Actually, no, it's not proof to me, or, if anything, it is a vindication of our species that we have managed to understand so much of the whole of which we are a part.
I am happy that you seem to have found meaning in your life, and I am saddened that you seem to feel the need to try to impose it on everyone else.
The reason it's junk science is because it does not stand up to the scientific method. There is no empirical evidence that we were created by an intelligent designer. The theory itself can neither be proven nor disproven.
The only arguments used to support the theory of intelligent design are based on logical fallacies, with no supporting evidence of any kind.
This is not something that should be taught in a science classroom. It is my personal position that it should not be taught anywhere, as it is singularly lacking in merit philosophically, as literature, and as religious doctrine.
I suppose if you think that "Black people are the result of God's curse on Ham" and that the reason we can see stars in distant galaxies is because God made the invervening light at the same instant he made everything else, then ID probably does seem perfectly reasonable to you.
Oy vey. Sometimes I think we are destined to slide back into barbarism. The higher, rational nature of man is clearly not genetically dominant.
You say "incompatible" like I'm saying "You can't study both science and religion".
This is false. I myself have studied both science and religion.
However science is based upon proofs, empirical observation, and the scientific method, while religion is based on faith in things that cannot be known or measured.
Application of pure logic and empirical methods to religion destroy faith. Application of faith to science skews empirical methods, and corrupts the scientific method, leading to bad science.
Therefore, in the interest of preserving both faith and science, the two should never be taught at the same time.
The problem is, the methods it embodies are an assault on the foundations of science. The things in science class may not all be 100% correct, but they've stood all the tests that can be thrown at them, and been held up to rigorous evaluation. That's the very heart and soul of the scientific method...Everything must be questioned.
ID is just the opposite. It embodies the fallacy I've got in my sig. If evolution is not proven utterly true, then Intelligent Design must be true.
That is an extremely poor place to start science education.
The idea of an Antiprophet is an interesting one to me. Everyone thinks of the "Antichrist" these days, but Christ himself was an anti-prophet...I suppose you could call him the "Anti-moses". He overthrew the religious doctrine of his day, swept out the vengeful old testament god, and preached a gospel of the new testament "touchy-feely" god.
The word "Satanic" throws together that idea of revolution and change, with secularism some of the cleverness that got so frowned upon in christian ethics (how the hell did Odysseus end up in Hell, hmmmm Dante?)
Then you throw in "puppy" to make it sound less threatening.
Though I'll admit, the girl who I later married who christened me that probably did it because I spent about half my time trying to get in her pants. I think the original story sounds better though.
Sounds great to me. I have no problem with religion myself, though I am not a religious person...I was raised Catholic, which is enough said for a lot of people.
But I understand faith and I respect people that have faith, but when you try to push those beliefs on me we're going to have problems.
If they keep their faith out of my schools, I'll keep my science out of their churches. Seems like a fair trade.
One side is fine with having religious classes, just not having an unholy union of them and science. This is a view endorsed by nearly every reputable scientist on the planet, and since they actually know what science is about, and since it is science class, I see no problem with this, the same way I have no problem with historians deciding what's in history class, and mathematicians deciding what is in math class, and religious scholars deciding what's in religious class.
The other side cannot tolerate anyone learning anything that falls outside of their narrow worldview, and so tries to inject its view into every class. History class where history starts in the garden of eden. Math class where everything is measured in cubits and two by two, with obsessive repetitions of the number 7. Science class, where a completely unproven theory with zero supporting evidence is given credibility alongside rigorously proven theories.
In a nutshell: All attempts to apply logic to religion, and all attempts to apply faith to science, end the same way. The two should remain utterly seperate, and we should all get along with our lives.
Riiight, because Satanic == Science, right? Pretty common viewpoint for a christian these days.
Besides, since the whole idea of Satan hinges upon the idea of God, all the Satanists out there are actually pro-intelligent design, and I can go on with the rest of my life without having to admit I'm in agreement with those jokers...unlike you.
Seems more like they're refusing to allow junk science and superstition to be cloaked in legitimacy.
Frankly I'd rather those kids were taught no science at all, than to be taught crap science. If we allow politicians the right to decide what is true in science, we are well and truly screwed.
That would involve either a person at google reading the article, and coding it appropriately, or the person who posted the article coding it appropriately.
The first one is too labor intensive...They'd have to employ hundreds or thousands of people.
The second one is too suceptable to fraud...If we could trust the content originators to code correctly, anyone would be able to write a super effective search engine, but spammers and rank inflators will always be trying to game the system.
What we really need is a way for the computer to be able to figure it out itself when it scans the page, with a couple of people vetting a percentage of it's choices. You could probably do it with loaded word heuristics...eg having the word "Holocaust" trump the word "German" when it comes to targeted ads, so a page with 2 holocaust references, and 10 german references would spawn ads for Schindler's List director's cuts, and holocaust histories.
Still an interesting problem. If we could get the computer to figure out what was REALLY appropriate, Google would be almost too good. You'd put in a search and get back one result every time.
Well, I'll be honest, I love the "unpractical" parts of philosophy.
But selling it in this environment, you have to push the areas that they'll apreciate. And frankly, just getting people to understand that there is practical philosophy is an accomplishment.
Writing fiction, did didn't matter a damn bit how good it was. There was nothing like an objective standard.
Code, on the other hand, is easy to measure. Does it run faster with fewer errors? Then it's better. Is coder A's code always better than coder B's? Coder A is a better coder.
It's also nice to be able to finish a project, and watch it do something. If you write a good story and it gets published somewhere worthwhile, the only thing you get out of it is the admiration of women (and homosexuals), and the disdain of pretentious snobs everywhere. And a crappy paycheck.
It's not insecurity. It's sticking up for a branch of study that's gotten the shaft in the last 80 years. I got three undergrad degrees (double major, with a minor that turned into a major), including straight up CompSci, so if I was ashamed of what I'd studied, I'd just pretend like I hadn't done it. You don't see me claiming my English degree all that often;), though having classes filled with girls did make me the envy of all my CS peers.
The thing about philosophy is that it's really about the process...If you want a branch of study that is completely focused on critical thinking, logical analysis, and proofs, philosophy is the best way to go, and the great thing about it is you don't have to go on and study metaphysics or any of the unpractical stuff if you don't want to...All the methods apply well to any other organized branch of study. Hardcore logic training has been invaluable to me in CS, much moreso than the 4 semesters of Calc I had to take.
To me, having someone put down philosophy as a whole like it's only suitable for coffeehouses is the same as someone dismissing physics because it isn't in the bible.
Actually I wrote fiction and freelance coded for a couple of years, then moved to I/T full time.
I kinda thought I wanted to be a writer at the time, but I found the hard satisfaction of coding to be more desirable than the ephemeral nature of "success" in writing, where the quality of your work had no relation to its value.
I'm just tired of the crap. I tell people I studied philosophy and they ask me retarded questions, "Durrr, so do we exist or not?"
I spent my time learning to write automata with higher Turing scores than morons like that, and routinely work with logic loops that would make their tiny minds asplode, and I get crap because they think their business degree, or their non-programming I/S degree was more challenging than what I studied?
It just pisses me off. It's not my fault a bunch of wankers in europe decided that their subjective experiences had external validity, and that their crackpot theories happened to fall into the fuzzy area between philosophy and religion, and it really irks me when people who know better draw no distinction between the two...It's like putting the ID people and the Evolution people in the same category.
Might want to draw a distinction between analytic philosophy and continental philosophy there...If you knock analytic philosophy, you're kicking the underpinings of the scientific method and throwing more wood on the anti-science debate.
You know, when I studied philosophy, we actually had to know real things. Advanced logic, tons of history...In the branch I was in (Cognitive Science), we had a neuroanatomy requirement, and a good number of math and CS courses, which in turn required physics and yet still more math.
Sad to see a philosophy major who thinks that he can learn it all in a chain coffee shop. Must be specializing in Continental "You want frys with that" philosophy.
I told my local representative that he was more republican than the actual republicans in this state and got a hand written reply carefully crafted around a strawman argument which missed the point of my original letter (which was that he was a wanker for voting to renew the patriot act), but which was clearly written by the man himself.
So they do read them, yes. It may not be too much to hope that some of my arguments will rub off on them.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, no, it's not proof to me, or, if anything, it is a vindication of our species that we have managed to understand so much of the whole of which we are a part.
I am happy that you seem to have found meaning in your life, and I am saddened that you seem to feel the need to try to impose it on everyone else.
The reason it's junk science is because it does not stand up to the scientific method. There is no empirical evidence that we were created by an intelligent designer. The theory itself can neither be proven nor disproven.
The only arguments used to support the theory of intelligent design are based on logical fallacies, with no supporting evidence of any kind.
This is not something that should be taught in a science classroom. It is my personal position that it should not be taught anywhere, as it is singularly lacking in merit philosophically, as literature, and as religious doctrine.
I suppose if you think that "Black people are the result of God's curse on Ham" and that the reason we can see stars in distant galaxies is because God made the invervening light at the same instant he made everything else, then ID probably does seem perfectly reasonable to you.
Oy vey. Sometimes I think we are destined to slide back into barbarism. The higher, rational nature of man is clearly not genetically dominant.
You say "incompatible" like I'm saying "You can't study both science and religion".
This is false. I myself have studied both science and religion.
However science is based upon proofs, empirical observation, and the scientific method, while religion is based on faith in things that cannot be known or measured.
Application of pure logic and empirical methods to religion destroy faith. Application of faith to science skews empirical methods, and corrupts the scientific method, leading to bad science.
Therefore, in the interest of preserving both faith and science, the two should never be taught at the same time.
ID is irrelevant to the theory of Evolution.
The problem is, the methods it embodies are an assault on the foundations of science. The things in science class may not all be 100% correct, but they've stood all the tests that can be thrown at them, and been held up to rigorous evaluation. That's the very heart and soul of the scientific method...Everything must be questioned.
ID is just the opposite. It embodies the fallacy I've got in my sig. If evolution is not proven utterly true, then Intelligent Design must be true.
That is an extremely poor place to start science education.
Hah. I agree completely. His original post was pretty sorry, and I threw out a nasty response to it pretty much like yours.
I was just saying that the followup was not so bad.
Hah. I hadn't thought my sig would ever be so relevant.
Actually, he's not too far off the way I mean it.
The idea of an Antiprophet is an interesting one to me. Everyone thinks of the "Antichrist" these days, but Christ himself was an anti-prophet...I suppose you could call him the "Anti-moses". He overthrew the religious doctrine of his day, swept out the vengeful old testament god, and preached a gospel of the new testament "touchy-feely" god.
The word "Satanic" throws together that idea of revolution and change, with secularism some of the cleverness that got so frowned upon in christian ethics (how the hell did Odysseus end up in Hell, hmmmm Dante?)
Then you throw in "puppy" to make it sound less threatening.
Though I'll admit, the girl who I later married who christened me that probably did it because I spent about half my time trying to get in her pants. I think the original story sounds better though.
Sounds great to me. I have no problem with religion myself, though I am not a religious person...I was raised Catholic, which is enough said for a lot of people.
But I understand faith and I respect people that have faith, but when you try to push those beliefs on me we're going to have problems.
If they keep their faith out of my schools, I'll keep my science out of their churches. Seems like a fair trade.
Actually, no.
One side is fine with having religious classes, just not having an unholy union of them and science. This is a view endorsed by nearly every reputable scientist on the planet, and since they actually know what science is about, and since it is science class, I see no problem with this, the same way I have no problem with historians deciding what's in history class, and mathematicians deciding what is in math class, and religious scholars deciding what's in religious class.
The other side cannot tolerate anyone learning anything that falls outside of their narrow worldview, and so tries to inject its view into every class. History class where history starts in the garden of eden. Math class where everything is measured in cubits and two by two, with obsessive repetitions of the number 7. Science class, where a completely unproven theory with zero supporting evidence is given credibility alongside rigorously proven theories.
In a nutshell: All attempts to apply logic to religion, and all attempts to apply faith to science, end the same way. The two should remain utterly seperate, and we should all get along with our lives.
Riiight, because Satanic == Science, right? Pretty common viewpoint for a christian these days.
Besides, since the whole idea of Satan hinges upon the idea of God, all the Satanists out there are actually pro-intelligent design, and I can go on with the rest of my life without having to admit I'm in agreement with those jokers...unlike you.
Seems more like they're refusing to allow junk science and superstition to be cloaked in legitimacy.
Frankly I'd rather those kids were taught no science at all, than to be taught crap science. If we allow politicians the right to decide what is true in science, we are well and truly screwed.
Holy crap! Two wrongs DO make a right!
That would involve either a person at google reading the article, and coding it appropriately, or the person who posted the article coding it appropriately.
The first one is too labor intensive...They'd have to employ hundreds or thousands of people.
The second one is too suceptable to fraud...If we could trust the content originators to code correctly, anyone would be able to write a super effective search engine, but spammers and rank inflators will always be trying to game the system.
What we really need is a way for the computer to be able to figure it out itself when it scans the page, with a couple of people vetting a percentage of it's choices. You could probably do it with loaded word heuristics...eg having the word "Holocaust" trump the word "German" when it comes to targeted ads, so a page with 2 holocaust references, and 10 german references would spawn ads for Schindler's List director's cuts, and holocaust histories.
Still an interesting problem. If we could get the computer to figure out what was REALLY appropriate, Google would be almost too good. You'd put in a search and get back one result every time.
Well, I'll be honest, I love the "unpractical" parts of philosophy.
But selling it in this environment, you have to push the areas that they'll apreciate. And frankly, just getting people to understand that there is practical philosophy is an accomplishment.
Einstein can say that...Because he had both.
Most people who quote sayings like that use it because they lack one, and are trying to pretend like it's not important.
Writing fiction, did didn't matter a damn bit how good it was. There was nothing like an objective standard.
;)
Code, on the other hand, is easy to measure. Does it run faster with fewer errors? Then it's better. Is coder A's code always better than coder B's? Coder A is a better coder.
It's also nice to be able to finish a project, and watch it do something. If you write a good story and it gets published somewhere worthwhile, the only thing you get out of it is the admiration of women (and homosexuals), and the disdain of pretentious snobs everywhere. And a crappy paycheck.
And I'm lying about the women thing.
Pshh. There are plenty of Continental Philosophers in the US these days, that's just where the idea got it's start.
Don't think I don't fume about whackjob American fundamentalism when I see it encroaching on other countries.
It's not insecurity. It's sticking up for a branch of study that's gotten the shaft in the last 80 years. I got three undergrad degrees (double major, with a minor that turned into a major), including straight up CompSci, so if I was ashamed of what I'd studied, I'd just pretend like I hadn't done it. You don't see me claiming my English degree all that often ;), though having classes filled with girls did make me the envy of all my CS peers.
The thing about philosophy is that it's really about the process...If you want a branch of study that is completely focused on critical thinking, logical analysis, and proofs, philosophy is the best way to go, and the great thing about it is you don't have to go on and study metaphysics or any of the unpractical stuff if you don't want to...All the methods apply well to any other organized branch of study. Hardcore logic training has been invaluable to me in CS, much moreso than the 4 semesters of Calc I had to take.
To me, having someone put down philosophy as a whole like it's only suitable for coffeehouses is the same as someone dismissing physics because it isn't in the bible.
Actually I wrote fiction and freelance coded for a couple of years, then moved to I/T full time.
I kinda thought I wanted to be a writer at the time, but I found the hard satisfaction of coding to be more desirable than the ephemeral nature of "success" in writing, where the quality of your work had no relation to its value.
I'm just tired of the crap. I tell people I studied philosophy and they ask me retarded questions, "Durrr, so do we exist or not?"
I spent my time learning to write automata with higher Turing scores than morons like that, and routinely work with logic loops that would make their tiny minds asplode, and I get crap because they think their business degree, or their non-programming I/S degree was more challenging than what I studied?
It just pisses me off. It's not my fault a bunch of wankers in europe decided that their subjective experiences had external validity, and that their crackpot theories happened to fall into the fuzzy area between philosophy and religion, and it really irks me when people who know better draw no distinction between the two...It's like putting the ID people and the Evolution people in the same category.
Might want to draw a distinction between analytic philosophy and continental philosophy there...If you knock analytic philosophy, you're kicking the underpinings of the scientific method and throwing more wood on the anti-science debate.
You know, when I studied philosophy, we actually had to know real things. Advanced logic, tons of history...In the branch I was in (Cognitive Science), we had a neuroanatomy requirement, and a good number of math and CS courses, which in turn required physics and yet still more math.
Sad to see a philosophy major who thinks that he can learn it all in a chain coffee shop. Must be specializing in Continental "You want frys with that" philosophy.
Or there might be a bad moon rising...Either way, I'm walking out my back door.
I told my local representative that he was more republican than the actual republicans in this state and got a hand written reply carefully crafted around a strawman argument which missed the point of my original letter (which was that he was a wanker for voting to renew the patriot act), but which was clearly written by the man himself.
So they do read them, yes. It may not be too much to hope that some of my arguments will rub off on them.