Aside from the fact that you're up against a mountain of evidence in favour of evolution, if you can show all that evidence to be wrong, and, say, show that species do not actually adapt to their environments over time, evolution would be falsified.
Oh, you wanted an easy falsfification, along the lines of "if my head hurts, I must've been drinking"? Sorry, no luck. You see, other people have thought about that before and all the easy falsifications have already been attempted - and failed.
Because debunking and falsification are not the same thing.
Proving your assumption to be wrong would debunk your theory. It would not prove it wrong, because logical results derived from a false assumption are not "wrong" in this sense.
A theory can be debunked by demonstrating that it is not necessary and does not add any understanding or answer any questions. This is more a metaphysical than a scientific approach. Basically, something that is claimed to exist in such a way that it has no effect whatsoever on the universe does, for all practical purposes, not exist. The claim can not be falsified - by definition, because no effect means no measurement, but no measurement can equally well mean it doesn't exist and as proof that there really are no effects. Since the claim can never be demonstrated as either true or false, the claim is meaningless and the theory is debunked.
That assumes that we don't already have a perfectly good explanation for the diversity that we see in life.
But we do.
You're trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist. I don't recall any current biological scientists being stumped by life's diversity. I don't remember any recent scientific publications saying "still can't explain why there are so many species". The problem of diversity simply doesn't exist, it's dishonest to say it does, that's one of the strategies of ID proponents to open up argument. But the assumption is false. They say "science doesn't explain that..." - whenever someone from a religious background says something like that, the very first thing you need to do is verify this claim.
2) ID is the belief that evolution is mostly true, but that something "interfered" with evolution, allowing it to overcome the statistical challenges to evolving more complicated life.
Evolution already explains the "statistical challenges". There is no need for ID and ID does not add anything to the theory of evolution that would need to be added. ID does not explain anything that needs explaining. Almost everyone who argues for ID does not "get" statistics and probabilities. These are the people that are claiming the odds are like a 747 spontaneously assembling in a junk yard. Which is the best demonstration ever invented that you have no clue what evolution is actually all about.
4) Put in those terms, it becomes statistically falsifiable (to arbitrary levels of confidence). One simply needs to determine numbers for hitting jackpots / speciation and compare them against the record of events. Or even better, going forward, keep track of the genomes of all species on earth, and see if mutation and speciation rates match theory.
And you seriously believe that ID supporters would pack their bags and say "ok, we were wrong, sorry." ? You've not had a discussion with one, had you? The problem is that you're talking to people who don't get probabilities, or else they wouldn't be arguing their nonsense in the first place. Here:
5) It is possible to develop a statistical method that determines to an arbitrary level of confidence, if species A could have evolved from species B given time duration T.
No, it isn't. "could have" is not a scientific term. What you are actually calculating is a probability. Your evidence, however, is that species A exists. Any probability above absolute zero means your evidence doesn't falsify a thing. Any probability below absolute certainty means your evidence doesn't verify a thing.
That's what ID is all about. They make some back-of-a-napkin calculations and say "the probability for this happening is so tiny, it must have been god". They don't get probabilities. The chance to win the lottery is on the order of ten million to one against (precise odds depending on what lottery you play). Nevertheless, it happens every other week or so. But neither the fact that someone did win the jackpot this week, nor the fact that someone didn't last week is proof of heavenly intervention.
On the side of ID, you would need actual claims. The equivalent of saying "winning the lottery is impossible without heavenly intervention, which means nobody who is not a devout christian can ever win the lottery". Then, if someone like me for example does, ID is falsified. As long as they just say "god interferes in mysterious ways", any attempt at falsification will always be put to the "mysterious ways".
as our skills with genetic engineering move forward, it will be critical to be able to tell if West Nile 2012 is an intelligently designed species or not.
That's a totally different matter. Being able to determine if some virus evolved naturally or was constructed by humans is not the same as making the difference between a natural evolution and the interference of an imaginary being whose alleged powers include being able to make things appear as if they had happened by chance.
Christianity debunked hundreds of times? Care to furnish proof of that statement?
Learn to read. Creationism is what I wrote. I know, it both starts with a capital C...
The problem today is that Christians keep getting ostracized for their faith and beliefs
By far not enough, but that's not my scientific opinion, only my personal one. As long as you can say "I'm a christian" on national TV without being laughed out of the room, you evil bastards are getting cut way too much slack still.
We belief there is a God and created the world. But why the vitriol?
Because you can't keep your belief private and leave me mine. You have to inject it into every aspect of society, because the goal is not keeping your belief, but shaping society according to its rules. And I am not ok with living by the rules of an ancient desert goat-herding society, because that's where these rules come from.
it's because you don't believe or want to believe in a Sovereign God. Your choice not to, but there's no need to spew the hate for those of us who do.
There are many, many good reasons. In fact, whole books have been written in an attempt to enumerate them. I'm not going to repeat what Harris or Hitchens can express in better words.
Now for your "argument":
What concession would you like? Darwin had the same kind of concession in Origin of Species and, well, that gets overlooked in the light of preserving the belief.
Darwin never claimed his theory to be perfect. Science doesn't work like faith does, in that you either believe or you don't, in that you're a believer or a heretic, that everything is either good or evil. Scientific theories are not either right or wrong. They are always "wrong" in the sense that every scientist worth the name accepts that whatever theory he holds is the best one we currently have and that it is very likely that a better one will come along. If a theory is shown to not fit all the facts, a scientist will go looking for a better theory that does. If the original theory is any good, chances are high that the better theory is a variation of the old one. And evolution has been through that cycle many times. The reservations of Darwin do not all apply anymore, as many have been taken into account in the modern theory of evolution. If you want to seriously discussion the theory of evolution, please discuss the one that is actually in use, and not the old and outdated original one.
There are several "Z"s as I understand the theory (but I'm not a biological scientist, so any of those can probably improve upon what I say).
One main claim of evolution is inheritence - that traits get passed on. If you could prove that wrong, evolution would be in serious trouble. So far, massive amounts of evidence show that we've actually seen this happen again and again.
Another main claim is adaptation - that living things change according to their environment. Same thing, prove that wrong and evolution is in trouble, so far we have libraries of documented cases of this happening.
The third main claim is what's commonly called the "survival of the fittest", namely that a feedback loop exists between adaptation and inheritence leading to traits that have a positive influence on survival chances to propagate throughout the population while traits with a negative influence diminish over time.
Every fact that's ever seemed to be at odds with the theory of evolution, scientists have eventually found ways to explain. So is there anything that would really falsify it?
You went right by the main advantage of the scientific method and didn't notice it. Very rarely in science is a theory actually falsified - the Ether was, when Einstein came around with his better explanation. The more common case is that a theory is shown to have faults, and a better theory is proposed that has all the advantages of the old, but also works in those areas the old one doesn't. This has in fact happened to the theory of evolution many times, the one that science holds up today is not the same as the one Darwin came up with.
Right now, evolution is one of the most solid theories in all of science, very few have been so extensively reviewed and improved upon. That is why my falsification examples above seem so out-there - because this has been attempted thousands of times, and every attempt has led to a stronger theory because every time a case that doesn't quite fit is found, an improvement on the theory can be made.
The strength of a scientific theory is not in standing unchanged for centuries. It is in being so generic and adaptable that it can be improved upon constantly, getting better and better.
The problem with religion is that it is fixed in time and does not accept change. The bible is a horrible book to live your life by because the world it describes is a world of villages in the desert filled with farmers and goat herders, not a world of globalization, technology, world-wide communications, international markets and WMDs. There is no part in the bible that tells you how to handle the responsibility of having the launch codes for an ICBM, and so it's being interpreted from rules that are about goat farming or living with your neighbours in a rural desert area.
That's why science and religion are mortal enemies - because one constantly changes and embraces change, and the other thinks it already has all the truths and no improvements can be made.
The core principle of science is falsifiability (well, and a few others), but its core method is continuous improvement and the knowledge that everything you have in your textbooks is wrong, you just don't yet know where, and the reason you accept it for now is because it is pretty close to right. But science is being on the lookout for the other details that don't fit, and changing the theory so it fits them, too. The core belief is that the theory needs to be continuously changed so it fits the world.
The core principle of religion is faith, the belief that the answers have already been given. That if you find something that doesn't fit into your faith, that something must be wrong, evil or a test. That the answer never needs change, only the facts do. That the world needs to be changed so it fits the holy book.
If we're all dead, it just proves that the godly plan didn't go as announced. It could be a mistake in the announcement, or the plan got delayed, but it says nothing about the origin.
But then you make the statement "Creationism has been debunked hundreds of times". If it can't be falsified, then how can it be debunked?
To falsify a theory, you prove it to be wrong.
To debunk a theory, you show that it's nuts. That doesn't require falsification. For example, there are many famous statements in logic that are not false in a logical sense, but neither are they true, and they can be shown to be meaningless. e.g. any conclusion derived from a false assumption.
They already are, though FOX news and its viewers don't realize it.
The problem with climate change is not that it's not falsifiable - it is. The problem is that falsifying it requires waiting a century, and that if we wait a century and it is right, we're all fucked.
I would have said, "that is not science, that is religion."
I disagree since religion does not have to be fanatical. Granted, most are, especially the monotheistic ones. But if you look at the ancient romans, for example, you'll find a religion that gladly accepted foreign gods of any colour and breed into the pantheon. These people were cool to say "ah, ok, in these lands, XYZ governs the fields. Fine with me."
For a modern example, look at buddhism, where at least the versions I've encountered don't even make a claim to truth, their claim is to happiness - they say they have a method that makes you happy, here and now, and it's been tested and perfected for a few thousand years. They say belief is a necessary part of it, but if you're uncomfortable with it, they don't have a problem with you, just please leave them their illusion because it works for them.
No, religion does not have to equal fanatism, but it is a very common combination.
conduct of research relating to the theory of intelligent design or other alternate theories of the origination and development of organisms.'"
That's a big loss.
So politicians now define what an "alternate theory" is? Sorry, but ID is not a "theory". It's hogwash, bullshit, dumbfuck, nonsense, insanity or any of a selection of similar terms. It is not even a theory, and definitely not a scientific theory.
To cut a long discussion short, it lacks an important part: Falsifiability.
If creationists want to have their delusions discussed by honest people, they have to make one concession first, and that is the willingness to be convinced that it's all hogwash, bullshit, nonsense, you get it. They need to say "my theory proposes X and Y, and it forbids Z. If Z can be shown to be true, my theory is a piece of crap and I'll stop plastering it everywhere and brainwishing my kids into believing it."
Science is full of faults and bad theories - but it has an uncanny ability to rid itself of them. Creationism (in both its pure form and it's ID camouflage) has been debunked hundreds of times, practically every time a real scientists so much as takes a good look. And yet it's still thrown around, largely unchanged. That is not science, that is fanatism.
And by regulating science not on the ground of proper scientific conduct, but on grounds of ideology, those politicians have just delivered an excellent proof that they are not to be trusted with truth, facts, knowledge or in fact anything, least of all running the place.
When will we have our Tharir place to rid ourselves of this caste of no-gooders who have turned everything that was once good about our democracy against us and are driven by nothing but greed and power?
On the other hand, the entire Western world's opinions of each other are basically an n-way fingerpointing of "all you guys are hypocritical lunatics and only my country is any good".
But in an entirely different way, a lot more playful. Sure we germans have certain opinions of the french, and the british, and we still crack jokes about italian tanks having one gear for forward driving and three for backwards.
But the opinion on americans isn't guided by jokes anymore. It's hard to look at Afghanistan and Iraq and feel the desire to crack a joke.
For at least the last full decade, for example, bashing the US has been a highly popular thing for European politicians to do during their campaigns.
Ever asked yourself why ?
And let's not get things out of proportion, shall we? The current governments of Great Britain, Germany, Sweden and Spain are pretty much servants of the US.
it's entirely the US's fault for not then reporting back the same information to EU citizens that the EU board handing over the information already has...
Actually, no. The tone I found in the discussion was one of not being surprised, because not honouring international treaties or law has become par for the course for the US. That is the actual "bashing" part, not this particular case.
Oh, and the "rest of the world is left of the US" thing is garbage but popular too.
Not my words, throw 'em at the one who wrote that.:-)
Because we (the western nations) have so much trust in the arab world right now. Every kid that dies (and there will be innocent victims, let's not kid ourselves here) will be further proof that all of the west is evil.
You can't go in and fix a country if you still have two horribly-gone-wrong attempts of that running. Thinking that you can is hubris.
Usually people don't hate on average American folk (outside of jest at least),
Actually, lots do, though disdain runs a bit higher than hate. Americans are seen as fat, lazy, stupid bastards in most parts of the world, especially western Europe.
That wasn't always the case, in fact it's fairly new. It started with Reagon (nobody over here in Europe understood how a mediocre actor could become president), got a bit better with Bush Sr. until the first Iraq war, turned into "crazy" during the Clinton impeachment-for-a-blowjob circus and with GWB the US went off the scale in any measurement of (insert any insulting term here).
I'm not sure where to find a list of treaties that the United States has failed to honor (did a quick search and nothing obvious popped up),
Search for "treaties the US is a member of". They are famous for playing only as long as it is to their advantage. One of the most popular examples is that the US is years behind in is payments to the UN, and has been for a very long time.
do the majority of people inside the U.S. realize how much they've lost on the world stage over the past decade?
I think the majority of people inside the US don't realize that there is a world stage. There are a couple famous videos on YouTube where most of the random people interviewed on the street couldn't find places like Iraq or Afghanistan on a fucking world map that was shown to them. And I don't mean small errors like confusing Iraq with Iran or Afghanistan with Pakistan, I mean putting them on the wrong continent or having no clue whatsoever.
If you'd shoot every moron in the US, the country would be severely depopulated. I'm not saying other countries don't have morons, but the percentage seems to be extraordinarily high in the US.
Understanding if/then and loops requires a certain amount of analytical thought and abstraction. Not everyone has these, or has the patience to put in the effort required. Just like some people simply don't dig math. Sure they'll pick up the basic computations, but ask them for a derivative and they'll be lost. And we all know that's where real math starts.
Even a simple program is not something that everyone can do or will be able to do within the forseable time. Heck, if we can't teach basic math and increasingly basic grammar of our mother tongues to school children, how does the GP even come up with the idea of everyone being able to write code?
The FBI could have planted bugs in my apartment. They could bug my landline telephone. They could point a laser device at my window and pick up voice via the vibrations. They could be following me. They could have planted a tracking device on my car.
All of those except the landline require actions in the physical world, where resources are limited and distances are real. Those natural limitations will prevent large-scale invisible abuse. You can do it on a limited scale, or you can do it big scale but then the country turns visibly into a police state.
Bugging your landline or your phone, or reading your GPS coordinates remotely requires a computer and being the FBI so you can tell the telco to go and do it. Running it on 1000 people is only marginally more troublesome than running it on 100 people. And that's a very important difference.
This will never happen. Look at what is happening instead - as computers grow more powerful, and programming becomes easier due to better languages (who still remembers manually allocating memory in C?), all those gains are offset by higher complexity.
It's not the only thing he doesn't understand. Many of his lauded "visions" are totally bonkers and his first book had to be re-written years later so as to not appear to be as dramatically off the mark as it was.
Fact is - and I know that's hard for people brainwashed with capitalism-cures-everything ideology - that money does not generate intelligence nor creativity. Where you find the two linked, the mental attributes always came first. People don't get smarter as they get richer. They may, however, appear to be smart because they can pay for ghostwriters, personal coaches, PR agencies and other helpers who change their public image.
It's one of the reasons I love TED, btw. - it's an opportunity for smart people to speak to rich people, so they might learn something that's not marketing drivel from their own inbred companies.
Besides, other WP:* rules would already cover that, such as verifiability and citations. On all but the most complex topics you don't need to be an expert to check if a cited source really says what the article claims it does.
Also, when you look at history, things get really crazy. I've followed deletion requests closely for a while, and commented on any I thought I could make a worthwhile comment. During even that comparable short time (a few months), I have seen several articles brought up again after consensus was reached the first time that it was, in fact, notable. Funny how some people just can't accept a decision unless it's theirs. Of course, by the time of the second discussion, many contributors to the first did no longer bother or were busy elsewhere and it was often successful. Several times despite me or someone else pointing out the older discussion and result.
It doesn't even come down to politics. It's a lot more personal and simple than that, it's pure ego-stroking, power-mongering and dick measuring.
Doesn't bother me in the slightest, in fact I like it because if someone mentions then and I go "What the fuck is that?" I can find out.
I've argued that extensively on Wikipedia years ago - to deafening silence as the only answer.
Notability should - if you insist on having it at all, which I think is dumb - be an inverse qualifier. The less well-known something is, the more likely it is that people will want to look it up. Sure you look up Ronald Reagan occasionally, because you need his birthdate or whatever. But when you look up, say, the Darfur governeur from 50 years ago, that's when you want an encyclopedia because it's unlikely you can just ask someone and it's unlikely there's a recent article on that somewhere Google would find it.
Surprised? It's not really a modern thing, though we had a time between the various revolutions and today when politics at least made a pretense of being honestly interested in the common good.
While the original idea was a good one, they have made sure actual experts and anyone else who has something to do other than jerk off to Wikipedia all day will have to run a gauntlet of skanky losers who have claimed the Wiki as "their domain".
Where Wikipedia once worked on crowdsourcing and allowing experts in a field a chance to help fill in the gaps now it is just a haven for trolls and losers with no life outside Wikipedia.
Right on. I used to edit articles about topics I'm an expert in by profession or interest. One day I realized that I had started lecturing idiots and defending my edits on the discussion pages more than I was actually improving articles. And I realized that I had to, because if I didn't, those improvements would be reverted or removed. Much like office politics where you have to play the game or your actual work will suffer, but by playing the game you lose time that you know should be spent on actual work.
That's when I stopped. And when I started looking around for alternatives (like Citizenpedia, which I think doesn't exist anymore), I realized for the first time just how many people where in the same spot. And how desperately they all really, really wanted to get their knowledge out there for the world to see. Because we grew up in this spot in history where hackers meant it when they said "information wants to be free", before the crackdown on copyright by the content industry. Don't for a moment think that the legal aspects are what matters, the real crackdown is in the minds - creating the mindset that sharing of information is not by itself good, that information has an owner and that you need to get permission to distribute it. A lot of us slightly older folks (in our 30s now) share knowledge just because we feel that's the right thing to do - or to put it with Alfred Korzybski, you know the guy who coined the term "the map is not the territory", because we have realized that what makes the human species great is that we are Time-Binders. And time-binding requires knowledge to be shared, because that's how the "standing on the shoulders of giants" part works. And Wikipedia had nothing more important to do than to crush that spirit. It started out in that mind, or at least it appeared to. Then it became part of the content industry. Like a newspaper or a magazine, it was concerned with "quality" and appearance, with measurements and standards of editing - instead of the sharing of knowledge.
I don't trust the knowledge on Wikipedia anymore, because I don't understand what motivates the people who share it to do so. Maybe they're just stubborn enough to withstand all the political nonsense going on over there. But despite all the railing on the WP admins, I fear the average WP editor is not so much different anymore. How else could they survive in such a climate, if it weren't one they consider home?
You forgot the porn star and manga character articles. They have to be there. After all, especially for the porn stars, there is a plethora of sources available. Of course, to ensure the quality of the article, said sources need to be reviewed...
The sheer fact that it's deletion and the controversy are plastered all over should be indication that the magazine is, indeed, "notable".
What are your chances that your average porn star or manga character, many of whom have their won Wikipedia pages, could create even half as much of an uproar?
The problem with the deletionists is that they've gone far beyond reason. The time and energy consumed and the frustration (on all sides) created by this discussion alone is much, much more damaging to Wikipedia than leaving an article that maybe doesn't deserve it there. When your defense of a principle causes so much damage to the larger whole that your principle is claiming to protect, then something is wrong.
And, btw., we have a word for people who don't see that. It's "fanatics".
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Aside from the fact that you're up against a mountain of evidence in favour of evolution, if you can show all that evidence to be wrong, and, say, show that species do not actually adapt to their environments over time, evolution would be falsified.
Oh, you wanted an easy falsfification, along the lines of "if my head hurts, I must've been drinking"? Sorry, no luck. You see, other people have thought about that before and all the easy falsifications have already been attempted - and failed.
Because debunking and falsification are not the same thing.
Proving your assumption to be wrong would debunk your theory. It would not prove it wrong, because logical results derived from a false assumption are not "wrong" in this sense.
A theory can be debunked by demonstrating that it is not necessary and does not add any understanding or answer any questions. This is more a metaphysical than a scientific approach. Basically, something that is claimed to exist in such a way that it has no effect whatsoever on the universe does, for all practical purposes, not exist. The claim can not be falsified - by definition, because no effect means no measurement, but no measurement can equally well mean it doesn't exist and as proof that there really are no effects. Since the claim can never be demonstrated as either true or false, the claim is meaningless and the theory is debunked.
That assumes that we don't already have a perfectly good explanation for the diversity that we see in life.
But we do.
You're trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist. I don't recall any current biological scientists being stumped by life's diversity. I don't remember any recent scientific publications saying "still can't explain why there are so many species". The problem of diversity simply doesn't exist, it's dishonest to say it does, that's one of the strategies of ID proponents to open up argument. But the assumption is false. They say "science doesn't explain that ..." - whenever someone from a religious background says something like that, the very first thing you need to do is verify this claim.
2) ID is the belief that evolution is mostly true, but that something "interfered" with evolution, allowing it to overcome the statistical challenges to evolving more complicated life.
Evolution already explains the "statistical challenges". There is no need for ID and ID does not add anything to the theory of evolution that would need to be added. ID does not explain anything that needs explaining. Almost everyone who argues for ID does not "get" statistics and probabilities. These are the people that are claiming the odds are like a 747 spontaneously assembling in a junk yard. Which is the best demonstration ever invented that you have no clue what evolution is actually all about.
4) Put in those terms, it becomes statistically falsifiable (to arbitrary levels of confidence). One simply needs to determine numbers for hitting jackpots / speciation and compare them against the record of events. Or even better, going forward, keep track of the genomes of all species on earth, and see if mutation and speciation rates match theory.
And you seriously believe that ID supporters would pack their bags and say "ok, we were wrong, sorry." ?
You've not had a discussion with one, had you? The problem is that you're talking to people who don't get probabilities, or else they wouldn't be arguing their nonsense in the first place. Here:
5) It is possible to develop a statistical method that determines to an arbitrary level of confidence, if species A could have evolved from species B given time duration T.
No, it isn't. "could have" is not a scientific term. What you are actually calculating is a probability. Your evidence, however, is that species A exists. Any probability above absolute zero means your evidence doesn't falsify a thing. Any probability below absolute certainty means your evidence doesn't verify a thing.
That's what ID is all about. They make some back-of-a-napkin calculations and say "the probability for this happening is so tiny, it must have been god". They don't get probabilities. The chance to win the lottery is on the order of ten million to one against (precise odds depending on what lottery you play). Nevertheless, it happens every other week or so.
But neither the fact that someone did win the jackpot this week, nor the fact that someone didn't last week is proof of heavenly intervention.
On the side of ID, you would need actual claims. The equivalent of saying "winning the lottery is impossible without heavenly intervention, which means nobody who is not a devout christian can ever win the lottery". Then, if someone like me for example does, ID is falsified. As long as they just say "god interferes in mysterious ways", any attempt at falsification will always be put to the "mysterious ways".
as our skills with genetic engineering move forward, it will be critical to be able to tell if West Nile 2012 is an intelligently designed species or not.
That's a totally different matter. Being able to determine if some virus evolved naturally or was constructed by humans is not the same as making the difference between a natural evolution and the interference of an imaginary being whose alleged powers include being able to make things appear as if they had happened by chance.
Christianity debunked hundreds of times? Care to furnish proof of that statement?
Learn to read. Creationism is what I wrote. I know, it both starts with a capital C...
The problem today is that Christians keep getting ostracized for their faith and beliefs
By far not enough, but that's not my scientific opinion, only my personal one. As long as you can say "I'm a christian" on national TV without being laughed out of the room, you evil bastards are getting cut way too much slack still.
We belief there is a God and created the world. But why the vitriol?
Because you can't keep your belief private and leave me mine. You have to inject it into every aspect of society, because the goal is not keeping your belief, but shaping society according to its rules. And I am not ok with living by the rules of an ancient desert goat-herding society, because that's where these rules come from.
it's because you don't believe or want to believe in a Sovereign God. Your choice not to, but there's no need to spew the hate for those of us who do.
There are many, many good reasons. In fact, whole books have been written in an attempt to enumerate them. I'm not going to repeat what Harris or Hitchens can express in better words.
Now for your "argument":
What concession would you like? Darwin had the same kind of concession in Origin of Species and, well, that gets overlooked in the light of preserving the belief.
Darwin never claimed his theory to be perfect. Science doesn't work like faith does, in that you either believe or you don't, in that you're a believer or a heretic, that everything is either good or evil. Scientific theories are not either right or wrong. They are always "wrong" in the sense that every scientist worth the name accepts that whatever theory he holds is the best one we currently have and that it is very likely that a better one will come along.
If a theory is shown to not fit all the facts, a scientist will go looking for a better theory that does. If the original theory is any good, chances are high that the better theory is a variation of the old one. And evolution has been through that cycle many times. The reservations of Darwin do not all apply anymore, as many have been taken into account in the modern theory of evolution. If you want to seriously discussion the theory of evolution, please discuss the one that is actually in use, and not the old and outdated original one.
There are several "Z"s as I understand the theory (but I'm not a biological scientist, so any of those can probably improve upon what I say).
One main claim of evolution is inheritence - that traits get passed on. If you could prove that wrong, evolution would be in serious trouble. So far, massive amounts of evidence show that we've actually seen this happen again and again.
Another main claim is adaptation - that living things change according to their environment. Same thing, prove that wrong and evolution is in trouble, so far we have libraries of documented cases of this happening.
The third main claim is what's commonly called the "survival of the fittest", namely that a feedback loop exists between adaptation and inheritence leading to traits that have a positive influence on survival chances to propagate throughout the population while traits with a negative influence diminish over time.
Every fact that's ever seemed to be at odds with the theory of evolution, scientists have eventually found ways to explain. So is there anything that would really falsify it?
You went right by the main advantage of the scientific method and didn't notice it. Very rarely in science is a theory actually falsified - the Ether was, when Einstein came around with his better explanation. The more common case is that a theory is shown to have faults, and a better theory is proposed that has all the advantages of the old, but also works in those areas the old one doesn't. This has in fact happened to the theory of evolution many times, the one that science holds up today is not the same as the one Darwin came up with.
Right now, evolution is one of the most solid theories in all of science, very few have been so extensively reviewed and improved upon. That is why my falsification examples above seem so out-there - because this has been attempted thousands of times, and every attempt has led to a stronger theory because every time a case that doesn't quite fit is found, an improvement on the theory can be made.
The strength of a scientific theory is not in standing unchanged for centuries. It is in being so generic and adaptable that it can be improved upon constantly, getting better and better.
The problem with religion is that it is fixed in time and does not accept change. The bible is a horrible book to live your life by because the world it describes is a world of villages in the desert filled with farmers and goat herders, not a world of globalization, technology, world-wide communications, international markets and WMDs. There is no part in the bible that tells you how to handle the responsibility of having the launch codes for an ICBM, and so it's being interpreted from rules that are about goat farming or living with your neighbours in a rural desert area.
That's why science and religion are mortal enemies - because one constantly changes and embraces change, and the other thinks it already has all the truths and no improvements can be made.
The core principle of science is falsifiability (well, and a few others), but its core method is continuous improvement and the knowledge that everything you have in your textbooks is wrong, you just don't yet know where, and the reason you accept it for now is because it is pretty close to right. But science is being on the lookout for the other details that don't fit, and changing the theory so it fits them, too. The core belief is that the theory needs to be continuously changed so it fits the world.
The core principle of religion is faith, the belief that the answers have already been given. That if you find something that doesn't fit into your faith, that something must be wrong, evil or a test. That the answer never needs change, only the facts do. That the world needs to be changed so it fits the holy book.
And that is falsification how?
If we're all dead, it just proves that the godly plan didn't go as announced. It could be a mistake in the announcement, or the plan got delayed, but it says nothing about the origin.
But then you make the statement "Creationism has been debunked hundreds of times". If it can't be falsified, then how can it be debunked?
To falsify a theory, you prove it to be wrong.
To debunk a theory, you show that it's nuts. That doesn't require falsification. For example, there are many famous statements in logic that are not false in a logical sense, but neither are they true, and they can be shown to be meaningless. e.g. any conclusion derived from a false assumption.
They already are, though FOX news and its viewers don't realize it.
The problem with climate change is not that it's not falsifiable - it is. The problem is that falsifying it requires waiting a century, and that if we wait a century and it is right, we're all fucked.
I would have said, "that is not science, that is religion."
I disagree since religion does not have to be fanatical. Granted, most are, especially the monotheistic ones. But if you look at the ancient romans, for example, you'll find a religion that gladly accepted foreign gods of any colour and breed into the pantheon. These people were cool to say "ah, ok, in these lands, XYZ governs the fields. Fine with me."
For a modern example, look at buddhism, where at least the versions I've encountered don't even make a claim to truth, their claim is to happiness - they say they have a method that makes you happy, here and now, and it's been tested and perfected for a few thousand years. They say belief is a necessary part of it, but if you're uncomfortable with it, they don't have a problem with you, just please leave them their illusion because it works for them.
No, religion does not have to equal fanatism, but it is a very common combination.
conduct of research relating to the theory of intelligent design or other alternate theories of the origination and development of organisms.'"
That's a big loss.
So politicians now define what an "alternate theory" is? Sorry, but ID is not a "theory". It's hogwash, bullshit, dumbfuck, nonsense, insanity or any of a selection of similar terms. It is not even a theory, and definitely not a scientific theory.
To cut a long discussion short, it lacks an important part: Falsifiability.
If creationists want to have their delusions discussed by honest people, they have to make one concession first, and that is the willingness to be convinced that it's all hogwash, bullshit, nonsense, you get it. They need to say "my theory proposes X and Y, and it forbids Z. If Z can be shown to be true, my theory is a piece of crap and I'll stop plastering it everywhere and brainwishing my kids into believing it."
Science is full of faults and bad theories - but it has an uncanny ability to rid itself of them. Creationism (in both its pure form and it's ID camouflage) has been debunked hundreds of times, practically every time a real scientists so much as takes a good look. And yet it's still thrown around, largely unchanged. That is not science, that is fanatism.
And by regulating science not on the ground of proper scientific conduct, but on grounds of ideology, those politicians have just delivered an excellent proof that they are not to be trusted with truth, facts, knowledge or in fact anything, least of all running the place.
When will we have our Tharir place to rid ourselves of this caste of no-gooders who have turned everything that was once good about our democracy against us and are driven by nothing but greed and power?
On the other hand, the entire Western world's opinions of each other are basically an n-way fingerpointing of "all you guys are hypocritical lunatics and only my country is any good".
But in an entirely different way, a lot more playful. Sure we germans have certain opinions of the french, and the british, and we still crack jokes about italian tanks having one gear for forward driving and three for backwards.
But the opinion on americans isn't guided by jokes anymore. It's hard to look at Afghanistan and Iraq and feel the desire to crack a joke.
For at least the last full decade, for example, bashing the US has been a highly popular thing for European politicians to do during their campaigns.
Ever asked yourself why ?
And let's not get things out of proportion, shall we? The current governments of Great Britain, Germany, Sweden and Spain are pretty much servants of the US.
it's entirely the US's fault for not then reporting back the same information to EU citizens that the EU board handing over the information already has...
Actually, no. The tone I found in the discussion was one of not being surprised, because not honouring international treaties or law has become par for the course for the US. That is the actual "bashing" part, not this particular case.
Oh, and the "rest of the world is left of the US" thing is garbage but popular too.
Not my words, throw 'em at the one who wrote that. :-)
Because we (the western nations) have so much trust in the arab world right now. Every kid that dies (and there will be innocent victims, let's not kid ourselves here) will be further proof that all of the west is evil.
You can't go in and fix a country if you still have two horribly-gone-wrong attempts of that running. Thinking that you can is hubris.
Usually people don't hate on average American folk (outside of jest at least),
Actually, lots do, though disdain runs a bit higher than hate. Americans are seen as fat, lazy, stupid bastards in most parts of the world, especially western Europe.
That wasn't always the case, in fact it's fairly new. It started with Reagon (nobody over here in Europe understood how a mediocre actor could become president), got a bit better with Bush Sr. until the first Iraq war, turned into "crazy" during the Clinton impeachment-for-a-blowjob circus and with GWB the US went off the scale in any measurement of (insert any insulting term here).
I'm not sure where to find a list of treaties that the United States has failed to honor (did a quick search and nothing obvious popped up),
Search for "treaties the US is a member of". They are famous for playing only as long as it is to their advantage. One of the most popular examples is that the US is years behind in is payments to the UN, and has been for a very long time.
do the majority of people inside the U.S. realize how much they've lost on the world stage over the past decade?
I think the majority of people inside the US don't realize that there is a world stage. There are a couple famous videos on YouTube where most of the random people interviewed on the street couldn't find places like Iraq or Afghanistan on a fucking world map that was shown to them. And I don't mean small errors like confusing Iraq with Iran or Afghanistan with Pakistan, I mean putting them on the wrong continent or having no clue whatsoever.
If you'd shoot every moron in the US, the country would be severely depopulated. I'm not saying other countries don't have morons, but the percentage seems to be extraordinarily high in the US.
You overestimate average people.
Understanding if/then and loops requires a certain amount of analytical thought and abstraction. Not everyone has these, or has the patience to put in the effort required. Just like some people simply don't dig math. Sure they'll pick up the basic computations, but ask them for a derivative and they'll be lost. And we all know that's where real math starts.
Even a simple program is not something that everyone can do or will be able to do within the forseable time. Heck, if we can't teach basic math and increasingly basic grammar of our mother tongues to school children, how does the GP even come up with the idea of everyone being able to write code?
The FBI could have planted bugs in my apartment. They could bug my landline telephone. They could point a laser device at my window and pick up voice via the vibrations. They could be following me. They could have planted a tracking device on my car.
All of those except the landline require actions in the physical world, where resources are limited and distances are real. Those natural limitations will prevent large-scale invisible abuse. You can do it on a limited scale, or you can do it big scale but then the country turns visibly into a police state.
Bugging your landline or your phone, or reading your GPS coordinates remotely requires a computer and being the FBI so you can tell the telco to go and do it. Running it on 1000 people is only marginally more troublesome than running it on 100 people. And that's a very important difference.
(1) citizens can program,
This will never happen. Look at what is happening instead - as computers grow more powerful, and programming becomes easier due to better languages (who still remembers manually allocating memory in C?), all those gains are offset by higher complexity.
Bill, you don't understand education.
It's not the only thing he doesn't understand. Many of his lauded "visions" are totally bonkers and his first book had to be re-written years later so as to not appear to be as dramatically off the mark as it was.
Fact is - and I know that's hard for people brainwashed with capitalism-cures-everything ideology - that money does not generate intelligence nor creativity. Where you find the two linked, the mental attributes always came first. People don't get smarter as they get richer. They may, however, appear to be smart because they can pay for ghostwriters, personal coaches, PR agencies and other helpers who change their public image.
It's one of the reasons I love TED, btw. - it's an opportunity for smart people to speak to rich people, so they might learn something that's not marketing drivel from their own inbred companies.
That is not what the Notability Guideline itself says.
Besides, other WP:* rules would already cover that, such as verifiability and citations. On all but the most complex topics you don't need to be an expert to check if a cited source really says what the article claims it does.
Also, when you look at history, things get really crazy. I've followed deletion requests closely for a while, and commented on any I thought I could make a worthwhile comment. During even that comparable short time (a few months), I have seen several articles brought up again after consensus was reached the first time that it was, in fact, notable. Funny how some people just can't accept a decision unless it's theirs. Of course, by the time of the second discussion, many contributors to the first did no longer bother or were busy elsewhere and it was often successful. Several times despite me or someone else pointing out the older discussion and result.
It doesn't even come down to politics. It's a lot more personal and simple than that, it's pure ego-stroking, power-mongering and dick measuring.
Doesn't bother me in the slightest, in fact I like it because if someone mentions then and I go "What the fuck is that?" I can find out.
I've argued that extensively on Wikipedia years ago - to deafening silence as the only answer.
Notability should - if you insist on having it at all, which I think is dumb - be an inverse qualifier. The less well-known something is, the more likely it is that people will want to look it up. Sure you look up Ronald Reagan occasionally, because you need his birthdate or whatever. But when you look up, say, the Darfur governeur from 50 years ago, that's when you want an encyclopedia because it's unlikely you can just ask someone and it's unlikely there's a recent article on that somewhere Google would find it.
Surprised? It's not really a modern thing, though we had a time between the various revolutions and today when politics at least made a pretense of being honestly interested in the common good.
While the original idea was a good one, they have made sure actual experts and anyone else who has something to do other than jerk off to Wikipedia all day will have to run a gauntlet of skanky losers who have claimed the Wiki as "their domain".
Where Wikipedia once worked on crowdsourcing and allowing experts in a field a chance to help fill in the gaps now it is just a haven for trolls and losers with no life outside Wikipedia.
Right on. I used to edit articles about topics I'm an expert in by profession or interest. One day I realized that I had started lecturing idiots and defending my edits on the discussion pages more than I was actually improving articles. And I realized that I had to, because if I didn't, those improvements would be reverted or removed. Much like office politics where you have to play the game or your actual work will suffer, but by playing the game you lose time that you know should be spent on actual work.
That's when I stopped. And when I started looking around for alternatives (like Citizenpedia, which I think doesn't exist anymore), I realized for the first time just how many people where in the same spot. And how desperately they all really, really wanted to get their knowledge out there for the world to see. Because we grew up in this spot in history where hackers meant it when they said "information wants to be free", before the crackdown on copyright by the content industry. Don't for a moment think that the legal aspects are what matters, the real crackdown is in the minds - creating the mindset that sharing of information is not by itself good, that information has an owner and that you need to get permission to distribute it.
A lot of us slightly older folks (in our 30s now) share knowledge just because we feel that's the right thing to do - or to put it with Alfred Korzybski, you know the guy who coined the term "the map is not the territory", because we have realized that what makes the human species great is that we are Time-Binders. And time-binding requires knowledge to be shared, because that's how the "standing on the shoulders of giants" part works.
And Wikipedia had nothing more important to do than to crush that spirit. It started out in that mind, or at least it appeared to. Then it became part of the content industry. Like a newspaper or a magazine, it was concerned with "quality" and appearance, with measurements and standards of editing - instead of the sharing of knowledge.
I don't trust the knowledge on Wikipedia anymore, because I don't understand what motivates the people who share it to do so. Maybe they're just stubborn enough to withstand all the political nonsense going on over there. But despite all the railing on the WP admins, I fear the average WP editor is not so much different anymore. How else could they survive in such a climate, if it weren't one they consider home?
You forgot the porn star and manga character articles. They have to be there. After all, especially for the porn stars, there is a plethora of sources available. Of course, to ensure the quality of the article, said sources need to be reviewed...
The sheer fact that it's deletion and the controversy are plastered all over should be indication that the magazine is, indeed, "notable".
What are your chances that your average porn star or manga character, many of whom have their won Wikipedia pages, could create even half as much of an uproar?
The problem with the deletionists is that they've gone far beyond reason. The time and energy consumed and the frustration (on all sides) created by this discussion alone is much, much more damaging to Wikipedia than leaving an article that maybe doesn't deserve it there. When your defense of a principle causes so much damage to the larger whole that your principle is claiming to protect, then something is wrong.
And, btw., we have a word for people who don't see that. It's "fanatics".