intelligent design is essentially giving up at some point and throwing your hands in the air and going "too complicated, cant be understood". its an antithesis of science.
But 'throwing your hands in the air and going "too complicated, cant be understood' is also the antithesis of logical argument. If you can take some reasonably-well-validated scientific observations, and
if I can make a LOGICAL argument that God exists, then its as good as a tested argument that something else exists.
No. A logical deduction is only as valid as starting point. If you can make a logical argument that God exists, then it's as tested as the axioms from which you started.
Well they can be, and people have certainly tried. But it's tricky. Science requires repeatable observations, and one cannot make objective, repeatable observations of the beauty of a poem.
When we consider morality issues surrounding the environment and global warming, science can give us information about how things
Sure, and science will tell us what would happen if we inject a murderer with Potassium Chloride. But I cannot see how science will ever tell us, once and for all, whether we should inject murderers with Potassium Chloride. Similarly, science can tell us how developed a foetus is at a given age, but it cannot tell us the latest time for an ethical abortion.
makes it sound as though there simply can never be any facts discovered
Well, to a certain extent, that's true. The facts can rarely be discovered, just a series of increasingly accuracte approximations to the facts.
Whereas the previous "seeking explanations" posits that there are explanations
Not really. I could spend my life seeking Bluebeard's buried treasure, but that doesn't imply that the treasure exists. Just that we're looking, me hearties.
Would you make the same decision if you knew you wanted kids
Well, we probably will at some point..
Mom teaches kids that if you don't put your faith in Jesus, you go to hell. Dad says he hasn't put his faith in Jesus
Fortunately, I'm such a wishy-washy liberal I'll explain that i) All Faith is a personal journey, and a personal decision. ii) Whatever decision Sprog Owen makes, will be respected by both the parents. iii) That those of faith and those without faith can (and should) be able to have a free, forthright, honest and civil debate about their beliefs, whether they're atheists, muslims, christians, rastafarians or Hindu. And that while faith is an admirable thing, faith without acceptance of other's faith, can only lead you to conflict. (See, told you I was a wishy washy liberal).
Hopefully, hopefully, hopefully.
Anyway, I'm far more worried by the idea of my kids going through puberty than any hypothetical discussion about the role of faith in society.
But the existence of those other worldly being requires just as great a leap of faith as any other non-scientific justification. So all they've done is pushed their pseudo-science one step further down the infinite stack of turtles.
What is the practical difference between being atheist and being agnostic?
I'm getting married in a church because my girlfriend is a Christian. If I were an atheist, I may have a problem with this. As an agnostic, it seems pretty silly to get worked up about a question whose answer I consider unknowable.
Theism is faith in the non-existence of God. Atheism is faith in the non-existence of God.
I see no evidence of either, so I refuse to choose between them.
implying that in fact there are some phenomena which are not in the purview of science.
An appreciation of beauty, a sense of morality, the ability to be moved by poetry.
These are phenomena of which science can (and IMHO, should) say nothing. A determinist will tell you that each of these is simply the effect of certain pheromones and brain chemistry, but Heisenberg did for the determinists around 1920.
And, IMHO, these, along with science, are the things that separate us from the animals.
Better than the previous explanations. The construction of hypotheses that withstand the rigorous comparison with the evidence.
For example : Newton's Laws are cool, but one deduction from Newton's Laws is "The orbit of Mercury is an ellipse" (which Kepler determined experimentally, up to the limits of his kit).
Now, the problem is that that isn't true. It's almost true, and so it's adequate for predicting the location of Mercury to a certain accuracy. But to get that extra accuracy you need General Relativity -- which is also only an approximation to some Unified Theory of Quantum Gravity -- but it's a "more adequate" approximation (a horrible term) if you need the position of Mercury to a greater accuracy than Newton could've told you.
Which will move the conversation from what can be observed and and tested to what we can posit through logic proofs.
Ok. I agree with you up to here...
Which will then absolutely requre Intelligent Design to be considered pure science.
Now you've lost me. If there's syllogism (inductive logic or otherwise) between those two statements, it's completely lost on me. Can you explain why you believe the acceptance of inductive reasoning will require ID to be pure science?
Evolution by natural selection will be deemed "inadequate" and ID will take it's place.
Well, then that will be a problem. But that's not the problem yet. When someone argues as you have, then I'll gladly join in the fight against their idiocy. Until then, you're slippery slope argument remains unconvincing.
However, the philosophical weight actually goes against the naturalist in this argument, as we need to know what caused the events which caused the events which caused the universe to come into being
Actually, we don't. Because the universe is not just space, it's space-time (possibly with 19 other dimensions, depending on who you ask). Once you accept the time did not exist before the creation of the universe, your word "before" loses all it's meaning, as does the notion of causality.
In short, the concepts of time and causality require a universe, and so the question "What caused the start of the universe?" is, in the nicest possible sense, not just unanswerable but completely meaningless.
God is eternal, he is the exception to all the rules. You just have to assume it to be true without a shred of proof or logic.
That's true. And it's fair enough... but the second clause then precludes it from fitting their own definition of science, because you can't do hypothesis testing if you can never gain any evidence.
Darwin 1 Idiot Fundamentalists 0
You are a stinking atheist commie and unworthy to be included in our discussion
Well, that's also true, but possibly less relevant. (Actually, I'm a stinking agnostic liberal, but there's not a lot of point making those subtle distinctions in the Midwest.)
I never said they weren't. I just said they were both sound.
The old one "seeking natural explanations for what we observe around us" implies that everything that we observer around us has a natural explanation
No, it doesn't imply that at all. It implies that we should look for a natural explanation. It doesn't say that there is one, just that we should look. We may never find a "explanation" for the Uncertainty Principle (except as an abstract mathematical theorem concerning non-commutative operators -- but even then we may never find an "explanation" for the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in modelling the universe). Science is merely the systematic practice of looking for those explanations.
You're missing the point. Believers in Intelligent Design believe that complex beings require a creator.
God is complex, therefore God requires a creator.
Furthermore, God's creator would Herself be complex, and therefore would also require a creator, who would also require a creator of His own, who would.... anyway, you get the idea. After that, it's turtles all the way down.
The problem is that the concept of a supernatural being begets far more questions than it answers
Damn right. The most important being "If anything complex requires a creator (the fundamental axiom pf Intelligent Design), it seems logical that such a creator would be need to be complex Himself (or Herself). So, who designed the creator?"
The two definitions of science both seem reasonably sound. If anything, the second is closer to science as practised by actual scientists. And "Creation Science" doesn't fit either definition: not the first because it uses supernatural (rather than natural) explanations and not the second, because it simply does not allow for invalidation by evidence (implicit in the concept of hypothesis testing).
a parade of Ph.D.'s testified Thursday
I wonder how many of them were atheists... or biologists for that matter.
"Even if Al Gore had never entered the political arena, we'd probably still be reading web pages via the Internet today.""
That's such a disengenuous statement by snopes, its ridiculous. It's like saying
"If Otta hadn't invented the internal combustion engine we'd, still have motor cars by now.
Now, that's a completely true statement, someone else would've made that breakthrough, and probably not later. But it doesn't diminish the fact that Otto did invent the internal combustion engine.
Talk about completely missing the point of this award. It's being given precisely to counter those juvenile jibes. (American politics reduced to juvenile jibes? Thats unpossible!?!
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah. What Peter La Casse (3992) said.
OP.
Theism is faith in the existence of God.
Atheism is faith in the non-existence of God.
That's what I mean.
i) All Faith is a personal journey, and a personal decision.
ii) Whatever decision Sprog Owen makes, will be respected by both the parents.
iii) That those of faith and those without faith can (and should) be able to have a free, forthright, honest and civil debate about their beliefs, whether they're atheists, muslims, christians, rastafarians or Hindu. And that while faith is an admirable thing, faith without acceptance of other's faith, can only lead you to conflict. (See, told you I was a wishy washy liberal).
Hopefully, hopefully, hopefully.
Anyway, I'm far more worried by the idea of my kids going through puberty than any hypothetical discussion about the role of faith in society.
But the existence of those other worldly being requires just as great a leap of faith as any other non-scientific justification. So all they've done is pushed their pseudo-science one step further down the infinite stack of turtles.
Theism is faith in the non-existence of God.
Atheism is faith in the non-existence of God.
I see no evidence of either, so I refuse to choose between them.
These are phenomena of which science can (and IMHO, should) say nothing. A determinist will tell you that each of these is simply the effect of certain pheromones and brain chemistry, but Heisenberg did for the determinists around 1920.
And, IMHO, these, along with science, are the things that separate us from the animals.
Better than the previous explanations. The construction of hypotheses that withstand the rigorous comparison with the evidence.
For example : Newton's Laws are cool, but one deduction from Newton's Laws is "The orbit of Mercury is an ellipse" (which Kepler determined experimentally, up to the limits of his kit).
Now, the problem is that that isn't true. It's almost true, and so it's adequate for predicting the location of Mercury to a certain accuracy. But to get that extra accuracy you need General Relativity -- which is also only an approximation to some Unified Theory of Quantum Gravity -- but it's a "more adequate" approximation (a horrible term) if you need the position of Mercury to a greater accuracy than Newton could've told you.
In short, the concepts of time and causality require a universe, and so the question "What caused the start of the universe?" is, in the nicest possible sense, not just unanswerable but completely meaningless.
Darwin 1 Idiot Fundamentalists 0Well, that's also true, but possibly less relevant. (Actually, I'm a stinking agnostic liberal, but there's not a lot of point making those subtle distinctions in the Midwest.)
You're missing the point. Believers in Intelligent Design believe that complex beings require a creator.
.... anyway, you get the idea. After that, it's turtles all the way down.
God is complex, therefore God requires a creator.
Furthermore, God's creator would Herself be complex, and therefore would also require a creator, who would also require a creator of His own, who would
I wonder how many of them were atheists... or biologists for that matter.
The more time you spend "responding furiously" to "anonymous posts on OSNews.com", the less time you're spending actually being productive.
... yadda, yadda, yadda.
You'd be better of ignoring the cynics, the nay-sayers, and the anonymous blowhards, and continuing doing something productive.
Arguing on the internet is like
Third, and nearly second.
You win, 5 virtual pounds.
Don't spend it all at once.
Talk about completely missing the point of this award. It's being given precisely to counter those juvenile jibes. (American politics reduced to juvenile jibes? Thats unpossible!?!
Man, you must've really wanted that first post.
A launching platform from which fans can throw rotting vegetables at the 2005 Seattle Mariners, for example.
done
(It'll give me another result to look out for on the swingometer)