This isn't Star Trek, guys. You don't wave a magic piece of plastic over someone's head that has sustained massive head trauma and they wake up. I'm all for the future and wonderful medical science, but even if Terry had been somewhat repaired, she wouldn't wake up as Terry, so ultimately it's pointless.
You're partially correct- I doubt any new brain tissue would have the connections between neurons that only grow over a lifetime. However, yes, that's EXACTLY what stem cell research offers- the ability to turn massive head trauma into a major stroke. The ability to replace all that shaken apart and dead grey matter with new grey matter. Will that mean it would take years to reteach a Terry how to be Terry? Would that likely mean major personality changes? Yes. But we don't actually *know* how the brain stores information, so we don't really know any of that for sure. Could be that memories are stored so redundantly that all we need to do is replace 98% of the grey matter and then exercise it.
The rest of (the English speaking subset of) humanity uses the word random as an English word not as a mathematical definition. It means happening without aim, reason, or pattern.
And what I'm saying is that nothing in the universe happens without aim, reason, or pattern. It ALL is governed by a set of physical laws, of which we don't currently have a complete picture, but such a definite set exists. That set may not even be finite, but it is reasonable- that is, discoverable through the powers of reason.
"He picked up a random rock" means he picked up a rock without selecting it according to a goal - he just picked up one of the available rocks. Sure if you managed to analyse the complete state of small section of the universe he was in and the actual rules of physics you could determine which he would choose - but that's irrelevant to the word random.
In fact, if he's human, he picked up a carefully, but unconsciously, chosen rock based on his strength, the weight of the rock, and distance from his starting point. To claim that to be random is at best incorrect, and at worst, a lie.
Random mutation similarly means mutation happening with no aim, reason, or pattern.
But in evolution and ID, mutation happens with reason and pattern, and survival of the fitest yeilds aim.
Mutations just happen, some of them result in the death of the being, some of them nothing and ride along on the rest of the fitness of the being, and some are benficial and give the being an advantage over the competition. Sure if you knoew the compete state of a small section of the universe and the rules of physics you could determine that some particular particle is going to interact with that particular atom/bond/whatever and cause a particular change that will result in a particular being's DNA encoding something that is better able to not die when exposed to some particular chemical that you know will appear in the environment next year. We still call that a random mutation.
In that case, you say a lie. An untruth you KNOW to be incorrect, and you teach it as truth. Do you understand why anybody who cares about TRUTH rather than SCIENCE would call you a liar for claiming this?
The rest of use dictionaries to see what words probably mean.
And gasp, my definition of random, dealing with finite predictability, is the #1 meaning when I look it up in a dictionary. I don't find any definition of random that fits your slapdash and incorrect usage, and certainly none that supports lying to schoolchildren.
Are you aware of any current embryonic stem cell therapy currently used at all? Nevermind routinely?
Yes I am- but it's a bit of a failure for other reasons. The real safety concern in using adult stem cells is implant compatibility- embryonic stem cells have a tendency to keep their mitochondrial information even when the nucleus is destroyed, thus causing rejection of the tissue created.
There are a number of ROUTINE ADULT stem cell therapies in use today. From treating multiple blood disorders (leukemia, for example).
Absolutely agreed- but they all contain this particular danger; you can *cause* leukemia with the exact same therapy as the treatment if you're not careful.
From everything I've read, adult stem cells are less likely to result in uncontrolled growth. Far less.
I think that may depend upon your definition of uncontrolled- like I said, many cancers are *caused* by adult stem cells having uncontrolled growth. I think what you mean is that Adult Stem Cells are less omnipotentary- they can create fewer types of tissue, so you're far more likely to create the tissue you want instead of the tissue you don't. This alone means a much lower chance of *malignant* cancer- but without the *benign* cancer, you wouldn't have any tissue to implant to begin with.
Their effectiveness in neurological disorders is on par with embryonic stem cells, far less risk of rejection (once the cells differentiate) and far less chance of the uncontrolled growth of embryonic stem cells.
I think what you're missing here is different types of uncontrolled growth. The one the article is talking about is the difficulty of stopping the accellerated growth once started (even an adult stem cell therapy won't do you any good if it takes a human lifetime to grow an organ for replacement). That affects all forms of stem cells equally. The one you're talking about is *additional differerntiation* which is a different type of tumor. The adult stem cells are much less likely to grow something you don't want.
So question is, what 'controls' or tells the cells when to start and stop? I would hope this is a question being asked, because it would seem to this simple geek that the answer to that would both unlock the usage of stem/cord/etc cells and perhaps aid in stopping cancer (when cells decide to go haywire).
Yep- that's the primary area of stem cell research today. How to get them to start, how to get them to stop, how to control what they turn into. And it's not one solution; different target tissues with different starting stem cells seem to require different growth and stopping solutions. And even then, the research is young- we can't be 100% sure.
Accelerate? Why? Whereas this "accelerated growth" natural for embryonic stem cells, and VERY much unwanted, in adult stem cells, are less likely to give rise to the uncontrolled growth seen with embryonic stem cells. At least, so I've read...
The whole key to the use of stem cells (adult, embryonic, or cord blood) is that you need to get the cells to divide and grow into the tissue you want. Without the cell division, without the accelerated growth, the stem cell implantation won't do anything at all for the patient. Controlled accellerated growth is EXACTLY what you want- creating tissue for implantation, say, into a damaged spinal cord. Uncontrolled accellerated growth is *always* a danger, and has been since the start, with all types of stem cells. In fact, several types of naturally occuring cancer are thought to be adult stem cells that have been "turned on" by a passing environmental influence- and are growing into a different type of tissue than what belongs at that location in the body. In the case of a certain type of ovarian stem cell cancer- the cancer can even appear to be a fetus complete with teeth and hair.
So do adult stem cells. A recent experiment using human adult nervous tissue stem cells with mice proved that we could grow several human adult brains from a single cell (perhaps Terry Schaivo WAS killed too soon). But the same thing applies- adult or embryonic- the key is in stopping the division where you want to.
However, the same problem still exists- to use tissue from even adult stem cells, you have to accellerate their growth in an appropriate growth medium. Fail to stop that accellerated growth before implantation yeilds cancer. In fact, cancer is a good description of what you do to stem cells to begin with- encourage them to grow as different parts of the organism they came from, hopefully in a benign, controlled manner, but sometimes in a malignant uncontrolled manner.
Well yes: which is exactly why it's ridiculous for you to claim to know any better. You don't. You have no grounds to conclude anything about something external to the universe from the nature of the universe. You don't have any facts to work with.
Well, actually we *do*- the universal constants and Avogadro's Balloon. It's only been about 10 years since they were discovered, we don't know what they mean yet- but since the Big Bang was by definition a closed system, such a reversal of entropy must mean something. Also, it's incorrect, or at least premature, to assume a random universe merely because we don't have the capability to measure all the variables yet.
Simply put, there is nothing particularly religious about a need to know and a wonder about the world around us.
That is incorrect- this is in fact what religion is all about and always HAS been all about.
I'm not religious, and I have it.
Incorrect- you're quite religious or you wouldn't be arguing your beliefs in such an evangelical manner.
Other people are religious, and their religion may well undergird their motivation for doing science.
And in fact, has for the past 600 years.
But that has nothing to do with science being a particularly religious endeavor. It's no more religious than taking the dog out for a walk because you don't want him to poop on your carpet.
On the contrary, the need for human beings to explain their environment is very religious- and in forms other than science, apparently goes back to other species than homo sapiens as well. It appears many hominids have this curious need to explain their universe and tell stories based on the facts they know as if they were the one and only truth.
??? You're. Not. Making. Sense. Again: we only have the one universe here.
We actually have at least 6.5 billion universes on this planet alone- one for each individual model of the universe that each individual human has come up with from the "facts" they know. None are complete, none are even close to the truth, but by comparing them to what is we can find the truth.
We cannot generalize about this universe being special or tellingly one way or the other, because we only know about the one.
But we don't just know about the one- we know about BILLIONS of them. The rest may not be truth, may not be factually based, may not even be possible, but that doesn't stop us from constructing them and modeling them and comparing them to reality.
There is no "theistic science."
Oh, there has been for generations now. ATHEISTIC science is rather new by comparison, and has yet to withstand the test of time.
Your form of ID does not predate the universe,
Why should it have to? Does your atheistic science predate the universe?
sorry, making its "predictions" AD HOC.
Just as ad hoc as any other form of science then, since Darwin and you don't predate the universe either, by that silly rule. Got any other silly rules to redefine words for me to shoot down?
Do you realize that your responses are barely at all consistent over time or with what they are responding to?
Actually, they're completely consistent over time and with what they are responding to. But when discussing such things with an irrational individual who doesn't even understand basic philosophy, some things may seem to be inconsistent at any given moment. But that's just the basic problem with the intersection of models that are inconsistent.
and the God who created natural laws which put 300,000 people to a misearable (not even peaceful) death in the Asean tsunami..
Considering how overpopulated that coastline was getting, some would consider that a GOOD thing. Not to mention the fact that anybody who subscribed to traditional teachings knew that when the sea goes out it's time to head for the hills. Only really *stupid* modern people were caught by that tsunami.
and the God who created dreadful genetic deseases like haemophilia, muscular dystrophy (are some people sinners at birth ?)
Yes, that's one way to look at it. Another way to look at it is that for some to be saved, others must suffer- that there is no good without evil.
Again, I'm not missing the point: you aren't making sense. You are the one making claims here about the universe. I'm not denying that science might not one day be able to address the question better, but as things stand now, your claims about probability, order and disorder and so forth, have no basis in anything. There's nothing to compare our universe to: there's no basis to conclude anything from it being the way it is.
Therefore, your form of science is useless to the question- being unable to answer it. There are plenty of ways we can compare the universe to alternates- every experiment in science does that, compares what is to a theoretical alternate. There is *NO* difference between this and theology at that stage, or at least, not good rational theology. It's irrational theology we need to be against, and irrational science.
Nonsense. The universe, despite quantum weirdness, remains quite predictable. Even quantum weirdness is, itself, pretty reliably predictable, albiet in a different sense.
If it's predictable, it's not probablistic and it's not random. If it is not predictable, then it's random and everything in both science and theology are meaningless. Either the universe is deterministic (despite our inability to measure accurately or at all at a quantum level) or it is nondeterministic. There is no third option, because a nondeterministic universe is essentially rule-free.
Science is a process for evaluating evidence. You can certainly be personally religious while you undertake that process, but religion is basically irrelevant to the process, and it isn't itself scientific in any way shape or form. Religion is neither a necessary nor a particularly relevant thing to science.
Obviously you know nothing about the reason why we undertake science. There is only one rational reason: to understand the universe in it's entirety, and determine what we can of the mind of God from that. This is the science of Einstien, of Copernicus, of Galileo, of Newton. I don't know what kind of science you imagine can be separated from the religious need to know. But something tells me it has far more to do with base materialism than anything else.
I just don't see your argument here. Random mutation is not the only element relevant to evolution. Pretending that it is is simply nonsense. Pretending, likewise, that a universe in which some order exists proves that there is an ID simply begs the question. There's barely even any argument there for me to refute!
It isn't even the central element, which is why I say ID and evolution are one and the same. But in a random universe- there isn't even that much.
This is simply your personal opinion. It's first of all completely irrelevant to evolution, because evolution does not purport to explain physical laws or regularities, it simply works off what's there.
I'm not even really talking about evolution- if you had been actually READING what I've been writing, my qualm is with quantum physics, and only tangentially impacts evolution, which I regard as an engineering method.
It's second of all simply begging that universe question we discussed before. You cannot conclude that physical laws or fine tuning or anything else demand intelligence, because there is nothing to compare the universe too.
We're comparing the universe to theories and models all the time, that's the meaning of the word experimentation. An intelligence free universe is a rule free universe- there'd be no models to discover if the universe was rule free.
If we suddenly discovered that the universe is really actually totally irrational and random after all, and our belief that it wasn't was an illusion, I have a feeling you'd still find some way to insist that the ID wanted it that way for whatever reason you can think up for it.
Nope- because ID would be worthless in that situation (as would electricity, computers, car engines, etc.). A to
I don't see in what manner a non-deterministic chaotic and random universe implies in a purposeless universe. In fact this could be a major point to insert your favorite 'god' into scheme, where scientist see chaos and random events the believers could see divine intervention.
Do you know anything about the history of science? Science is NOT atheistic- atheists have co-opted science yes, but it simply isn't. It is in fact a very theistic pursuit- the idea that by looking at divine revelation only, we're missing a large part of the story. If God is a creator- an artist- then he left a lot of himself in his creation, and by studying his creation we can learn things we can't learn from scripture alone. It's the ultimate retort to the Sola Scriptura folks, the ones who I blame for creating atheists and agnostics by insisting on an anthromorphic, and very irrational, God.
The fact that there is a completely random, that do not depend on no measurable variable could be a very good way for a higher being introduce his will into our reality.
Only for a fundamentalist. No rational God would behave that way. Rational Gods follow their own rules- fundamentalist idols are as capricious as Zeus and as insane as Allah.
I, myself, am an agnostic, I do not know if there is a god or not. I choose to live my life as if there isn't since most of what I see and learn points to a direction that even if there exists a god then the probability I have to choose the exact correct religion to follow is so low that most of the people world will end up in hell anyway, so I might just live my life by my standards anyway, witch in my point of view is better and more tolerant then most of the official POVs of most of the religions around the world.
Interesting thought- but how do you objectively know that your standards are correct? From my point of view, that's almost as irrational as saying a scripture written during the reign of King David (within recorded history) has anything factual to say about the beginings of life on this planet.
According to the theory there should've been countless unfit creatures that would've become extinct -- so how come no one's been able to find any of these fossils?
In a small religious town called St. Benedict, OR, the monks have a really neat museum with many unfit creatures that went extinct, not just fossilized, but actual taxidermy.
christian fundamentalists won't generally accept explanations like that, because if you read the bible literally, everything happened in 6 days 6000 years ago. perhaps you could argue that the "days" arent literal days, but epochs marked by god intervening to shape a particular aspect of our world, but that again would be untestable conjecture, and as such is not a scientific theory.
However, if you take both together, they point to a very interesting an highly useful form of engineering.
If you have a reproducable test where you get "God" to create new life forms I think you should publish a paper.
I've seen the beginings of one (in that I've seen a theory that is untestable with our current technolgy but has been used in science fiction) but it needs a black hole for an output device for the computerized matrix.
In other words, from a strictly objective point of view, until humanity *becomes* God there will always be skeptics who think God doesn't exist.
OK, so you use the word random to mean something completely different than the rest of humanity.
Not at all- I'm using the word random to mean that something is unpredictable and non-deterministic. This is the only meaning of the word random that I've ever heard. Something that might be determined if we had more variables that we can't currently measure is decidedly NOT random. Random causes creating non-random events is quite ridiculous as well. But both are required for an irrational belief in Quantum Mechanics.
Makes communication hard, but to each his own and all.
Yes, it's hard if you're irrational to become rational enough to converse on that level- that's why the Islamics have taken to blowing each other up instead.
Many people is not comfortable with that, including scientists that are still looking for those hidden variables, witch would be able to predict the results, and they may even be correct, but for all we know now the universe is random. And this is what science is all about, testing and accepting your ignorance. If there is anyone being arrogant and saying that this or that scientific theory (witch ID is not) is the absolute truth then this person is probably not a scientist or at least is not a very good one.
If the universe is random, then most likely not only do the gods exist, but every god ever imagined exists, and continues to exist despite our not beliving in them anymore....er...sorry, was channeling Douglas Adams there for a second.
The *only* problem true IDers have with evolution is the idea of a nondeterministic and purposeless universe. EVERYTHING in evolution makes more sense than the taken-out-of-context verse picking that the creationists do; in fact, evolution can tell you WHY God would have had to make fishes before birds, and such.
There are plenty of atheists who base their whole way of life on the idea of a random and purposeless universe, and I'd agree- they're not very good scientists either.
Quantum mechanics IS completely nondeterministic. That's the essence of theory, in fact. Its not that we just can't tell where an electron is going to be, its that the electron ISN'T in any of those places... its in all of them at once, within certain probabilities.
But of course, there's no way to tell the difference between that and an equipment error. It's just a model used to avoid admitting that we can't measure everything.
And yes, entropy != true randomness. That was my second point.
Thus, entropy and quantum mechanics are at odds (actually, predictability and quantum mechanics are at odds; at a VERY basic level, thus my problem with it. It's very similar to my problem with Christian and Islamic fundamentalists- it all hangs together).
Some "god" may have decided how the radiation behaves, but this same "god" also created quantum effects, and as such the rays hitting a chromosome are completely nondeterministic (yeah, even "god" doesn't know when and where, and with what frequency that photon will hit. You need to understand that this is not anthropomorphising, or a failure of imagination... this is integral to how quantum physics work).
Quantum physics itself is anthromorphisizing a failure of imagination in and of itself. A lack of laws surrounding how radiation behaves is as silly as a God who changes his mind and breaks his own rules, it's just another bit of "irrational" philosophy that makes rational discussion impossible. The whole idea of a random, non-deterministic universe is basically ridiculous at a very low level.
You seem to have a hard time following the argument. This response doesn't really address what I said. What I said was that it is impossible to make judgements about things like chance and likihood about "the universe" given that we have no idea and no capability to have any idea, what "universes" in general are like or how characteristic of universes ours is, or even whether it is the only one.
And you're missing my point that there's no need to get arrogant and dogmatic about it. Science has surpassed the impossible so many times that you'd think nobody would use that word anymore. Making presumptions about the universe in a dogmatic way is in and of itself irrational.
Well, no, he wasn't, again you're confusing things, but when people like Heisenberg used those terms, they used them in a precise and well-defined manner. You are just throwing them all over the place willy nilly.
Apparently neither precise enough or well defined enough; for what they said made no sense and makes a mockery of the very *idea* of a predictable universe.
Of course science can tell us the how. Indeed, that's been the triumph of science over and over and over.
It has according to me- but you seem to have the idea that science and religion are separate.
No: it's a limitation that prevents its scope from shooting out into the mere speculation and fantasy.
Without speculation and fantasy, theories and hypothesis and models would not exist. There is *only* speculation and fantasy here, no reality.
Nope. But please, name me any ID theorist who has made a specific scientific prediction about physical evidence based on their claimed understanding of God.
Pope Benedict XVI did quite recently- and the Islamics jumped all over him for it. Don't you pay any attention to the world around you?
No, ID does not. ID contributed nothing to ferreting out those patterns or pointing anyone in their direction.
Bullshit. Without ID, evolution makes no sense- for there cannot be patterns where there is only randomness. Your "patterns" are destroyed by the idea of random mutation.
Evolution predicts specific patterns in the evidence.
And without intelligence, those specific patterns could not exist, because there would be no physical laws to determine the pattern.
ID does not predict anything in particular.
Yes it does- it predicts that there will be patterns, that those patterns will be rational AND UNCHANGING. As opposed to random and unpredictable.
All your claimed knowledge about ID is ad hoc: you are speculating about the motives of the ID after the fact.
Nope, my involvement in ID predates the creationist involvement by a good number of decades.
That's fine if you enjoy doing so, but it's not science.
Neither is an irrational belief in random accidents.
What you're saying has almost nothing to do with what the ID movement has argued, except slightly the cosmological portion.
It is elsewhere than this country. In this country, the stupid creationists thought that the concept of ID could save them instead of making them look more stupid. In this country, the scientists reject ID, and with it, any real concept of a predictable model of the universe, making them ALSO look stupid. I find it highly amusing that NEITHER bothered to ask the Pope about rational religion.
Whether the universe is random or ordered is basically irrelevant: it is what it is, and we have no capacity to draw conclusions from one example when we don't know what the alternatives are, how they are determined, or whether there even are any alternatives.
Just because we have no capacity to do so now does not mean we will never have the capacity. Just because we can't measure something now doesn't make the measurement irrelevant to a more complete model.
You are also, of course, using terms like "ordered" and "disordered" in vague and bizarre ways. It's really sort of worthless to try and introduce woo like that into science.
I'm not the one who introduced it into science- Heisenberg was.
ID is untestible because it doesn't explain the how of anything (not even anything you've been talking about) in anything other than an ad hoc manner.
Neither does science, for that matter- by limiting evidence to only that which can be tested, the scientific method has a fatal flaw.
No matter what conditions or things we find in the world, we can ALWAYS invent some motive for why the ID wanted it that way.
We can, but that would be the irrational, anthromorphic way to look at it, placing our desires upon God. It should be the other way around.
We aren't committed to _anything_, especially if we don't commit to a very specific ID (which most ID people won't do, because that would mean admitting that they think it's their particular God)
Once again, you're looking at a small sample of irrational American Christians as if they are the whole- which is about as stupid as judging all of Islam based on the 10 million or so who subscribe to convert or die theologies. Your view of ID, and of religion in general, is strangely narrowminded. Are you sure you aren't a Biblical atheist fundamentalist, so poisoned by the ridiculous assertions of American Christianity that atheism seems to become the only sane option?
Evolution predicts very particular patterns that must hold up in the physical evidence about life on earth.
Yes it does, as does ID. In fact, those particular patterns are one and the same for theistic evolution- they have to be, because the physical evidence about life on earth is how we know more about God than our ancestors did.
ID offers none of this, for anything. Saying that ID "predicts" the universe that already exists is nonsense.
If evolution predicts the universe that already exists, so does ID- for the simple reason that ID is the search of the "scripture" written in our DNA (which is another reason why the Biblical Creationists won't find their God there- for they don't worship a God, but rather a book).
"If we found out that the universe is made from tiny pixies that have pink hair, but they are so small we can't see them, then ID is wrong".
Among others, yes. But it need not be that dramatic; one "miracle" of the more modern (and less acurate) meaning of the word, one bit of real "magic" of any sort, and the whole thing becomes so unpredictable that *all* thories would become at best wrong models.
You obviously have no idea how the scientific method works (if you did, you'd know that it's called Avogadros number, no agrivados number).
What an arrogant remark- a misspelling based on phonics is linked to as "no idea how the scientific method works". And you're missing the point- that the real discussion is between an ordered vs a random universe in cosmology, not macro world evolution.
This is what you need: give me a "If you do X, and Y happens, ID is wrong"
Ok, if you write a dissertation and it causes a volcano, ID is wrong.
"If we find X by observing Y, ID is wrong".
Ok, if we find a hurricane by observing a butterfly, and that hurricane is in the same position as the butterfly, then ID is wrong. I think what you're failing is that you don't understand what the central portion of ID as a theory IS.
For every other dicipline of science, that experiment exists.
Can you prove that remark? I can't. It's an untestible statement.
But it doesn't for ID.
Also incorrect, as I just gave you two. There are *many* others. All you have to do is prove the central tenent of quantum mechanics- that the universe is random- for ID to be wrong. There are as many ways to prove that tenent as there are atoms in the universe. No, strike that. There are SIX TIMES as many ways to prove that tenent as there are atoms in the universe. All you have to do is find a single unpredictable phenomena. TRULY unpredictable, not "unpredictable because we currently don't have a way to measure cause X when we observe effect Y". Because the problem with ID has nothing to do with the existance of God or non-existance of God at all- it has to do with whether the cosmos is ordered and rational or disordered and irrational, at a quantum level. If the universe is ordered- if there is a plan and a purpose to the universe- regardless of whether or not that plan and purpose is discoverable, ID is indeed correct (and so is Evolution, and so is Physics, and so is the scientific method). If the universe is disordered- if there is no plan, no purpose- then all theories are equally invalid, for the Flying Spaghetti Monster could just be playing a trick on us all and have created the universe last Tuesday for his own purposes. ID is on the same side as science (which is a good joke on all the Young Earth Creationists) in this; Quantum Mechanics and Islamic Fundamentalism and Christian Fundamentalism are all on the other side, the side of irrationality, to some extent. Pope Benedict XVI recently presented an excellent sermon on this topic that so scared the fundamentalists that several nuns died for the sin of even suggesting it.
Historically, the philosophy behind the scientific method (without which the scientific method itself is completely meaningless) is a theological fight between those who believe God to be ordered, mindful, and intelligent vs those who don't believe God to be anything of the sort. Either God follows his own laws, or magic and miracles (in the modern form, as opposed to St. Augustine's form) exist. There can be no equivocation on that.
By the way there is a combination of the last two interpretations that leads to a modern form of Bishop Berkeley,s idealist philosophy and can be summed up in popular terms that we are living in God's matrix. The interesting question is are these different approaches mere metaphysics or do they ultimately lead to experimental tests. In which case an experiment to determine the existence of God would be possible.
I personally think this will ultimately lead to an experimental test- one which attempts to reverse entropy and create a manmade matrix. Doing so won't be definate proof for God, but it will be definate proof against the non-existance of God.:-)
Show me an experiment or a prediction or anything really that would prove ID wrong.
Oddly enough, it's the same thing that would prove Evolution itself (and just about every other scientific theory that has risen to the predictability of a law) wrong: ID is incompatible with a random universe. If you can show me a commonly accepted physical law changing at random, say the gravitational constant of the universe or agrivado's number, or some such thing; that would prove ID wrong because it would postulate *either* an irrational God or a universe that had lost any sembalance of guiding order or principle. In other words- if you can prove the non-existance of God OR the non-intelligence of God, without being anthromorphic in fallacy, you can prove ID wrong. Evolution would fall as well, and the entire study of physics and biology, but you will have proven ID wrong.
Because some people aren't rational beings, that's why. Because some people were taught to believe certain things, and they have no interest in educating themselves on the subject they fear before they argue about it. Because some people just don't know or care what they're talking about.
EXACTLY RIGHT. Rationality is core- you can't argue with irrational individuals, and they exist on both sides of every debate.
Slashdot Mirror
This isn't Star Trek, guys. You don't wave a magic piece of plastic over someone's head that has sustained massive head trauma and they wake up. I'm all for the future and wonderful medical science, but even if Terry had been somewhat repaired, she wouldn't wake up as Terry, so ultimately it's pointless.
You're partially correct- I doubt any new brain tissue would have the connections between neurons that only grow over a lifetime. However, yes, that's EXACTLY what stem cell research offers- the ability to turn massive head trauma into a major stroke. The ability to replace all that shaken apart and dead grey matter with new grey matter. Will that mean it would take years to reteach a Terry how to be Terry? Would that likely mean major personality changes? Yes. But we don't actually *know* how the brain stores information, so we don't really know any of that for sure. Could be that memories are stored so redundantly that all we need to do is replace 98% of the grey matter and then exercise it.
The rest of (the English speaking subset of) humanity uses the word random as an English word not as a mathematical definition. It means happening without aim, reason, or pattern.
And what I'm saying is that nothing in the universe happens without aim, reason, or pattern. It ALL is governed by a set of physical laws, of which we don't currently have a complete picture, but such a definite set exists. That set may not even be finite, but it is reasonable- that is, discoverable through the powers of reason.
"He picked up a random rock" means he picked up a rock without selecting it according to a goal - he just picked up one of the available rocks. Sure if you managed to analyse the complete state of small section of the universe he was in and the actual rules of physics you could determine which he would choose - but that's irrelevant to the word random.
In fact, if he's human, he picked up a carefully, but unconsciously, chosen rock based on his strength, the weight of the rock, and distance from his starting point. To claim that to be random is at best incorrect, and at worst, a lie.
Random mutation similarly means mutation happening with no aim, reason, or pattern.
But in evolution and ID, mutation happens with reason and pattern, and survival of the fitest yeilds aim.
Mutations just happen, some of them result in the death of the being, some of them nothing and ride along on the rest of the fitness of the being, and some are benficial and give the being an advantage over the competition. Sure if you knoew the compete state of a small section of the universe and the rules of physics you could determine that some particular particle is going to interact with that particular atom/bond/whatever and cause a particular change that will result in a particular being's DNA encoding something that is better able to not die when exposed to some particular chemical that you know will appear in the environment next year. We still call that a random mutation.
In that case, you say a lie. An untruth you KNOW to be incorrect, and you teach it as truth. Do you understand why anybody who cares about TRUTH rather than SCIENCE would call you a liar for claiming this?
The rest of use dictionaries to see what words probably mean.
And gasp, my definition of random, dealing with finite predictability, is the #1 meaning when I look it up in a dictionary. I don't find any definition of random that fits your slapdash and incorrect usage, and certainly none that supports lying to schoolchildren.
Are you aware of any current embryonic stem cell therapy currently used at all? Nevermind routinely?
Yes I am- but it's a bit of a failure for other reasons. The real safety concern in using adult stem cells is implant compatibility- embryonic stem cells have a tendency to keep their mitochondrial information even when the nucleus is destroyed, thus causing rejection of the tissue created.
There are a number of ROUTINE ADULT stem cell therapies in use today. From treating multiple blood disorders (leukemia, for example).
Absolutely agreed- but they all contain this particular danger; you can *cause* leukemia with the exact same therapy as the treatment if you're not careful.
From everything I've read, adult stem cells are less likely to result in uncontrolled growth. Far less.
I think that may depend upon your definition of uncontrolled- like I said, many cancers are *caused* by adult stem cells having uncontrolled growth. I think what you mean is that Adult Stem Cells are less omnipotentary- they can create fewer types of tissue, so you're far more likely to create the tissue you want instead of the tissue you don't. This alone means a much lower chance of *malignant* cancer- but without the *benign* cancer, you wouldn't have any tissue to implant to begin with.
Their effectiveness in neurological disorders is on par with embryonic stem cells, far less risk of rejection (once the cells differentiate) and far less chance of the uncontrolled growth of embryonic stem cells.
I think what you're missing here is different types of uncontrolled growth. The one the article is talking about is the difficulty of stopping the accellerated growth once started (even an adult stem cell therapy won't do you any good if it takes a human lifetime to grow an organ for replacement). That affects all forms of stem cells equally. The one you're talking about is *additional differerntiation* which is a different type of tumor. The adult stem cells are much less likely to grow something you don't want.
So question is, what 'controls' or tells the cells when to start and stop? I would hope this is a question being asked, because it would seem to this simple geek that the answer to that would both unlock the usage of stem/cord/etc cells and perhaps aid in stopping cancer (when cells decide to go haywire).
Yep- that's the primary area of stem cell research today. How to get them to start, how to get them to stop, how to control what they turn into. And it's not one solution; different target tissues with different starting stem cells seem to require different growth and stopping solutions. And even then, the research is young- we can't be 100% sure.
Accelerate? Why? Whereas this "accelerated growth" natural for embryonic stem cells, and VERY much unwanted, in adult stem cells, are less likely to give rise to the uncontrolled growth seen with embryonic stem cells. At least, so I've read...
The whole key to the use of stem cells (adult, embryonic, or cord blood) is that you need to get the cells to divide and grow into the tissue you want. Without the cell division, without the accelerated growth, the stem cell implantation won't do anything at all for the patient. Controlled accellerated growth is EXACTLY what you want- creating tissue for implantation, say, into a damaged spinal cord. Uncontrolled accellerated growth is *always* a danger, and has been since the start, with all types of stem cells. In fact, several types of naturally occuring cancer are thought to be adult stem cells that have been "turned on" by a passing environmental influence- and are growing into a different type of tissue than what belongs at that location in the body. In the case of a certain type of ovarian stem cell cancer- the cancer can even appear to be a fetus complete with teeth and hair.
So do adult stem cells. A recent experiment using human adult nervous tissue stem cells with mice proved that we could grow several human adult brains from a single cell (perhaps Terry Schaivo WAS killed too soon). But the same thing applies- adult or embryonic- the key is in stopping the division where you want to.
However, the same problem still exists- to use tissue from even adult stem cells, you have to accellerate their growth in an appropriate growth medium. Fail to stop that accellerated growth before implantation yeilds cancer. In fact, cancer is a good description of what you do to stem cells to begin with- encourage them to grow as different parts of the organism they came from, hopefully in a benign, controlled manner, but sometimes in a malignant uncontrolled manner.
Well yes: which is exactly why it's ridiculous for you to claim to know any better. You don't. You have no grounds to conclude anything about something external to the universe from the nature of the universe. You don't have any facts to work with.
Well, actually we *do*- the universal constants and Avogadro's Balloon. It's only been about 10 years since they were discovered, we don't know what they mean yet- but since the Big Bang was by definition a closed system, such a reversal of entropy must mean something. Also, it's incorrect, or at least premature, to assume a random universe merely because we don't have the capability to measure all the variables yet.
Simply put, there is nothing particularly religious about a need to know and a wonder about the world around us.
That is incorrect- this is in fact what religion is all about and always HAS been all about.
I'm not religious, and I have it.
Incorrect- you're quite religious or you wouldn't be arguing your beliefs in such an evangelical manner.
Other people are religious, and their religion may well undergird their motivation for doing science.
And in fact, has for the past 600 years.
But that has nothing to do with science being a particularly religious endeavor. It's no more religious than taking the dog out for a walk because you don't want him to poop on your carpet.
On the contrary, the need for human beings to explain their environment is very religious- and in forms other than science, apparently goes back to other species than homo sapiens as well. It appears many hominids have this curious need to explain their universe and tell stories based on the facts they know as if they were the one and only truth.
??? You're. Not. Making. Sense. Again: we only have the one universe here.
We actually have at least 6.5 billion universes on this planet alone- one for each individual model of the universe that each individual human has come up with from the "facts" they know. None are complete, none are even close to the truth, but by comparing them to what is we can find the truth.
We cannot generalize about this universe being special or tellingly one way or the other, because we only know about the one.
But we don't just know about the one- we know about BILLIONS of them. The rest may not be truth, may not be factually based, may not even be possible, but that doesn't stop us from constructing them and modeling them and comparing them to reality.
There is no "theistic science."
Oh, there has been for generations now. ATHEISTIC science is rather new by comparison, and has yet to withstand the test of time.
Your form of ID does not predate the universe,
Why should it have to? Does your atheistic science predate the universe?
sorry, making its "predictions" AD HOC.
Just as ad hoc as any other form of science then, since Darwin and you don't predate the universe either, by that silly rule. Got any other silly rules to redefine words for me to shoot down?
Do you realize that your responses are barely at all consistent over time or with what they are responding to?
Actually, they're completely consistent over time and with what they are responding to. But when discussing such things with an irrational individual who doesn't even understand basic philosophy, some things may seem to be inconsistent at any given moment. But that's just the basic problem with the intersection of models that are inconsistent.
and the God who created natural laws which put 300,000 people to a misearable (not even peaceful) death in the Asean tsunami..
Considering how overpopulated that coastline was getting, some would consider that a GOOD thing. Not to mention the fact that anybody who subscribed to traditional teachings knew that when the sea goes out it's time to head for the hills. Only really *stupid* modern people were caught by that tsunami.
and the God who created dreadful genetic deseases like haemophilia, muscular dystrophy (are some people sinners at birth ?)
Yes, that's one way to look at it. Another way to look at it is that for some to be saved, others must suffer- that there is no good without evil.
Again, I'm not missing the point: you aren't making sense. You are the one making claims here about the universe. I'm not denying that science might not one day be able to address the question better, but as things stand now, your claims about probability, order and disorder and so forth, have no basis in anything. There's nothing to compare our universe to: there's no basis to conclude anything from it being the way it is.
Therefore, your form of science is useless to the question- being unable to answer it. There are plenty of ways we can compare the universe to alternates- every experiment in science does that, compares what is to a theoretical alternate. There is *NO* difference between this and theology at that stage, or at least, not good rational theology. It's irrational theology we need to be against, and irrational science.
Nonsense. The universe, despite quantum weirdness, remains quite predictable. Even quantum weirdness is, itself, pretty reliably predictable, albiet in a different sense.
If it's predictable, it's not probablistic and it's not random. If it is not predictable, then it's random and everything in both science and theology are meaningless. Either the universe is deterministic (despite our inability to measure accurately or at all at a quantum level) or it is nondeterministic. There is no third option, because a nondeterministic universe is essentially rule-free.
Science is a process for evaluating evidence. You can certainly be personally religious while you undertake that process, but religion is basically irrelevant to the process, and it isn't itself scientific in any way shape or form. Religion is neither a necessary nor a particularly relevant thing to science.
Obviously you know nothing about the reason why we undertake science. There is only one rational reason: to understand the universe in it's entirety, and determine what we can of the mind of God from that. This is the science of Einstien, of Copernicus, of Galileo, of Newton. I don't know what kind of science you imagine can be separated from the religious need to know. But something tells me it has far more to do with base materialism than anything else.
I just don't see your argument here. Random mutation is not the only element relevant to evolution. Pretending that it is is simply nonsense. Pretending, likewise, that a universe in which some order exists proves that there is an ID simply begs the question. There's barely even any argument there for me to refute!
It isn't even the central element, which is why I say ID and evolution are one and the same. But in a random universe- there isn't even that much.
This is simply your personal opinion. It's first of all completely irrelevant to evolution, because evolution does not purport to explain physical laws or regularities, it simply works off what's there.
I'm not even really talking about evolution- if you had been actually READING what I've been writing, my qualm is with quantum physics, and only tangentially impacts evolution, which I regard as an engineering method.
It's second of all simply begging that universe question we discussed before. You cannot conclude that physical laws or fine tuning or anything else demand intelligence, because there is nothing to compare the universe too.
We're comparing the universe to theories and models all the time, that's the meaning of the word experimentation. An intelligence free universe is a rule free universe- there'd be no models to discover if the universe was rule free.
If we suddenly discovered that the universe is really actually totally irrational and random after all, and our belief that it wasn't was an illusion, I have a feeling you'd still find some way to insist that the ID wanted it that way for whatever reason you can think up for it.
Nope- because ID would be worthless in that situation (as would electricity, computers, car engines, etc.). A to
I don't see in what manner a non-deterministic chaotic and random universe implies in a purposeless universe. In fact this could be a major point to insert your favorite 'god' into scheme, where scientist see chaos and random events the believers could see divine intervention.
Do you know anything about the history of science? Science is NOT atheistic- atheists have co-opted science yes, but it simply isn't. It is in fact a very theistic pursuit- the idea that by looking at divine revelation only, we're missing a large part of the story. If God is a creator- an artist- then he left a lot of himself in his creation, and by studying his creation we can learn things we can't learn from scripture alone. It's the ultimate retort to the Sola Scriptura folks, the ones who I blame for creating atheists and agnostics by insisting on an anthromorphic, and very irrational, God.
The fact that there is a completely random, that do not depend on no measurable variable could be a very good way for a higher being introduce his will into our reality.
Only for a fundamentalist. No rational God would behave that way. Rational Gods follow their own rules- fundamentalist idols are as capricious as Zeus and as insane as Allah.
I, myself, am an agnostic, I do not know if there is a god or not. I choose to live my life as if there isn't since most of what I see and learn points to a direction that even if there exists a god then the probability I have to choose the exact correct religion to follow is so low that most of the people world will end up in hell anyway, so I might just live my life by my standards anyway, witch in my point of view is better and more tolerant then most of the official POVs of most of the religions around the world.
Interesting thought- but how do you objectively know that your standards are correct? From my point of view, that's almost as irrational as saying a scripture written during the reign of King David (within recorded history) has anything factual to say about the beginings of life on this planet.
According to the theory there should've been countless unfit creatures that would've become extinct -- so how come no one's been able to find any of these fossils?
In a small religious town called St. Benedict, OR, the monks have a really neat museum with many unfit creatures that went extinct, not just fossilized, but actual taxidermy.
The problem is that education is not a door to a destination, but a path leading forever into the sunset. There is always more to learn.
christian fundamentalists won't generally accept explanations like that, because if you read the bible literally, everything happened in 6 days 6000 years ago. perhaps you could argue that the "days" arent literal days, but epochs marked by god intervening to shape a particular aspect of our world, but that again would be untestable conjecture, and as such is not a scientific theory.
However, if you take both together, they point to a very interesting an highly useful form of engineering.
If you have a reproducable test where you get "God" to create new life forms I think you should publish a paper.
I've seen the beginings of one (in that I've seen a theory that is untestable with our current technolgy but has been used in science fiction) but it needs a black hole for an output device for the computerized matrix.
In other words, from a strictly objective point of view, until humanity *becomes* God there will always be skeptics who think God doesn't exist.
OK, so you use the word random to mean something completely different than the rest of humanity.
Not at all- I'm using the word random to mean that something is unpredictable and non-deterministic. This is the only meaning of the word random that I've ever heard. Something that might be determined if we had more variables that we can't currently measure is decidedly NOT random. Random causes creating non-random events is quite ridiculous as well. But both are required for an irrational belief in Quantum Mechanics.
Makes communication hard, but to each his own and all.
Yes, it's hard if you're irrational to become rational enough to converse on that level- that's why the Islamics have taken to blowing each other up instead.
Many people is not comfortable with that, including scientists that are still looking for those hidden variables, witch would be able to predict the results, and they may even be correct, but for all we know now the universe is random. And this is what science is all about, testing and accepting your ignorance. If there is anyone being arrogant and saying that this or that scientific theory (witch ID is not) is the absolute truth then this person is probably not a scientist or at least is not a very good one.
If the universe is random, then most likely not only do the gods exist, but every god ever imagined exists, and continues to exist despite our not beliving in them anymore....er...sorry, was channeling Douglas Adams there for a second.
The *only* problem true IDers have with evolution is the idea of a nondeterministic and purposeless universe. EVERYTHING in evolution makes more sense than the taken-out-of-context verse picking that the creationists do; in fact, evolution can tell you WHY God would have had to make fishes before birds, and such.
There are plenty of atheists who base their whole way of life on the idea of a random and purposeless universe, and I'd agree- they're not very good scientists either.
Quantum mechanics IS completely nondeterministic. That's the essence of theory, in fact. Its not that we just can't tell where an electron is going to be, its that the electron ISN'T in any of those places... its in all of them at once, within certain probabilities.
But of course, there's no way to tell the difference between that and an equipment error. It's just a model used to avoid admitting that we can't measure everything.
And yes, entropy != true randomness. That was my second point.
Thus, entropy and quantum mechanics are at odds (actually, predictability and quantum mechanics are at odds; at a VERY basic level, thus my problem with it. It's very similar to my problem with Christian and Islamic fundamentalists- it all hangs together).
Some "god" may have decided how the radiation behaves, but this same "god" also created quantum effects, and as such the rays hitting a chromosome are completely nondeterministic (yeah, even "god" doesn't know when and where, and with what frequency that photon will hit. You need to understand that this is not anthropomorphising, or a failure of imagination... this is integral to how quantum physics work).
Quantum physics itself is anthromorphisizing a failure of imagination in and of itself. A lack of laws surrounding how radiation behaves is as silly as a God who changes his mind and breaks his own rules, it's just another bit of "irrational" philosophy that makes rational discussion impossible. The whole idea of a random, non-deterministic universe is basically ridiculous at a very low level.
You seem to have a hard time following the argument. This response doesn't really address what I said. What I said was that it is impossible to make judgements about things like chance and likihood about "the universe" given that we have no idea and no capability to have any idea, what "universes" in general are like or how characteristic of universes ours is, or even whether it is the only one.
And you're missing my point that there's no need to get arrogant and dogmatic about it. Science has surpassed the impossible so many times that you'd think nobody would use that word anymore. Making presumptions about the universe in a dogmatic way is in and of itself irrational.
Well, no, he wasn't, again you're confusing things, but when people like Heisenberg used those terms, they used them in a precise and well-defined manner. You are just throwing them all over the place willy nilly.
Apparently neither precise enough or well defined enough; for what they said made no sense and makes a mockery of the very *idea* of a predictable universe.
Of course science can tell us the how. Indeed, that's been the triumph of science over and over and over.
It has according to me- but you seem to have the idea that science and religion are separate.
No: it's a limitation that prevents its scope from shooting out into the mere speculation and fantasy.
Without speculation and fantasy, theories and hypothesis and models would not exist. There is *only* speculation and fantasy here, no reality.
Nope. But please, name me any ID theorist who has made a specific scientific prediction about physical evidence based on their claimed understanding of God.
Pope Benedict XVI did quite recently- and the Islamics jumped all over him for it. Don't you pay any attention to the world around you?
No, ID does not. ID contributed nothing to ferreting out those patterns or pointing anyone in their direction.
Bullshit. Without ID, evolution makes no sense- for there cannot be patterns where there is only randomness. Your "patterns" are destroyed by the idea of random mutation.
Evolution predicts specific patterns in the evidence.
And without intelligence, those specific patterns could not exist, because there would be no physical laws to determine the pattern.
ID does not predict anything in particular.
Yes it does- it predicts that there will be patterns, that those patterns will be rational AND UNCHANGING. As opposed to random and unpredictable.
All your claimed knowledge about ID is ad hoc: you are speculating about the motives of the ID after the fact.
Nope, my involvement in ID predates the creationist involvement by a good number of decades.
That's fine if you enjoy doing so, but it's not science.
Neither is an irrational belief in random accidents.
What you're saying has almost nothing to do with what the ID movement has argued, except slightly the cosmological portion.
It is elsewhere than this country. In this country, the stupid creationists thought that the concept of ID could save them instead of making them look more stupid. In this country, the scientists reject ID, and with it, any real concept of a predictable model of the universe, making them ALSO look stupid. I find it highly amusing that NEITHER bothered to ask the Pope about rational religion.
Whether the universe is random or ordered is basically irrelevant: it is what it is, and we have no capacity to draw conclusions from one example when we don't know what the alternatives are, how they are determined, or whether there even are any alternatives.
Just because we have no capacity to do so now does not mean we will never have the capacity. Just because we can't measure something now doesn't make the measurement irrelevant to a more complete model.
You are also, of course, using terms like "ordered" and "disordered" in vague and bizarre ways. It's really sort of worthless to try and introduce woo like that into science.
I'm not the one who introduced it into science- Heisenberg was.
ID is untestible because it doesn't explain the how of anything (not even anything you've been talking about) in anything other than an ad hoc manner.
Neither does science, for that matter- by limiting evidence to only that which can be tested, the scientific method has a fatal flaw.
No matter what conditions or things we find in the world, we can ALWAYS invent some motive for why the ID wanted it that way.
We can, but that would be the irrational, anthromorphic way to look at it, placing our desires upon God. It should be the other way around.
We aren't committed to _anything_, especially if we don't commit to a very specific ID (which most ID people won't do, because that would mean admitting that they think it's their particular God)
Once again, you're looking at a small sample of irrational American Christians as if they are the whole- which is about as stupid as judging all of Islam based on the 10 million or so who subscribe to convert or die theologies. Your view of ID, and of religion in general, is strangely narrowminded. Are you sure you aren't a Biblical atheist fundamentalist, so poisoned by the ridiculous assertions of American Christianity that atheism seems to become the only sane option?
Evolution predicts very particular patterns that must hold up in the physical evidence about life on earth.
Yes it does, as does ID. In fact, those particular patterns are one and the same for theistic evolution- they have to be, because the physical evidence about life on earth is how we know more about God than our ancestors did.
ID offers none of this, for anything. Saying that ID "predicts" the universe that already exists is nonsense.
If evolution predicts the universe that already exists, so does ID- for the simple reason that ID is the search of the "scripture" written in our DNA (which is another reason why the Biblical Creationists won't find their God there- for they don't worship a God, but rather a book).
"If we found out that the universe is made from tiny pixies that have pink hair, but they are so small we can't see them, then ID is wrong".
Among others, yes. But it need not be that dramatic; one "miracle" of the more modern (and less acurate) meaning of the word, one bit of real "magic" of any sort, and the whole thing becomes so unpredictable that *all* thories would become at best wrong models.
You obviously have no idea how the scientific method works (if you did, you'd know that it's called Avogadros number, no agrivados number).
What an arrogant remark- a misspelling based on phonics is linked to as "no idea how the scientific method works". And you're missing the point- that the real discussion is between an ordered vs a random universe in cosmology, not macro world evolution.
This is what you need: give me a "If you do X, and Y happens, ID is wrong"
Ok, if you write a dissertation and it causes a volcano, ID is wrong.
"If we find X by observing Y, ID is wrong".
Ok, if we find a hurricane by observing a butterfly, and that hurricane is in the same position as the butterfly, then ID is wrong. I think what you're failing is that you don't understand what the central portion of ID as a theory IS.
For every other dicipline of science, that experiment exists.
Can you prove that remark? I can't. It's an untestible statement.
But it doesn't for ID.
Also incorrect, as I just gave you two. There are *many* others. All you have to do is prove the central tenent of quantum mechanics- that the universe is random- for ID to be wrong. There are as many ways to prove that tenent as there are atoms in the universe. No, strike that. There are SIX TIMES as many ways to prove that tenent as there are atoms in the universe. All you have to do is find a single unpredictable phenomena. TRULY unpredictable, not "unpredictable because we currently don't have a way to measure cause X when we observe effect Y". Because the problem with ID has nothing to do with the existance of God or non-existance of God at all- it has to do with whether the cosmos is ordered and rational or disordered and irrational, at a quantum level. If the universe is ordered- if there is a plan and a purpose to the universe- regardless of whether or not that plan and purpose is discoverable, ID is indeed correct (and so is Evolution, and so is Physics, and so is the scientific method). If the universe is disordered- if there is no plan, no purpose- then all theories are equally invalid, for the Flying Spaghetti Monster could just be playing a trick on us all and have created the universe last Tuesday for his own purposes. ID is on the same side as science (which is a good joke on all the Young Earth Creationists) in this; Quantum Mechanics and Islamic Fundamentalism and Christian Fundamentalism are all on the other side, the side of irrationality, to some extent. Pope Benedict XVI recently presented an excellent sermon on this topic that so scared the fundamentalists that several nuns died for the sin of even suggesting it.
Historically, the philosophy behind the scientific method (without which the scientific method itself is completely meaningless) is a theological fight between those who believe God to be ordered, mindful, and intelligent vs those who don't believe God to be anything of the sort. Either God follows his own laws, or magic and miracles (in the modern form, as opposed to St. Augustine's form) exist. There can be no equivocation on that.
By the way there is a combination of the last two interpretations that leads to a modern form of Bishop Berkeley,s idealist philosophy and can be summed up in popular terms that we are living in God's matrix. The interesting question is are these different approaches mere metaphysics or do they ultimately lead to experimental tests. In which case an experiment to determine the existence of God would be possible.
:-)
I personally think this will ultimately lead to an experimental test- one which attempts to reverse entropy and create a manmade matrix. Doing so won't be definate proof for God, but it will be definate proof against the non-existance of God.
Show me an experiment or a prediction or anything really that would prove ID wrong.
Oddly enough, it's the same thing that would prove Evolution itself (and just about every other scientific theory that has risen to the predictability of a law) wrong: ID is incompatible with a random universe. If you can show me a commonly accepted physical law changing at random, say the gravitational constant of the universe or agrivado's number, or some such thing; that would prove ID wrong because it would postulate *either* an irrational God or a universe that had lost any sembalance of guiding order or principle. In other words- if you can prove the non-existance of God OR the non-intelligence of God, without being anthromorphic in fallacy, you can prove ID wrong. Evolution would fall as well, and the entire study of physics and biology, but you will have proven ID wrong.
Actually, I was talking about his work in engineering- but it usually takes a theist to see it.
Because some people aren't rational beings, that's why. Because some people were taught to believe certain things, and they have no interest in educating themselves on the subject they fear before they argue about it. Because some people just don't know or care what they're talking about.
EXACTLY RIGHT. Rationality is core- you can't argue with irrational individuals, and they exist on both sides of every debate.