"why would God create everything using supernatural power, then create observable processes to keep it going?"
Isn't that how we write computer programs?
"In the end it really doesn't matter anyway, because as Christians we should be reflecting Christ and telling of his love, not arguing divisive issues."
But his love is meaningless if you don't know the problem he came to die for. And that problem is meaningless if the problem is simply an allegory.
"The apostle Paul said in so many words: its a sin to turn people away (cause them to stumble) and in reality that's all this argument does."
I know of more people stumbling because evolution wasn't addressed than because it was.
"Dembsky's work is not accepted as valid by most scientists. See more on wikipedia if you're curious."
So it passed peer review (your requirement), but isn't seen as valid by people who agree with you (wow I'm surprised). I did in fact meet your challenge whether one or a million scientists agree with this work.
"No, it didn't. But it's always nice to play the martyr persecuted by the establishment."
Actually, if you read the statement, it agrees with my views. (a) it passed peer review. Noone is questioning that. (b) the reason given was simply topical. (c) the reasons for not discussing it further is one of policy of another organization, not because of anything implicit in the paper.
Notice that the statement did not critique the paper in any way, shape or form, but was merely a policy statement saying "we don't do that kind of stuff here". I suggest that you also look at what the editor in charge had to say about the event.
But natural selection dramatically limits the ability of organisms to adapt, since they must more or less stay at a local maxima. This leads to biodiversity being either due to something intrinsic to the organism (it is pre-coded to adapt) or something extrinsic (an external entity helps it to adapt). Otherwise, drastic environmental change would naturally select nothing at all, or the lack of environmental change would keep an organism at stasis, and actually downward-moving.
Evolution _assumes_ that for every _tiny_ step in evolution (not just the big ones), there must be an advantage for every intermediate step that is a local maxima AND genetically stable. Not every big step, but every minor step as well. To think that is the case, would simply mean that we would have to think of the earth itself as either an intelligence which can program, or an existing program that is intricately designed to allow life.
While you can shift teleology around, its removal is not indicated by the known processes.
And biological science likewise has a "vestigality of the gaps" in which structures with unknown functions are assumed to be evolutionary leftovers until purpose is found. As science grows, vestigality shrinks (or you could say, the prospect of teleology is increased).
"The first fallacy is its claim that evolution is a "random" process. Evolution is not random at all, as its progress is determined by natural selection (or the selection of God, if you prefer)."
(a) if it were the selection of God, it would be ID, though not creationism.
The question, though, is whether or not discussions of teleology is allowed in biology. If I am a creationist, is it allowable for me to research based on my assumptions of God? Is it allowable for me to publish my findings? If my work is the result of a given underlying philosophical core, can a discussion of such be included in the discussion part of a research paper without it being rejected a priori? Finally, in context of education, is it reasonable to point out that philosophic naturalism, is, in fact, an assumption, and that other people who have other assumptions have come to other conclusions?
"An extremist is someone who attempts to interject religious beliefs into the secular public school system."
What about secular humanism?
"and peddling such myths in secular schools only serves to isolate and diminish the religious beliefs of others."
What about the peddling of secular myths? Textbooks are full of them, specifically in regard to what we know about evolution. In fact, many textbooks contain things that have been known to be false for 40 years! And, still, most history classes show the secular myth of Inherit the Wind, which is about 90% propoganda, and 10% fact.
What we have today is government schools promoting a secular religion.
"Same here, including being a Southern Baptist. I firmly believe that God created the universe, and it seems like the most likely means he used were the big bang and evolution."
Were the means God used here purely naturalistic? If yes, then why did he suddenly start performing miracles (like recording the creation story) just recently? If no, then you are part of the ID camp -- naturalism is not a sufficient explanation for life.
"Furthermore, I think that the creation story from Genesis is reasonably accurate, given that it was written by the son of slaves roughly 2300 years before the discovery of quantum physics."
Except that at the same time there _were_ evolutionary accounts of origins. The Enuma Elish story is just one such story. This was also taken up by Epicurus in Greece. Therefore, it was not beyond the mind of people in that age to think of such a thing, in fact they already had.
"At the point where a person advocates teaching religion in science classes, or campaign against scientific theories on the basis of religious orthodoxy, they are an extremist in my book."
Thank goodness! Someone else to help me fight against secular humanism and philosophic naturalism in education! I think we can fight this together!
Oh, wait, you probably meant that you wanted secular humanism to be the only theological opinion taught in schools. Sorry, I misunderstood.
"The problems comes when Christians take it upon themselves to outline the agenda of a science class."
What about Christians who are scientists? Young Earth Creationists who are scientists? Is this any different than, say, having Richard Dawkins design a science class?
"You are correct. There are many Christians who believe in Creationism and ID, but do not want it taught in science classes."
Actually, that would be most groups. AiG, ICR, and the Discovery Institute all agree that creationism and ID should not be a mandatory part of any secular curriculum.
What they are wanting is to (a) stop presenting philosophy as science, and (b) stop presenting propoganda in place of evidence. Things like Haeckel's embryo drawings and the peppered moth story and the idea that "everything is worked out" or that homology necessarily shows ancestry should not be taught as science, nor the philosophic notion that everything can be understood in terms of material causes.
"ID is only a set of apologies for why you can not interpret genesis literally. It's a "made up" idea that came forward when the scientific amount of evidence for evolution became so overwhelmingly huge that certain proponents of creationism understood that the old 6-day, 6000 year old created Earth did not fly."
Actually, it's been around since Cicero.
"I'd be willing to pay $1,000,000 to anyone who can come up with scientific evidence for ID that will stand scientific peer-review. Any takers?"
This article stood up to peer review, but was withdrawn because of political pressure. This article stood up to peer review and was published. Dembski's The Design Inference was peer-reviewed. This article was done by a young-earth creationist, with creationist results, but it was allowed to be published because he only left it as "an unsolved problem in theoretical biology.". And of course the whole basis of modern biology -- genetics -- was found by a creationist showing why continual evolution was not likely.
Interestingly, only 38% of physicians think that evolution alone was sufficient to bring about all diversity of life. See http://www.hcdi.net/polls/J5776/ question #7.
Why would someone use Zigbee over bluetooth? Is it a simpler interface for hardware designers? A different frequency range? What, exactly, is the appeal?
I thought they had to start with a new code base since the IE6 base had reached its end of fixabilities (like add an extra fix, and something else breaks again, and so on and on and on)
Usually that means that you need refactoring, not necessarily a full rewrite, though rewrites can be useful, too.
The question is whether they did true reengineering work or whether they just tried to paper over the flaws. The fact that they supposedly have PNG working indicates that at least some reengineering work has gone on.
Didn't miss it. However, you have not explained how alternate codes (whether nuclear or mitochondrial) could have arisen without destroying the existing machinery. Simply adding an initiation codon can change the meaning of a strand of DNA. Likewise, swapping out an important amino acid for another can greatly affect the folding properties of a protein.
"Why are there two major windows manager projects?"
The idea that more people working on it brings better results is simply untrue. In fact, they are both probably a lot further along because they are separated. This allows them each to look at the problem from a different perspective, and build out those ideas, and thus provide new ideas to the other group. With a single project, everyone would have to agree about the project direction before moving forward. With multiple projects, multiple directions can be explored fully, and then each project can see which parts worked well and which parts did not.
Some call the OS just the kernel, and others put the OS as the kernel + libraries + basic utilities, and others put the OS as "everything that ships with your distribution". All of these are more or less correct, and just a matter of perspective. I personally prefer the latter two because it is the measure of compatibility of downloaded tools.
X is a graphical system. It is actually rather barebones, as it doesn't specify anything about how the controls work. It doesn't include a text entry box, buttons, graphics, or anything. It is simply a basic toolkit for network-driven graphics. It doesn't even hook up to sound.
A "toolkit" is a set of widgets -- text entry boxes, standard icons, buttons, etc. GTK and QT are toolkits.
A widnow manager is just what it says -- it manages windows. The top bar of windows, with their close, minimize, and maximize buttons, are actually drawn by the window manager, not the application. The Window manager often, but not always, draws to the background (sometimes the file manager does this). The window manager is involved if you have multiple desktops. It handles minimizing and maximizing. It handles laying out the windows, and telling them where they can and can't go.
A "desktop environment" is a complete collection of tools and specifications for a desktop. For example, the GNOME desktop environment consists of (a) the GTK toolkit, (b) a set of libraries for making applications work together in a consistent manner, (c) a panel and a set of applets (most desktop environments include a panel), (d) a set of specifications for interaction. These specifications include specifications for the function of window managers, specifications for human interface interactions, specifications for the handling of clipboard data, specifications of standard application interfaces for doing various things like printing, configuration, etc. Many desktop environments specify a default window manager as well.
Windows and Mac roll all of these parts into one. All you have is the desktop environment, which contains everything else. There is _some_ separation, but it is not as clear-cut as it is on UNIX. Whether this is a benefit or a flaw depends on your perspective.
"it seems clear that the pope thinks evolution is supported, at least to some extent, by the evidence."
_Everyone_ thinks that evolution is supported, at least to some extent, by the evidence. 6 day creationists included.
The article I referenced doesn't even include the translation you are referring to. Instead, it includes the pope's words in context with everything else he has said, such as:
"It is clear that the truth of faith about creation is radically opposed to the theories of materialistic philosophy. These view the cosmos as the result of an evolution of matter reducible to pure chance and necessity."
Thus, the pope was saying that more than chance and necessity are required to bring forth creation. Again, speaking on reducing creation to chance and necessity, the pope said:
"In fact, this would be equivalent to admitting effects without a cause. It would be to abdicate human intelligence, which would thus refuse to think and to seek a solution for its problems."
Actually, DNA would point you in the other direction. Being that there are multiple DNA codings, it is unlikely for them to be ancestral to each other since a change in the coding would render most of the existing genome useless.
The DNA and RNA comparisons past the family taxonomic level lead to utter confusion.
The fact that everything has DNA is like saying every program has an initialization stage, a loop, and a finalization stage. It's true, but it doesn't mean much, especially if there was a common designer involved.
"This is the dumbest thing ever. You either have faith or you don't. If you do research to try and prove you're in some way correct in your faith, you totally defeat your whole argument."
Actually, modern science arose mostly from Biblical creationists trying to learn more about the world. The difference between a Biblical creationists and a secular scientists, is that a Biblical creationist will trust the Bible to be a valid starting point. You seem to be confusing having a solid starting point with also having an ending point.
"I can't help but wonder why I don't ever see ID or creationist fossil research publications."
The reason you don't see ID fossil research publications is that most people in the ID crowd have no problem with the standard interpretation of the fossil record. In additions, the methods of ID deal with systems, which are not present in fossils.
Creationists do deal with fossils. The creationists are few enough in number that they don't have highly specialized publications, but they do have publications that include fossil research. Two I am aware of are the Creation Ex Nihilo Technical Journal (now just called TJ), and the Creation Research Society Quarterly, often abbreviated CRSQ. The Baraminology Study Group just finished having a conference, and, while not dealing very much with fossils, they are doing interesting work and the conference proceedings are online.
Answers in Genesis ministries actually spends a lot of time and money on Dinosaurs and their bones. In fact, they recently funded a trip to Alaska to search for bones, and I've heard they brought back 200 pounds worth. They are opening a museum in Kentucky, and have a very talented Dinosaur modeller working for them.
As far as how and where Dinosaurs lived, creationists actually do a lot of research on this, but secular scientists usually do not give it any credit, because it goes against what they assume to be true. Specifically, there are many historical accounts of Dinosaurs which the creationists often research. The Thunderbird of the Indians is exactly like a Pteradactyl, even to the crown on his head. There have been numerous accounts of Dinosaur activity throughout history, not just in fanciful tales of dragons, but in plain, direct reporting as well. In fact, John of Damascus was tired of all of the fanciful tales about these creatures going around, and in the 700s wrote a book about them, telling their biology and life-cycle and encouraging people not to believe the fanciful myths about them. Unfortunately, this work is only available in Latin and Russian at the time being.
An interesting account of ancient history with some reference to dinosaur reports throughout history is Bill Cooper's After the Flood.
Slashdot Mirror
"why would God create everything using supernatural power, then create observable processes to keep it going?"
Isn't that how we write computer programs?
"In the end it really doesn't matter anyway, because as Christians we should be reflecting Christ and telling of his love, not arguing divisive issues."
But his love is meaningless if you don't know the problem he came to die for. And that problem is meaningless if the problem is simply an allegory.
"The apostle Paul said in so many words: its a sin to turn people away (cause them to stumble) and in reality that's all this argument does."
I know of more people stumbling because evolution wasn't addressed than because it was.
"Dembsky's work is not accepted as valid by most scientists. See more on wikipedia if you're curious."
So it passed peer review (your requirement), but isn't seen as valid by people who agree with you (wow I'm surprised). I did in fact meet your challenge whether one or a million scientists agree with this work.
"No, it didn't. But it's always nice to play the martyr persecuted by the establishment."
Actually, if you read the statement, it agrees with my views. (a) it passed peer review. Noone is questioning that. (b) the reason given was simply topical. (c) the reasons for not discussing it further is one of policy of another organization, not because of anything implicit in the paper.
Notice that the statement did not critique the paper in any way, shape or form, but was merely a policy statement saying "we don't do that kind of stuff here". I suggest that you also look at what the editor in charge had to say about the event.
But natural selection dramatically limits the ability of organisms to adapt, since they must more or less stay at a local maxima. This leads to biodiversity being either due to something intrinsic to the organism (it is pre-coded to adapt) or something extrinsic (an external entity helps it to adapt). Otherwise, drastic environmental change would naturally select nothing at all, or the lack of environmental change would keep an organism at stasis, and actually downward-moving.
Evolution _assumes_ that for every _tiny_ step in evolution (not just the big ones), there must be an advantage for every intermediate step that is a local maxima AND genetically stable. Not every big step, but every minor step as well. To think that is the case, would simply mean that we would have to think of the earth itself as either an intelligence which can program, or an existing program that is intricately designed to allow life.
While you can shift teleology around, its removal is not indicated by the known processes.
And biological science likewise has a "vestigality of the gaps" in which structures with unknown functions are assumed to be evolutionary leftovers until purpose is found. As science grows, vestigality shrinks (or you could say, the prospect of teleology is increased).
"The first fallacy is its claim that evolution is a "random" process. Evolution is not random at all, as its progress is determined by natural selection (or the selection of God, if you prefer)."
(a) if it were the selection of God, it would be ID, though not creationism.
(b) for the use of the term "random" as it is popularly use, evolution is indeed random.
The question, though, is whether or not discussions of teleology is allowed in biology. If I am a creationist, is it allowable for me to research based on my assumptions of God? Is it allowable for me to publish my findings? If my work is the result of a given underlying philosophical core, can a discussion of such be included in the discussion part of a research paper without it being rejected a priori? Finally, in context of education, is it reasonable to point out that philosophic naturalism, is, in fact, an assumption, and that other people who have other assumptions have come to other conclusions?
"An extremist is someone who attempts to interject religious beliefs into the secular public school system."
What about secular humanism?
"and peddling such myths in secular schools only serves to isolate and diminish the religious beliefs of others."
What about the peddling of secular myths? Textbooks are full of them, specifically in regard to what we know about evolution. In fact, many textbooks contain things that have been known to be false for 40 years! And, still, most history classes show the secular myth of Inherit the Wind, which is about 90% propoganda, and 10% fact.
What we have today is government schools promoting a secular religion.
"Same here, including being a Southern Baptist. I firmly believe that God created the universe, and it seems like the most likely means he used were the big bang and evolution."
Were the means God used here purely naturalistic? If yes, then why did he suddenly start performing miracles (like recording the creation story) just recently? If no, then you are part of the ID camp -- naturalism is not a sufficient explanation for life.
"Furthermore, I think that the creation story from Genesis is reasonably accurate, given that it was written by the son of slaves roughly 2300 years before the discovery of quantum physics."
Except that at the same time there _were_ evolutionary accounts of origins. The Enuma Elish story is just one such story. This was also taken up by Epicurus in Greece. Therefore, it was not beyond the mind of people in that age to think of such a thing, in fact they already had.
"At the point where a person advocates teaching religion in science classes, or campaign against scientific theories on the basis of religious orthodoxy, they are an extremist in my book."
Thank goodness! Someone else to help me fight against secular humanism and philosophic naturalism in education! I think we can fight this together!
Oh, wait, you probably meant that you wanted secular humanism to be the only theological opinion taught in schools. Sorry, I misunderstood.
"The problems comes when Christians take it upon themselves to outline the agenda of a science class."
What about Christians who are scientists? Young Earth Creationists who are scientists? Is this any different than, say, having Richard Dawkins design a science class?
"You are correct. There are many Christians who believe in Creationism and ID, but do not want it taught in science classes."
Actually, that would be most groups. AiG, ICR, and the Discovery Institute all agree that creationism and ID should not be a mandatory part of any secular curriculum.
What they are wanting is to (a) stop presenting philosophy as science, and (b) stop presenting propoganda in place of evidence. Things like Haeckel's embryo drawings and the peppered moth story and the idea that "everything is worked out" or that homology necessarily shows ancestry should not be taught as science, nor the philosophic notion that everything can be understood in terms of material causes.
"I was pointing out why saying ID vs. Natural Selection was a poor expression of the idea."
Except that many people in the ID community believe in Universal Common Ancestry.
As for the differences between creationists and evolutionists, I think this best sums up the differences.
"ID is only a set of apologies for why you can not interpret genesis literally. It's a "made up" idea that came forward when the scientific amount of evidence for evolution became so overwhelmingly huge that certain proponents of creationism understood that the old 6-day, 6000 year old created Earth did not fly."
Actually, it's been around since Cicero.
"I'd be willing to pay $1,000,000 to anyone who can come up with scientific evidence for ID that will stand scientific peer-review. Any takers?"
This article stood up to peer review, but was withdrawn because of political pressure. This article stood up to peer review and was published. Dembski's The Design Inference was peer-reviewed. This article was done by a young-earth creationist, with creationist results, but it was allowed to be published because he only left it as "an unsolved problem in theoretical biology.". And of course the whole basis of modern biology -- genetics -- was found by a creationist showing why continual evolution was not likely.
Do I get a million dollars!?
"Beleif in creationism and ID is a sign of under education and a inability to think rationally."
Actualy, it's the product of having a different set of assumptions than philosophic materialism.
Interestingly, only 38% of physicians think that evolution alone was sufficient to bring about all diversity of life. See http://www.hcdi.net/polls/J5776/ question #7.
Why would someone use Zigbee over bluetooth? Is it a simpler interface for hardware designers? A different frequency range? What, exactly, is the appeal?
I thought they had to start with a new code base since the IE6 base had reached its end of fixabilities (like add an extra fix, and something else breaks again, and so on and on and on)
Usually that means that you need refactoring, not necessarily a full rewrite, though rewrites can be useful, too.
The question is whether they did true reengineering work or whether they just tried to paper over the flaws. The fact that they supposedly have PNG working indicates that at least some reengineering work has gone on.
Didn't miss it. However, you have not explained how alternate codes (whether nuclear or mitochondrial) could have arisen without destroying the existing machinery. Simply adding an initiation codon can change the meaning of a strand of DNA. Likewise, swapping out an important amino acid for another can greatly affect the folding properties of a protein.
"Why are there two major windows manager projects?"
The idea that more people working on it brings better results is simply untrue. In fact, they are both probably a lot further along because they are separated. This allows them each to look at the problem from a different perspective, and build out those ideas, and thus provide new ideas to the other group. With a single project, everyone would have to agree about the project direction before moving forward. With multiple projects, multiple directions can be explored fully, and then each project can see which parts worked well and which parts did not.
The OS:
Some call the OS just the kernel, and others put the OS as the kernel + libraries + basic utilities, and others put the OS as "everything that ships with your distribution". All of these are more or less correct, and just a matter of perspective. I personally prefer the latter two because it is the measure of compatibility of downloaded tools.
X is a graphical system. It is actually rather barebones, as it doesn't specify anything about how the controls work. It doesn't include a text entry box, buttons, graphics, or anything. It is simply a basic toolkit for network-driven graphics. It doesn't even hook up to sound.
A "toolkit" is a set of widgets -- text entry boxes, standard icons, buttons, etc. GTK and QT are toolkits.
A widnow manager is just what it says -- it manages windows. The top bar of windows, with their close, minimize, and maximize buttons, are actually drawn by the window manager, not the application. The Window manager often, but not always, draws to the background (sometimes the file manager does this). The window manager is involved if you have multiple desktops. It handles minimizing and maximizing. It handles laying out the windows, and telling them where they can and can't go.
A "desktop environment" is a complete collection of tools and specifications for a desktop. For example, the GNOME desktop environment consists of (a) the GTK toolkit, (b) a set of libraries for making applications work together in a consistent manner, (c) a panel and a set of applets (most desktop environments include a panel), (d) a set of specifications for interaction. These specifications include specifications for the function of window managers, specifications for human interface interactions, specifications for the handling of clipboard data, specifications of standard application interfaces for doing various things like printing, configuration, etc. Many desktop environments specify a default window manager as well.
Windows and Mac roll all of these parts into one. All you have is the desktop environment, which contains everything else. There is _some_ separation, but it is not as clear-cut as it is on UNIX. Whether this is a benefit or a flaw depends on your perspective.
I was referring to these
"it seems clear that the pope thinks evolution is supported, at least to some extent, by the evidence."
_Everyone_ thinks that evolution is supported, at least to some extent, by the evidence. 6 day creationists included.
The article I referenced doesn't even include the translation you are referring to. Instead, it includes the pope's words in context with everything else he has said, such as:
"It is clear that the truth of faith about creation is radically opposed to the theories of materialistic philosophy. These view the cosmos as the result of an evolution of matter reducible to pure chance and necessity."
Thus, the pope was saying that more than chance and necessity are required to bring forth creation. Again, speaking on reducing creation to chance and necessity, the pope said:
"In fact, this would be equivalent to admitting effects without a cause. It would be to abdicate human intelligence, which would thus refuse to think and to seek a solution for its problems."
Actually, DNA would point you in the other direction. Being that there are multiple DNA codings, it is unlikely for them to be ancestral to each other since a change in the coding would render most of the existing genome useless.
The DNA and RNA comparisons past the family taxonomic level lead to utter confusion.
The fact that everything has DNA is like saying every program has an initialization stage, a loop, and a finalization stage. It's true, but it doesn't mean much, especially if there was a common designer involved.
"Even the Pope has given up and accepted that the fossil record is pretty conclusive and hence evolution is true."
This is based on a misreading of the pope's statements.
See Finding Design in Natura
"This is the dumbest thing ever. You either have faith or you don't. If you do research to try and prove you're in some way correct in your faith, you totally defeat your whole argument."
Actually, modern science arose mostly from Biblical creationists trying to learn more about the world. The difference between a Biblical creationists and a secular scientists, is that a Biblical creationist will trust the Bible to be a valid starting point. You seem to be confusing having a solid starting point with also having an ending point.
"I can't help but wonder why I don't ever see ID or creationist fossil research publications."
The reason you don't see ID fossil research publications is that most people in the ID crowd have no problem with the standard interpretation of the fossil record. In additions, the methods of ID deal with systems, which are not present in fossils.
Creationists do deal with fossils. The creationists are few enough in number that they don't have highly specialized publications, but they do have publications that include fossil research. Two I am aware of are the Creation Ex Nihilo Technical Journal (now just called TJ), and the Creation Research Society Quarterly, often abbreviated CRSQ. The Baraminology Study Group just finished having a conference, and, while not dealing very much with fossils, they are doing interesting work and the conference proceedings are online.
Answers in Genesis ministries actually spends a lot of time and money on Dinosaurs and their bones. In fact, they recently funded a trip to Alaska to search for bones, and I've heard they brought back 200 pounds worth. They are opening a museum in Kentucky, and have a very talented Dinosaur modeller working for them.
As far as how and where Dinosaurs lived, creationists actually do a lot of research on this, but secular scientists usually do not give it any credit, because it goes against what they assume to be true. Specifically, there are many historical accounts of Dinosaurs which the creationists often research. The Thunderbird of the Indians is exactly like a Pteradactyl, even to the crown on his head. There have been numerous accounts of Dinosaur activity throughout history, not just in fanciful tales of dragons, but in plain, direct reporting as well. In fact, John of Damascus was tired of all of the fanciful tales about these creatures going around, and in the 700s wrote a book about them, telling their biology and life-cycle and encouraging people not to believe the fanciful myths about them. Unfortunately, this work is only available in Latin and Russian at the time being.
An interesting account of ancient history with some reference to dinosaur reports throughout history is Bill Cooper's After the Flood.
If you're curious about creationist biology, I would encourage you to look at the book Understanding the Pattern of Life.