCE OF EVOLUTION" not PROOF. From what I read, it sounds like they don't even know how the observed change occurred, it doesn't say that they know for a fact it was evolution."
You don't understand. Where is this "evidence" of ID? I can fill up my house with research papers building on Darwin's theories proving well beyond reasonable doubt that evolution theory is indeed correct to anyone that bothers to do the research themselves. There are certainly questions yet to be answered, but ID is just beyond silly when considering the vast amounts of verifiable, tested, observed evidence for evolution theory. ID is borne of faith based beliefs, and then people went out to try and find reason to take it seriously... which fails miserably with, well, everyone else.
It's all faith-based BS, and should be left in Sunday school where facts are largely unimportant, and critical thought is denounced. Remember, in most successful faith-based religions, questioning your faith is the biggest sin...
"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel Boorstin
how do you know it's a lie?
A pink giraffe was living in my back yard last week. Prove me wrong.
have you proven creationism to be a lie and not told anyone?
Creationism can't be proven wrong, which is why it isn't science.
while you're at it you might as well tell everyone how you proved evolution as fact while the rest of the world is still trying...
Ummm, evolution (as a process) is proven. There is no debate about this whatsoever. There is a tiny, vocal crowd disagreeing with that, but you'll find that with anything. Evolution (as the theory explaining the observed facts) can't be proven because nothing in science can be proven - that's not how it works.
By the way, I'm a conservative Christian.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
how do you know it's a lie? have you proven creationism to be a lie and not told anyone? while you're at it you might as well tell everyone how you proved evolution as fact while the rest of the world is still trying...
I don't need to because many people already have. Here's a few to get you started.
Honestly, not wanting your kid's science class to teach intelligent design to your kids is no different (to anyone remotely familiar with scientific evidence, anyway) than not wanting your kid's math class to teach them the "theory" that pi equals 3 (1 Kings 7:23).
You know, God can be a little time-challenged sometimes, a side effect of being omniscient (order of things gets mixed up). This law explains Hurricane Katrina; God's punishment for this law, as well as Huey Long.
(For the sarcastically challenged, this was meant as a joke.)
If I am not for myself, then who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? If not now, when?
Actually, the scientific world doesn't debate whether evolution is a fact or not. They debate the finer points. How fast did these mutations occur? What are the main trigger mechanisms? That sort of thing. But the basic "species change over time giving rise to new species" is as close to scientific fact as you can get. Some creationists get hung up on the word "theory." In science, virtually everything is a theory, not matter how well proven it is. There is a mountain of evidence that evolution happened (and is still happening). Creationism is a nice story, and if you want to believe that God is the one behind the curtains making it all work, go right ahead. But God has no place in a science class, just like science has no place dictating what (if any) prayers you say.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
"Dawkins doesn't have all the answers, you know."
Blasphemy!
n/t
The point of science is to invite conflicting points of view, so that they may be tested. The whole point of science is to weed out the unprovable hypotheses from the provable, so that in the end we get a solid set of working facts from which to build more complex ones.
As long as it uses the same scientific methods, I have zero problems with any challenging points of view being taught in a classroom.
And BTW: allowing alternate points of view in a science class is not akin to an imposition of Sharia law. Also, Islam encompasses well over 1bn people, including nations such as Indonesia (which definitely doesn't practice Sharia law...), Turkey (which is quite liberal, even by EU standards), and so forth. So, you may want to keep that brush a bit narrower than you currently have it.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Return to remedial science class, do not pass GO.
1) Science cannot prove something to be correct, it can only prove something to be incorrect.
2) It's pretty clear, even from that watered down article, that they recorded the evolution of a complex trait in the bacteria.
3) Science has defined the term "evolution", since these bacteria mutated and acquired a new inheritable trait they have "evolved".
FTFA: She adds that the bill's language, which names evolution along with global warming, the origins of life and human cloning as worthy of "open and objective discussion"
now we can start debating global warming as the bullshit science that it is.
sounds to me like they are trying to allow teachers to present both sides of the argument... I thought we WANTED our children to learn how to think on their own, not to be spoon fed theories that are widely accepted (and taught) as fact but still not proven.
Presenting ID as equal to a sturdy, well researched and rigorous theory as evolution is tantamount to teaching 5+5=11 because some people like ones more than zero. There's no good reason to believe that 5+5=11, it just looks like a good idea and fits in nicely with my personal theory that all numbers should have as many ones in their sums as possible. If I were to teach that to your children, you'd probably have me chucked out the window. Teaching ID as science is equally as irresponsible. ID is NOT science as it is not testable. Presenting ID as an example of a bad scientific theory is a GREAT idea, but full of too many landmines to be useful in a classroom. Teaching kids to recognize good science from bad science is a great idea, however.
When we teach science we should teach science, not religious creation stories. Those belong in another, equally important class, but not in a science class.
This one's tricky. You have to use imaginary numbers, like eleventeen... --Hobbes
While this might seem like a good idea in the short run, it's a really bad idea in the long run. Those students will vote; those students will become politicians; those students will become business people that she has to work with. Their lack of education, close-mindedness, and (likely) fundamentalism mean that her life will be far worse off.
Further, the lack of science education has a dire effect on the long term viability of the U.S. economy and technological progress. Yesterday, there was a /. article on NASA and lots of hand-wringing about how we can't keep up with China and Russia. That's the result of poor education; don't support it, even if it makes you (or your daughter) look good for a little while.
The more people I meet, the better I like my dog.
I've been a long time reader here but never posted until now. My tolerance for intolerance has reached a critical mass with this stuff. I've grown pretty weary of supposedly "open-minded" and "tolerant" individuals from both camps spewing their venom on others.
I am a scientist. I have been a passionate student of the hard sciences (physics, chemistry, astronomy, etc) all my life. I am an engineer by profession, trade and training. I absolutely devour all the science television programming, scientific literature, etc. I can get. I am also very much a "fundamentalist" Christian, what most of you guys would call an "idiot" or a "nut job" or a "wacko".
My personal view of all of these types of debates is that science and faith are not mutually exclusive. Both are dedicated to the pursuit of truth. One studies the wonders of the Creation and the other the wonders of the Creator. My belief in science is not so small as to not be open to all possibilities not disproven. My faith in my Creator is not so shaky as to not withstand critical thinking.
People of faith are often attacked as "ignorant" or "uneducated" or "bumpkins" or "fundamentalists" and "zealots" but I would like to put forward the observation that many of those applying those labels are most often just as zealous in defense of their favorite theories, philosophies, etc. I think we have just as many Churches of Darwinian Evolution and Secular Cosmology as we do Roman Catholic, Baptist, Episcopal, Whatever Churches. I am not a Christian because I have been "indoctrinated" or "brain-washed". I have read. I have studied. I have questioned. I remain still a scientist AND a Christian.
I wish that as educated, self-proclaimed men and women of intelligence we could realize that open-minded discourse and critical thinking are vital to healthy science and healthy faith and, indeed, a healthy society. I wish we could just stop applying labels and displaying our collective ignorance by bashing others with blanket statements and insults. I no more believe that all people of faith are "ignorant idiots" than I believe that all scientists are "deluded Godless heathens". The universe is a magnificently beautiful, ordered, expansive and complex place. Just because we don't yet, in our limited understanding, see how it all fits together doesn't mean that it doesn't. I think we could get to that fuller understanding a lot quicker if we spent less time in low-brow bickering and hate-mongering (on both sides) and more time in the pursuit of a holistic understanding of that beautiful universe.
Just my $.02. Flame away.
You might want to check your reading level, even the sub title says "EVIDENCE OF EVOLUTION" not PROOF. From what I read, it sounds like they don't even know how the observed change occurred, it doesn't say that they know for a fact it was evolution.
And therein lies the rub... Evolution has actual Evidence (and lots of it)! Something that creationism lacks.
THE SOFTWARE, IT NO WORKY!!!
I'm sure most programming nerds program something at some point that mutates with random then selects from it? I wrote a simple ant java thing where each ant started with random rules of how to get to the food and back to the hive. If they don't get to the food, and then the hive, after a set time, they get fresh random rules. After 30 min of so, each ant has the same rules. Real life clearly has mutations, and clearly has selection forces, no brainer. It's so easy to see logically it's true, that's why creationists fear it so much.
Is it "afraid" to not want my children taught an out-and-out lie
Whether or not a statement is true, if you believe in its truth when you say it, you are not lying.
L. Ron Hubbard was lying. Those who parrot his teachings are not.
As you obviously know this (or can easily find out from a dictionary), YOU are the liar here when you call those who hold beliefs that oppose yours "liars".
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
It can be questioned, that's why there's still scientists trying every day to refine the theory of evolution. Even Darwin didn't have everything figured out with his theory. We didn't even understand DNA until well after Darwin was dead. It's not that Darwinism shouldn't be questioned. It has always been questioned, and there are scientists testing it every day. We we can't do, is put up with it with it being refuted by thinks like ID, which have no method of proving or disproving anything about how things actually work.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Evolution has already been proven true. It's proven true every single day by thousands of scientists who use it daily in their work. But I'm sure, the 10 billionth time someone relies on it to make a prediction and it works, God will show up and tell us how everything really works.
Let's hear it for irrational, useless beliefs! I can make up beliefs with no basis in fact that can't be proven false all day.
The problem with evolution is that it isn't that it's controversial, it's that there's no real consequences to the people who deny it. You can ask the guy who denies gravity to prove it by jumping off a cliff and one way or another the problem is solved. There's no such easy solutions for evolution.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Hell, God *could* exist and *could* have intelligently designed the universe. It's highly unlikely, but not impossible.
From what experiment/observation do you conclude that it's "highly unlikely"?
Woosh.
That's the sound of a joke flying over your head.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
You really think that redneck hicks of Louisiana will vote for a Hindu guy named Piyush who supports theory of Evolution over Intelligent design?
All I am saying is that he is a phoney politician pretending to be whatever he needs to be inorder to win.
how do you know it's a lie?
Short argument? Because it depends on deliberate omission, distortion, or outright fabrication of facts.
have you proven creationism to be a lie and not told anyone?
Do not attempt to shift the burden to me, personally. No person in science operates alone: that's the whole point of the "peer review" portion of the scientific method.
while you're at it you might as well tell everyone how you proved evolution as fact while the rest of the world is still trying...
And this is the first--and one of the largest--lies that creationists will tell to well-meaning, well-intended people like you.
Evolution has already been proven as fact. The general broad framework of evolution has been well established at least since the 1960s or so. The specific mechanisms, the process, the intermediate steps ... some of these things have been well established, some of them are still not completely understood. But even if we do not understand all aspects of how evolution occurs, we have witnessed it occurring again and again--in the fossil records, in the lab, and even in the field.
The frequent assertion made by Answers in Genesis, Institute for Creation Research, Creation Research Society, and their ilk that "evolution has never been proven" is the foundational lie to their argument.
If you haven't been down-modded lately, you aren't trying.
Sacred cows make the best hamburger.
gays and straights aren't competing for market share.
I'll say. I haven't been asked out by either side in months.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Fair enough, I should have been more precice.
I do agree that challenging viewpoints should be expressed, however ID is unprovable, and has no evidence at all to back it up. It's not a valid challenger.
ID is a philosophy, and not an alternative scientific theory. As such, I have no problem with it being taught - just with it being taught in science class.
You nailed it right on the head. I'm amazed how each side of this debate gets so defensive so quickly. Teach science in science class and teach philosophy in philosophy class (we're still teaching our kids philosophy aren't we?). ID, as it hinges on the unprovability of the existence or non-existence of God, doesn't fit nicely within the rigid requirements of scientific theory and thus should not be taught in a science class.
I see no problem in exposing our children to both sides of the discussion as long as each side is presented in the right context. In fact, I think we do our children a disservice by avoiding engaging with them in mature philosophical or even religious discussions (not proselytizing). Philosophy and religion are a part of humanity and, whether or not you subscribe to them, pretending they doesn't exist or deserve any thought or discussion is willful ignorance at best.
This whole, "anyone who entertains the idea of ID is a complete idiot" is just narrow minded. Until the God question is exhaustively proven one way or another, there will always be people on both sides. Life is full of uncertainties, DEAL WITH IT. Attacking those who choose to believe in something that is neither provable nor disprovable is just as ignorant as attacking those who choose to not believe in something even though they can't disprove it. The important thing here is that when truth comes along, both sides should align themselves with it.
Faith is a willingness to accept something w/o complete proof and to act on it. Reason allows you to correct that faith.
I don't want any child of mine's head filled with every silly idea that apposes a valid scientific hypothesis. That has no place in a science class room. They going to start insisting the math classes state the value for PI could be 3 because that's what the bible states?
Sorry couldn't resist writing that ...
I have to say that while I fully believe in Evolution Theory I always thought that ID SHOULD BE TAUGHT. Why, because it is a contentious and current topic. Secondly, because it is the counter-point to Evolution. It's hard to make a proper case for Evolution without discussing in depth the alternative(s).
Moreover, isn't a fully rounded view what we are striving for? To be clear, we want to be able to say that we have discussed all the major points of view and that we have a sensible rationale for our beliefs or disbeliefs.
BIG NOTE: People who believe in ID aren't likely to be swayed by science. Their point of view is intrinsically non-rational (not rooted in logic); it is theological, psychological, or emotional. However, our kids should not be unprepared to duel with the ID proponents on their own ground. If they are, they may one day be swayed by them for less than rational reasons. AND, if we can't talk their language how are we going to sway them ;)
Lastly, I have a problem with not considering the other guy's point of view just because he/she is on the other side of the politial/theological/ fence. There is something wrong with that.
So, I have no problem with ID education. It all depends on how it's taught. If it's taught as theory or theology- then good. If the teacher stops every 10 minutes for a Hail Mary or "Go Jesus!"- then BAD!
(disclaimer: I'm a tech monkey not a priest or biologist)
/LabMonkey09
I'm rather confused by how ID searches for answers. It seems to me like it simply says "this is how it must have been" and the search stops there. How can one study such a thing as ID in order to arive at new ideas? There's nothing to test since it doesn't have falsifiable predictions... A search involves moving forward with testing new ideas and seeing if they're true.
And a pile of sand might evolve if more sand were dumped on the pile every day
Sand does not reproduce, with heritable variation between the children of a Daddy Sand, and with some of those variations being advantageous or not for the purposes of future reproduction. ergo, no, a pile of sand will not evolve if you dump more sand on it.
is that one type seems to require some kind of intelligence.
That's I think the issue. I'm not sure why a person needs more intelligence to arise than a pile of sand. It might need more energy and time, but intelligence? Why? Where did IT come from? Is it intelligent designers "all the way down"?
ID is a piece of garbage trying to pose as a scientific theory. ID is garbage because there is no way of proving or disproving it. There are no testable consequences of ID. It does not give any prediction on what will happen. It is only a statement of belief of what already happened.
Evolution give consistent repeatable and observable predictions that have huge repercussions in your everyday life. Drug resistance staph infections have moved from a curiosity to a reality to a virtual epidemic. Sticking your head in the sand and saying God did it and continuing as normal is a recipe for disaster.
was the first time I'd heard of religious types trying to sneak something in the back door, at least where school children were concerned.
In Soviet Russia jokes are formulaic and decidedly non-humorous.
We can't define anything precisely. If we attempt to, we get into that paralysis of thought that comes to philosophers⦠one saying to the other: "you don't know what you are talking about!". The second one says: "what do you mean by talking? What do you mean by you? What do you mean by know?"
So you'll never PROVE evolution is true, just as you will never PROVE ID to be true or for that matter ANYTHING to be true! All you can every do is look at the world around you (evidence) and try and make a good guess as to what is going on.
The difference between the evolution and ID camps is the honest observation of the physical world. Scientists are always searching for new evidence to explain the world and their observations. The ID crowd is always searching for ways to prove their faith, it's that simple.
The ID crowd is as dangerous as any fascist movement, they will ignore all evidence that does not support their belief system.
Don't get me wrong, there are also scientist who are fascists. they truely belive their version of reality is the "correct" one. They are also as dangerous as the ID crowd. but they are usually not organized and they are few. The ID crowd is organized and there are a lot of them. It's truely a situation of mass delusion and it will quickly turn to fascism if they were to ever get in a position of power. Just look at the Islamic countries for example.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_the_eye http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambrian_explosion
Why don't the IDers slip in a different spin:
./big-bang ...
~/god# make
~/god#
** universe created
** planet Earth instantiated
** animal life evolving
** humans emerging
-- In the beginning was the WORD, and the WORD was UNSIGNED, and the main(){} was without form and void...
"My aversion to homosexuality has nothing to do with Christianity. My aversion is rooted in evolution; the "yuck" factor maintains reproduction. Evolution depends entirely on reproduction!"
alright, your stance and all that...
But how do you reconcile that with:
"A lot of Christians make too much noise about a minor sin [...] while ignoring major sins like [...] adultery"
Surely the adultering person would be much more adapt at furthering evolution? Whether it be the a guy impregnating multiple womens or a woman getting pregnant from different men (and thus a larger gene pool).
Something tells me the foundation for your aversion is on.. well not shaky ground, perhaps, but have you heard of the tower of Pisa?
can you prove, with only science, that all the laws of science have always existed
Of course you can't. Mathematicians work with proofs. Physical scientists work with experimentation and predictive theories.
how do you know it's a lie?
Y'might want to google "Behe's empty box", or check out www.talkorigins.org.
But it's not in a biology-related field, so I'll first focus my comments on your points.
For what it's worth, I (almost) completely agree with your post. Certainty may not be the antithesis of science, but it is to the scientist as humility is to many religionists: Something we seek, but of which we should never claim to achieve absolutely.
The hardest thing for me to beat out of new grad students' heads is the idea that the model is reality. Even if we hold to positivist notions (and not all "scientists" do), different models approximate reality in different contexts. You adequately described a few of those in physics. In softer "sciences", it can be much messier.
That said, regarding the TFA: Because a model's usefulness varies by context, which model is taught and when it is taught should be dictated by the context of the learning. If you're in Sunday school, being indoctrinated (not used in a pejorative connotation - the U.S. Pledge of Allegiance is indoctrination as well) into some moral code, there may be some justification for ID... though I can't think of any.
In a science class, the models that are most useful in the context of science - at the students' current level - should be taught. We may even teach models that are less useful to real scientists because they are more useful to the students: We teach about electron orbits in grade school, even though we don't accept them as a completely accurate description of those subatomic particles' behavior/existence.
Lest my comments be construed to imply some sort of support for this law in LA, let me be clear: ID is not a useful model in the context of science. In a religious or philosophical discussion, it may serve some purpose, but not in science. And, as has been stated many times in this thread, it's not even because ID is wrong; it's because it's not falsifiable. Most students learn aspects of Lamarckian evolution because we can test it and show through evidence that it is less useful than Darwin's ideas. ID doesn't even get that far, which is why it is so dangerous.
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
The problem with ID and creationism is that they don't even rise to the level of a lie. A lie can be disproved. ID and creationism make no useful predictions about the universe. They can not be falsified. They aren't even incorrect science: they aren't science at all.
It isn't about proving they are incorrect, which is impossible. It is about proving they are useless. They are proven useless by the very fact that they can't be proven incorrect.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Explain in detail how evolutionary theory explains the Cambrian Explosion.
even wikipedia reports how and why the Cambrian Explosion was not really an "explosion"...
Describe in detail how evolution made complex biological structures such as the human eye.
oh, come on... this is just pointless... it took more than a few millions of years to come to humans, why are you so excited about our limited eyes? 'cause yeah, other animals have better eyes, ya 'know?
Explain how evolutionary theory solves the problem that DNA cannot exist without protein and protein cannot exist without DNA.
wiki again :)
oh, maybe I should have seen your sign before...
"I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn't know." -- Mark Twain
I am appalled at the acrimonious nature of so many posts when a subject like this comes up. Is Darwinism so sacrosanct that it can never be questioned?
No, Darwinism can be questioned. I, and other scientists, openly welcome questions. Maybe you'd like to pose some in a scientific context, publish some results that indicate that something is wrong with evolutionary theory, and propose some alternative mechanism.
The problem is that 'intelligent design' (ID), as such' does not do the above. It is little more than saying 'we don't think evolution works, so God did it'; that's a bit of unfair paraphrasing, but get's the gist. What published results indicate that evolutionary theory is incorrect? I'll wait..... Oh, none? That's what I thought. No, popular books don't count.
The typical creationist response to such a challenge (show us the published results) is that the journals would not publish their results. But, it would be nice if they actually tried.
From a science standpoint, ID doesn't exist beyond saying 'God did it'. Here's another challenge: What happened and when? You don't have to be exact, but some idea of what happened. Pick your favorite designed mechanism (Behe likes the blood clotting system and the flagellum, for example) and tell me what ID says happened. Be as broad as you want, beyond saying 'God did it'. I'll wait....
There are questions that Darwinism cannot answer. Intelligent Design is about a search for the answers to those questions. Intelligent design theory does not say that the universe is too complex to be explained by evolution.
Please tell me what it does say, beyond 'evolution doesn't work' and 'God did it'. I could be wrong and have missed it, but my reading of the ID literature entirely omits proposing anything and claiming victory by default.
Many things are very complex. A pile of sand is complex, for instance. And a pile of sand might evolve if more sand were dumped on the pile every day. What separates one type of complexity (such as a pile of sand) from another type of complexity (such as a living organism) is that one type seems to require some kind of intelligence. In that respect, the universe and a good book seem to have more in common than a sand pile has to either of them.
Wonderful. Now propose a positive history of the universe that includes intelligent design, or for some part of the universe, that we can consider. (Yes, we'll do our best to disprove it, but that's science for you)
The more people I meet, the better I like my dog.
Whom ever marked me as flamebait; Please explain or stand forever as an Anonymous COWARD.
All of the other posts discuss this same idea: Freedom vs Censorship.
Never trust a man wearing a coat and tie!
Your comment hinges on a statement that is incorrect.
All CLOSED systems naturally devolve from order to disorder. The Earth is not a closed system, receiving energy from the Sun on a constant basis. When a tree grows an apple it is creating order (the apple) out of disorder (water, CO2, soil), and it uses the Sun's power to do it.
I'm too dumb to understand it, but they even have the math for this. Anyone who has completed a university-level chemistry class (not me, unfortunately) should be able to explain this to you.
.there is enough of everything for everyone.
No, it can't be "questioned". It's science. It's fact. You can't question fact.
It was once settled fact that the Earth was at the center of the Solar System, with (flawed but present) mathematical proofs to back it up.
Yes, you can question fact - the trick lies in proving that any refutations you find are themselves factual, and that they provide a better explanation for observed pheonomenon, and that they don't conflict with other relevant supporting facts.
After all, one cannot prove a better hypothesis without first questioning the existing one.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Just because a certain item or behavior appears complex, doesn't mean it required complex actions to create it. Read anything about emergence to see plenty of examples of very complex behaviors emerging out of simple actions. Look at bees or ants for some simple examples.
Complexity does not equal design, and science has shown time and time again that complexities can and do naturally arise out of simplicity.
Children go to school to learn things that are of the temporal world, not the spiritual world. That's been the basic agreement of public schools. They learn what science knows. I'm very deeply faithful, but I do not want my son learning about someone else's religious beliefs being rammed down his throat. I came to believe what I believe through my own relationship with God and that's for me to explore, and no one else. In matters of this world, though, evolution is accepted science, and, until we have a better, scientifically provable model that makes better predictions than evolution theory does, then its time to shut the f-- up. Same goes for GW too. I'm a skeptic, but until I write a better program than Hansen's crapp y FORTRAN, what I've got is not -science-.
The main thing though, is to teach children the basics of science. Like, if you ask a question about how the world works, how do you organize your thoughts into a program so that you can come up with an experiment to answer it, and in doing so, how can you understand the limits of your own answer? If you do that, first and foremost, and from an early age, you'll have an entire generation of people that are thinking properly.
This is my sig.
If they are just making a requirement to give equal time to the major alternatives, thats ok.. If they are trying to push it so you only get one view point, then no, its not ok.
Disclaimer: Personally i think ID is just plain silly, but they should have just as much right to express their loony opinion as anyone else in a tax supported education system.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I would use a gravity analogy. Stuff is attracted to each other. This is fact. We have ideas that quantify and attempt to explain this attraction that are referred to as theories of gravity.
"Physics is to math as sex is to masturbation." -R. Feynman
I understand what you're saying, and I quite agree that the person who innocently propagates a lie that they received in good faith is not lying. However, if Person A makes a knowingly false statement (a lie), and Person B repeats it in good faith, Person B is not lying--but the statement is still a lie.
I place no moral onus on Person B--they are repeating something they heard and accepted in good faith. The moral onus for lying falls solely on Person A.
If you haven't been down-modded lately, you aren't trying.
Sacred cows make the best hamburger.
He was born on the same day as Abraham Lincoln - Feb 12th 2009. Newsweek compares the two men, giving a slightly great edge to Abraham in terms of historical importance. Hopefully the 2009 celebrations will clear up some of the fundie BS about Charles.
Basically, they had high points of Science and Technology, but their rabid spiritualists tried to force every little thing to be expressed in terms of religion (Just like this bill is doing) until they became what they are today. They were once top in the world, and now they are firmly at the bottom.
Wasn't it the crusades that razed the scientific knowledge of the islamic regions?
The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.
Richard Dawkins, rabid atheist, [...]
You say that as if it were a bad thing?
That there are hundreds of known competing creation stories, that makes it likely that one of them will get close to the mark. However, it also means that there is a rather tiny chance that any one in particular will be the right one.
Since the only real basis for belief that most people have is that one sect got to them before another sect, there is no real rational reason to pick one religion over another. From reading Tao of Physics, I can say that Eastern philosophies have a better metaphore for how things actually operate than Mid-Eastern religions. However, I also know that there isn't a 1:1 correlation.
As Plato's forms "theory" shows us, any idea that we have of "god" or anything else is just a poor shadow of the real, perfect thing. We can never perceive the original and know its true nature. That said, all religions are therefor equally (in)valid.
But then, these are all philosophical arguments, not scientific ones. Science is better at answering "how" than "why," looking at facts as opposed to truths. If you are on a quest for ultimate meaning, then its best done in the philosophy seminar surrounded by the works of Socrates and Plato, not in the science classroom surrounded by Feynman and Dawkins.
The existence of a god that has any power to affect things in the realm of science (i.e. the entire natural world, including you and your brain) is disproven a zillion times a day by the laws of science being upheld. The experiment "the outcome will be according to god, not science" consistently fails.. He might exist, and might have an ability to control something, but the evidence certainly says it's highly unlikely. This also covers god as proposed intelligent designer of species.
God as creator of the universe is only possible if the universe has a beginning, which I don't think is current scientific understanding (in this context taking universe to mean out universe or the infinite regress of what begat that).
The real reason you cannot teach intelligent design in school is because there is no difference in the following answers to the question, "how did life come to be?"
1) God did it.
2) We don't know.
So, teaching intelligent design doesn't get you anywhere. If you'd like to live in a place where the government and religious leaders decide school curriculum together, I hear that Iran, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia are lovely this time of year.
It's very important that we present both sides of these issues, otherwise how will the children know that people of Jewish descent were merely relocated during the period 1939 to 1945 in Germany? Bit of a straw man, you say? Sorry, I'm an Engineer. And I make this particular extreme comparison in defense of my future young colleagues in the great state of Louisiana. My job is to tell the truth because when I don't tell the truth, people die! Sometimes lots of people in certain engineering disasters actually. And I'm afraid you can't give equal time to a lie because the act of giving equal time to that lie gives it a legitimacy that it does not deserve. Teach whatever you want in home school or private school, but teaching this garbage to future Civil Engineer's who I am going to be relying on to build useful infrastructure and follow specifications is a serious problem for me. These are smart kids, if they really have some doubts about evolution I trust them to go take a look at the competing nonsense being propagated.
What would Richard Feynman do, if he were here right now? He'd do some math and he'd follow through!
*sigh* Nice try leeching on my up-modded post.
And believing that the intelligent designer with a complex sense of order came into being by chance is less illogical because...?
Yes, it's true that something as complex as life could not have occurred by chance. Nothing more complex, like a creator, could have either, of course, so obviously we don't exist.
Glad we could clear that up!
What? I like feeding trolls
I remember this topic coming up in uni Logic/Philosophy where there are a number of reasons why this isn't valued in pre-college schools:
- Culture Mindset
Our culture values having kids obey elders. Telling kids they can question elders or authority at 8 year old runs contrary to that. What parents want their kids to questions about their chores instead of doing them? In our culture, kids frankly aren't independent where although it isn't true that kids can't think for themselves, we never ask them too for serious topics till they are "mature enough". Can 8 year old kids really make independent, complex decision about a complex world when they haven't experienced much of it?
- Harder to teach, hard to test
Although I have no expertise in teaching, I suspect its difficult to teach 8 year old kids "critical thinking" without resorting to the very techniques complained about (ie. drill text/example/facts into their head). I also suspect its harder to design test to see if they were paying attention. Its one thing to ask a hand full of 20 year olds to read dozens of philosophers across the ages and design essay tests to see if they understand logic and philosophy behind the writing. I can't imagine the setup necessary for 20+ 8 year old kids to begin teaching let alone testing.
- No Tangible "Payoff"
Its kind of a side effect of the previous problem. Its easier to justify money gym equipment or a math book than it is to justify logic/philosophy books. You can give balls and clothes to the school and check back later to see if they are wearing or using the equipment. You buy books and software and can test kids to see if they can solve a math problem (they may not understand it, that it another thread for another day). Its harder to measure how much critical thinking 8 year kids do let alone if they have improved after buying them books.
If you really believe that "critical thinking" is important than it needs to be taught as "fundamental", like reading and numbers, which I'm not sure there is a school anywhere on the planet tries that. My view has always been that pre-college is too soon to teach many complex topics. Saying "kids should be taught to think critically" is like saying "kids should be taught multi-variable differential calculus". Yeah it would be nice if kids "knew" those wouldn't it...
A pink giraffe was living in my back yard last week. Prove me wrong.
That's not what he's saying. He's saying that claiming creationism is an outright lie requires proof of such a claim. You have to prove not only that it's false (which no one can do, anyway), but that the proponents of it spread it knowing it was false. If someone wishes to claim that people are lying, they gotta put their money where their mouth is, and show us some reasonable evidence that they were, in fact, lying.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
One word .. Dover.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitzmiller_v._Dover_Area_School_District
If you get a chance I highly recommend the Nova episode on it.
are we so afraid that science will lose the fight?
Yes, because the fight is fixed.
The language of science is roughly "We think that this and this, so we test..., we find a high correlation, our theory appears to fit the facts very well, there are some cases that we can't yet explain" and so on. Very careful, very methodical, always especially focussed on the weak spots.
The language of religion is very different: "This is so! The word is the absolute truth. Nothing else can exist. We know with absolute certainty from the highest being itself. Though shalt do. Never, always, truth, good, evil, damnation, eternal! Did I say forever and ever and evereverever?" - absolutist, totally polarised, never questioning itself, never allowing even the smallest doubt to its base premises. In fact, even asking the question means you're already in for eternal damnation or whatever the maximum penalty is.
In the minds of young people, who for their life so far relied on adult people guiding them, and who have not yet developed critical thinking, this isn't even a fight.
More importantly: Aside from what medieval christianity thought, a fight very rarely decides who is right and who is wrong, except for a very narrow margin of questions (such as "I am the better fighter - no, I am - ok, let's find out").
Most importantly: If there is anything that science tells us - and I mean the entire body of science over its entire history - it is that common sense is like Newton's Laws - it works fairly well in the "middle world", the world we inhabit, but a few steps outside of that, it doesn't fit the facts anymore. Most of the religious "wisdom" is of that kind - it more or less fits the world that we can experience with our own senses. Outside of it - on the very small or very large, either in size or time - we find out that it ain't true. The world isn't eternal, species haven't always existed unchanged, history isn't a short and evident route to some goal, the world isn't flat and can't have been made in 7 days because "day" without "world" makes no sense at all.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
And I don't mind letting kids know that maybe (just maybe) science doesn't have all the answers.
That is a valid concern, and actually is perfectly addressed when science is taught correctly. A scientific theory is as good as the evidence supporting it, minus the evidence contradicting it. Any instruction in these matters will include a critical analysis of the relevant evidence.
But addressing the strengths and weaknesses of a scientific theory cannot involve introducing NONscientific ideas. If one were to teach a section on Special Relativity in a physics course, would it make sense to spend time talking about Hamlet? Shakespeare is great, but he doesn't belong in a physics classroom. The argument against teaching ID in science classes has absolutely nothing to do with the validity of ID or the validity of the scientific process, and has everything to do with the fact that ID is not science.
If you believe that science and the scientific method is flawed, fine. But then you should advocate removal of science classes from a public school education, and NOT introduction of nonscientific ideas into existing science classes.
how do you know it's a lie? have you proven creationism to be a lie and not told anyone? while you're at it you might as well tell everyone how you proved evolution as fact while the rest of the world is still trying...
well, it's actually kind of easy: since evolution it a theory, it has a chance of being truth, while ID is at maximum a belief, so chances of it being proven are nearly zero.
oh, and again, when was the last time science had to _exactly_ prove/disprove anything?
science it's a trial-and-error system...
"I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn't know." -- Mark Twain
'The act is designed to slip ID in "through the back door"'"
I thought that sort of thing was illegal in the Bible belt.
I'm so sick of Christians (ie: Baptists) giving the rest of us a bad name. Anyone willing to interpret the Bible especially the old testement literally is a moron. It was never meant to be interpreted that way. In fact, many of the stories relate back to pagan stories, so why not teach those in schools - since they were the original stories?
but little Johnny is disrupting the class. He keeps arguing against current scientific thought. He knows his math and spelling. he seems to be real bright, but he keeps brining up arguments against global warming, evolution and a few other theories we need to indoctrinate the class with. If he can't tow the line and regurgitate what we teach him, we will have to expel him from classes. It is only politically correct for him to do this. Please help us in training him to think right, I mean left, I mean correctly.
-- Many men would appreciate a woman's mind more if they could fondle it
Do you even understand the concept of science and how it's done? Science is all about questioning. Biologists and other scientists are constantly questioning the tenets of evolution, performing research the either proves or disproves some aspect of the theory and then documenting their results for others to replicate, question or offer alternatives. What it isn't is deciding "Whoa, this is too complex, kind of like that pile of sand over there. I guess gawd musta done it!".
You want to teach ID, provide some testable measurements that offer a better fit to how life on earth came to be and offer it up to the scientific community for evaluation. Until then, ID is nothing more than the voodoo that you do so well and, as such, it belongs in a church where people blindly accept things without proof instead of a science class.
It'd be much easier.
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
But none of the points that you used back up your assertion. Except for this embarrassing intelligent design law, he seems pretty darn pragmatic to me... even on education in general. I even listened to that whole stupid CSPAN thing you mentioned. Actually, it's still going since it's a farking hour long. But so far, he sounds pretty decent as far as governors go. A little pie-in-the-sky, but not more so than, say, Obama. A little idealism is okay, though.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I'm aware complexity by itself does not mean design. I just want the science establishment to lay the groundwork for ID.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Thank you for proving my point.
Proverbs 21:19
ID can't be proven false. Also string theory can't be proven false at this time either. The difference is string theory has a strong basis in physics and has grown from the attempt to generalise physics through rigourous mathematical formulae. ID is (not even a theory) but a set of conjectures without any basis in anything that is observable.
I don't think the problem is that ID can or can't be proven false, but that ID has no grounds on which it could be conceivable to be true.
The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.
i hear screams of "ID isn't science, these theories must be test and proven to be science". evolution is as tested and proven as ID is. we don't have evidence, look around you, we don't see animals or plants in the middle of a species transformation, (evolving from one species to another). there is ADAPTATION, but not evolution. we don't have *proof* that everything alive today evolved form simple organisms into the vast, complex organisms we have today. so, when it comes down to it, evolution is as scientific fact as ID. they are both a belief in something that we can never prove, because we weren't there. faith has been called "believing in the unseen", so if you use that definition, you would consider both evolution and ID as "faith" based theories, so why would it be ok to teach one in the classroom and not the other?
So that you have a chance to hear more than one side of the issue:
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NjNjYTNjMTVkNmVhMmYxN2JkMWZhMzYzMGNjNzY4ZDE=
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
If this was done right it could be used to teach tolerance to the approx 270 large religious groups out there. It could be tied in with history or social studies. I think it is much harder to hate or fear a religion that you've learned about and even better met someone face to face who practices it. Often it's exciting to see how close your religion is to another persons. For example "Wow you had a giant flood too?"
I wonder though if this is going to cause a flood of charter and private schools based on "hard" science to open and the parochial school kids to return to public schools.
Don't anthropomorphize computers. They *hate* that.
There must be something in there about a lot of people being assholes or something.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
That's ok, we don't need any illiterate cajun scientists anyhow.
I often wonder if the North defeating the South in the Civil War was really a good thing.
I'm not great with history, or the extrapolation of alternate historic time lines, but it seems to me that part of the reason why the U.S. is so reactionary compared to other developed nations is due to the fact that we have significant rural populations that exert a disproportionately large influence on the far more populous, and coincidentally much more progressive, urban population centers spread throughout the nation.
Not only that, but the shear size of our nation and government dilutes the efficacy of our democracy. Democratic action is most feasible at the municipal level, where the fluid nature of local government allows the public to easily change public policy to more or less reflect the political consensus of the community. But as you get to the state level, the political system becomes less and less fluid due to the increasing layers of bureaucracy between the public and policy makers. This is all the more apparent in the fact that, while independent candidates often win in local elections, there are virtually no 3rd party or independent politicians in government offices beyond the state level, as the bipartisan system is so rigidly entrenched at higher levels of government. This trend continues until you reach the federal level, where government becomes so rigid and disconnected from their constituency that it becomes almost impossible for democratic action to influence public policy.
The scales are further tipped towards the reactionary end of the political spectrum by a system whereby political representation is weighed by geographical area rather than purely by population size. The result of this is that rural populations that are smaller but more spread out receive much more political voice than densely populated metropolitan areas. So instead of progressive cultural centers where the majority of the population lives leading our society, we instead have a reactionary rural minority determining the political direction of our nation.
Sure, children in Louisiana deserve to share the benefits of a real scientific education, and women in Georgia should have the right to get an abortion and have access to pharmaceutical contraceptives. But our moral obligation to bring these ass-backward states into the 21st century seems to be outweighed by the cost of creating such a geographically overstretched nation. in order to maintain a cohesive nation in such an overstretched area, there is a necessary forcible cultural/political homogenization to create a unified national cultural. but as a result of all the aforementioned factors, the existing hegemon is one of a largely reactionary nature.
It seems to me that if we had allowed the South to secede from the Union, or perhaps even let the union dissolve altogether, there'd be much more political and cultural diversity in North America. Politically conservative rural states may be even more reactionary, but the liberal northern/coastal states would also be much more progressive. And at the very least, the ID/creationist camp wouldn't have any political influence outside of their own state. We'd be much better off having the reactionary population culturally/politically quarantined rather than letting them choose our president.
Is Darwinism so sacrosanct that it can never be questioned?
No, it can't be "questioned". It's science. It's fact.
You mean like how Newtonian mechanics is fact?
So ID replaces the lack of a well specified explanation for the structure of the eye with a creator that cannot be explained (because it is beyond experience)? What is so much more satisfying about the second one?
I assert that I can't imagine A, but since I did imagine B, B must be THE TRUTH!
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
They must be trying to redifne the word "science", since it is completely impossible for ID to be thought of as anything remotely science given the current definition of science.
Here are a number of definitions of science:
[from dictionary.com]
- systematic knowledge of the physical or material world gained through observation and experimentation.
- knowledge, as of facts or principles; knowledge gained by systematic study.
[from wikipedia]
Science (from the Latin scientia, meaning "knowledge") is the effort to discover, understand, or to understand better, how the physical world works, with observable physical evidence as the basis of that understanding. It is done through observation of existing phenomena, and/or through experimentation that tries to simulate phenomena under controlled conditions. Knowledge in science is gained through research.
The best that I could do for ID being in science is placing it in psychology, as a study on the relationship between IQ and belief in ID.
The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.
I both graduated (quite a while back) in and live in LA. I fail to see how this article is anything but fiction, as there is nothing intelligently designed in our education system.
For conscience is the wound, and there's naught to staunch it
And what does steam do, science boy? Does it stay up in the sky forever?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Faith is believing without evidence. Science requires evidence before deciding whether to believe or not believe in a hypothesis.
There is scientific evidence for evolution. Evolution is a theory in the sense that it makes testable predictions, and when we test those predictions, the evidence matches the predictions. We cannot see the Big Bang or the continents move thousands of miles, but there is lots of evidence for believing the Big Bang theory and plate tectonic theory.
ID says we should find ample evidence of "design" in living organisms that could not have occurred through mutation and selection. So far, there is no evidence that gives us any reason to believe it. ID is not proven at all, as opposed to the massive amount of evidence that backs up the theory of evolution.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
I don't think you understand the problem. Darwinian Evolution isn't beyond question, it's just been questioned so many times recently that people no longer tolerate the questioning any more.
The argument has been done, been done recently, and no matter what "questions" you're going to throw at evolution they've already been answered in favour of evolution. I say not because there is no question that you could ask that hasn't been answered, but because there is no question you will ask that hasn't been answered.
Darwinian evolution isn't meant to be a panacea, so yes, there are questions that it can't answer. "How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if woodchuck could chuck wood?" is a question it does absolutely nothing to resolve. Nor do we expect it to. It's not the universal theory of everything and everyone.
Intelligent design isn't a "search for the answers", it's a search for the questions. ID already has the answer: "God did it". Now they just need to tailor the questions so their answer is always right.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Yes, I do understand the concept of science. ID says that there are mechanisms in nature which appear to have intelligence behind their makeup. That intelligence may be from a creator, or it may be from some yet undiscovered cause. We don't know yet. What we do know is that Darwinism fails to explain the existence of some biological constructs.
You say that science is all about questioning, but the minute someone questions Darwinism they are labeled "ignorant", "superstitious", and the like. And if they are scientists are are ostracized, stripped of their tenure, or silenced in some other way.
Proverbs 21:19
First, I highly recommend you read "Finding Darwin's God" by Dr. Ken Miller for an interesting treatise on the interplay between the realms of science and faith.
But more than that I recommend that rather than shoehorning the idea of spiritual faith into an idea of science you accept that for most people faith has little to do with making a metaphorical reference to natural phenomenon. It may turn out that you're precisely correct - that the idea of 'God' is best equated to the idea of the 'Universe as a whole'.
It may be - and probably is - that spiritual faith has little to do with 'using scientific tools' at all. It doesn't have to do with equations or with rigorous processes. Indeed, if you compare the modern conception of science to Buddhism's Noble Eight-fold Path, it fits pretty well into step five; begging the question of what the others are, or are for?
Traditionally the answer to that has been a very personal one. But I encourage you to recognize that while you can say that science is a way of examining God, this is not true for all people - that spirituality has little to do with the explanation of the material experience. Until there is that general acceptance there will be a great deal to fight about.
[Ego]out
I am not a lawyer but I thought it was the Supreme Court's role to interpret laws. Unless you have a time machine or can raise the dead, we can't ask the founding fathers what they meant when they wrote this stuff on parchment over 200 years ago.
In Everson v. Board of Education, SCOTUS deduced that Jefferson mean that there should a separation of church and state. Some would argue that Jefferson actually meant that the government should not prefer one religion to another. However in practical terms, if government cannot prefer one religion to another, it either must separate itself or recognize them all equally. So the Church of Flying Spaghetti Monster gets equal funding and consideration from the state as the Christians or the state gives no money or consideration to either.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
One argument against supposing an intelligent desinger is that the desing is not all that intelligent
For eksample the human eye has the optic nerves on the inside of the eye redusing space for light sensitive cells and making a blind spot where the nerves come togheter and leaves the eye. Some species of octopus has this the right way, but as humans according to the bible are created after the sea-creatures it is strange the designer did not keep this better solution.
The human spine seems like it has been designed for moving on four limbs and given some minor tweaks to fit bipedal movement. Maybe the designer was too short on time to redesign this properly?
We have multiple nerves that are wired in a way that allow a strike to the wrong (or right dependig if you are the striker or the strikee) place to disable a person completly. Maybe fighting was not in the original design goals.
These weaknesses must mean the desinger was not omniscient, or maybe lazy. Or maybe there was some other reason, makin life more challening? I dont know.
These weaknesses can be explained by evolution.
Because any change to happen in evolution there must be a path in "gene-space" from one form to the new where every step in the way is a improvement on the previus step. Creationists tries to use this property of evolution teory to disprove it by trying to find exsamples of features where there can be no such path.
So a specie can be "trapped" in an local optimum in the "gene-space" until a change inn its enviorment causes it to no longer be an local optimum, a big (beneficial) mutation causes it to make a big leap in "gene-space" out of the local optimum or it goes extinct.
The big mutation event is the least likley one, but considerig the timerframe and the number of species and individuals it probably has happened may times.
Just being the most likely scientific conclusion doesn't make something definitively true, or we'd all be walking around forced to obey Newton's laws of motion by government order (which would also have led to Einstein's execution for heresy).
You're missing the point, ID is not science and shouldn't be taught in a science class.
So who should explain to the kids why ID is not science? The science teacher or the religion teacher?
The problem is that ID can't be proven false.
Well, as a logical proposition, evolution has this problem, too. As pointed out by Philip Johnson in his book, Darwin on Trial, as a theory, Darwinian evolution has four problems:
These are all valid points of logic, and scientists should be prepared to counter them.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
Everytime this issue gets brought up, the same hatred comes out. Why do Atheists feel the need to continually make fun and blast the views of the religious? Conversely, why do the religious blast the views of the atheist?
Why do you who believe that all of a sudden a big bang occurred and all the atoms that we know of suddenly appeared and formed the planets and the stars think that that theory is any more credible than a God all of a sudden creating everything?
What was there before the big bang? If you have read the theory of everything by stephen hawking, he even proposes that 'something' else had to be present in order for the universe to be created. How did the big bang occur and how did everything react so perfectly at just the right temperature in order to expand the universe?
For the evolutionists, how come only one species evolved, out of the billions on earth, that have the mental capacity as humans? No other species have the abilities we do. How did humans luck out? Why isn't there another type of creature similar to the homosapien? You would think that other combination of molecules would evolve to the same point. For the creationists, why isn't there a companion species to the humans?
Nobody knows how the universe was created, nobody knows what was there BEFORE the universe was created, nobody knows where the atom came from, nobody knows where humans came from.
Everybody needs to stop blasting each other when neither side knows what is going on. Big bang (and hence evolution) is just as mythic as creationism.
ID is not testable, provable, falsifiable, based upon any observable evidence, able to be observed in any fashion, able to offer any predictions, or accepted as a scientific anything by any reputable experts.
It's not a challenging point of view, any more so that my point of view that I am in fact Jeebus Cristo.
Evolution isn't taught as fact because we're afraid of introducing other theories. It's taught as fact because it's the best way to understand the natural world. It's a road map for every other facet of biology.
Similarly, atomic theory is taught as fact even though we can't see electrons. However, every other facet of chemistry reinforces the current model of the atom. Without that model, chemistry as we know it makes no sense, has no backbone.
Would you be open to the plum pudding model of the atom being taught in schools as a possible candidate for what an atom really looks and behaves like?
I might have to disagree with you about Islamic countries being firmly at the bottom of "Science and Technology," due to purely philosophical and theological reasons.
Before I get too far, Iran has some really intelligent scientists and engineers. It is possible that pretty soon the United States will find themselves "on the bottom," as the countries that are now "on the bottom" work really hard to send their kids "to the top" through pushing them towards science and engineering education.
Beliefs about God and the origins of life have zero impact on a persons capacity to manipulate and understand the physical here and now. The past is essentially a black box. There is no way to prove that the universe did not just spring into existence just a moment ago.
Where Islamic countries went wrong was the suppression of freedom. Oppressive atheistic states have seen similar economic hardships. It's as simple as this, where freedom is suppressed, the economy is suppressed.
Intelligent design for stupid people.
People that are unable to rationalize the complexity of our world and crave for simple explanations instead.
-- Truth suffers from too much analysis.
Where? Considering what a mess we're in you would think they could have done a better job.
The Crusades didn't quite make it to Persia, which was one of the scientific centers of the world.
You might know it as "Iran" now.
Um, I wasn't aware that microorganisms reproduced sexually. I thought that Escherichia coli reproduced via mitosis, not meosis?
>>As soon as the ID crowd can provide proof of any sort to move their take on things from fairy tale category to testable theory, then they can begin teaching it in classrooms.
I proposed such a method to turn ID into a falsifiable theory here:
http://slashdot.org/~ShakaUVM/journal/121956
Surprisingly enough, it wasn't very popular with a number of people who repeatedly beat on the ID isn't falsifiable drum.
Note: I don't believe in ID, but I do think it's possible to turn it into a testable theory. This fact seems lost to most people who can't get it through their fucking tiny skulls that it's possible to talk about both ID and evolution in a rational, scientific fashion.
What I can do is immediately tell anyone who tells me that they know what God wants, or what God was thinking, that they can go fuck themselves.
Your own little piece of dogma, right there...
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
we don't see animals or plants in the middle of a species transformation
All animals and plants are in the middle of a species transformation. That is why it is called "evolution."
No offense, but for the record, the parent post is a great example of how ID advocates spin evolution into a non-science.
For something to be science, it must be testable. You have to be able to experiment with it to either prove or disprove it. You cannot do this with intelligent design, therefore it has no place in school classrooms. Anyone who calls this science is daft and needs to have his/her head examined. I a not saying that science and religion should be mutually exclusive, because this is not true. If there is indeed a God, what better way is there to show our appreciation than to strive to understand the universe around us that he created?
He's saying that claiming creationism is an outright lie requires proof of such a claim. You have to prove not only that it's false (which no one can do, anyway), but that the proponents of it spread it knowing it was false.
A statement can be a lie independent of the intent of the speaker. If I tell you my name is Bob and you pass that on to someone else, then you have repeated the lie. That doesn't make you a liar, nor does it mean that my name really is Bob.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
So, if nature we're observing is too complex to have evolved through a basic set of rules and requires a divine creator to come into existence
... then who the hell created the supercomplex deity ?
I smell a new religion folks.
"Violence is the last refuge of the competent, and, generally, the first refuge of the incompetent" - Thing_1
Ever. Kthx.
I can ask the question: "what is natural selection?" and get a reasonably precise answer.
I can ask the question: "what is God?" and spend years getting no answer.
Natural selection is something that can be subjected to the scientific method. God cannot be subjected to the scientific method. So even if you are right and God is responsible, God is still not science. You can teach ID in a philosophy class, and say it's an alternative theory to science. That's fine. Just keep it out of science textbooks, because God is not and never will be science.
There has been a lot of discussion of this type of stuff over at http://www.jerrypournelle.com/
What is the big deal? Can allowing local schools and local teachers to set their own policies be worse than centralized control? Say a handful of schools (or even a handful of states) taught intelligent design over evolution (or FSM over evolution). Would that really be the end of the world?
I think that people who get all worked up over this are 1) too optimistic about the ability of schools to shape children, and 2) too fond of the same centralized control that has destroyed the education system in this country.
See that "Preview" button?
These people vote for such a law, yet they don't think it is possible that they are related to monkeys?
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Current evolutionary theory doesn't hinge on speciation.
If you insist that evolution is only true if there is speciation, the problem is with what you are insisting, not with evolutionary theory.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Were I a college or university official selecting students from various national high schools, I would immediately exclude all graduates from the State of Louisiana starting three years hence. This would apply to all fields of study because science, along with reading, writing and mathematics, makes up a central core of educational training essential to High School graduation.
There is one simple reason: The students may not have been taught scientific rigor, that for a hypothesis to be proven it must be supported by observable, repeatable facts. And any science teacher who teaches that "science" permits a hypothesis or theory to be supported by wishing, conjecture, supposition, acts of unobservable forces and so on is not appropriately training students for any future in higher education. And I would have to say that it is not the job of my college or university to teach remedial science to students who ought to have been correctly taught the basics in high school.
I should mention that the Pope has stated that Darwin's theory of evolution [is] compatible with Christian faith. And anyone who has actually read Darwin's Origin Of Species By Natural Selection and The Descent Of Man will quickly come to the conclusion that Charles Darwin was a very religious man and couched his arguments in terms of his own beliefs, but never once deviating from scientific rigor in his statement of his hypothesis.
The Christian wing-nuts who would teach religion as if it were science have managed to confuse the English definition of the word "theory" with the scientific definition of that word. In English, the word allows for considerable uncertainty whereas, in science, a hypothesis becomes a theory only upon rigorous peer review and only when not disproved by physical evidence. During Darwin's lifetime, his book was always seen as a hypothesis and it graduated to the level of theory as actual evidence that supported his statements came rolling in.
There is genetic and physical evidence for Darwin's statements on natural selection. And we have evidence supporting evolution and none, whatsoever, for any other hypothesis for how plants, animals and humans appeared on the earth.
I would urge any college and university admissions offices to consider denying admission to any and all students who have not appropriately learned science, which means they have been taught to not follow the rules of scientific enquiry in schools in Kansas (in the past) and Louisiana (going forward).
Gods don't kill people, people with gods kill people.
Just being the most likely scientific conclusion doesn't make something definitively true
Of course not, and I never said (or would say) otherwise. That doesn't change the fact that evolution has demonstrably occurred. You can argue about the process that shaped it, but that's entirely different than claiming that it didn't happen.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Absolutely correct, in some respects. Misleading in the case of this article.
What you are missing is that (if, as has been done before and incorrectly) the creationists wish to teach their religion, there is a time and a place. Creationists have so far, undeniably, chosen to teach religion in Science lessons. In my country, you can't even teach religion in Religious Education lessons - you have to teach what the curriculum tells you to teach even if you're a satanist and satanism isn't on the curriculum. If you disagree, get the curriculum changed - but the curriculum SHOULD always be set by experts in the SUBJECT CONCERNED. Hence, religious experts should get as much say in a Science lesson as Scientists do in a Religious Education lesson. NONE.
Teaching creationism (as it currently stands using their previously-displayed tactics) in a Science lesson is the equivalent of me coming into your church/mosque/other place of worship, forcing science textbooks into your congregation's hands, demanding that Bibles all carry warning stickers about how unverified their sources are, lecturing to them about how wrong they all are, and FORCING THEM TO LISTEN.
In fact, it's worse than that... it's the equivalent of me doing this to YOUR CHILD'S SUNDAY SCHOOL, with nobody but a scientist "at the front of the classroom" and you not being present, for MANY HOURS a week. That's what creationists are asking, trying and in fact to some extent have achieved in certain states for a limited time (until uproar ensued and EVERY governor was thrown off the board and replaced with someone who DIDN'T believe this was a good idea).
Nobody cares about what anybody "believes in", what most people are concerned about are the methods, the venue and, to a much greater extent, the back-handed forced-ignorance of established curricula. Creationism in Science is the equivalent of being forced to learn that Pi is four in Maths, that full stops and commas don't exist in English, that sitting around makes you fit in PE or, indeed, that electricity runs through cables not by the transference of electrons but by the "magic angel dust" that a God put there in Science. They aren't relevant or correct within the scope of the subject being taught.
This is a SECOND underhanded attempt to change the law in a state in order to teach religion in something not a religious lesson (which is illegal in my country, by the way, even in a school with a stated religious bent). They call it a "Science Education Act" when it has NOTHING to do with Science. They slip it in after previously-dirty tactics failed. That's the problem, not what they actually WANT to teach (even if they were fighting for the teaching of the existence of the spaghetti monster, they are DOING IT WRONG, and the same people would STILL be up in arms).
That said, I'm a scientist. I think creationism is a load of pretentious, fabricated, illogical bunkum, more so than most religions that I hold to be merely completely untrue. But I don't go into RE lessons in the schools I work in and tell them that, or force them to recite it. If I did, I would be sacked. If any teacher in the schools in my country did, they would be sacked and quite possibly sued (and if the school allowed it, the school would be sued, etc.).
From TFA, here is a truly scary argument:
"Academic freedom is a great thing," says Josh Rosenau of the National Center for Science Education in Oakland, California. "But if you look at the American Association of University Professors' definition of academic freedom, it refers to the ability to do research and publish." This, he points out, is different to the job high-school teachers are supposed to do. "In high school, you're teaching mainstream science so students can go on to college or medical school, where you need that freedom to explore cutting-edge ideas. To apply 'academic freedom' to high school is a misuse of the term."
Man, I'm sure glad I didn't go to a high school where such an idea held any sway.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
Good point.
No matter what bills pass or don't pass, public education remains the biggest enemy of objective thought and reason these days.
"I am writing you with much concern after having read of your hearing to decide whether the alternative theory of Intelligent Design should be taught along with the theory of Evolution. I think we can all agree that it is important for students to hear multiple viewpoints so they can choose for themselves the theory that makes the most sense to them. I am concerned, however, that students will only hear one theory of Intelligent Design.
Let us remember that there are multiple theories of Intelligent Design. I and many others around the world are of the strong belief that the universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster. It was He who created all that we see and all that we feel. We feel strongly that the overwhelming scientific evidence pointing towards evolutionary processes is nothing but a coincidence, put in place by Him.
It is for this reason that Iâ(TM)m writing you today, to formally request that this alternative theory be taught in your schools, along with the other two theories. In fact, I will go so far as to say, if you do not agree to do this, we will be forced to proceed with legal action. Iâ(TM)m sure you see where we are coming from. If the Intelligent Design theory is not based on faith, but instead another scientific theory, as is claimed, then you must also allow our theory to be taught, as it is also based on science, not on faith.
Some find that hard to believe, so it may be helpful to tell you a little more about our beliefs. We have evidence that a Flying Spaghetti Monster created the universe. None of us, of course, were around to see it, but we have written accounts of it. We have several lengthy volumes explaining all details of His power. Also, you may be surprised to hear that there are over 10 million of us, and growing. We tend to be very secretive, as many people claim our beliefs are not substantiated by observable evidence. What these people donâ(TM)t understand is that He built the world to make us think the earth is older than it really is. For example, a scientist may perform a carbon-dating process on an artifact. He finds that approximately 75% of the Carbon-14 has decayed by electron emission to Nitrogen-14, and infers that this artifact is approximately 10,000 years old, as the half-life of Carbon-14 appears to be 5,730 years. But what our scientist does not realize is that every time he makes a measurement, the Flying Spaghetti Monster is there changing the results with His Noodly Appendage. We have numerous texts that describe in detail how this can be possible and the reasons why He does this. He is of course invisible and can pass through normal matter with ease.
Iâ(TM)m sure you now realize how important it is that your students are taught this alternate theory. It is absolutely imperative that they realize that observable evidence is at the discretion of a Flying Spaghetti Monster. Furthermore, it is disrespectful to teach our beliefs without wearing His chosen outfit, which of course is full pirate regalia. I cannot stress the importance of this enough, and unfortunately cannot describe in detail why this must be done as I fear this letter is already becoming too long. The concise explanation is that He becomes angry if we donâ(TM)t.
You may be interested to know that global warming, earthquakes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters are a direct effect of the shrinking numbers of Pirates since the 1800s. For your interest, I have included a graph of the approximate number of pirates versus the average global temperature over the last 200 years. As you can see, there is a statistically significant inverse relationship between pirates and global temperature.
In conclusion, thank you for taking the time to hear our views and beliefs. I hope I was able to convey the importance of teaching this theory to your students. We will of course be able to train the teachers in this alternate theory. I am eagerly awaiti
FOXTROT UNIFORM CHARLIE KILO
No. A scientific theory can typically not be proven correct, only incorrect. A scientific theory is a story that does not contradict any observations and produces useful predictions. It is assumed to be correct as long as the predictions it produces remain accurate. Some theories, such as those relating to Newtonian mechanics, are kept around after they have been shown to produce incorrect predictions because the predictions that they do produce are sufficiently accurate to be used in a lot of cases and the theories which provide better predictions require much more complex mathematics and are not worth bothering with in most cases.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
"Unless you have a time machine or can raise the dead, we can't ask the founding fathers what they meant when they wrote this stuff on parchment over 200 years ago."
sure we can. for example i just quoted and explained only a few of Jefferson's texts which can deduce that he was not against having religious expression in the public square. If the supreme court wanted to interpret what Jefferson meant then surely they would have come to a decidingly convincing conclusion that religion expression in the public square is ok and that there is nothing unconstitutional about it.
if you also look beyond just the constitution(since SCOTUS wants to pry out one sentence from a letter that they mis-interpreted) you would be able deduce that the founding father saw fit and saw it good for religious expression and religion to be involved in the public square in including schools.
SCOTUS and judges are to interpret EXISTING LAW. It is not their job to re-interpret it, add to it, take away from or dilute from it. It is not their job to second-guess what they thought Jefferson meant or what the 1st amendment was supposed to mean when coinciding with Jefferson's Danbury Baptist letter. Instead, in this particular case, we know how Jefferson felt because of how he acted and legislated as president and as governor. Like i said it's right there in black and white but SCOTUS seems to be not concerned with that and want to rule based on what they think. This is dangerous for everyone.
SCOTUS and judges are not there to be the thought police. It is up to the legislative representatives and the people that they represent(you and i) to make the laws that we see fit, thus giving power to the people and their statehood, rather than a few blackrobed judges.
Sensible people always think and rule and err on the side of caution. Usually judges that sit on a bench are rarely sensible and this includes SCOTUS.
If:
1. The remaining work available in the U.S. is intellectual, and
2. Louisiana chooses not to teach their children to think logically and clearly
then,
Thanks, Louisiana, for helping to reduce the competition. Hey, the need for manual labor can be underestimated.
another reason to believe 5 + 5 = 11 is that 5 + 5 is symmetrical, around the +. logically, both sides of the = should also be symmetrical.
11 is a symmetrical number because if you draw a line right down the center you get 1 and 1.
10 isn't symmetrical because you get 1 and 0.
5 + 5 = 11 just makes more sense than 5 + 5 = 10.
Just like Intelligent Design.
No one has a right to their *own* opinion. They have a right to the TRUTH.
Well, I call myself an aignostic because there is the very distinct possibility there is *something* out there. But he might be completely unlike anything we have ever seen before. Something totally outside of our understanding. And we might have as much chance understanding it as your average amoeba does understanding Humans.
If "God" were really like that, Christians would have a real serious problem. He doesn't answer prayers, he didn't send his son to die on a cross, we made all that up.
Consider this.
Lets say, 500 years from now we are a space faring species and in our exploration of the universe we find a big unknown energy "thing" out in space, and it claims that was the very first organism in our universe to achieve sentience after we find this thing. (and after we find out how really to communicate with it.) That it really is observable and "there." and it has to operate within the boundaries of our universe. It just has been around so long it knows how things work and how to make things we don't.
What have we found?
I'm not saying thats the way it "really is" I'm saying that if in our future we start really encountering other organisms more advanced than Humans, the three religions are going to have a serious problem. Because, no God didn't create Humans in thier Image. And the whole Christian, Muslim and Jewish theism falls apart.
"...and start thinking critically"
OK, why does the Pope have testicles ?
Answer: no ID
"Violence is the last refuge of the competent, and, generally, the first refuge of the incompetent" - Thing_1
Here I fixed it for you:
Louisiana proves Intelligent Design Flaw
Oh, the sweet irony - the mere fact they are passing this proves intelligent design is a failed concept.
whoa. I'm an evangelical christian and I neither accept ID as nothing but pseudoscience, nor do I loathe catholics. time to put away the broad brush.
Teach the controversy.
sic
Sorry - if that was a joke, I don't know if I'm interpreting as it was intended. Can you clarify what you meant? Thanks.
Deal. We'll send the kids over, and you give them the comedy show.
conscious, confident, self-sufficient, intelligent, knowledgeable, open-minded, free-thinking little people
Ummm... you don't get any of those things from teaching a kid science. You get the same kid as before, but now they know science.
I'm sorry but they could solve/stop all these stupid debates in one fell swoop if they just had a seperate and different "Religious Studies" class. This does not force people to believe in god but actually allows them to debate theological issues, even for atheists it's a great lesson as it teaches them to understand others.p.s. I'm an atheist but still really enjoyed the lessons. I guess one proviso would be that you'd have to be allowed to question anything.
I can go ahead and claim it didn't happen if I want. It's the old "brain in a jar" or "world popped into existence 5 minutes ago" argument. I just can't, factually, state that evidence does not point to evolution.
You mean like how Newtonian mechanics is fact?
Yes it is, at any speed you're likely to witness. Read a little more - "until someone PROVES that something very similar to Darwinism only with a little twist we hadn't thought about is correct, Darwinism stands.".
Relativity does NOT disprove Newtonian mechanics. It ADDS to it by being a closer approximation to the truth in special circumstances. /(sqrt(1-(v^2/C^2))) is 1, or very close to 1 at low speeds. If you divide by 1, you change nothing. All of Newton's formulas are still valid, until you approach important fractions of the speed of light. I would argue that the difference introduced by relativity at everyday speeds is far less than the error introduced by your measuring method.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
No, you're just deluded.
It's perfectly rational not to want your children taught delusions - semantics aside, a delusion that persists in the face of physical evidence to the contrary is in fact dishonest, and the use of the word 'lie' in this context is therefore perfectly reasonable.
One swallow does not a fellatrix make
Thanks for the history lesson. Unfortunately, Thomas Jefferson did not write the Bill of Rights, including the First Amendment. It is widely attributed to James Madison, who introduced it to Congress on June 8th, 1789.
Madison's proposed amendments to the new US Constitution were based on George Mason's Virginia Declaration of Rights, which were introduced into that State's constitution in 1776 and written with Madison's input.
There were twelve initial articles offered to the US Constitution, and ten were ratified right away, with the other two, one on Apportionment has never received the approval of enough states for it to become part of the Constitution and the other on Congressional Pay Raises was not ratified until 1992, when it became the 27th Amendment.
While Thomas Jefferson may have looked on and cheered their passage through Congress and their later ratification by the States, he was, at the time, serving as the first Secretary of State under President George Washington and not involved directly in the passage of bills.
Gods don't kill people, people with gods kill people.
Here is another perfect example of a value question being marked as Troll.
It seems to me that EVOLUTIONISM IS A 'RELIGION' to many people. Anyone who disagrees or even questions it, even with valid scientific claim gets viciously attacked for not believing in the so-called 'truth'.
About 2500 years back, there was a religion of the Pythagoreans that believed that there was no such thing as an irrational number and that all numbers had to be representable as a fraction of two other numbers. Their whole explanation of the universe depended on the non-existence of irrational numbers. When they themselves discovered their own logic system can create such irrational numbers (such as sqrt(2)) they were shocked and many had trouble living with the reality and once source I read said that they required the discoverer to commit suicide.
Could someone please explain what is different between the Darwinian and the Pythagoreans?
If bacteria can evolve to digest citrate, an entirely new chemical (new to them at least) in just 15 or 20 years, just think how much they could evolve in 20 million years, 200 million, 2 billion even.
America, Home of the Brave.
I've never understood that about him, tbh, How does one go from a religion that brought us the Kama Sutra to one that won't even let you stick it in the rear.
No one has ever claimed that Dawkins DOES have all the answers.
This is why you will never get these people of faith to convert. They are only interested in following someone who has ALL the answers, and science can never provide that. These people aren't interested in the truth, or facts, they want lies, comforting, uncomplicated lies!
Idiot.
When the Creationists kids are injured or seriously ill they take them to the hosiptal, which is essentially a temple of science. When it comes to modern western medicine, most of the Creationists must agree that science works.
When Science directly contradicts their mythology then science is bad.
Remind me again why anyone takes these fools seriously?
I disagree on your definition of "lie", then. To me, a lie must be known to be not true by the person who originates or repeats it, else it is not a lie, merely an honest mistake. Intention means everything in this regard.
For example, at one point in time, the value of pi was not known as precisely as it is today. The mathematicians of ancient times gave the value as closely as they had figured it out, but although the information was wrong throughout the whole chain of those who repeated it (right down to the person who first calculated that value), it was not a lie.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
Sure it is.
What you don't see me doing is trying to use it as the crux of an argument and labeling it as scientific.
You also don't see me proclaiming that other people should behave the same way or suffer ill effect X.
Why are we so concerned about the origin of species being taught in schools? In my highschool we spent less than 40 minutes on Evolution and Creationism was mentioned (in Bio class). Why are we so concerned about this? Isn't it better to focus on the constructs of the science and focus on its real purpose then in debating the dogmas behind the two points of views? Its not like we aren't already finding it difficult to teach kids enough in School now already, why waste too much time on this issue, when the scope of most secondary science classes is to instruct about how to study and use science in those areas, rather than bringing these issues to light. I just have never understood it. And get this, I am a Christian, I believe in Micro-Evolution, but not Macro, at least so far, that Macro Can't happen on its own (If God wanted it to happen who am I to say it couldn't), but for high school biology and anatomy, shouldn't they be focusing on things that actually prepare those kids for college and allow those who want to specialize in such areas to have the opportunity at the College level to learn as much as they want?
People hate Intelligent Design because it is untestable. Also, this is the Internet, where atheists come to make their claim that anything not scientifically sound must be untrue.
Science class is for teaching science not "facts about reality". Science is a method for probabilistically determining how reality will react when we act upon it. So yes, some people make the mistake of believing that scientific "laws" and theories act prescriptively upon reality instead of describing how it acts on its own, but their mistake does not entitle religious believers to make a counter-mistake of teaching an untestable hypothesis as "science".
Thanks for making my point. You are as closed minded as you are rude.
Proverbs 21:19
I always figured the command would be something like:
...
~/deity@cosmos# make world
checking for omnipotence in use... yes
checking whether to support http... yes
enable greed exploit check... no
# Building reality
# Creating universe
# Generating E.A.R.T.H.
Never explain a joke. Ever.
"Violence is the last refuge of the competent, and, generally, the first refuge of the incompetent" - Thing_1
Evolution is a fact. Like gravity is a fact.
The method in which evolution takes place is the theory, just like the method by which gravity works is a theory.
"Just let poor gullible children think for themselves for once!"
Giving somebody wrong information and the 'letting them think for themselves' is not the way to go.
"but on the other hand, neither is there any concrete scientific evidence of evolution,"
Could you be more ignorant. Here is a clue: Study some before spouting off and making a fool of your self. There is volumes of concrete scientific evidence.
" apart from the strong surviving over the week,"
And that further shows you have no grasp of the theory of evolution, a.k.a natural select.
With the theory of evolution, you can run tests and make predictions. If you can't do that, it's not a scientific theory, hence ID should not be taught in a science class.
You got a different theory? lets see the falsifiable tests.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Faith is the stalwart of religion and doubt is the stalwart of science but both are the opposite of certainty. If catholicism, the most hypocritical church on earth, has no problem with Darwin's ideas then why is it such a problem with other religions.
Supports of I.D must remember that limiting the discoveries of science is akin to limiting the glory of god, knowledge is not evil and neither is the extension and application of science. The discoveries of science test the limits of our understanding of the universe and should be seen, as such, to expand the understanding of the works of god. A God doesn't need defense from anyone and testing the limits of biology doesn't resemble testing god, it only tests the most pathetic of literal interpretations of the bible in it's most evangelical insecurity. If atheists test god, why do you care, who are you to judge? If atheists want to commune at the limit by saying god doesn't exist, who cares, you can't save anyone.
Atheists croon about people who have a faith and how stupid they but forget that a lot of people draw comfort from faith because there is a difference between intelligence and wisdom - it doesn't mean either is right or wrong - just different ways to get to death and that life can be a shit fight sometimes. We all have freewill with no interference, that's why you can choose what you believe, that's why you can't blame god for suffering in the world - because it's our world, our domain.
That said, I believe I.D is a blasphemous work of satan designed to dumb people down and distract them from what's important. Education is a weapon against suffering.
I think that it's really shitty that Atheist's and Theists are wasting time on this debate instead of standing up for things that matter like challenging human rights abuses, poverty, tin pot dictators, corporate corruption and so many other issues worth pursuing. Things that affect us no matter what we believe in.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
If ID is so preposterous why are the proponents of evolution so against it being taught. From the text of the intro to this, it claims that it would "could allow Intelligent design to be taught in schools." It doesn't say anything about it mandating it be taught or that it would taught exclusively. Why try to shut down discussing alternative views? Isn't evolution still a theory? That I know of it has not been proven without a doubt. What makes me really wonder is why, somehow evolution stopped before man knew it was happening. There is micro-evolution, within a species that is still evident today but One species becoming another is that evident. Dogs may evolve but they are still dogs. Through enviromental changes and selective breeding dogs change but they are still dogs. If it were truly a series of random events that occurred over "billions and billions" of years why is it not still occurring. Offspring of a species is always within the same species.
I'd pick the philosophy teacher in a class on the philosophy of science. I didn't study that until university though, which is a shame, it and the scientific method really should be taught a lot earlier in schools.
the "theory" that pi equals 3 (1 Kings 7:23)
Of all the possible attacks against the Bible, this is perhaps the most baffling to me. The verse in question states:
Now he made the sea of cast metal ten cubits from brim to brim, circular in form, and its height was five cubits, and thirty cubits in circumference. (New American Standard Bible). Some take this to imply that the Bible is stating 30 (the circumference) over 10 (the diameter) is a proscribed definition for pi. The simplest explanation is that the writer was rounding numbers. Another alternative is that the scribe was measuring from the inside edge for the diameter and around the outside edge for the circumference. Both explain the measurement without resorting to the patently ridiculous idea that the Bible defines pi as 3.
Actually, you're making my point, and I certainly wasn't attacking the bible (religion is an important part of my life). Personally, I agree that there are satisfactory interpretations of the bible that are consistent with evolution just like (as you point out) there are interpretations of the bible that are consistent with pi being greater than 3.
You haven't countered my statement that teaching Intelligent Design in public school science class is just as stupid and offensive as teaching pi = 3 in public school math class. Again, I never said that the facts that pi > 3 and that evolution is scientifically proven means you can't believe in the bible.
Presenting children--children, mind you--with a lie is wrong. Creationism and ID are not "sides of an argument," they are lies: lies originated in dishonesty, propagated in (at best) good faith ignorance, and perpetuated by superstition.
Advocating for a lie to be taught in schools is not something I'd want to sign my name to, either.
If you haven't been down-modded lately, you aren't trying.
Sacred cows make the best hamburger.
Alright, let's engage in the discussion scientifically. What is the scientific evidence for ID?
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
but these ID messiahs will be the first against the wall when the evolution comes.
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
Because Big Bang theory makes predictions, such as the existence of the cosmic background radiation. That's the difference between science and religion. Science makes predictions that can be tested. Religion depends on blind faith.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
Where's Oolon Coloophid when you need him?
Zeitgeist
Calling ID a philosophy is an insult to all philosophers and thinkers. ID is, at best, a mythology, a fiction, some fanciful story some guy told that got written down. It's like the stories you tell at the bar over a beer, they might be true, they might be made up, but nobody knows and nobody cares. They're just stories.
Philosophy is a method of thinking, perceiving, judging, and acting. Philosophy describes a way of life, or describes aspects thereof. Philosophical writings are not stories, though stories can contain a philosophical message, which the bible and most other holy books do.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
They purposely created a campaign called "Teach the Controversy" to create this confusion.
And in the process, inspired some really spiffy t-shirts.
(I have no connection with the T-shirt manufacturer other than as a fan).
I have no aversion to adultery and in fact recently was very tempted. But one has an aversion to his or her (especially his) partner committing adultery and I think that is surely from evolution. Kids from unstable homes, especially back when the world was more dangerous, had less chance to survive to puberty.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
where did science come from? can you prove, with only science, that all the laws of science have always existed
The old greeks would be my first guess, but my history in that area isn't that good. You can't prove anything with science, you can only disprove. And you can only disprove things about an observed reality, not about a philosophical system.
or explain how our 1 in 10^99999999999999999999999999999999999 chance of evolving into an intelligent species just happened even though out of the millions of stars we've studied ours is one of very few that might possibly contain a planet that might possible support life
This one is simple. We exist, therefore there is a 1:1 chance of us existing. Propabilities after the fact is useless because it has already happened.
You could just as well say that there is 1:10^X chance of me breathing in that exact air molecule that I just breathed in. Don't you see, it is impossible, so it must be work of god. It is a bad argument, plain and simple.
Just curious. you can blindly accept evolution as fact
If you mean blindly as in having seen lots and lots of biological facts concerning evolution, also having seen the effectiveness of natural selection as a mathematical algorithm used in computer AI and being impressed how such a simple system can tie to many observed things, such as fossiles, dna similarties between species, 1000s of years of farming and much much more.
All in all it is more solid than our theories concering gravity where we basically only have a formula that says, this is how it works, but have no real working theory of the underlying reasons why the formula works.
thought with an open mind and see WHY someone might be inclined to believe such irrational nonsense as ID
I have. Psychology is an interesting subject which among other things studies why humans believe irrational nonsense.
Indoctrinated upbrining is commmon. As is peer pressure. The human brain also is very good at partitioning information allowing irrational beliefs to coincide with rational ones that often contradict the irrational part.
I should mention that the Pope has stated
This isn't going to help your case. You do realize that some of the ID'ers, Young Earthers, etc. are also of the belief that the Pope is literally the Anti-Christ incarnate on Earth, right?
I just wish our legislatures would spend less time on issues regarding the worship of YHWH.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Exactly. Catholics got burned on the Galileo thing, and still remember that.
PS Intelligent design sucks
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
You are right, DOG was just fucking with them. He reached down and tweaked that bacteria.
It's good to know that these guys have such firm faith in their beliefs that they know the only way to express them is to crawl in through the back door.
Well then let's not let it in the backdoor. The first thing we can do is stop calling it 'Intelligent Design' which is a pr-term to disguise what it really is: Creationism (or in my mind: A step 1000 years back in time for real science.)
And if you are a grown, college educated person, who believe that the Grand Canyon was formed by a three day flood, you are not a believer. You are a fool.
You are arguing from a position of ignorance, my friend. First of all, no one who really understands what evolution is says "macro-evolution" there is no such thing as macro and micro evolution. Those are words made up by creationist to try to differentiate small evolutionary steps (what they call "micro-evolution") and large changes in speciation (what they call "macro-evolution"). Secondly, "theory" in scientific terms is NOT the same as "theory" in everyday speech. A scientific theory is actually BETTER than fact, it is based on many observable facts to give a set of rules that can predict natural phenomena. A single fact may at first seem actually lie outside those rules (see the bacterial flagellum argument that ID proponents talk about) but on further DEEPER investigation turn out to actually support the original theory. An example that doesn't use evolution is this... the theory of gravity dictates that things fall to the ground. The FACT that a helium balloon floats seems to contradict the theory. But on further investigation and applying information about gas densities and whatnot, you find that the theory of gravity holds true. The THEORY of gravity is actually better than the individual fact. This is another problem with creationists, they try to find single FACTS that seem to contradict theories and use those to prove that creationism is correct. Example: The grand canyon and other "eroded" canyons must have been created in a few days because Mt St Helen's blew up and created a big hole in a day - they completely ignore that that is a SINGLE abnormal event... but choose to use that as "proof" that all phenomena must be the same.
Why oh why is there a need for such a law?
Fourty-two!
I can prove that PV=NRT is incorrect as it both fails to properly account for mixed gases as well as fails to predict any transitional cusps (liquification, reactivity, or plasma transition).
Negative proofs exist in abundance. Positive results from experimentation simply become additional datapoints in the verification process. As shown in the example where it does function for a single given gas between cusps - to within experimental error in most cases.
The evolution of the eye is actually very well understood. Even Darwin himself had a good idea of how it happened.
You know that creationist quotemine that has Darwin saying that the eye evolving by natural selection seems at first glance to be "absurd in the highest possible degree"? In the book Darwin actually goes on to explain how it probably happened. I'm as surprised as you probably are that creationists tend to leave that bit out.
It has proven to be observable, at least.
How do we prove truth is true?
I can't think of a time when a narrative dream in the Bible was ever literal. Think about Joseph's dream, the dreams of the cupbearer and baker, Pharaoh's dream, and Nebuchadnezzar's dream. This too is an ALLEGORY. Peter, the one who experienced the dream, clearly explains that the message God sent to him was to be understood allegorically.
Please notice that the sheet with unclean animals was let down THREE times (10:16). Then...
19 While Peter was still thinking about the vision, the Spirit said to him, "Simon, THREE MEN are looking for you. 20 So get up and go downstairs. Do not hesitate to go with them, for I have sent them."
The Spirit sent three men just as He had sent the sheet down three times. The focus is on people -- three Gentiles -- not food.
I think this is the New Covenant doctrine that is being illustrated:
Or is God the God of Jews only? Is He not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also, since indeed God who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith is one. - Romans 3:29-30
Remember what God said: Do not think that the Son came to abolish the Law. (Mat. 5:17) Not one jot (iota) or tittle has passed away.
Well of course I don't think that it is a GOOD philosophy (since I prefer the scientific method to understand the natural world), but it is a philosophy.
My objection isn't that ID hasn't been thought through or that it's not logical. It, or versions of it, have been around for over 100 years. There's even a logical, rational thought process behind it.
My rejection to ID is twofold. First, it has no success in describing the natural world, and provides no practical benefit besides "understanding". My other objection is that it is not being sold as a philosophy - it is being sold as a scientific theory.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Then for starters, I would say you are obviously incorrect. Genetic algorithms work in exactly the same way, by adding randomness and using selection to improve robustness of algorithms. A related algorithm, simulated annealing, works in a similar way.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
If you don't know yet, that's fine. As it stands to date, however, there have been no published papers in the normal scientific journals that have provided the merest whiff of the slightest proof of such a "creator". All we've seen so far is some mystical, Jedi-like handwaving about evolutionary theory not answering all the questions. No one is saying any different. Provide some documented evidence of your position that is measureable and testable that fits life on earth. I'll wait...
Oh, please, do tell. Here, I'll start you out for the listing of all such scientists who've had such things happen to them, with appropriate references:
1)
You know what, fuck yourself. One exception (which could be a lie for all we know) doesn't disprove anything. You no more deserve respect for your belief in the magical sky genie than I deserve respect for thinking you're retarded for having said belief.
I have a different theory. It is not gravity that pulls the baseball back to earth. Rather, it is God's Love. So in the interest of academic freedom, today class, we will spend the hour discussing God's Love.
You can see where this is heading.
Take off every Sig. For great justice.
I always find it comical (or sad, depending on how you look at it) to see how ignorant the Slashdot crowd can be.
There are over 30,000 different "denominations" of "Christianity", and the vast majority of them, including Catholicism, make no dogmatic statement at all about the "how" of our coming to be (there are some groups that do, yes). That is left to the realm of science.
It irritates me to no end to see ignorant statements being modded up as "Informative" or "Insightful".
I see plenty of well founded but familiar criticisms of the intelligent design philosophy and its mind shrinking consequences, plenty of explanations of science, some ire aimed at the Louisiana legislature, but not a single question as to whether or not the state or federal government should be meddling in schooling curriculum in the first place.
No one questions the notion that government should be providing for our childrens' schooling needs, even though this law demonstrates the structural vulnerability of such a system when increasingly vocal theocrats obtain authority in these capacities. I'd like to see this example as fuel for a discussion of a free market in schooling. The religious can send their poor kids to creationism school and localize the intellectual damage, and the rest of us can select schools for the quality of curriculum and presentation.
I wonder how this law would affect private schools whose governing bodies wanted to fire a science teacher for introducing mythology into the class.
Creationism can't be proven wrong, which is why it isn't science.
Well, "Intelligent Design" for a given trait can be falsified by demonstrating a natural way for said trait to have evolved. ID is still not scientific though, since it has absolutely no explanatory or predictive power whatsoever.
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
ID's claims of irreducible complexity are indeed falsifiable. It's still not scientific though.
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
I wasn't taking a jab at PhDs -- I meant it. If am wrong in my assertions, I want someone knowledgeable to correct me. The best way to make sure you can always learn something is to not believe in anything -- that way you don't mind being corrected.
He states that since many organisms do not change for millions of years there is something wrong with the argument
I'm not sure I see the problem. If the environment does not appreciably change, there is little to no selection pressure, and so little change in a species.
extrapolation to macroevolution or even permanent microevolution is unwarranted
Why are either of those extrapolations invalid? A sequence of microevolutions can lead to speciation.
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
Let states pass legislation like this, on the grounds that they rename their science curriculum and classes to reflect what they're teaching: pseudo-science. That way, it's clear to everyone (especially universities) which students (potential employees) have had a proper science curriculum, and which have taken pseudo-science classes that teach them that non-scientific concepts need to be considered as legitimate alternatives to scientific ones. I could care less if a state wants to fuck up all of its children, and raise a generation that can't properly apply the scientific method, just as I could care less that there are millions of parents that do exactly the same thing to their kids with or without good schools today. But at least make it clear to everyone else what's going on and call it what it is.
You are confusing radiometric dating, used for determining the age of fossils millions of years old, with radiocarbon dating, used for determining the age of organic material thousands of years old. Sounds like you need to learn *the* facts before you can interpret them correctly. Anyway, if you have any solid evidence that either radiometric or radiocarbon dating is seriously flawed, let's see it. As far as I know, both dating techniques match other evidence. For example, radiocarbon dating matches what we would expect from historical records, and radiometric dating matches with the age of the solar system.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
So if you can prove something wrong then that IS science? That makes no sense
You misunderstand. Science is about trying to disprove ideas and seeing which ones hold up to scrutiny. If there is no way possible to prove an idea incorrect, then that idea is not science.
For example, I hypothesize that the Earth is round. A consequence of that idea is that if I travel around it long enough, I'll come back to where I started. If I tried that experiment and it failed, then the Earth could not be round.
Now, take the idea that the Earth was formed last Tuesday by a smartass god who likes to screw with our heads, and he made the world look exactly as though it were 5 billion years old and created all of us with memories extending back before last Tuesday. Maybe it's an interesting thought experiment, but it is not science because there wouldn't be any test you could run that could disprove the idea.
There's more to science than disprovability, but it's a key component and one whose absence is enough to relegate an idea to philosophy instead of genuine scientific inquiry.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
The word metaphysics is derived from a medieval compilation of the works of the philosopher Aristotle. The compiler wasn't sure what to call the philosophical books he placed after Aristotle's Physics, so he called them the Metaphysics. In these books, Aristotle discusses the nature of reality and the patterns and structures governing it. Discussing metaphysical questions does not imply that you're dealing with invisible extra-spatial and extra-temporal forces, as you imply.
I have to recommend Carl Sagan's "The Demon-Haunted World". It was required reading for an honors Texts and Critics class I took at an Engineering land-grant university, not even a crunchy granola liberal arts college.
In my local Christian school (Lutheran) they do this. Never really see secular schools do it, too 'controversial'. But the school I am talking about is big on making christian faith your own rather than just the one you have by default.
CS: It is all sink or swim...oh and did I mention there are sharks in that water?
A few points about this:
1. That's not what evolutionary theory says. In fact, the theory that might come closest to that (though it doesn't even say that) is Big Bang cosmology, which you will note, is a cosmological theory, and not a biological theory.
2. It looks to me like you don't have the vaguest idea what philosophy is.
3. Evolution isn't a dogma or a religion. It isn't a Leftist political platform. It's a scientific theory.
4. You're a fucking moron who likely knows jack-shit about biology, cosmology, philosophy or anything else, but think that you can fool people into believing your clever by using words like "philosophy". Of course the sheer ignorance you betray when you pop this sort of crapola out in a place where people with some familiarity with Creationist/ID lies and idiocy reveals you to be a simpering half-wit who an education was wasted on.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Yes, the analogy fails, because I was simply debunking your claim that introducing randomness cannot add integrity to a complex system. On the other hand, it is because the analogy fails that you fail to prove evolution does not occur. Biological systems can mutate and still reproduce. Most genetic mutations are harmless.
At this point, I'd like to point out that I asked for evidence for ID, but instead you're attempting to providing evidence against evolution. This is the way ID proponents work -- it is not scientific, as it assumes without evidence that ID is the only alternative to evolution. If they were scientific, they would show that ID is able to make more accurate predictions than evolution.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
I'd be all for critical thinking, but first the need to actually teach it. That means recognizing logical fallacies, empty arguments, appeals to emotion and religious belief, not to mention understanding what science is, how it works, and why some things are and some things are not science (regardless of how true anyone may hold them to be).
What you seem to be suggesting is rather like handing a kid a history textbook and then one of Zundel's pieces of trash, and basically saying "Okay, figure out whose telling the truth".
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
And where is what I asked for, the evidence that radiometric dating techniques used in determining the age of fossils are flawed? Radiocarbon dating is irrelevant to evolution, because it doesn't measure the long time periods over which species split. If you have the evidence I'd like to see it. I keep seeing over and over in this thread that scientists are unwilling to debate the facts of the matter, but those same people are unwilling to give specific facts to debate about. You are simply claiming without evidence that radiometric dating is flawed. There's nothing to debate, as it's an empty claim.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
Buddhism has an interesting viewpoint on issues like this.
You'll notice all kinds of gods in Buddhist iconography and mythology. If you're a Buddhist, you're not expected to believe in any of them. You can if you want, but belief isn't an end in itself. Belief is something that on its own is hard to maintain. You can't be expected to believe in something all the time.
It's this heavy burden of trying to believe in something all the time that is going to prompt the development of the Electric Monk...
Bow-ties are cool.
But evolution also isn't science.
I have never done this before, but this time is really necessary.
You're a complete idiot.
Hope this comment may help you exit from your religion and become an half-decent human being.
There's a hidden treasure in Python 3.x: __prepare__()
1. Please define "information" as it applies to biological systems.
2. Please provide evidence of this loss of "information".
You picked a rather interesting one in sickle cell, for a number of reasons. For one thing, it evolved (that's right, it evolved) in a number of different populations independently, and these varieties can actually be used to track a person's origins. So if we go by your "information" theory, who has lost more information, someone suffering from Saudi-Arabian and Cameroon varieties?
Another interesting fact is that in someone who is heterozygous, it, in fact, confers a survival advantage, making the person more resistant to malaria (this is why, just as NS would predict, the disorder is still maintained in populations, despite the delerious effects of being homozygous). So who has less information, a heterozygote or a homozygote? And even if your information theory is correct (which it isn't, because we can identify the gene responsible, and there is the same number of coding sequences in either case, so your theory is pure bullshit anyways), it still means that genetic changes can lead to the arising of beneficial traits.
As to this origin nonsense, well that's a separate (though) related field called abiogenesis. Behe, being a man who has rejected science in favor of the Creationism-lite called ID, intentionally confuses in this regard (though he doesn't deny Common Descent, which should suggest to you that even he accepts evolution). Evolutionary biology deals in imperfect replicators. Where those replicators came from is something else. This is rather like saying "I don't believe in Indo-European language classification because you can't show me who the first PIE speaker was".
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
It's a damned good thing we have more than one method of dating, and that we're all not epistemological nihilists who, out of a need to prop up a long-defunct view of the world, would deny any capacity to gain knowledge.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The big deal is that it encourages people to eschew facts, and try to fit their observations to a hypothesis, rather than trying to fit a hypothesis to the facts. Basically turning the entire scientific method on it's head is what the problem is. You start with evolution, but it's not a big step from there to alchemy. Allowing any "science" teacher to teach anything that isn't verified or even possibly verifiable through the scientific method is a great way to make our already stupid nation much less intelligent. You Christians bitch about how all our jobs are being taken by foreigners, yet go on to encourage the mediocrity and ignorance of our people. Doesn't really surprise me, though... cause and effect are lost on people like you.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
I am a Christian and a programmer. I believe God created the rules of nature, and sometimes puts a helping hand in when needed. If I was to program an AI based world, that is at least what I would do. I wouldn't want to control every little detail, I would just want to make sure the entities abided to general principals/rules.
My point is, why does ID and evolution have to contradict each other? They aren't mutually exclusive. As a Christian it really peeves me off when extremists give us a bad name. Why is it these extremists in USA have such a loud voice?
First of all, what real people? What are you referring to? Moses? Adam? Joshuah?
Second of all, what does anything of that have to do with radiometric dating? Maybe you comfort yourself with imaging that this colossal non-sequitur somehow debunks multiple dating methods that can be, in fact, synchronized with each other, but it makes you look rather sad and desperate.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
ID is not a theory. Please stop perverting that word. A "theory" is a scientific term for a model that is backed by evidence, has not been rejected by evidence, and is falsifiable.
ID is NOT backed by evidence and is NOT falsifiable, thus it is NOT a theory. It is a belief. Evolution can be proved wrong. ID cannot be.
While I think ID is total crap, it is potentially a valid theory. The premise of evolution is that speciation is caused by small, random genetic mutations that occasionally increase survivability. In order to "disprove" evolution, one would have to find evidence of instantaneous, large genetic mutations that are statistically improbable. This is exactly what the ID people argue. The problem with ID is that the evidence is really weak.
What do you think is more likely, A meteor that strikes the earth carrying the first bacteria, or heritability arising from natural chemical reactions? Is the meteor theory valid as a theory?
Bit of a correction first - what you stated is not the premise of evolution, it's merely one theory of how evolution could work. There are others, not all incompatible with each other.
Here's the thing which gets me about this whole thing - and I often find it hard to express this complaint clearly...
Science starts from the idea or observation that something did happen, must have happened, and attempts to find a solution that will fit the available evidence. There is life on Earth and we know it must have started somehow, and we assume there is a reasonable explanation for that.
Intelligent Design basically circumvents this. Rather than starting with "this must have happened, so there must be an explanation" it instead starts with its own premise and tries to substantiate it, mostly by tearing down competing theories. "Science can't sufficiently explain how this biological process could have come to be (never mind the fact that the previous statement may be false) therefore the development of life must have been guided by an intelligence."
I find this apparent negation of the basic model of the world's events disturbing - if things happen not because of an unknown cause-effect relationship but rather, because of an unknown intent of an unknown designer - if we make no assumptions that we can connect pieces of evidence and try to come up with a mechanical explanation that fits the facts, then what can we rely upon in this world?
I hope I've expressed my idea clearly. I have a lot of trouble trying to get this particular point across.
Bow-ties are cool.
Do scientists not accept many theories without direct evidence proving them? Do they not read text books that describe events that 'prove' theories that were written by people in the past whom they've never seen, talked to, or really know exist other than from what someone else or some other book told them?
But its silly to believe a book from a long time ago?
I believe in evolution, but these retarded arguements about how science has proof and is somehow different than religion on a cosmic level are just retarded.
In my opinion, if you truely believe we have the right idea about the origin of the universe, the big bang, or what happened in the universe billions of years ago, you are a very piss poor scientist.
Going on a theory, which was built on some theories which were built on some theories which explain events that we have no possible way to observe or test is just as dumb as faith in a mythical being that created the universe from nothing.
Everyone needs to stop with the religious wars, and like it or not, many scientists are religious zealots with a different god. I'm sure we'll have the scientific crusades soon enough.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
The problem is that you cannot show that bias coming from willful intercession vs. the bias caused by superior (in context of the current environment) random trait.
In order to prove/disprove ID, your data sets have to have all biases coming from willful intercession. Its not the existence of bias, which natural selection hinges on, but the source of the bias. That's the only flaw I see, but I do respect the attempt.
Why would anyone risk hiring products of Louisiana's education system?
Go to New Orleans and spend lots of money, but boycott the rest of the state. Tell you boss and your HR people that Louisiana schools are deliberately turning out dummies and that you don't want them working with you. Pull your contracts out of Louisiana.
Tell them you'll come back when the current idiots in the legislature and the governor's office are replaced by rational human beings.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Because one is a scientific theory, and the other is vacuous fluff. There is no debate in the scientific community about evolution. The number of scientists, and more importantly scientists whose areas of expertise involve in some form or another biological evolution is overwhelmingly in favor of evolutionary biology. The other side is corrupt politicians, lawyers, nutjobs and the very very very very rare token PhD like Behe.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The Eggtropian view of the universe is that we were intelligently hatched from eggs after being baked in the inner workings of a blond nova. Once that baking was completed our atoms were squished inside a blue hole and we were then spewed into the bowels of some unsuspecting gnats and reborn as chickens.
Once you begin to allow one sort of view you must permit all sorts of views to be taught. The schools will have to give equal billing to Jesus freaks as well as Allah freaks, among others, such as Satanism, etc.
The Supreme Court ruled that cities/states, etc., didn't have the right to discriminate against religion any more than it would be allowed to support one religion over another. If the cities/states wanted to promote one religion it had to promote them all, as well as anti-religions.
Now, if this State decides that schools are to teach intelligent design they must also now teach my Eggtropia. Intelligent design isn't fact, it is faith. Faith is the belief of each individual and the level of that faith is the commitment of each individual. It is inappropriate for a government to force upon our children a faith that really is a subjective matter.
That law will be held unconstitutional. Legal challenges will begin immediately. Smart governments know how to stay out of this sort of debate. This tells us that those individuals that enacted these laws will not be in office much longer.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
Actually it's much worse. It's an invocation of epistemological nihilism, the denial that any verifiable knowledge can ever be gained. It's post-modernism at its very worst, and the ironic part is that it obliterates Creationism just as much as evolution. If there's no reason to accept evidence because it all could be true or false, then why believe in Creationism?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Well, chalk one more freedom up as being completely dead. No that it's OK to make laws to tell our teachers, professors and other educators what they can and cannot teach we've turned our schools into indoctrination centers. Give this 10-15 years and schools will be nothing but a useless brainwashing that teaches nothing of value because ANYTHING of value is dangerous to someone's status quo.
Remember that slippery slope thing that your professors said was a falicy? Well it sure seems like it's working - and against the people who think it doesn't exist. Remember the old frog boiling analogy? The one where you slowly turn up the heat instead of toss it into 211 degree water?
Thanks a lot evolution zealots - you successfully shot all of us in the foot by trying to shout down and silence anyone who opposed your (much more fact based) view of the world. Even though you were right, you left your opponents no room to do anything other than change the rules. And so the rules change, and we can only hope for another Scopes Monkey Trial. Remember, you can win the battle and lose the war. SPECTACULAR FAIL!
-- $G
Science is the search for truth. There are many scientists who have come to believe that everything around us didn't just happen by accident. And most people of faith have no problem accepting that evolution exists. Things change over time, just look at fossils. But just because things evolve over time does not explain how they got here in the first place. There's a giant leap between a pile of chemicals becoming a cell that can protect itself from the environment, feed itself, reproduce, move around, and sense things like light and heat. Science can tell us how, but only religion can tell us why. What I don't understand is why people who claim to be so knowledgeable and open minded never want to hear any other points of view and try to ban competing ideas and mock and ridicule those who don't agree with them. And yet every day we find new evidence that disproves theories that have been held as truths for decades or even centuries. Just because it's written in some text book doesn't make if infallible.
Seriously...The Feds squashed Texas for trying to do the same damn thing. This, whether you believe or not, is the real reason it should not be taught in public schools. There's a chain of schools called "Catholic" for a reason - You want your kids to have a decreased affinity for seeking out why the universe works because they simply believe that it does? There's the school chain for you. The general public (and more importantly, the state) is barred from permitting this kind of non-sense.
Now leave the rest of us who have more important work to do alone.
Your comparison is clever, but ultimately just a waste of time.
Evolution has evidence on its side.
Creationism doesn't.
I think you might be thinking of nylon, not citrate. Citrate has been around in biological systems for a long, long, long, long time. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citric_Acid_Cycle
A teacher's job is not to tell the children what some people believe, his job is to teach what is known to be the most accurate theory in existence.
I disagree. A science teacher's job is to teach science.
A teacher should not be afraid of teaching old theories then showing how people discovered that the old theory was wrong, THEN teach the newer theory. It's that critical thinking about falsifiability which is at the core of the scientific method, and that's what we should aim to impart to the next generation.
Michael, is that you? I liked you better when you were black and had zippers all over your cool red jacket.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Evidence is by no means conclusive. Scientifically, it seems to many that it may be the best way to explain how we got here. To automatically shut down anyone who disagrees regardless of whether or not the mention a deity is unscientific.
I once heard someone use the following analogy with respect to evolution. He mentioned that if every cell in the universe were a pentium 4 processor (he used the current cpu clock speed at the time) computing all the genetic makeups to cause a mutation, he said for a single species of animal to be mutated to another it would take in the order of trillions of years. Maybe somebody here with more knowledge could help redo the computation, as I don't remember the details.
The fact is that for a monkey to mutate into a human, the number of individual genetic mutations would be large, and the probability that it would have more than one 'beneficial' mutation is low. Also, don't two such species need to have the same mutation in order to reproduce with eachother (as per my understanding, part of the definition of a new species is that it can only procreate with a species of it's own kind).
Could someone tell me how many generations it would take for such a significant set of mutations to happen under statistically normal conditions? And, if the conditions were not statistically normal, why?
I despise the tone of New Scientist articles these days. They're as fanatical about convincing the non-believers as any Christians I've come into contact with.
Insanity: voting in the same two parties over and over again and expecting different results
Didn't NP Completeness not go unproven for many years?
No, it's more like this:
- "I've tested it in the laboratory, and many other people have verified my claims!"
- "No, you're stupid, it's all written in THE BOOK!"
- "Oh, yeah?"
- "Yes, EVERYTHING that's written in THE BOOK is absolutely true!"
- "Well, can't you see the obvious discrepancy between Matthew 1 and Luke 3, 23~38?"
- "Doh! Well, yes, now that I've read it, I guess you're right. See, I had never really read that book, I just assumed what people told me about it was true."
Are you saying that the 10 commandments were not meant to be taken literally? I'll agree that the creation story is too ambiguous to be taken literally, but most to the Bible is meant to be taken literally.
Unfortunately, the origin of life as it is currently taught in schools does require a lot of faith (or ignorance) as well. Maybe it's not something that should be taught in science class either.
Indonesia didn't preserve the texts of the ancient Greeks. Indonesia didn't have a highly advanced form of medicine. Indonesia is also not a theocracy.
Islam isn't the problem, the problem is that people who interpret the Koran literally force their government to be run according to the Koran, because the Koran IS law. Any kind of theocracy is bad, and Saudi Arabia is the perfect example of it.
Of course not ALL areas that had large amounts of Muslims were doomed. If it were for the large number of Muslims in Spain, the European countries might *still* be in the dark ages, but they aren't, because the fantastic ideas that the local Spanish Muslims had records of were stumbled across, and it lead to the Renaissance and eventually to the Enlightenment.
Learn something new.
(Caveat: I'm working off a year-old memory of Phillip's book here, so I might get things a bit muddled.)
Re: the "no change" argument, I believe his point is that a great many species show very little sign of change, in spite of large-scale changes in the geological record. Evolution has poor "predictive" powers, he would argue.
Re: the "unwarranted" argument, his point would be that the ability to select from a known state is not at all the same as creating something entirely new. Selection has insufficient "creative" powers, he would argue.
Anyway, I thought the book was worth reading, regardless of how one comes down on the question.
Personally, I believe we haven't truly hit upon the right theory yet. There is clearly something going on with self-organization of systems, not just self-selection. The world doesn't feel "random" at all, in fact, just the opposite.
Whatever this self-organizing principle may turn out to be, of course it would be a "natural" feature. There's absolutely no need to bring supernaturalism into the discussion at all.
There certainly are other realms of inquiry beyond science, and they can be perfectly legitimate. But science is self-restricted to only that which can be tested, which means the natural world. So please, yes, let's not try to pass of philosophical evidence as science.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
I've got to post to undo some incorrect moderations. Whee! For some reason, slashdot picked the next moderation in the list, substantially changing things. Oh well.
Oops, I accidentally left the last part of my post off...
As a Christian, what I don't understand is why God couldn't have used evolution as a tool for creation
Great! Then you are on the evolution side of this conflict. The majority of Christians accept evolution, and (in the Western World) the majority of "evolutionists" are Christian.
It's only the anti-evolution side trying to push the wacky line that evolution and God are in conflict. Precisely once I saw someone post that evolution somehow denied God and I personally gave him a verbal smackdown for it. He immediately retracted his earlier words and called it an accidental misphrasing.
Just like in the Galileo situation, it's the anti-science folks pushing the line that Galileo/Darwin conflict with the bible, that the science is somehow an attack on God and that it somehow equals atheism.
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Hell, God *could* exist and *could* have intelligently designed the universe. It's highly unlikely, but not impossible.
Just like God's existence in unprovable, and Him having intelligently designed (or created) the universe is unprovable, the likelihood of those items is unknown. Until such time as He decides to settle the matter, anyway. But until then, the probability is somewhere between 0 and 1.
Sure I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?
I want to say that I oppose the teaching of creation, no matter what you call it, in the curriculum of public schools if the teaching of evolution is not also included. And I respect the other side saying "no teaching of evolution without teaching of creation."
I believe the lecture should go something like this. "How the universe came to be is a matter of controversy, ongoing for millenia. The two basic theories are Creation and Evolution. Creation is defined as {______brief neutral definition______}. Evolution is defined as {______brief neutral definition______}. The controversy of the issue means that I cannot tell you which one is right. You must discuss this with your parents and/or your spiritual advisor".
You're right, this is something of a cop-out. But if it is done any other way, the children will only get one side of the story, depending on which camp lobbies the school board more effectively. I'd rather see the issue 'non-taught' than see this happen. At least my version will inform the students of the nature of the controversy, and spur them to discuss the issue with parents.
TANSTAAFL GIGO Acronyms to live by!
I could care less...
Just how much less could you care? I, on the other hand, couldn't care less, not even a little.
Okay, I'm tired, so sue me.
Sure I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?
The theory of gravity isn't proven either. As a matter of fact, evidence to prove evolution outweighs (pun intended) evidence to prove gravity. The gravitational constant is only known to a few digits while other physical constants are known to a dozen or more. No one has any more than paper theories on how gravity works, but there is a ton of work on evolution. Experiments have been designed, both in the lab and in the wild, to prove various aspects of evolution, have been carried out, and have worked as predicted.
You are the kind of idiot who insists everyone else has to provide proof equivalent to 2 + 2 = 4, but want everyone else to believe your bible because you say it is so, without the slightest pretense of provising anything even close to evidence.
Infuriate left and right
just stating the obvious i suppose when i say that we can at least all agree (those of us who have at least two brain cells) that it is imperative that church and state should be separated and even though it is an undeniable fact that there are great mysteries in the universe which are still beyond our comprehension. But the old grey hippie in the sky who designed the world ... that's just a bit too far-fetched imo ... or actually maybe not far enough ... religion is outdated and obsolete, it's only use is to appease the insecure and the ignorant (bold statement, yes) and we will not see great progress or the next step in evolution until we leave that childish foolishness behind ... look to the stars people, and see STARS !!! never forget that MAN created god to be it's spitting image :p
Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?
Too bad this law only applies to the teaching of science. I would love to see the community's reaction to a satanist social studies teacher bringing "supplementary material" into the classroom.
>> The fact is that for a monkey to mutate into a human, the number of individual genetic mutations would be large,
>> and the probability that it would have more than one 'beneficial' mutation is low. Also, don't two such species
>> need to have the same mutation in order to reproduce with eachother (as per my understanding, part of the definition
>> of a new species is that it can only procreate with a species of it's own kind).
You're a bit wrong here.
First of all, a single mutation does NOT make a new species. For a new species to happen, one group of the original species must be divided in two and then prevented from mating with eachother. That way a mutation can appear in one group but not in the other, and if enough mutations amass, we could call it a new species as they would no longer be able to produce fertile offspring.
Imagine that you somehow isolated the entire american continent from the rest of the world. No humans from outside would move in, nor would anyone from the inside be able to move out. That's essentially what you need to create a new species out of us humans. You'd need to keep one group isolated so that they would not mix their mutations with ours. If that is allowed to go on long enough, the differences between the two groups would be big enough to prevent the groups from mixing.
Secondly, mutations can be propagated even if only one individual has it. It depends on if the gene the mutation is stored in is recessive or dominant.
$ sed 's/creationism/intelligent design/g' creationist_textbook.txt
No, They apparently did the cut-n-paste job by hand. And butchered the job.
Linky linky: cdesign proponentsists
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The G...GP said citrate. They weren't able to deal with it before, but now they can, which is what I meant by "new to them".
America, Home of the Brave.
There is no reason that any of this cannot be tied into your faith.
Did God take 7 ACTUAL EARTH DAYS to form all of creation? How is that possible...there where no "Earth days" when he started!
"God" is really just all of nature and existence around you (in the end, after all, it IS what created you and everything else). Those of ancient times simply personified it because they didn't have any explanation for natural occurrence taking place without some type of living being being the cause (Volcanos caused by underground demons? Floods caused by angry gods of the sea?)
Likewise, they decided on an arbitrary time frame because they had no concept of "billions".
If you ask me, knowing that the God I learned about for 9 years of Catholic school is in fact the world around me (including myself, and you too) and that (just about) all the lessons in those religious texts where written in order to guide the mindset of those who followed them to prevent disease, war, poverty, and ultimately the failure of our species, is in fact much more amazing to me than thinking there is a big ghostly guy in the sky behind golden gates who keeps tabs on everyone at all times. Really.
Just because I don't choose to perceive God as a being doesn't mean the concept of God can't apply to what I know about the world.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
I'm a full-on, YEC
I have a bit of expertise on some of the other issues you two were discussing, and maybe I'll get into some of that later, but first I want to see how this issue goes.
If you go to the arctic or antarctic and dig in the snow, you can see visible yearly layers. In the summer the surface bakes out under the sun for 6 months changing its texture, and a layer of dust and pollen from across the globe settles out of the atmosphere. You can count down the layers to any given year and find traces of ash from any given volcano in history. Dig down 1929 layers - 1929 years ago - to the layer for 79 A.D. - and you'll find ash from Mt Vesuviusm the famous eruption that destroyed Pompeii. If you want to get fancy you can measure minute trace levels of lead in the layers. Based on lead levels you can you can see lead levels go up in the 1920's when we started using leaded gasoline, and you can see lead levels go down in the 1970's and 80's when we phased out leaded gasoline. But more interesting if you dig down counting about 5300 layers down - counting about 5300 years ago - you can actually detect the beginning of the bronze age around 3300 B.C. In the bronze age the mining and smelting of ore released lead smoke and dust into the atmosphere, more than 5300 layers down the snowpack has no trace lead contamination, from that point on it does have faint traces of lead contamination. The yearly layers in the snow are visible and countable, and they verifiably track all of history and beyond.
Well, the layers down stop 5300 layers down. They keep going. In the arctic icepack there are about 123,000 layers. In the antarctic there are about 174,000 layers. All the way down you have yearly summer layers with the traces of pollen and dust. All the way down you have occasional layers of volcanic ash, laying out a history of 174,000 years routine pattern of occasional volcanic eruptions.
There is no sane way that the earth is less than 174,000 year ago. It is also not possible there was a literal global flood, at least not within the last 174,000 years anyway. Such a flood would have melted any underlying layers, and even if it didn't melt all of the underlying layers, it still would have left a huge and obvious mark behind at that point.
If that doesn't punch a hole in your YEC model of history, then I doubt even a video taped history of evolution would make a dent.
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Typo: "the layers down stop 5300 layers down" should read don't stop.
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Sorry, got lost pouring that out to the world (finally) and forgot my conclusion! The point of the parent post is:
Let your children learn about the world around them via science, which is a process to do as best as possible to gather unbiased facts about any subject.
Teach them to tie it into your religion on your own time. It's possible, and it usually works.
My tax dollars do not pay to support your religion, and your tax dollars shouldn't be used to support mine. This is how we maintain FREEDOM OF RELIGION, which is one of the founding principals of the United States of America. If you don't like it, well, there is the door. Come visit whenever you want, the door is always open (let's hope, but that's a whole other topic).
...and I thank you for thinking carefully (and critically!) before replying.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
I believe his point is that a great many species show very little sign of change, in spite of large-scale changes in the geological record. Evolution has poor "predictive" powers, he would argue.
Indeed, one cannot currently predict how a species may or may not evolve, since we don't really have a good understanding of gene expression. That's due primarily to a lack of understanding, not a flaw in the theory. We can foresee that one day we might be able to predict beneficial mutations given certain environmental conditions, but a great deal of research needs to fill in some gaps first.
his point would be that the ability to select from a known state is not at all the same as creating something entirely new. Selection has insufficient "creative" powers, he would argue.
Selection is not creating anything, mutation is. Selection merely weeds out the bad mutations.
For instance, see this recent announcement of a reproducible random mutation of E. Coli which enabled them to start metabolizing citrate. Once they narrow down the series of generations which led to this mutation, we'll get a clear picture of how random mutations can lead to beneficial traits and possibly speciation. It's a very exciting discovery, and the patience and effort that went into it is mind-boggling. I think this experiment will turn out to be critical to evolution and natural selection.
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
Sorry, no. Only if you can prove that the universe is sufficiently deterministic.
I thought we WANTED our children to learn how to think on their own, not to be spoon fed theories that are widely accepted (and taught) as fact but still not proven.
As opposed to being spoon-fed theories spread by a bunch of bigots?
There is a difference between the scientific method, which demands that you question everything, even if it appears supported by facts, and the bigot method, which demands that you accept everything, particularly if it is unsupported by facts.
A pink giraffe was living in my back yard last week. Prove me wrong.
Good point. It's not possible, since I wasn't there. This relates to my next point...
Creationism can't be proven wrong, which is why it isn't science.
Neither can evolution be, FWIW. Why are we teaching either of them?
Ummm, evolution (as a process) is proven. There is no debate about this whatsoever.
Evolution (more accurately, natural selection) has been demonstrated in trivially small instances. Claiming this supports the notion that one species can gradually morph to another is quite a leap of faith.
To quote Mark Twain:
In the space of one hundred and seventy six years the Lower Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. That is an average of a trifle over a mile and a third per year. Therefore, any calm person, who is not blind or idiotic, can see that in the Old Oölitic Silurian Period, just a million years ago next November, the Lower Mississippi was upwards of one million three hundred thousand miles long, and stuck out over the Gulf of Mexico like a fishing-pole. And by the same token any person can see that seven hundred and forty-two years from now the Lower Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long, and Cairo and New Orleans will have joined their streets together and be plodding comfortably along under a single mayor and a mutual board of aldermen. There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Intelligent Design should be known as an exercise in philosophy and not in grounded science fact. It is just as probable to take this as fantasy against reality, reality wins everytime. It would take a degree(College) to understand the real science of evolution. It would take an ordinary high school education to understand ID.
Without this law, the teacher could mark B wrong and set A to be the correct answer. Where's freedom of religion?
Considering that both ToE and ID are theories, are inherently unprovable, and can do nothing more than explain existing data and make predictions, D is the correct answer anyway. At least under this law, the class is permitted to have this discussion and discover that the ToE, contrary to the claims of its followers, doesn't have a monopoly on IQ.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
I hear there are Creationism experts (quite intelligent folks, believe it or not) who are looking for ToE followers to debate. Would you like to volunteer?
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Is the theoretical part of evolution falsifiable?
Yes [x]
No [ ]
I'm sorry... how exactly could it be falsified? I wasn't aware it was possible.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Damn. I was trying to come up with a joke about schools run by fundie principals...
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
You don't understand evolution if you can make a statement like that. Evolution's "survival of the fit" only applies up to the transfer and raising of the next generation to breeding age. It says nothing about OUR guiding/interfering in the process. Such a process would NOT be "natural selection", but "intelligent selection."
Kevin Smith on Prince
I'm a Christian, and I don't beleive that the 7 days of the creation were earth days at all... considering that an earth day is the time that earth takes to spin in itself and that earth didn't exist until the second day makes the first day unmesureable.
Bear with me for a moment. There is a fatal flaw in theistic evolution from a Christian's standpoint. Evolution requires eons of generation after generation living, reproducing, and dying before finally becoming human. Christianity, on the other hand, hinges on the concept of "sin" which results in physical and spiritual death. If the "original sin" is literal, you're stuck with the dilemma of billions of creatures suffering and dying before sin entered the picture. If the "original sin" is figurative, there's nothing to literally "save" us from, and Jesus' literal, physical death was unnecessary.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
I think you're agreeing with me here with respect to the number of mutations... I said "the number of individual genetic mutations would be large", so it should be clear that a single mutation doesn't make a new species.
I'm no expert in this, but it seems you're strengthening my point by pointing out that the entire group would have to be isolated from everyone else, and I presume it must be for a large number of generations.
It seems that the probability of a species having enough mutations to become another species is extremely low, and in order for it to be 'random' it must take a lot longer than the evidence shows. If such mutations did occur within the timeline perceived by the evidence supporting it, there has to be some non-random outside factor coming into play.
To add to this, the probability of the previous intermediary species completely dying out also seems a little sketchy to me. Why don't we see monkies with developed vocal cords or something of the like today? What makes humans so different that we're the only species that has the power to communicate abstract ideas?
One could argue that unless one has witnessed evolution from once species to the next, it is also unprovable. One may have strong evidence to back it up, but there can still be reasonable doubt.
Creationism can't be proven wrong, which is why it isn't science.
Neither can evolution be, FWIW. Why are we teaching either of them?
Sure it can. Find one example - just one! - of an animal in the fossil records that appeared out of nowhere and can't be shown to be a variation of another animal.
Go ahead. We're waiting.
To quote Mark Twain:
No. Mark Twain was a fine writer, but he wasn't a scientist. Other fine writers once thought that the world was flat, but you don't get to use their words in defense of the idea that it isn't round.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
That's not a valid question. Science deals with questions that are provably false, not provably true. There are no true laws in science, only theories supported by evidence. Some disciplines call some of their basic theories laws, but that is a semantic distinction. Further, "always" is a meaningless term. We have no information from before ~13.75 bn years ago. Since that point, we have a pretty good understanding of the fundamental forces controlling the development of the universe. Further, what other than science would you use to answer such a question?
Care to share where that number came from. Creatures of intelligence on our planet appear to have evolved independently starting from the earliest multicellular eucaryotes. Both invertebrates and vertebrates have exemplars of organisms with large brains integrating input from multiple complex sensory organs to regulate bodily function and direct behavior. Within the vertebrate subphylum, organisms that communicate to direct the behavior of a group is a common theme. Virtually every mammal and avian communicates with other members of the same species. Pack predators organize hunts. Herd animals communicate the presence of threats or food. Cetacea mammals are highly social and are able to communicate over incredible distances. In addition to Apes, several other mammal and avian species use tools. Based on fossil evidence from the Cretaceous period, the modern trend towards communicative, large-brained social organisms appears to have occured on this planet at least once before.
Intelligent tool-using social animals appear to be little more than a combination of prevalent successful evolutionary strategies. Given enough time, I'd guess that any planet where simple eucaryotes evolved would eventually host a species that you would consider intelligent.
I believe we have only excluded a relatively small number of stars from possibly supporting an earth-like planet within the habitable zone for carbon/water-based life. We haven't found any stars with earth-like planets within their habitable zone because our instruments lack the necessary sophistication. Just because you can't use a pair of binoculars to stand on a beach in California and count the fleas on a dog in China doesn't mean that the dog doesn't have fleas.
Who is blindly accepting evolution as "fact"?
Can you please provide a hypothesis supported by evidence that if true would contradict any aspect of the theory of evolution.
I was born and raised south of the Mason-Dixon line. I have a great deal of insight on why people believe irrational nonsense and it has nothing to do with maintaining an open mind.
Yes, that's exactly what I was referring to. I'm not entirely sure who modded me "Funny", but they obviously misunderstood that I was in fact serious.
I am officially gone from
Sure it can. Find one example - just one! - of an animal in the fossil records that appeared out of nowhere and can't be shown to be a variation of another animal.
I'm not taking that bait. All animals have, to a certain extent, characteristics which are variations of those found in other animals. Eyes, ears, and various other appendages appear on most animals. That doesn't prove they evolved from each other.
Furthermore, virtually all kinds of animals observed today CAN be considered to be totally different from (e.g. not variations of) most other kinds of animals - even despite having certain characteristics which are similar. For example, insects, birds, and mammals are all completely different despite the fact that all have species with the ability to fly. Do I hear you admitting this proves evolution is false? Nah... I doubt that very much. Even if such an animal could be found, evolutionists would figure out some way to fit it into their theory. (Did they ever figure out where the duck-billed platypus came from?)
I wasn't suggesting Mark Twain was a great scientist. I was suggesting that he, as any other person with half a brain, could see how ludicrous it is to take a relatively trivial statistic ("the Lower Mississippi is 242 miles shorter than it was 176 years ago" or "natural selection has resulted in certain bacteria becoming resistant to antibiotics") and claim that it can be extended, without modification, billions of years into the past or future ("in 742 years the Lower Mississippi will be 1.75 miles long", "in another ten billion years that bacteria will have evolved into an intelligent multi-celled organism"). Just because we're ignorant of the limiting factor on this phenomenon ("path of shortest distance on a sphere is an arc of a great circle" in the case of the Mississippi) doesn't mean one doesn't exist. That's the whole point here.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
I'm not taking that bait. All animals have, to a certain extent, characteristics which are variations of those found in other animals. Eyes, ears, and various other appendages appear on most animals. That doesn't prove they evolved from each other.
Of course it doesn't - science can't prove anything. That's not how it works. You can look at mitochondrial DNA and be arbitrarily certain of relationships, though, and similar experiments have given the expected results every time they've been tried.
Furthermore, virtually all kinds of animals observed today CAN be considered to be totally different from (e.g. not variations of) most other kinds of animals - even despite having certain characteristics which are similar.
Of course they're different now. The question is whether their respective ancestors were less different than those species current are, and in every case that's been true. Dogs and cats are different, but the further back in time you go, the closer they seem to be.
Even if such an animal could be found, evolutionists would figure out some way to fit it into their theory.
No - they would alter their theory to account for it. ID proponents are the ones that like to bend facts to make it work out.
(Did they ever figure out where the duck-billed platypus came from?)
(Does your sect allow access to Wikipedia?)
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
If you have compelling, verifiable proof of truth on the issue, let's get it published so we can end the debate.
Until then, it is a matter of beliefs, and should be handled as such, by the parents and spiritual counsellors of the student.
Science class needs to present it as a contentious subject, noting that there has been no definitive proof, and noting both sides positions. However, not all teachers are unbiased enough to present it this way.
In the end, on this and most other subjects, PARENTS ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THEIR CHILDREN'S EDUCATION. This should not be in the hands of the government.
TANSTAAFL GIGO Acronyms to live by!
Dogs and cats are different, but the further back in time you go, the closer they seem to be.
You discovered a missing link? Quick, somebody recommend him to the Nobel committee!
No - they would alter their theory to account for it. ID proponents are the ones that like to bend facts to make it work out.
Fit it in, alter the theory... same difference. Just put a few million more years in, that should take care of it...
(Does your sect allow access to Wikipedia?)
By all means. In case you're confused, I'll summarize the 3 paragraphs you linked to:
1. Hand-waving. "They're from an early branching of the mammalian tree and that kind of stuff. We're pretty sure they're related to marsupials, too."
2. We found a fossil platypus that had teeth. They weren't mammal teeth, though, so we're a little bit confused still.
3. The platypus has 10 sex chromosomes and lacks a certain mammalian gene. We're still confused about how this works, too. Maybe they're more like birds.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Would I be correct in assuming that the total number wasn't strikingly higher?
The school quotes tuition as $3500. With all of the buy-outs, it's $4200 (this year). You have to volunteer for bingo. You have to sell bread, chocolates, raffle tickets, Pre-Christmas shopping tickets, candy and so on. Children are not permitted to work bingo because that's gambling and the State does not allow that so busy parents must carve out time. My issue is that it's "mandatory volunteerism."
My wife was constantly wanting to buy things for her students that we couldn't well afford - we had to frequently chat about which items were luxuries and which were really efficient, reusable tools. And sometimes we bought lumber instead of an expensive finished good and I was assigned to the table saw.
How are her writing skills? Has she and has the school considered writing for grant money from some of the retailers and corporations in your area? Where is the Principal and the Administration? Giving to local schools is seen as a way to expiate corporate sins in the eyes of the consumers who buy from them. I also realize that she is one teacher in a large school and something like this needs to be coordinated. I also realize she's working hard, probably on a Masters degree as well as the daily lesson plans and test grading. Also, I would suggest that she ask parents of children in her class to collect boxtops from the various tissue and cereal makers and send them in with her students. It really takes nothing to collect these things and throw them into an envelope for the school and they do result in some needed cash for the district, if not the school.
Mind you, I am not suggesting your local and state government abdicate its responsibility to our children.
I admit to being ignorant of the specifics of the regional legislative actions, but I do hold out hope for both the teachers and students.
Here is what they did in Delaware and Kansas: The Top-Down approach. The Kansas State School Board redefined "Science" and then bought millions of "science" books that included language that specifically was designed to cast doubt on evolution as a theory, essentially reducing it to the level of hypothesis. Then the Theory of "Intelligent" Design was offered with no aspersions to its validity and introduced as "new" and "perhaps superior." If you study theories on how the planets formed, the new ones tend to be considered the most correct and tend to be presented that way to students. This creates a bias.
[W]e covered spontaneous generation as a theory. We also covered Pasteur's refutation of it.
Thas is how science should work. Students should see widely-accepted theories that have been disproven and read the refutations. I also was informed on another theory of evolution called Lamarckian. We studied the issue of heuristics in hypothesis and how that can prove to be a trap. Sometimes these traps can serve as really advantageous accidents.
Gods don't kill people, people with gods kill people.
Two words: Isochron dating. Uranium-lead is a good example. Please explain the collinearity of the points in the first graph here. What assumptions are problematic in this example? Please be specific.
What is your take on the tools used to calibrate carbon dating methods over time? Ice cores, tree rings, etc?
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
To quote an old post here, "You must think that we're discussing Darwin's other great scientific work, On the Origin of Spacetime." Evolution says nothing of the sort. Evolution is a theory in the field of biology.
This type of thing really needs to be studied in depth. Reasoning it out by intuition alone will simply not get you anywhere.
The fact that evolutionary theory works is independent of the origin of live. Evolution is about change over time. Life could have gotten here by some fascinating chemical abiogenesis, or it could have been popped in by magic. Evolutionary theory holds either way. Again, you're pulling in ancillary topics that aren't really relevant because you're assuming that evolutionary theory's job is to replace your entire belief system about the universe. It's not.
A problem with the reproductive system would be a problem for that particular individual organism, not for the entire species. Can you describe a more specific example?
Have you actually looked into this to see if any work has been done, or are you simply assuming that it's a gap in humanity's knowledge because it's a gap in yours?
Digestion in its many forms predates mammals significantly. If you're asking how an organism with no digestive system at all could develop a modern human digestive system, it wouldn't. Nobody has suggested anything of the sort.
Again, have you actually checked this claim? It's simply not true.
I hate to be overly harsh here, but I think that another major difference is that you don't seem to have done much research into the actual data behind the theory of evolution.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
Future generations will view the rise of Intelligent Design and other challenges to materialism in the same light as we view Gallileo today. The fact of the matter is that those who are fighting "to save science" are actually those who are destroying it: They are materialist reductionists. Science used to be about empirical evidence, testable hypothesis, and an honnest search for the truth, whatever it might be. However, during the 20th century, this was replaced with materialist ideology. When someone says "ID is anti-science", he actually says it is "anti-materialist". According to materialist reductionists (MR), everything can be reduced to primitave particles including the human consciousness, the universe created itself without an intelligent agent, and it has no meaning. This is a philosofical worldview, not science. When ID proponents comes with empirical evidence and solid arguements, MR-ists claims it is "anti science" and "a return to the dark ages", comparing it to all kinds of debunked medieval ideas. It is interesting to note that they NEVER give an accurate description of what ID actually states. The reason for this is simple : if you can't debunk it, deface it. And while ID "have no evidence and can't be falsified", these MR-ists are happy to promote Evolutionary phycology as a science. Here you have a "dicipline" that is based purely on speculation, with no data, and no way of being verified, being promoted as a valid science. All the "sciences" dealing with origins are actually based on philosofical assumptions which has nothing to do with science. That's why they haven't developed much in 150 years: They ignore evidence that goes against the materialist worldview, and some are even willing to fabricate evidence to support materialism. As a result, science are comming to a standstill, because those who claim that they do not believe in anything without evidence, is forcing science to support materialism, even when it goes against the evidence. But then again, what can you expect from people who honnestly believe their own consciousness is an illusion?
Uuuh. This is so tipical of most people who are against ID: The don't have no idea what it is, but that doesn't stop them from having an emotional outburst about it. Michelle Behe, one of the main figures in the ID movement and author of the book "Darwin's black box", is a Catholic. If you actually READ his book before critisising his ideas, you would've known that. OOPS!!!