NationStates Jolt Archive

i'm getting annoyed at this nonsense. but first,
1. its got nothing particularly to do with me
2. i am loathe enough to engage in religious debates (such as the creationism vs evolution arguements that are ever popular of late), yet alone start one... but in reading this (http://forums2.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=441380) thread something hit me that i had already thought, but not been aware of (if you know what i mean)
3. this isn't a thread bashing the many religious debate threads out there at the mo
4. i wrote this many hours before this (http://forums2.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=441513) (now locked) thread... however the news article (http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/feature/story/0,13026,1559743,00.html) from it comes in most handy now


so with that out the way, lets make some assumptions about the school system (as i understand it in america)

1. school is a place of learning
2. a place of learning for all - religious or not.

i would like to assume that religion should play no part in governance or the state, and have no place in education - but evidently this is the hotly contested issue (now you know where i stand)

so why do i say this?
to answer, lets make some assumptions about the theories of evolution and creationism (ID, whatever its all one and the same really - at least for the purposes of this thread)

1. evolution is a scientific theory that has large amounts of evidence - both physical and theoretical (but provable within the laws of physics) - that means it is the best means it is the best theory we've come up with yet. it could be wrong, but - scientifically - this is unlikely (only in small details).
it is an a-theist (seperation intended) idea in that it does not require faith or belief in the existance of some kind of god.

2. creationism has no concrete physical evidence. any theoretical evidence comes from a 2000 year old book, whose authors we don't know. many of its assumptions are impossible under the laws of physics. without faith it makes no sense - it requires belief in god. it is not a comparable scientific theory to evolution.

-------------

so, assuming these assumptions are true, i argue strongly that religion has no place in the classroom.
firstly, the fact that creationism is not of comparable theoretical calibur to the evidence, facts and coherence presented by evolution, says to me that creationism should not be taught at all. strictly comparing the two 'theories' on a scientific or rational basis, teaching creationism makes about as much sense as teaching an old, defunct scientific theory... like the earth is flat or the earth is the center of the universe, for example (though those actually have more evidence than creationism does anyway lol - so therein lies my point). if creationism is being presented as an alternate 'theory' to evolution, then let it be treated as such a theory - and comparatively, as a theory, it does not stack up against evolution, and should not be taught as a theory - but as a religous myth (see below)

Intelligent design is not an argument of the same character as these [evolutionary/scientific] controversies. It is not a scientific argument at all, but a religious one. It might be worth discussing in a class on the history of ideas, in a philosophy class on popular logical fallacies, or in a comparative religion class on origin myths from around the world. But it no more belongs in a biology class than alchemy belongs in a chemistry class, phlogiston in a physics class or the stork theory in a sex education class. In those cases, the demand for equal time for "both theories" would be ludicrous.

secondly, if school is open for all - theists or a-theists, religious or not, surely teaching a 'theory' that relies on personal faith as its cornerstone makes no sense. it is a waste of time for those without faith. if a school is a place of learning, it should teach just the facts (which is evolution if the above assumptions are true) and the school should not have this religious bias on it that is unfair to non-believers.



now, understand, i'm not saying creationism shouldn't be taught at all, just not in the same way as, or alongside, evolution. teach it in Religious Studies if you must (or your equivalent over there)

or, preferably, don't teach it in school at all. RE or philosophy classes should perhaps make you aware of the theory, but certainly not teach it as fact. the class should similarly make the student aware of the different creation myths from the other main religions of the world.
if you want to learn about creationism, as fact or coherent 'theory', you can be taught it at sunday school or in your place of worship - NOT in school.



i know this subject has been done to death, but i wanted to present my own slightly annoyed viewpoint. i also know that not every state is pushing for creationism to be taught in schools, but nonetheless i was annoyed enough at the whole issue to go write this.

to summarise: religion should not be taught alongside credible science.
so, agree, disagree?

Agreed. Religion is NOT science and has NO place being taught in a science class. Intelligent Design is Creationism in trendy new jeans, nothing more.

That said, science classes should not touch on religon at all. That means no preachy atheist science teachers trying to 'debunk' religion. Science should be taught objectively.

I agree. I think evolution belongs in the biology/science class and creationism can be taught in either history (as a relevant religious movement piece) or in a cultural anthropology piece. Either way, creationism should never be taught as a possible explaination for life in the universe.

The earth is not the center of the universe? :eek:

Well said and I agree with you.

What is "credible science"? Something you see with the eyes? Empirically provable information? Do you not have faith in your eyes, in your subjective sensory perceptions? How then does your faith in your sensory perceptors differ from someone elses faith in a deity figure?
I see it thus, the possibility of both are equal, and should be treated as such.
- Rachel Stremp
Head of Philosophy, Tyslan

I think creationism/ID should be taught in school. In a psychology class, it would be highly interesting, when compared to ..let's say schizophrenia. In science class, it would be an entertaining break from the dry facts, and a brilliant tool to demonstrate what science is not.
I can even imagine it in an english or IT class, examining how propaganda is used in contemporary society is always important.

What is "credible science"? Something you see with the eyes? Empirically provable information? Do you not have faith in your eyes, in your subjective sensory perceptions? How then does your faith in your sensory perceptors differ from someone elses faith in a deity figure?

That seems like senseless deconstruction to me.

We can't ever know anything for sure huh... why do we bother becoming educated at all?


Pfft... philosophy ruins everything.

*Applauds*

Beautiful. I absolutely agree. Religion has no place in schools.(Except of course R.E.)

That said, science classes should not touch on religon at all. That means no preachy atheist science teachers trying to 'debunk' religion. Science should be taught objectively.
absolutley. science can, and should in all fairness, be taught in an a-religious way teaching just the facts

That seems like senseless deconstruction to me.

We can't ever know anything for sure huh... why do we bother becoming educated at all?


Pfft... philosophy ruins everything.
lol too true. if everyone thought that much we'd all just be terminally depressed nihilists :p

lol too true. if everyone thought that much we'd all just be terminally depressed nihilists :p

That or live in some sort of virtual world made by machines that.....wait :rolleyes:

I'm Neo!

Ugh. People are starting to push for ID over here, now.

Though it won't gain any momentum. As a whole, we're not particularly religious, and too multicultural for that to be successful.

What is "credible science"? Something you see with the eyes? Empirically provable information? Do you not have faith in your eyes, in your subjective sensory perceptions? How then does your faith in your sensory perceptors differ from someone elses faith in a deity figure?
I see it thus, the possibility of both are equal, and should be treated as such.
- Rachel Stremp
Head of Philosophy, Tyslan
Science deals with the natural. Anything that contains supernatural elements isn't science, and has no place in a science class. Solipsism is a worthless philosophy, and should be treated as such.

That or live in some sort of virtual world made by machines that.....wait :rolleyes:
well you never know :eek:

but then what do we mean by "know"?
how do we know that what we know is actually what we have percieved? can we trust our perceptions?


ah damn y'all got me going at it now... :headbang:

right on dude, religon belongs in RE and even RE shouldn't exist.

right on dude, religon belongs in RE and even RE shouldn't exist.
Seriously, RE isn't about religious teachings. That's what religious institutions are for. Creationism/ID doesn't belong in school. Regardless of the class. RE should be about religions & religious history. Sure, ID can be briefly laid out in such a class, but it should not be taught. That's what sunday schools & madrasses are for.

I'm Neo!

And lo, shall Keanu speaketh unto the faithful, "Whoa."

Seriously, RE isn't about religious teachings. That's what religious institutions are for. Creationism/ID doesn't belong in school. Regardless of the class. RE should be about all/different religions & religious history. Sure, ID can be briefly laid out in such a class, but it should not be taught. That's what sunday schools & madrasses are for.
added an important word(s) (bold), but yes thats precisely what i was trying to get accross :fluffle:

"It might be worth discussing...in a philosophy class on popular logical fallacies"

haha, ouch. though that pretty much is how philosophy classes deal with the old version of the argument.

I think they should just make it fair. If in fact people want religion in the science class room under the guise of ID, then let them have it, with the one condition that there will also be a part of the curiculum that goes over, in detail, every point where science, archeology &c. has proved the bible cannot be the literal truth. Part of this would be showing the mountains of evidence that debunk biblical accounts of the past. (Liek the flood).

And lo, shall Keanu speaketh unto the faithful, "Whoa."

:D

And for my contribution:

I agree with what is being said so far. That Dwarkin article posted earlier was especially helpful.

Now if IDers were to do some scientific testing...

added an important word(s) (bold), but yes thats precisely what i was trying to get accross :fluffle:
Heh, well you just made the statement even clearer, so you're welcome ;)

Anyway, I wonder why we don't see the usual crowd of ID'er arguing against this? Did they evolve? Or maybe even go extinct?

What is "credible science"? Something you see with the eyes? Empirically provable information? Do you not have faith in your eyes, in your subjective sensory perceptions? How then does your faith in your sensory perceptors differ from someone elses faith in a deity figure?
I see it thus, the possibility of both are equal, and should be treated as such.
- Rachel Stremp
Head of Philosophy, Tyslan

Sensory perceptors can be tested.

Proof of a deity can not.

Sensory perceptors can be tested.

Proof of a deity can not.
:)
(bump)

Just to cause trouble, I'll disagree with the mass opinion. But...wait, I can't make a credible case for teaching creationism in the classroom. So, yeah, forget that. Creationism ≠ science.

(Er, if symbol doesn't display, read "Creationism =/= science".)

hey wow, czardas... you got your old nation back! w00t!!

Here's an interesting CBS poll. What shocked me was that 56% of Kerry voters favor schools teaching Creationism and evolution.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/11/22/opinion/polls/main657083.shtml

hey wow, czardas... you got your old nation back! w00t!!
I think this is Salusa's doing, and I'm afraid to log off in case I can never go back on again. :eek:

By the way, we have...er...questions *rubs hands together wickedly* for you on the NSTM forum. ;)

I demand we discuss the Intelligent Design of human beings in the class room. Intelligent Design by aliens from the Pegasus galaxy that died off millions of years ago.

I demand we discuss the Intelligent Design of human beings in the class room. Intelligent Design by aliens from the Pegasus galaxy that died off millions of years ago.
Er...And I suppose you can easily find proof of such aliens? :rolleyes:

(You are making a joke, aren't you? Good. I shudder to think whether anyone would seriously advocate that.)

Here's an interesting CBS poll. What shocked me was that 56% of Kerry voters favor schools teaching Creationism and evolution.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/11/22/opinion/polls/main657083.shtml
That's slightly scary methinks...

67% thinks creationism is science?
37% thinks it should replace evolution studies?

WTF?! If those numbers were 10 & 5% I'd be shocked... But this.. Well.. "Holy shit" comes to mind..
Does anyone know exactly how those numbers reflect what education people have? I think that would be pretty interesting. I can't imagine all the Crea people are uneducated sugarcane farmers with sunburns..

What is "credible science"? Something you see with the eyes? Empirically provable information? Do you not have faith in your eyes, in your subjective sensory perceptions? How then does your faith in your sensory perceptors differ from someone elses faith in a deity figure?
I see it thus, the possibility of both are equal, and should be treated as such.
- Rachel Stremp
Head of Philosophy, Tyslan

You just don't SEE IT, do you....?

Nobody says you can't believe in your pink bunnies, or your flying space ghosts... just DON'T PREACH THEM IN SCIENCE CLASS.

There is NO scientific evidence of ANY gods, and a 'godlike' being COULD NOT be calculated WITHIN science.... that doesn't mean your faith is WRONG - but it DOES NOT FIT in science class.

So - keep 'god' in the religion classes, and keep spectrosopes in science class... each field has it's things it is 'best at'.

Science is 'best' at analysing the repeatable, verifiable, falsifiable universe.

Religion is 'best' at dealing with those matters of the more 'spiritual' nature.

Teach them according to their strengths, and stop trying to crowbar them into the same classroom.

Er...And I suppose you can easily find proof of such aliens? :rolleyes:

(You are making a joke, aren't you? Good. I shudder to think whether anyone would seriously advocate that.)

There are religions that focus on extra-terrestrial forms... Raelians (I think that's it), for one.

And why shouldn't aliens be advocated? There is as much 'evidence' for little green men, as there is for big floaty ghost gods.

My 2 cents on this is pretty simple. Anyone that rejects science's educated guess in favour of a religious explanation, should be locked up in a mental institution.

Er...And I suppose you can easily find proof of such aliens? :rolleyes:

(You are making a joke, aren't you? Good. I shudder to think whether anyone would seriously advocate that.)

Sounds like Scientology.

I'm all for keeping religion out of science class, as, for one, there are simply too many religious beliefs on creation to give all a fair amount of time for each to be discussed. However, I would rather science class, especially in terms of teaching evolution and the origins of the universe, make sure to teach it all objectively and remind everyone that there is nothing to it that is 100% conclusive.

What I mean is, make sure they remain taught as theories, as that is what they are.

Creationism and Intelligent Design belong in RE and Philosophy classes, not in Biology. Simple as that.

Er...And I suppose you can easily find proof of such aliens? :rolleyes:

(You are making a joke, aren't you? Good. I shudder to think whether anyone would seriously advocate that.)
Theoretically, I can prove that just as well, if not better, than religious intelligent design.

And no, not Scientology, have you seen Scientology? Most ludicrous shit ever.

1. Creationism is not science.
2. A science class is supposed to teach *gasp* science.
3. Therefore, a science class should not teach creationism.

That isn't to say that we should say that all science is precise truth and absolutely correct without question, as I doubt any sicentist would actually say. Science is all about documented procedure and best guesses based on what we observe. If you don't like the conclusions science draws, don't study it, but don't pretend like you can shove in anything you want or believe is correct and make it science. It doesn't work that way.

(Just for the record, I am a creationist.)

Creationism and Intelligent Design belong in RE and Philosophy classes, not in Biology. Simple as that.

and even there, only to be mocked mercilessly

Er...And I suppose you can easily find proof of such aliens? :rolleyes:

(You are making a joke, aren't you? Good. I shudder to think whether anyone would seriously advocate that.)

By the way it was a famous evolutionist who had the theory that aliens brought life to our planet: Francis Crick, co-discoverer of the DNA.
Because it was hard for him to explain how the complexity of life could have evolved on the earth, so he speculated the conditions on a distant planet might have been better and we got primitive life form send to our earth in a spaceship!
Francis Crick, I believe a great scientist!!
Let me ask the question does this belong into a science class?
There is no supernatural in it..
Yes, science do not deal with the supernatural, does it mean the supernatural does not exist?
If there is a intelligent designer is it forbidden to mention the possibility?
I think thats a boarderline. I have no problem if the classes do not teach the Creation story of the Bible in a science class, because it do not belongs there, but evolution should be taught as a theory not as a fact.

reading this thread I notice that alot of those who oppose ID seem to have no idea what ID really teaches. It's not creationism wrapped up in "new jeans".

Creationism as spelled out in the bible and other early mythological texts does not belong in the classrooms, no question about that.

Micro-evolution is a scientific theory that can be tested and "proved".

Macro-evolution is a scientific hypothesis that can not be tested or "proved", rather merely an extension of micro-evolution.

ID simply states that macro-evolution is not possible without some "guiding intelligence" to direct the forces of evolution.

Anti-ID people are acting exactly as the anti-evolution folkes did in the "monkey trials".

ID simply states that macro-evolution is not possible without some "guiding intelligence" to direct the forces of evolution.

Which is just creationism-lite in new clothes. The very thesis of this argument is untestable and therefore unscientific; its basically just a sneaky way of sliding a god-figure back into the process.

reading this thread I notice that alot of those who oppose ID seem to have no idea what ID really teaches. It's not creationism wrapped up in "new jeans".

Creationism as spelled out in the bible and other early mythological texts does not belong in the classrooms, no question about that.

Micro-evolution is a scientific theory that can be tested and "proved".

Macro-evolution is a scientific hypothesis that can not be tested or "proved", rather merely an extension of micro-evolution.

ID simply states that macro-evolution is not possible without some "guiding intelligence" to direct the forces of evolution.

Anti-ID people are acting exactly as the anti-evolution folkes did in the "monkey trials".

Perhaps you should read something about Macro-evolution. You know...so that you know what you're taliing about. Here's a start.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/

Which is just creationism-lite in new clothes. The very thesis of this argument is untestable and therefore unscientific; its basically just a sneaky way of sliding a god-figure back into the process.

We still could leave the possibility open, that there is a Intelligent design. To say there can not be intelligent design and life can not be created is equal unsientific.
Reality is beyond science therefore science should conform with it.
I do not want to say we should teach that there must have been intelligent design, only to leave it open.

We still could leave the possibility open, that there is a Intelligent design. To say there can not be intelligent design and life can not be created is equal unsientific.
Reality is beyond science therefore science should conform with it.
I do not want to say we should teach that there must have been intelligent design, only to leave it open.

I agree but I think we should also leave it open that this is nothing more then the matrix!

Things are just designed to well to just happen! The matrix is doing it!

We still could leave the possibility open, that there is a Intelligent design. To say there can not be intelligent design and life can not be created is equal unsientific. No it isn't, as it is not a <i>scientific</i> theory. Creationism is not scientific in basis. ID is not scientific in its main basis. Therefore neither should be taught in a science class. The only course in schools they belong are in religion courses and in philosophy, where both have been stomped down repeatedly over the last three hundred years.


Reality is beyond science therefore science should conform with it. What the hell does this have to do with anything?

Here's the problem. Whenever anyone cites that the facts are on their side, they mean that the facts as interpreted through their pre-conceived notions. If an evolutionist sees a fossil, he thinks "Ah, that must have been buried umpteen million years ago by silt, which gradually increased in pressure and replaced the organic material with inorganic material. This neatly allows for the layered strata of rocks that we see as well." A creationist, when he sees a fossil, thinks "Ah, that must have been buried about 6 thousand years ago in a giant flood that quickly and drastically increased the pressure of the surrounding material and thus 'flash' fossilized the creature, avoiding such interesting processes as rot, and allowing fossils such as those where one fish is in the process of eating another, or one creature is giving birth." The evolutionist typically comes back with something like "that's only a religious belief. It doesn't count" neatly ignoring the fact that all the basic assumptions that must be made to learn ANYTHING are to some degree or another a faith based belief. Some of these rather important beliefs are that the world isn't a product of someone's imagination, the world is orderly, the world does not have some sort of "ideals" or "forms" that it strives for like what Plato or Aristotle believed so that if we see an elliptical orbit, we can know that there's a reason there's an elliptical orbit rather than a slightly off center version of the circular "ideal," etc. (side note: all of those assumptions needed for science to have a base wedge neatly into the Christian worldview.) It doesn't matter if your assumptions are naturalistic, believing that all we can see is the only thing that exists, or religious, believing that the world was at least set in motion by a God or gods that are better than man. There are no worldviews that can be totally proved beyond any doubt. No one observed the beginning of the world (unless you count God, but counting Him kinda blows up all naturalism, so we'll ignore Him for the sake of argument) so we can't see whether "nothing blew up and made something" or "some ghostly god" created it all. In the end, you have to take a leap of faith and land somewhere. Some choose to take that leap by saying "I'll believe man evolved, though it can't be repeatedly tested" and some choose to take that leap by saying "I believe in a God that created everything not too long ago."

My personal viewpoint, before you flame me to kingdom come, is that neither should be exclusively taught. Give mention to both, point out all the evidence and holes in both, and teach kids what they REALLY need to know, namely, think. If you're presented with all the data for both sides, without an already entrenched viewpoint that you want to defend, the better side should win. If not, someone screwed up massively along the way. That's also what I believe about purely philosophical issues. If you're point of view can't stand up to criticism, then you really need to reconsider it.

Anyhow, no one asked for it, but there's my POV on the issue.

Ok thats it i have f***ing had it with you people. Thats it i mean how could any reasonable logical person, someone schooled in physics and science even THINK!!!!!! we came from MONKEYS! thats absolutely ludicrous. IT states very clearly in Genesis that god made and seperated the birds of the air from the animals of the ground and the fish of the sea, and that he also made man in his own image. Monkeys do NOT look like us, even with there hands and funny hats! microbes turning in to new microbes? i think not, i think that such things that enable you to see that which is so small can only be the influence of Satan and that you are obviously peering in to the netherworlds of hell and damned, damned i say! to the lake of fire for using your Satanic contraptions. The earth revolving around the sun, the EVIDENCE points to the SUN moving around the Earth and not vice versa, i do not feel myself moving, the sun itself moves across the sky and thus any "science" gained from a Telescope, or what i like to call Satanic devices inspired by heretics delusions of grandeur, is false. How could any intelligent person believe that over millions of years man evolved from bacteria, to mice to other mammals and then to monkeys, then finally in to our divine forms, iits plainly ludicrous. I mean that theory counts on there having been millions of years and once again the bible teaches us the age of the earth is only 5000 years. Think of the children people, by the love of god think of the children.



ok now seriously that is sooo funny, i think i will start a companion post to this one begging anyone to find evidence of creationism and more then just the bible says so lol. by the way take what i wrote up there and erase it i dont believe any of it lol lol i just thought it was hilarious

flash fossilised huh, you mean mummification, well that doesnt turn it to stone lol lol, basically flash fossilisation was invented by a desperate evangelist attempting to get more power and feel more powerful remember, let the Christian church rise! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! praise Jesus! lol lol thats the jist of the beginning of that theory lol i heard about it back in 86 as an attempt to explain the dinosaurs, another was that god placed the fossils in there for us to find and think about

My personal viewpoint, before you flame me to kingdom come, is that neither should be exclusively taught. Give mention to both, point out all the evidence and holes in both, and teach kids what they REALLY need to know, namely, think. If you're presented with all the data for both sides, without an already entrenched viewpoint that you want to defend, the better side should win.

*sighs* My god, it is spreading. By your frame of argument, shouldn't we then teach that the world is flat side by side with it being round, point to the evidence and holes in each, and hope they get it right? Anyone (I hope) with a brain would say no. Because one is incredibly well supported and one is not at all. Same deal here. This isn't a notion of "well, both these sides disagree and its muddy so we'll hear them both out." One (ID) is patently unscientific and untestable, which leads it to utter uselessness in a science course. The other (evolution) has been the most scientifically supported and tested theory in science itself, to the point where it is rediculous to assume it false. This is flat-earth/round-earth talk, not he said/she-said.

If you're point of view can't stand up to criticism, then you really need to reconsider it.
I'm willing to hear criticism. I'm not willing to see education in science go to pot by introducing unscientific ideas.

YES! unscientific ideas like man coming from monkeys! lol actually my post was a pro creationist one but it was literally my best try on attempting to prove creationism, all i can literally [and i have read the bible] point to is the bible is the proof and it was written by people living in the desert who spent years on plinths letting the sun slowly melt their brains, oh a plinth is those 40 foot towers people used to sit on and shout fire and brimstone lol, oh that and desert wanderers. lol.,

gon put on an iron chirt, chase de devil out of earth, gon send im to outer space, to find anudder race. lol got bored reggae is fun

You really don't want religion in the science class. It makes a mockery of both. Either science ceases to be, or religion does. The two don't mix, regardless of how much a few people want them to.
This has nothing to do whether there is a god, or religion is myth. It's about how the two things work.

In science, religion can only ever be an assumption about something that objectively isn't there. However, if science starts assuming stuff is there, when there's no reason to do so, science ceases to be. If it doesn't make that kind of assumptions, then religion ceases to be.
So pick one. Because regardless of how much you try to mix the two, only one will remain when you're done mucking it up.

We still could leave the possibility open, that there is a Intelligent design. To say there can not be intelligent design and life can not be created is equal unsientific.
Reality is beyond science therefore science should conform with it.
I do not want to say we should teach that there must have been intelligent design, only to leave it open.
First of all, you're making at least two, possibly more, unrelated arguments:
Science cannot yet explain the origin of life. We can make some hypothesis about what happened, but that's it. Thus the origin of life is not something you'd normally be taught in a science class.
There's no basis for proposing there's intelligence behind evolution. We know a (to make an extreme understatement) fuckload about how evolution works, and yet there is no indication of intent or intelligence playing any role in it at all. That being the case, it is completely unfounded to start assuming there is some kind of intelligence at work behind the scenes. Further more, it is not a falsifiable claim. There is no way to produce evidence for or against ID, and no way to verify such an entiry is even there (let alone is the cause of evolution). There is, however, litterally tons of hard evidence against the more common versions of ID. The conclusion is, bring god into science, and the science goes away.

Secondly, you say reality is beyond science. How so? Science deals with the rational world. Is that not reality? Religion, on the other hand, deals primarily with the supernatural, or the irrational. To a christian, for example, it is obvious that God caused the Big Bang. For someone with science-goggles on, it is not rational to make that assumption. It might be true, but there's no reason to assume God did it. It may well have been a natural consequence of the state of things back then, just as it might have been caused by a slice of apple pie. All three are completely unfounded conclusions, and have no place in science. At least not as long as we can't simulate or otherwise test it. In other words, all notions of such things are irrational.
If we leave the door open to ID & other supernatural/irrational beliefs, science will break dowm. Instead of looking at quantum mechanics and going "Wow, this shit is unreal! As soon as we try to watch these things, they start conforming to what we're doing?! I wonder what that's about?! Let's find out!!" People will instead just say "Wow, quantum mechanics makes no sense!! It's God/Apple Pie!!". Again, science & religion simply cannot co-exist. It's not good for religion, as such a god will become the God-of-The-Gaps, the temporary explanation for stuff that doesn't immediately makes sense to us. And it will kill science, as things will no longer have to be falsifiable, before we accept them as valid.
Imagine for a moment if people had come to the conclusion that the Earth sucked stuff to it, because it was intelligent & telekinetic. Without the scientific method, noone would ever find out that isn't the case. And noone would ever be able to make a case against the intelligent, telekinetic Earth.

I apologise if my liberal use of silly examples offends the believers. It's not what I intended, but this debate very much need to make it crystal clear why science+religion only yeilds nonsense.
And after saying all of the above, plenty of esteemed scientists are religious people. There's no inherrent conflict between science and religion. There are just some conflicts about some - primarily christians - who're unwilling to accept science for what it is, or perhaps don't know what the scientific method is.

If you have faith, I suggest you do some soul searching, and examine whether your religion promotes human curiousity & reason, or if it preaches that knowledge is a sin. I personally have a hard time imagining that Jesus would've wanted ID in the science class, but that's just me, and I'm not Christian.

<Snip>
If you're point of view can't stand up to criticism, then you really need to reconsider it.
I assume that goes for you as well? If so, I suggest you read up on what evolution is these days. You may also want to brush up on the basics of geology.

The assumptions your argument are built on, do not reflect the actual situation. No offence or anything, but you clearly have only the very vaguest idea of what you're talking about.

Here's the problem. Whenever anyone cites that the facts are on their side, they mean that the facts as interpreted through their pre-conceived notions. If an evolutionist sees a fossil, he thinks "Ah, that must have been buried umpteen million years ago by silt, which gradually increased in pressure and replaced the organic material with inorganic material. This neatly allows for the layered strata of rocks that we see as well." A creationist, when he sees a fossil, thinks "Ah, that must have been buried about 6 thousand years ago in a giant flood that quickly and drastically increased the pressure of the surrounding material and thus 'flash' fossilized the creature, avoiding such interesting processes as rot, and allowing fossils such as those where one fish is in the process of eating another, or one creature is giving birth."

Then the next easy thing would be to "flash fossilize" something to prove their arguement. What? You mean they can't? Hmmmmmm.


The evolutionist typically comes back with something like "that's only a religious belief. It doesn't count" neatly ignoring the fact that all the basic assumptions that must be made to learn ANYTHING are to some degree or another a faith based belief.

No actually they don't. They tend to bring up dating methods.

Nothing is taken on faith in science.


Some of these rather important beliefs are that the world isn't a product of someone's imagination, the world is orderly, the world does not have some sort of "ideals" or "forms" that it strives for like what Plato or Aristotle believed so that if we see an elliptical orbit, we can know that there's a reason there's an elliptical orbit rather than a slightly off center version of the circular "ideal," etc.


Whoops. They had evidence to suggest it.


(side note: all of those assumptions needed for science to have a base wedge neatly into the Christian worldview.) It doesn't matter if your assumptions are naturalistic, believing that all we can see is the only thing that exists, or religious, believing that the world was at least set in motion by a God or gods that are better than man. There are no worldviews that can be totally proved beyond any doubt.

There is your mistake. Science never claims to prove anything beyond a reasonable doubt. Religion deals with absolutes.


No one observed the beginning of the world (unless you count God, but counting Him kinda blows up all naturalism, so we'll ignore Him for the sake of argument)



Wrong. It has nothing to do with blowing up naturalism(Christians just love those ism words). You can't prove or disprove the existence of God so you don't include into the equation.


so we can't see whether "nothing blew up and made something" or "some ghostly god" created it all. In the end, you have to take a leap of faith and land somewhere.

No not really. Any scientist that takes a "leap of faith" in their defense of something gets ignored and basically scorned. Just like the ID/creationists.


Some choose to take that leap by saying "I'll believe man evolved, though it can't be repeatedly tested" and some choose to take that leap by saying "I believe in a God that created everything not too long ago."

It can't ? Wow. I guess I am reading the evil propaganda of the "eviloutionists" Testing is done all the time. Even now a project to measure the genome of the Neandertals is beginning.


My personal viewpoint, before you flame me to kingdom come, is that neither should be exclusively taught. Give mention to both, point out all the evidence and holes in both, and teach kids what they REALLY need to know, namely, think.

Yea and we know what the Christian community will decide what they need to know.....


If you're presented with all the data for both sides, without an already entrenched viewpoint that you want to defend, the better side should win.

There is your problem. The data for ID is sorely lacking. But hey you are supposed to take that on faith right?


If not, someone screwed up massively along the way. That's also what I believe about purely philosophical issues. If you're point of view can't stand up to criticism, then you really need to reconsider it.

Criticism of evolution is a good thing. It's encouraged. But the faith based arguments really don't disprove it.

YES! unscientific ideas like man coming from monkeys! lol actually my post was a pro creationist one but it was literally my best try on attempting to prove creationism, all i can literally [and i have read the bible] point to is the bible is the proof and it was written by people living in the desert who spent years on plinths letting the sun slowly melt their brains, oh a plinth is those 40 foot towers people used to sit on and shout fire and brimstone lol, oh that and desert wanderers. lol.,

Apes! not monkeys.....

Sensory perceptors can be tested.

Proof of a deity can not.

you can test them all you want, but you can't know you're not getting duped.

i mean, zeno had this crazy argument 2500 years ago that proved all motion is impossible and illusory. there have been lots of different attempts to solve it, but they're all flawed. as far as i can tell, there are only three options - 1) there is a smallest unit of space, which i do not believe conforms with our understanding of physics, 2) there is something wrong with logic as we understand it or 3) the guy was right. none of them look particularly appealing, although as a mathematician i have to choose one and condemn physics because i couldn't handle discarding logic.

(i know that there are three different attempts to throw calculus at this but none of them solve the paradox, particularly the one where the turtle needs to get to the ocean, as much as they simply restate them in esotric manners that confuse most people into thinking it's been solved. cantor took a shot at it but his solution is insane; aristotle completely missed the point, etc, etc)

so, it's not as simple as saying your perceptions can be tested. there is no reason to accept the test results other than your faith in them.

of course, i have a great deal of faith in them and little faith in much else. but you should accept that, irregardless of what they teach you in grade ten science, most sciences [biology and physics especially] are based on a series of unproven axioms that require faith.....and these axioms, combined with logic, are useful only because they can accurately predict results.

there is no reason, for example, to believe that parallel lines can meet under certain circumstances other than that you HAVE to in order to derive relativity the way it has been derived. if relativity is wrong, and some people do believe that it is, then there is no reason to believe that some parallel lines can intersect each other.

and so it goes.

id, however, is not science and deserves no place in a science curriculum. it does not belong in a religious curriculum either; it is philosophy, and deserves to be taught as such - at universities, not high schools.

i don't see any reason why we could not prove a deity does exist; if we saw him descend out of the sky and march through NYC in drag or something, that would put an end to that....balder! balder! balder!.....although i do agree that we can never prove a deity doesn't exist.

You know what? Stuff it all. Let people learn what they want. Give them the option to listen to whatever lecture they want and separate them into two classrooms. The religious nuts and the science lunatics. Both can be as extreme as the other, so just keep them apart and make life a little easier.

Here's an interesting CBS poll. What shocked me was that 56% of Kerry voters favor schools teaching Creationism and evolution.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/11/22/opinion/polls/main657083.shtml

i've seen numerous polls that state that a solid majority of americans, irregardless of political affiliation, still believe in creationism over evolution.

the above result does not surprise me.

You know what? Stuff it all. Let people learn what they want. Give them the option to listen to whatever lecture they want and separate them into two classrooms. The religious nuts and the science lunatics. Both can be as extreme as the other, so just keep them apart and make life a little easier.
Once and for all, I would like to know what the scientific method has done to be sidelined with an irratinal belief system?
Do people really sideline it with faith?

.... :confused:

Once and for all, I would like to know what the scientific method has done to be sidelined with an irratinal belief system?
Do people really sideline it with faith?

.... :confused:

No, but some scientists spend so much time trying to debunk religion that they are just as bad as the religion extremists.

I see it this way: Keep your bloody beliefs to yourself unless asked. I do it and I've never had any major religious argument.

When jehova's bloody witnesses arrive on my doorstep, I let them yakyakyak, then I politely tell them I've already found my religion and that they would not find another follower here and that they could kindly bugger off now.

(Quote) the class should similarly make the student aware of the different creation myths from the other main religions of the world.

The Definition for MYTH is: A fictional story to explain the origin of some person, place, or thing

Now unless you are the master of the universe or billions of years old, then you can't possibly know if it 100% without the shodow of a doubt be Untrue.

I agree they shouldnt tech it as 100% fact but neither should they teach it that it is isn't, maybe they should treat it as a suggestion of this religion, eg: "Jesus is the son of God", is a suggestion, as is "Jesus was a real man but was just an ordinary man" is a suggestion.

No, but some scientists spend so much time trying to debunk religion that they are just as bad as the religion extremists.

I see it this way: Keep your bloody beliefs to yourself unless asked. I do it and I've never had any major religious argument.

When jehova's bloody witnesses arrive on my doorstep, I let them yakyakyak, then I politely tell them I've already found my religion and that they would not find another follower here and that they could kindly bugger off now.
But this particular debate have nothing to do with whether or not God is real. It's about junking science in the schools, because science is evil, or whatever..

I have no problem with religious people of any sort. People's personal beliefs aren't my business. At most, I'll attempt to understand why they hold to them. Nothing more.

It sounds like you're saying: "Well people who thinks the scientific method is a nifty tool, are complete rotters. They should just scrap the idea, and let popular opinion decide how stuff works. Anything else is lunacy."
I hope I read too much into it somehow :confused:

Once and for all, I would like to know what the scientific method has done to be sidelined with an irratinal belief system?
Do people really sideline it with faith?

.... :confused:

ok, you do bunch of experiments. you make a bunch of observations. you do some statistics, you try to figure out where the average lies and you try to come up with a mathematical relation. if you do so well, you develop a formula.

that formula, then, should accurately approximate your test results upon repeating the experiment over and over again.

fine.

there's this other guy across the street. he's done some experiments, come up with his own formulas.

the two of you figure that these formulas should be consistent with each other, but at first glance they're not. why not? you think it through and come to the conclusion that the only way they are compatible with each other is if some statement is true. is it true all of the time or only in certain circumstances? we'd better do more experiments.

but, wait. this statement is not testable. it must be true under at least a few circumstances, though, we just don't exactly when. let's just say it's always true.

but then there's this third guy from across town, and he's got his own formulas. he hears you two are up to something, so he goes to check it out. he likes your statement, because he has his own statement. he knows his statement has to be true under certain circumstances, he's just not sure when either. so, the three scientists together decide that both statements must always be true because they have to be true at least some of the time to explain their experiments.

fifty years later, some kids open up their grade ten textbooks. both statements are written as absolute fact, never questioned; from these statements, they learn why many observable phenomena occurred.

but why were those statements true all of the time again?

FAITH AND CONSENSUS.

But this particular debate have nothing to do with whether or not God is real. It's about junking science in the schools, because science is evil, or whatever..

I have no problem with religious people of any sort. People's personal beliefs aren't my business. At most, I'll attempt to understand why they hold to them. Nothing more.

It sounds like you're saying: "Well people who thinks the scientific method is a nifty tool, are complete rotters. They should just scrap the idea, and let popular opinion decide how stuff works. Anything else is lunacy."
I hope I read too much into it somehow :confused:


Yes, you read into it too much. I'm a science nutter myself, but I don't spread it all over the place ;) I'm saying we have to let people choose what they want to learn about.

<snip>

FAITH AND CONSENSUS.
...
I suppose American children aren't tought what a theory is, or the limitations of science? - Assuming the above was about science, and not religion.

If that is indeed the case, then this whole debate is pointless, as science isn't tought in the first place.

Yes, you read into it too much. I'm a science nutter myself, but I don't spread it all over the place ;) I'm saying we have to let people choose what they want to learn about.
I'm glad I did :)

However, I disagree with you, and I honestly think most people do. As far as I can tell, most people think that some basic grasp of the world & societies we live in, is necessary if people are to prosper and be part of their society.

As an article (I think posted by the OP) outlined, only ~25% of the american population knew what stemcell research is about, when they voted on it. I fail to see how that can be desireble, for the individuals as well as for the society. It seems irresponsible to let people decide things that affects themselves, when they have no clue what they are deciding.

As such, a basic grasp of what science is, and some basics about how things work, seems crucial for individuals to be able to make informed decisions, and realize their own potential.

But that said, I don't disagree with you very much. If people want their children to have a religious education, they should of course be allowed to do so. But if that's the case, the discussion shouldn't be about hauling a religious idea into a science class, but rather whether religious schooling should be integrated into the normal secular education.
As long as it happens independent of eachother, there's no reason why those two kinds of education should conflict.

I personally fail to see why people should be forced to have a religious education, unless a particular religious education is needed to partake in society. Of course, it can be argued that the day when that's a requirement isn't far away in the USA.

Put it this way.

Evolution has real evidence.

ID has real evidence too. The real evidence it shares from Evolution, and uses to extrapolate its conjecture.

What ID adds to Evolution, has no real evidence. There is no point teaching pure conjecture in the classroom.

...
I suppose American children aren't tought what a theory is, or the limitations of science? - Assuming the above was about science, and not religion.

If that is indeed the case, then this whole debate is pointless, as science isn't tought in the first place.

science is merely modern religion. it has central beliefs, dogmas....axioms and assumptions. it has a code of law - aristotlian logic - and it even has a satan figure, uneducated religious folks.

now, i know that SOME scientists understand that it's important to treat axioms and assumptions as what they are - questionable yet convenient beginnings that allow theories to develop properly so that they can explain observable phenomena. however, the vast masses do not think in this manner. they look to science for "facts". they receive solace in knowing that something has been "scientifically proven" and that's the end of that. even ignoring the fact that you need something to begin from before you can deduce, you need starting assumptions and axioms, the vast majority of people that believe that evolution is the right theory don't really understand why. they just accept scientific findings on the basis of faith, concensus or even conformity.

i won't argue evolution. i'm not a biologist, but what i have read into it suggests to me that at the very least it is correct in it's basic belief that species evolve through some sort of mechanism or another. however, accepting it's basic assumption - that of natural selection - is merely a question of faith. we may sort through the evidence and try to argue whether it really is natural selection or chaos or god that forces evolution, and it is evolution that is science and not natural selection, but there is no scientific basis for declaring one the better mechanism than the other. there is only debate.

natural selection is the current scientific concensus. there is a movement to make natural selection more ordered and this is intelligent design. i believe in the opposite approach of making it less ordered and subserviant to utter randomness and chaos. one may win out over the other. this choice can only come at a time when one predicts future results more accurately than the other two....which won't be for a very long time.

at the moment none rely on anything but faith; a choice on what you want to believe because at this point none are anything more than beliefs.

science is merely modern religion. it has central beliefs, dogmas....axioms and assumptions. it has a code of law - aristotlian logic - and it even has a satan figure, uneducated religious folks.

now, i know that SOME scientists understand that it's important to treat axioms and assumptions as what they are - questionable yet convenient beginnings that allow theories to develop properly so that they can explain observable phenomena. however, the vast masses do not think in this manner. they look to science for "facts". they receive solace in knowing that something has been "scientifically proven" and that's the end of that. even ignoring the fact that you need something to begin from before you can deduce, you need starting assumptions and axioms, the vast majority of people that believe that evolution is the right theory don't really understand why. they just accept scientific findings on the basis of faith, concensus or even conformity.

i won't argue evolution. i'm not a biologist, but what i have read into it suggests to me that at the very least it is correct in it's basic belief that species evolve through some sort of mechanism or another. however, accepting it's basic assumption - that of natural selection - is merely a question of faith. we may sort through the evidence and try to argue whether it really is natural selection or chaos or god that forces evolution, and it is evolution that is science and not natural selection, but there is no scientific basis for declaring one the better mechanism than the other. there is only debate.

natural selection is the current scientific concensus. there is a movement to make natural selection more ordered and this is intelligent design. i believe in the opposite approach of making it less ordered and subserviant to utter randomness and chaos. one may win out over the other. this choice can only come at a time when one predicts future results more accurately than the other two....which won't be for a very long time.

at the moment none rely on anything but faith; a choice on what you want to believe because at this point none are anything more than beliefs.

I'll take the liberty of quoting Cabra West. She's just much better at being short & to the point than I am, and I'm fairly confident she'll take my quoting her as a compliment. It's meant as one anyway.

And here we are again.
The main difference between science and pseudo-science is that science collects facts, evaluates them and draws conclusion.
Please show me one fact, one proof, one instance which would allow the conclusion that there is one intelligent being somewhere that is or was meddling with natural phenomena on this planet.

Please keep in mind that evolution, just like gravity, is a theory. It cannot be proven, but it can be disproven. If there is one piece of evidence against it, the theory will have to be either discarded or reviewed. however, so far all evidence supports the evolution theory. Please bring up evidence that supports intelligent design?

I hope this will spark your interest, as it is actually true. Maybe you would now consider learning what the scientific method is about?

If you do, you can also take another, thorough look at what ToE is.

Neither has much to do with what you seem to think. Incidentially, that's a pretty good argument for teaching science in schools, without trying to mix it up with something science cannot be used for.
And let me reiterate: Science & this debate has nothing to do with religion or faith. It's the debate about whether the scientific mothod should be taught in school, or whether it should be scrapped in favour of a religious (Christian) education.

Here's the problem. Whenever anyone cites that the facts are on their side, they mean that the facts as interpreted through their pre-conceived notions. If an evolutionist sees a fossil, he thinks "Ah, that must have been buried umpteen million years ago by silt, which gradually increased in pressure and replaced the organic material with inorganic material. This neatly allows for the layered strata of rocks that we see as well." A creationist, when he sees a fossil, thinks "Ah, that must have been buried about 6 thousand years ago in a giant flood that quickly and drastically increased the pressure of the surrounding material and thus 'flash' fossilized the creature, avoiding such interesting processes as rot, and allowing fossils such as those where one fish is in the process of eating another, or one creature is giving birth."
hmm quite true, but the thing is the way in which the evolutionist draws that conclusion about the fossil is based on scientific observations - about the rock strata for example, like you said, or carbon dating techniques.
the creationist who bases his analysis of the fossil on the great flood bases this assumption not on scientific quantitative observations or fact, but on faith - on belief that what some 2,000 year old book says was the case.

this is precisely the point of this whole issue.
to compare creationism - with its perequisite of faith in an untestable, unprovable, and - by all the laws of physics, nature and understanding - impossible "god" - to evolution as an apparently scientific theory is nonsense because one (the latter) is based on fact, the former (creationism or ID) is based on faith. one is a scientific theory, the other is simply not.



Francis Crick, co-discoverer of the DNA.

for the record, Crick and Watson 'discovered' or were the first to explain the double-helix nature of DNA - which subsequently allowed the process of transcription, replication, and the way codons work to be uncovered... so their work was incredibly important but they didn't discover DNA - nucleotides in cells had been known about and known to be involved in reproduction for many decades before W&C

just being pedantic :P

edit: were they the first to discover the four bases, too? :confused:

And here we are again.
The main difference between science and pseudo-science is that science collects facts, evaluates them and draws conclusion.


close, but not quite. science collects observations, evaluates them and draws conclusions, which are organized into theories. something is not scientific "fact" until it follows from the conclusions drawn, ie. the theory. the theory itself is not absolute and hence neither is the science. hence, there is no such thing as scientific fact.

we can say that every time we've dropped an apple it's fallen to the ground. we can come up with a bunch of mathematical relations to attempto to explain this, we can label it a force. we cannot declare for certain that the next time we drop an apple it will fall to the ground, we can only declare that if our model is correct then it will fall to the ground with a high degree of certainty.

to use another physical example....do you think that force = mass *acceleration? exactly? do some tests and tell me what the standard error is.

what this woman has missed is the point in between, which happens to be the most important point. following her logic, she would claim that if we observe something numerous times it becomes fact, so then we may evaluate this fact and draw conclusions from it. specious at best.

it has to follow from the conclusions before it becomes fact. yes, it is INCREDIBLY circular. but, that's science for you.


Please show me one fact, one proof, one instance which would allow the conclusion that there is one intelligent being somewhere that is or was meddling with natural phenomena on this planet.


i have never claimed that there was an intelligent being anywhere, including on this planet. i have claimed that natural selection is on no stronger a ground than intelligent design as intelligent design is just as good an explanation as natural selection is.

If there is one piece of evidence against it, the theory will have to be either discarded or reviewed. however, so far all evidence supports the evolution theory.

i'm not arguing with evolution, i'm arguing with natural selection. no more evidence exists to support natural selection than it does to support intelligent design, but this is exactly my point.

Please bring up evidence that supports intelligent design?

i do not support intelligent design.

wait a second. i don't like natural selection, and i don't like intelligent design either?

how about evolution through random bullshit luck?


I hope this will spark your interest, as it is actually true. Maybe you would now consider learning what the scientific method is about?

1) first you're trying to define truth. yikes.
2) second, YOU'RE trying to explain to ME what the scientific method is? pshaw.


If you do, you can also take another, thorough look at what ToE is.


i took two years of high school bio and three semesters of university bio including a full semester on evolution and ecology. furthermore, i spent about four months studying that period of human evolution between tchadensis and sapiens, which required quite a bit of evolutionary and biological knowledge including a rudimentary understanding of mitochondrial rna comparisons. i've studied the mathematics behind dna replication. i know what's going on; it's enough to know that i'm cool with evolution but not with natural selection.


Neither has much to do with what you seem to think.


correct. i believe that the major assumption behind that mechanism that supposedly guides evolution is fundamentally flawed. this does not mean that i support intelligent design.

Funny this started off as a thread about the virtues of an open educational system one that teaches a broad spectrum of ideas, thoughts, theories and facts. But once more has turned into an evolution v's creation thread.

We teach Psychology in schools and that is the biggest collection of half baked and unproved theories, thoughts and constructs that you a likely to come across. But we teach it, in good schools we teach it and make sure pupils know to take it with a big pinch of salt, but we teach it.

Why is we must teach either creationism or evolution, why not both? Because one is a science and one a religious teaching does not make one true and the other not. Or if we can’t teach creationism is this not religious fanaticism in reverse? You can teach any c~#p you like as long as it’s science.

So back to the point, what is wrong with teaching a proposition that is held as true (in one form or another) by a very large proportion of the world? Like evolution which should be taught with the proviso that it may not be correct (which it often is not) teach it as a possibility and let the pupils decide what to accept or not.

Funny this started off as a thread about the virtues of an open educational system one that teaches a broad spectrum of ideas, thoughts, theories and facts. But once more has turned into an evolution v's creation thread.

We teach Psychology in schools and that is the biggest collection of half baked and unproved theories, thoughts and constructs that you a likely to come across. But we teach it, in good schools we teach it and make sure pupils know to take it with a big pinch of salt, but we teach it.

Why is we must teach either creationism or evolution, why not both? Because one is a science and one a religious teaching does not make one true and the other not. Or if we can’t teach creationism is this not religious fanaticism in reverse? You can teach any c~#p you like as long as it’s science.

So back to the point, what is wrong with teaching a proposition that is held as true (in one form or another) by a very large proportion of the world? Like evolution which should be taught with the proviso that it may not be correct (which it often is not) teach it as a possibility and let the pupils decide what to accept or not.

Do you teach psychology in science class? When discussing the biological structure of the brain or the electrochemistry of the neural system, would you expect your teacher to rely on Siegmund Freud?

I don't have a problem with teaching creationism, but I think it should be taught in the correct subject. Creationism should be taught in religious education, evolution in science class.

Do you teach psychology in science class? When discussing the biological structure of the brain or the electrochemistry of the neural system, would you expect your teacher to rely on Siegmund Freud?

I don't have a problem with teaching creationism, but I think it should be taught in the correct subject. Creationism should be taught in religious education, evolution in science class.
No that's fine with me, as long as both are taught and both are allowed validity. I also think that what should be taught is the need for pupils to question what they are taught, to sift it, that they should think about things rather than just accepting them.

I've a bit of a downer for psycology because it is seen by many as a science. It is to me a collection of generalisations.

No that's fine with me, as long as both are taught and both are allowed validity. I also think that what should be taught is the need for pupils to question what they are taught, to sift it, that they should think about things rather than just accepting them.

I've a bit of a downer for psycology because it is seen by many as a science. It is to me a collection of generalisations.

Well, it is a branch of medical science in a way. However, the only basis for assumptions in psychology are statistics, which make it overall very general. I can't help but feeling that it still is very experimantal.

Yes, critical thought is something kids definitely should learn in school, but you will find both a large number of teachers and the school system on the whole rather reluctant to teach that.

Well, it is a branch of medical science in a way. However, the only basis for assumptions in psychology are statistics, which make it overall very general. I can't help but feeling that it still is very experimantal.

Yes, critical thought is something kids definitely should learn in school, but you will find both a large number of teachers and the school system on the whole rather reluctant to teach that.

If critical thought was taught more extensively in schools, those damn kids might actually start asking questions and thinking for themselves. Gods forbid they should have their own thoughts and ideas instead of just regurgitating what their teachers tell them is 'true'.

Macrocosmos... you state that you are a biology major.

That makes me wonder how come you don't support natural selection, when it is probably the most easily provble tenet of evolution... so easily so it can be observed in the world around us, or even in a petry dish. I've done it - and I'm a mere first year.

I hate to doubt your credentials, but I have grown up with science, am still studying science, with an especial interest in evolution, and yet a lot of what you say seems deeply flawed to me. I could give exmples, but that is not the point of the thread.

Science is a rigorous process... that is what it is. Yes, scientists make mistakes. If they didn't, they wouldn't be scientists. And no, they don't know everything. If they did, they again, wouldn't be scientists. After all, scienntists aren't paid to KNOW stuff, they're paid to FIND STUFF OUT.

On top of that, wheras a theory and a fact are different, a scientific theory pretty much is a scientific fact. Gravity is only a theory, yet even the most ardent anti-scientists don't start carpetting their cieling just in case one day it decides to prove us wrong.

All those that understand how science works, in it's intricacies, will know why it can be considered correct, why it is not a matter of faith, why it can be trusted. Any that do not know how it works, such as those that consider ID a "theory" and not a flawed hypothesis, have not the right to write the science books.

Evolution makes perfect sense to those willing to understand it.

One final point - becareful with the words "scientists" and "atheists". There are many religious scientists.... science can niether prove, nor disprove, the existance of a god, therefore, there should be no conflict between religion and science at all. The two are simply different things.

Yes, it is possible that God guided evolution, but that's not all ID says... ID implies science might be wrong, a divine hand doesn't.

Peace.

Macrocosmos... you state that you are a biology major.

That makes me wonder how come you don't support natural selection, when it is probably the most easily provble tenet of evolution... so easily so it can be observed in the world around us, or even in a petry dish. I've done it - and I'm a mere first year.

I hate to doubt your credentials, but I have grown up with science, am still studying science, with an especial interest in evolution, and yet a lot of what you say seems deeply flawed to me. I could give exmples, but that is not the point of the thread.

Science is a rigorous process... that is what it is. Yes, scientists make mistakes. If they didn't, they wouldn't be scientists. And no, they don't know everything. If they did, they again, wouldn't be scientists. After all, scienntists aren't paid to KNOW stuff, they're paid to FIND STUFF OUT.

On top of that, wheras a theory and a fact are different, a scientific theory pretty much is a scientific fact. Gravity is only a theory, yet even the most ardent anti-scientists don't start carpetting their cieling just in case one day it decides to prove us wrong.

All those that understand how science works, in it's intricacies, will know why it can be considered correct, why it is not a matter of faith, why it can be trusted. Any that do not know how it works, such as those that consider ID a "theory" and not a flawed hypothesis, have not the right to write the science books.

Evolution makes perfect sense to those willing to understand it.

One final point - becareful with the words "scientists" and "atheists". There are many religious scientists.... science can niether prove, nor disprove, the existance of a god, therefore, there should be no conflict between religion and science at all. The two are simply different things.

Yes, it is possible that God guided evolution, but that's not all ID says... ID implies science might be wrong, a divine hand doesn't.

Peace.
Just one point to make, a theory is never a fact.

And one branch of science does say that if you wait long enough it will pay off to carpet your ceiling, and your walls. Another theory states that everything is, somewhere, true.

So no theory is never fact.

Ok... So the Creationists want ID taught alongside Evolution.

Fine... But since the jusification is that both are theories then why limit it only to Christian Creation and Evolution... surely ALL religions creation theories should then be taught as under the "its only a theory" all the religions theories are as valid as each other.

i'm getting annoyed at this nonsense ... ... ...
to summarise: religion should not be taught alongside credible science.
so, agree, disagree?

Sense at last !

Ok... So the Creationists want ID taught alongside Evolution.

Fine... But since the jusification is that both are theories then why limit it only to Christian Creation and Evolution... surely ALL religions creation theories should then be taught as under the "its only a theory" all the religions theories are as valid as each other.
Correct. You can teach none specific creationism. It is never a bad thing to have knowledge or to expand ones perceptions. Why would a scientist ever want to close any doors. Are faiths so weak they can't accept science bing taught, and is science so weak it can't accept religion being taught?

Correct. You can teach none specific creationism. It is never a bad thing to have knowledge or to expand ones perceptions. Why would a scientist ever want to close any doors. Are faiths so weak they can't accept science bing taught, and is science so weak it can't accept religion being taught?

Of course if you cant teach a specific creationism then that pretty much means you cant teach any creationism as whatever you teach will be *specific* in that it is what it is...

Basically the creationism section would have to be total:

"Another theory is a divine being or group of beings or creatures created the world as it is today"

Beyond that you start to get specific.

My point is that there is a difference between the meanings of the word "theory" in a scientific and a general sense.

n general, a theory has not been proved.
In science, something only becomes a theory once it has, at which point it can generally be treated as fact.

Those two "theories" you stated I have never come across, nor do I believe they are any more than hypotheses based on some of the more outlandish philosophies of quantum physics.

And science is not weak, any more thaan an electronic calculator is weak. You may try to argue that 2+2=5, but you'll never get the calculator to accept that.

Of course if you cant teach a specific creationism then that pretty much means you cant teach any creationism as whatever you teach will be *specific* in that it is what it is...

Basically the creationism section would have to be total:

"Another theory is a divine being or group of beings or creatures created the world as it is today"

Beyond that you start to get specific.
So if something is harder to teach you don't teach it?
You can easily summarise the vast majority of creationist/ religious theories as they share a common ancestor. You could touch on the hindu idea and they point to the variety of others out there. those interested can look, others will have abetter understanding of the world and what the people in it believe, again not a bad thing.

My point is that there is a difference between the meanings of the word "theory" in a scientific and a general sense.

n general, a theory has not been proved.
In science, something only becomes a theory once it has, at which point it can generally be treated as fact.

Those two "theories" you stated I have never come across, nor do I believe they are any more than hypotheses based on some of the more outlandish philosophies of quantum physics.

And science is not weak, any more thaan an electronic calculator is weak. You may try to argue that 2+2=5, but you'll never get the calculator to accept that.
So maths and quauntum calculations even those that can be demonstrated and proven (though I admit I don't understand the proofs) are not fact but philosiphies, yet theories that are not proven but fit current knowledge are fact.

You see this is where science weakens it self.

So maths and quauntum calculations even those that can be demonstrated and proven (though I admit I don't understand the proofs) are not fact but philosiphies, yet theories that are not proven but fit current knowledge are fact.

You see this is where science weakens it self.

Jumping in here...

A mathematical proof is just that...proof. And as explained, scientific theories are also proof. How would this weaken science?

Jumping in here...

A mathematical proof is just that...proof. And as explained, scientific theories are also proof. How would this weaken science?
A theory is not a proof, the evidence that supports a theory is exactly that, evidence.

A theory is an idea or set of ideas that fits with evidence and facts currently available. It is a theory becasue should further evidence be found it can be revised to fit the new puzzle.

Mathimatical proofs if they are correct are constant.

Accepting theory as fact weaken science and is as dogmatic as any religious fanatic.

seems to me ID is just an attempt at a quick fix.

At least with science, when something is not known, such as the origines of life, theories are made that are supported by current knowledge. If a better theory comes along, it replaces the old.

Id seems to say, because the human brain is soooo complex or that scientists have not given all the answers yet, then there must be a greater power at work.

personally i think it boils down to fear. People fear the idea that life was totally up to random chance, so the idea of god makes 'em happier.

God lit a match and farted, and then there was light......

So if something is harder to teach you don't teach it?
You can easily summarise the vast majority of creationist/ religious theories as they share a common ancestor. You could touch on the hindu idea and they point to the variety of others out there. those interested can look, others will have abetter understanding of the world and what the people in it believe, again not a bad thing.

Jewish, christian and Islamic creation throries share a common ancestor, but really a lot of religions do not follow this belief and these three religions account for only a third of the worlds population. Why "Touch" on Hindu? It's not as though it is a minor religion! The only way you can avoid specializing in a particular religion is if you teach pretty much every creation storey with equal weight (I demand the Norse creation storey be taught in equal weight to the Christian one!) or you just go with the very very general statement I gave before.

Personally I was taught a number of creation stories in school. They were all taught in religious education.

Jewish, christian and Islamic creation throries share a common ancestor, but really a lot of religions do not follow this belief and these three religions account for only a third of the worlds population. Why "Touch" on Hindu? It's not as though it is a minor religion! The only way you can avoid specializing in a particular religion is if you teach pretty much every creation storey with equal weight (I demand the Norse creation storey be taught in equal weight to the Christian one!) or you just go with the very very general statement I gave before.

Personally I was taught a number of creation stories in school. They were all taught in religious education.



I was taught a number of creation stories
Don't care where they are taught as long as we keep the knowledge available to children broad.

(Just for the record, I am a creationist.)You are entitled to believe in whatever you want. But I am also entitled to say that you are an idiot for believing in religous riff raff, instead of science's educated hypothesis.

ID is real and i know come im the freaking designer! now everyone send me 10% or moreof all your wealth, and women.. *nods* then make pahretty pictures of me and repeat these words to all! and unto them he doth gave the truth to end their toil filled days. and all the world rejoiced.i can prove it coz i have a book that says im right. but dont ask me to prove whats in it coz i cant support it. ... ;)


muwhahaha... ok imma go sleep now .. *sigh* too much coffee *yawn* ok bye! *waves*

You are entitled to believe in whatever you want. But I am also entitled to say that you are an idiot for believing in religous riff raff, instead of science's educated hypothesis.

The two are not mutually exclusive.

There are many relious scientists, who can follow the teachings of Jesus, love thy neighbour, etc, and who can believe in God even alongside their scientific ideals.

Science does not disprove a God, would people please stop using it as an attack on the religious lot.

And to be balanced...

Religion cannot disproe science, please stop using it as an attack on teh science lot.

Thank you.

Lets not mix mathematics in this. It is among the only things that have near "absolute" "thruths" that can be proven (note the "´s ). In my opinion it is not such science like physics, chemistry or biology but something that can be used to aid other branches of science.

Most other forms of science do not have any absolute truths, nor they need any. Science in its purest form is just trying to explain the world and there is no intention to prove anything, at least there should not be. It just seeks out why something seems to be like it is and tries to give a plausible explanation with todays methods. Todays theory is todays "truth" but tomorrow there can be a better theory and then it is "the truth". It is absolute necessary to understand this. Unfortunately humans tend to forget this and mix all kind of non-important and non-true things in it like emotions and beliefs.

--------------Dramatization-----------------------------------------------

"how does it feel if this evidence suggests that humans should be classified as apes alongside chimpanzee, gorilla, orangutang and (possibly, I´m too lazy to check how it is nowadays viewed) gibbon."

"It feels like crap, lets modify the evidence! Or destroy it and whip something else up."

--------------End Dramatization-------------------------------------------
(Just an example do not flame because of this because I honestly do not intend to hurt anyone´s feelings)

Piltdown Man is a very good example for forged evidence and sadly many "scientists" believed in it because it suited their worldview.

Of course former is fully correct only with natural sciences (math, biology, physics etc. correct me if I am using wrong term). Sociological sciences need different way of approach and this is one of the problems in this debate I think. There is no point in trying to analyze weather by using psychology or trying to understand human behaviour through quantum physics.

What this is to do with current topic is that besides ID having no scientific credibility because it assumes something unexplicable is meddling in things there is a clear as a chrystal political agenda here that tries to get support from where it sees it can have it.

It is quite clear that current US government has decided to believe only in such science that supports it and try to quell the rest. There is nothing new in this sort of behaviour although I find it sad that it exists.

ID has no place alongside real scientific teaching and should not be taught in schools. If you want to hear about your religion and its beliefs go to seek a priest. Thats what they are for.

Sorry for rambling and possibly nonlogical writing as I did not catch any shuteye last night and it is starting to show.

I have a question for anyone that believes the bible is a literal account of creation: Did the people of Abraham's time have the scientific language necessary to describe the process, if they had somehow witnessed it?

A theory is not a proof, the evidence that supports a theory is exactly that, evidence.

A theory is an idea or set of ideas that fits with evidence and facts currently available. It is a theory becasue should further evidence be found it can be revised to fit the new puzzle.

Mathimatical proofs if they are correct are constant.

Accepting theory as fact weaken science and is as dogmatic as any religious fanatic.

But again, you are just using semantics to make an argument. Scientific Theory is fact based on evidence. We shy at saying Scientific Proof or Scientific law as it may change. It has an evolution of its own (yes, that's a horrid pun).

Lets Piltdown Man is a very good example for forged evidence and sadly many "scientists" believed in it because it suited their worldview.

Dude, Piltdown Man didn't fit into the evolutionary puzzle. That's how the hoax was discovered. It didn't fit.

I demand we discuss the Intelligent Design of human beings in the class room. Intelligent Design by aliens from the Pegasus galaxy that died off millions of years ago.

They aren't from the Pegasus you damned heathen, and they only died off 10 thousand years ago.

Dude, Piltdown Man didn't fit into the evolutionary puzzle. That's how the hoax was discovered. It didn't fit.

Otherwise we'd just say, "Oh, this fish here proves everything, god exists"...wait, that's what the faithful do say.

No, Piltdown is from a time when every Discovery was heralded prior to the research being done. Hardly a good example against evolution.

i'm getting annoyed at this nonsense. but first,
1. its got nothing particularly to do with me
2. i am loathe enough to engage in religious debates (such as the creationism vs evolution arguements that are ever popular of late), yet alone start one... but in reading this (http://forums2.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=441380) thread something hit me that i had already thought, but not been aware of (if you know what i mean)
3. this isn't a thread bashing the many religious debate threads out there at the mo
4. i wrote this many hours before this (http://forums2.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=441513) (now locked) thread... however the news article (http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/feature/story/0,13026,1559743,00.html) from it comes in most handy now


so with that out the way, lets make some assumptions about the school system (as i understand it in america)

1. school is a place of learning
2. a place of learning for all - religious or not.

i would like to assume that religion should play no part in governance or the state, and have no place in education - but evidently this is the hotly contested issue (now you know where i stand)

so why do i say this?
to answer, lets make some assumptions about the theories of evolution and creationism (ID, whatever its all one and the same really - at least for the purposes of this thread)

1. evolution is a scientific theory that has large amounts of evidence - both physical and theoretical (but provable within the laws of physics) - that means it is the best means it is the best theory we've come up with yet. it could be wrong, but - scientifically - this is unlikely (only in small details).
it is an a-theist (seperation intended) idea in that it does not require faith or belief in the existance of some kind of god.

2. creationism has no concrete physical evidence. any theoretical evidence comes from a 2000 year old book, whose authors we don't know. many of its assumptions are impossible under the laws of physics. without faith it makes no sense - it requires belief in god. it is not a comparable scientific theory to evolution.

-------------

so, assuming these assumptions are true, i argue strongly that religion has no place in the classroom.
firstly, the fact that creationism is not of comparable theoretical calibur to the evidence, facts and coherence presented by evolution, says to me that creationism should not be taught at all. strictly comparing the two 'theories' on a scientific or rational basis, teaching creationism makes about as much sense as teaching an old, defunct scientific theory... like the earth is flat or the earth is the center of the universe, for example (though those actually have more evidence than creationism does anyway lol - so therein lies my point). if creationism is being presented as an alternate 'theory' to evolution, then let it be treated as such a theory - and comparatively, as a theory, it does not stack up against evolution, and should not be taught as a theory - but as a religous myth (see below)



secondly, if school is open for all - theists or a-theists, religious or not, surely teaching a 'theory' that relies on personal faith as its cornerstone makes no sense. it is a waste of time for those without faith. if a school is a place of learning, it should teach just the facts (which is evolution if the above assumptions are true) and the school should not have this religious bias on it that is unfair to non-believers.



now, understand, i'm not saying creationism shouldn't be taught at all, just not in the same way as, or alongside, evolution. teach it in Religious Studies if you must (or your equivalent over there)

or, preferably, don't teach it in school at all. RE or philosophy classes should perhaps make you aware of the theory, but certainly not teach it as fact. the class should similarly make the student aware of the different creation myths from the other main religions of the world.
if you want to learn about creationism, as fact or coherent 'theory', you can be taught it at sunday school or in your place of worship - NOT in school.



i know this subject has been done to death, but i wanted to present my own slightly annoyed viewpoint. i also know that not every state is pushing for creationism to be taught in schools, but nonetheless i was annoyed enough at the whole issue to go write this.

to summarise: religion should not be taught alongside credible science.
so, agree, disagree?


Agreed, while I sympathize with the YEC (Young-Earth Creationists) and OEC's (Old-Earth Creationists), Day-Agers, and Progressives.... (by default) they should realize that even amongst the religion there is no real consensus (especially when you mix in us Evolutionary Creationists and Theistic Evolutionists)... The school is no place to present religious theologies, especially ones that are definitively one-sided; and in no way is this a situation of ID(OEC/YEC and DA) vs. Atheistic Evolution.... There are too many others inbetween.... And it's time they realized that.

No, but some scientists spend so much time trying to debunk religion that they are just as bad as the religion extremists.

I see it this way: Keep your bloody beliefs to yourself unless asked. I do it and I've never had any major religious argument.

When jehova's bloody witnesses arrive on my doorstep, I let them yakyakyak, then I politely tell them I've already found my religion and that they would not find another follower here and that they could kindly bugger off now.

People keep saying this... I see very little evidence of it, personally. We live in a world with tens of millions of 'scientists', most of whom are spending the majority of their time doing something useful - making water safe to drink, building bridges, developing medicine.

I very rarely see any serious scientist involved in ANY attempt to 'debunk' religion.... in fact, what I have usually seen consists of someone posing a religious statement... like the whole Flood Myth, and scientists (when asked) explaining the reasons why science considers such frippery unlikely.

No that's fine with me, as long as both are taught and both are allowed validity.
You say 'both'... like there are only two options.

Why shouldn't we teach Lamarckism? Why not teach the Egyptian Creation Myth... it's one of my favorites.

There are alternate 'theories' on BOTH sides of the spectrum, why do the Creationist/ID side always insist it is EITHER Darwin OR the Bible?

Macrocosmos... you state that you are a biology major.

i did? i'm a math student.

That makes me wonder how come you don't support natural selection, when it is probably the most easily provble tenet of evolution... so easily so it can be observed in the world around us, or even in a petry dish. I've done it - and I'm a mere first year.

i'm not sure which experiment you are talking about. i cannot debate this further unless you give me more details.

Correct. You can teach none specific creationism. It is never a bad thing to have knowledge or to expand ones perceptions. Why would a scientist ever want to close any doors. Are faiths so weak they can't accept science bing taught, and is science so weak it can't accept religion being taught?

No, nope, sorry.

Creationism is not science. It doesn't even match a hypothesis.

With your kind of logic, we should also allow for teaching the matrix as part of why we are the way we are.

Science will become weak if you open the door to faith based arguments.

You can't prove it so take it on faith it's true. You haven't found a reason yet so keep you eyes open. Have faith the proof will come.

See it just don't work.

Keep creationism in a comparative religions class were it belongs.

Biology teachers have enough to do and don't need to be bogged down making the sensitive christians feel nice.

I agree with Pure Metal. Why waste so much time and energy trying to answer where we are from, and use that to determine where we are.

Dude, Piltdown Man didn't fit into the evolutionary puzzle. That's how the hoax was discovered. It didn't fit.

And I will add many scientists didn't belive it!

I agree with Pure Metal. Why waste so much time and energy trying to answer where we are from, and use that to determine where we are.

Knowing where we are from contributes to knowing where we are - and where we are going.

The two are not mutually exclusive.

Actually they are. Science seeks to explain things. Religion seeks to define truths.


There are many relious scientists, who can follow the teachings of Jesus, love thy neighbour, etc, and who can believe in God even alongside their scientific ideals.

Sure they are Religious Scientists. Some famous ones in fact. However, they tended not to intermix the two(ie making faith based arguments).


Science does not disprove a God, would people please stop using it as an attack on the religious lot.

Science or in this case evolution has never set out to prove or disprove the existnece of God. The people that do that are usually Christians(speaking for the US) as they see it as an attack on their Religion. Or there are people that really don't understand the theory and use it to attack Religion.

However, most athiests tend not to use evolution as the basis of their stance.


And to be balanced...

Religion cannot disproe science, please stop using it as an attack on teh science lot.

Thank you.

Religion can however hamstring science. It has in the past and it starting two now(ie US stance on stem cell research).

side note: Some great work coming out of Europe! Good job guys!

Knowing where we are from contributes to knowing where we are - and where we are going.
That's BS. I mean, does it really matter?

Jumping in here...

A mathematical proof is just that...proof. And as explained, scientific theories are also proof. How would this weaken science?

you don't want to jump into this like that.

people used to think like this and quite regularly at that. kant even went so far as to declare euclidean geometry the perfect example of a priori knowledge. then we figured out that euclidean geometry is a bunch of hogwash because one of it's major axioms was wrong......all of a sudden, pythagoras' theorem fell apart and triangles didn't have 180 degrees in them anymore. calculus itself became a questionable theory.

consider this for a moment. that little relation you learned in grade school, a^2 + b^2 = c^2, the square of the hypotenuse of a right angled triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides, pythagoras' theorem....the general consensus among mathematicians today is that this is WRONG. there are NOT 180 degress in a triangle.

you're thinking "what the fuck?". everybody knows the proofs are written clearly in euclid's elements, right?

well, yeah, sure. but euclid had five axioms he began with. four of them nobody doubts. the fifth one people always thought should have been a theorem but they couldn't ever prove it. eventually, some people started wondering if maybe it was actually wrong and they built a new system of geometry out of it, a system that einstein built relativity on top of. our original system of geometry needed that this axiom be true in order for these results to follow; without it, the system collapsed and we lost pythagoras' theorem. how could things go so wrong that our most fundamental geometrical knowledge has been permanently lost?

we picked a bad assumption to start deducing from.

mathematics is anything but absolute. it relies on it's axioms as much, if not more, than the other sciences. furthermore, it relies on the rules of logic. what if logic is flawed? aristotle doesn't have a great track record anymore.

another example is that large amounts of number theory are deduced from the riemann conjecture.....yes, a conjecture.

godel mathematically proved that there are some things you can't mathematicaly prove.

etc, etc.

A theory is not a proof, the evidence that supports a theory is exactly that, evidence.

A theory is an idea or set of ideas that fits with evidence and facts currently available. It is a theory becasue should further evidence be found it can be revised to fit the new puzzle.


this guy gets it.


Mathimatical proofs if they are correct are constant.


i'm not sure what you mean by "constant". a mathematical proof is little more than a glorified argument in support of a stated hypothesis. the difference between this argument and other arguments is that there are certain rules you have to follow. the correctness of the proof depends on whether you've followed the rules or not.

there's no reason to accept the rules as absolue or constant other than that they seem so obvious you couldn't possibly debate them. however, to beat a dead horse, if we follow all of our original rules then einstein was simply wrong and hiroshima could not have happened.

one of the great breakthroughs in mathematics in the nineteenth century was the realization that the rules of mathematics are just as open to change and alteration to fit empirical fact as the axioms of science are. we simply cannot declare mathematics as absolute truth.


Accepting theory as fact weaken science and is as dogmatic as any religious fanatic.

couldn't have said it better myself.

Lets not mix mathematics in this. It is among the only things that have near "absolute" "thruths" that can be proven (note the "´s ).


NO!!!!

In my opinion it is not such science like physics, chemistry or biology but something that can be used to aid other branches of science.

math is more rigourous but this is inherent to math. the major difference between math and science is that math sets out to prove things without the aid of observation.

however, what we deduce must agree with observation or we've started with a bad set of assumptions.

Most other forms of science do not have any absolute truths, nor they need any.

nor does math.

ok. as you say. My point was just that math is different. there is 1+1=2. Its always true as long as we stay in basic calculus and I meant this when talking about "absolute".

And I took Piltdown as an example of forging evidence, nothing more. People believed in it although it is true that there was many who didn´t.

ok. as you say. My point was just that math is different. there is 1+1=2. Its always true as long as we stay in basic calculus and I meant this when talking about "absolute".


i'm just being anal at this point...

but 1+1=2 doesn't have anything to do with calculus, presuming you mean newton's (or leibniz's). in the old days it would have followed from one of euclid's common notions. nowadays, it's a result of peano's axioms, which most accurately fall under the heading of set theory.

in essence, however, 1+1=2 is basically an axiom, an assumption. we can't prove it. however, if 1+1=2 then we can deduce the rest of arithmetic by mathematical induction.

it may seem absurd to have people with phds sitting around fretting over how to mathematically prove that 1+2=3 but it happened about 100 years ago when we realized just how weak our mathematical system really was....

in essence, however, 1+1=2 is basically an axiom, an assumption. we can't prove it. however, if 1+1=2 then we can deduce the rest of arithmetic by mathematical induction.

it may seem absurd to have people with phds sitting around fretting over how to mathematically prove that 1+2=3 but it happened about 100 years ago when we realized just how weak our mathematical system really was....
LOl, that's funny. Of course it's an axiom; 1 + 1 = 2, etc is because humans find it useful...

I'd thought that was obvious.. ;)

You go to school to learn facts.

You go to church to grow spiritually.

You run a nation through rule of law.

Law requires facts to work.

Hense, religion has no place in government nor in the classroom. now, on the playground, cafeteria, library, gym, and autitorium is another matter entirely.

LOl, that's funny. Of course it's an axiom; 1 + 1 = 2, etc is because humans find it useful...

I'd thought that was obvious.. ;)

it does seem obvious, but so do most of our current axioms and most of our discarded axioms......just because it seems obvious, however, does not mean it's right. that's why most mathematicians since gauss have really taken descartes' epiphany that nothing is certain with the utmost seriousness.

then there's the axiom of choice. but let us not speak of this....

it does seem obvious, but so do most of our current axioms and most of our discarded axioms......
I think you misunderstand me.

I do not mean to say that it is obvious that 1 + 1 = 2, but rather that the obvious reason 1 + 1 = 2 etc, is because (some) human beings find it useful to go about doing things in such a way that the result is 1 + 1 = 2 etc. Whatever evidence is good enough to 'prove' that there are strips on the US flag, is good enough to prove that 1 + 1 = 2.

just because it seems obvious, however, does not mean it's right.
Well of course not, but is there any particular reason to doubt the 'obvious' in this case?

that's why most mathematicians since gauss have really taken descartes' epiphany that nothing is certain with the utmost seriousness.
Are you certain nothing is certain? ;)
I'm fairly certain the 'certain' is inexcessable to us (human beings) right now, either because we lack the 'tools' (such as 1 + 1 = 3 kind of tools), or we lack knowledge of some particular way in which our current tools could be used, or we are not capable (due to biologically imposed limitations) of percepting and/or cognating in such a way that we can access 'certain, absolute truth' (whatever that is) or for whatever reason. I'm not suggesting what relationship 1 + 1 = 2 etc has or might have with unmediated 'reality'; I suspect understanding such matters is way beyond our current capability, although I cant be certain. ;)

Here's the problem...<snip>
Actually, the problem is that ID and creationism are not falsifiable, as they make no testable predictions except the few they steal from evolution. As Popper would tell you, that means they aren't science, and should not claim to be. Nor should they be taught in science classes.

Once again, to highlight the point for the stragglers - the issue is *not* 'which is right or wrong' or 'surely we should let the children decide? Won't someone *please* think of the *children*?'. The issue is 'if it doesn't fit the definition of science and follow the scientific theory, it ain't science, and should be ordered to stop leaving abusive messages on science's answering machine'.

And also - has anyone here been touched by His noodly appendage? Join us in our Pastafarianism! We need more pirates to stop global warming! Quickly, to the Open-Letters-To-The-Kansas-Board-of-Education-Mobile! What Would The Flying Spaghetti Monster Do? If you still think ID should be taught in schools alongside evolution (or just want to know what this last paragraph is about), follow this link and get your damned selves edu-ma-cated! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Spaghetti_Monster)

We still could leave the possibility open, that there is a Intelligent design. To say there can not be intelligent design and life can not be created is equal unsientific.
Reality is beyond science therefore science should conform with it.
I do not want to say we should teach that there must have been intelligent design, only to leave it open.

Actually, in science, if you want to claim something as a viable theory, you have to justify it. Unless you're a Pastafarian too, I guess. Let's leave open the possibility that global warming is caused by lack of pirates! After all, it's possible, if you ignore all that evidence stuff that says it isn't (ooh, I am so losing my WWTFSMD badge over that comment...). And while we're leaving things open, let's teach chemistry students about that whole four elements making up the universe thing. And in maths we'll make sure to teach students... uh... something stupid and unmathematical, and claim it's an 'alternative' to maths. Maybe it could involve rubiks cubes and sudoku puzzles.

Anyway, techincally science classes do leave the option of ID open. Any teacher openly stating 'ID is bullshit, now shut up and learn your evolution theory' would probably be fired. The ideal is what there is currently - ID, other creationism myths and all that non-science stuff is not mentioned at all. If students want to learn it, they can learn it somewhere else, where the tax-payers (won't someone *please* think of the *tax payers*?) aren't paying for them to learn science.

Actually, the problem is that ID and creationism are not falsifiable, as they make no testable predictions except the few they steal from evolution. As Popper would tell you, that means they aren't science, and should not claim to be. Nor should they be taught in science classes.

Once again, to highlight the point for the stragglers - the issue is *not* 'which is right or wrong' or 'surely we should let the children decide? Won't someone *please* think of the *children*?'. The issue is 'if it doesn't fit the definition of science and follow the scientific theory, it ain't science, and should be ordered to stop leaving abusive messages on science's answering machine'.

And also - has anyone here been touched by His noodly appendage? Join us in our Pastafarianism! We need more pirates to stop global warming! Quickly, to the Open-Letters-To-The-Kansas-Board-of-Education-Mobile! What Would The Flying Spaghetti Monster Do? If you still think ID should be taught in schools alongside evolution (or just want to know what this last paragraph is about), follow this link and get your damned selves edu-ma-cated! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Spaghetti_Monster)



Actually, in science, if you want to claim something as a viable theory, you have to justify it. Unless you're a Pastafarian too, I guess. Let's leave open the possibility that global warming is caused by lack of pirates! After all, it's possible, if you ignore all that evidence stuff that says it isn't (ooh, I am so losing my WWTFSMD badge over that comment...). And while we're leaving things open, let's teach chemistry students about that whole four elements making up the universe thing. And in maths we'll make sure to teach students... uh... something stupid and unmathematical, and claim it's an 'alternative' to maths. Maybe it could involve rubiks cubes and sudoku puzzles.

Anyway, techincally science classes do leave the option of ID open. Any teacher openly stating 'ID is bullshit, now shut up and learn your evolution theory' would probably be fired. The ideal is what there is currently - ID, other creationism myths and all that non-science stuff is not mentioned at all. If students want to learn it, they can learn it somewhere else, where the tax-payers (won't someone *please* think of the *tax payers*?) aren't paying for them to learn science.

Got to love that Shaed. She's like our own portable howitzer of logic-flavoured goodness.

Excellent post, Shaed... :)

[QUOTE=Chikyota]No it isn't, as it is not a <i>scientific</i> theory. Creationism is not scientific in basis. ID is not scientific in its main basis. Therefore neither should be taught in a science class. The only course in schools they belong are in religion courses and in philosophy, where both have been stomped down repeatedly over the last three hundred years.

Ok, so you say there never can be made a connection to another subject from science?
Not even that there is a possibility of ID?
Why not, whats the problem with it? It does not mean we should study anything about God.
So you must take evolution as fact, because it is the only "scientific" way to explain origin of lifes?

And don't you think that evolution is also somehow a part of a philosophy, because it is the claim to of origin of life without God, which is not testable?
It takes faith to believe in evolution.
But I still don't mind if evolution is teached in classes. But I simply do not understand the great fear of a possibility of ID.

[QUOTE=Chikyota]No it isn't, as it is not a <i>scientific</i> theory. Creationism is not scientific in basis. ID is not scientific in its main basis. Therefore neither should be taught in a science class. The only course in schools they belong are in religion courses and in philosophy, where both have been stomped down repeatedly over the last three hundred years.

Ok, so you say there never can be made a connection to another subject from science?
Not even that there is a possibility of ID?
Why not, whats the problem with it? It does not mean we should study anything about God.
So you must take evolution as fact, because it is the only "scientific" way to explain origin of lifes?

And don't you think that evolution is also somehow a part of a philosophy, because it is the claim to of origin of life without God, which is not testable?
It takes faith to believe in evolution.
But I still don't mind if evolution is teached in classes. But I simply do not understand the great fear of a possibility of ID.

There is no fear of ID... it just isn't science.

You don't teach Japanese in Spanish classes, you don't teach mythology in science classes... it's pretty much THAT simple.

[QUOTE=Northharon]

There is no fear of ID... it just isn't science.

You don't teach Japanese in Spanish classes, you don't teach mythology in science classes... it's pretty much THAT simple.

Yeah you don't teach Japanese in Spanish class, but if there is evidence that Japanese and Spanish are in the same language group you can mention it, that it could be so without angry people crying out that does not belong to Spanish.
There is no mhytologie to say: You see, the first life is so highly complex that it is so improbable that it came into being by chance that it looks like there is an intelligence behind it.
I never said, we should teach the Bible in science.
By the way it is not science to teach evolution as a fact.
I am ok if we just say the theory.

[QUOTE=Grave_n_idle]

Yeah you don't teach Japanese in Spanish class, but if there is evidence that Japanese and Spanish are in the same language group you can mention it, that it could be so without angry people crying out that does not belong to Spanish.
There is no mhytologie to say: You see, the first life is so highly complex that it is so improbable that it came into being by chance that it looks like there is an intelligence behind it.

No it isn't.

I never said, we should teach the Bible in science.
By the way it is not science to teach evolution as a fact.
I am ok if we just say the theory.
They already do.

2. creationism has no concrete physical evidence. any theoretical evidence comes from a 2000 year old book, whose authors we don't know. many of its assumptions are impossible under the laws of physics. without faith it makes no sense - it requires belief in god. it is not a comparable scientific theory to evolution.


Actually, you might want to do a little more research, we actually DO know who wrote the bible, and I don't understand where you'd get that we don't. I've listed the authords below. There's about 40 different authors that wrote the bible over a period of about 1500 years.

Darwin, (you know who Darwin is right?) who himself came up with the evolution theory, said that he himself was made ILL at the thought of the human eye. He said that it was much too complicated to have evolved, since one part of the eye can't function without the other.

Not to mention that the big bang theory itself is used to prove the possible existence of a God by many. By saying that things can just all of a sudden "happen" and life appears, you're also saying that life could've come suddenly into existence by means of higher life. (oh, and the likeliness of the complexities of life suddenly happening out of nowhere by chance without a higher source, is about the likeliness of an explosion in a printing lab forming an unabridged dictionary.)


Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy = Moses - 1400 B.C.

Joshua = Joshua - 1350 B.C.

Judges, Ruth, 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel = Samuel / Nathan / Gad - 1000 - 900 B.C.

1 Kings, 2 Kings = Jeremiah - 600 B.C.

1 Chronicles, 2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah = Ezra - 450 B.C.

Esther = Mordecai - 400 B.C.

Job = Moses - 1400 B.C.

Psalms = several different authors, mostly David - 1000 - 400 B.C.

Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon = Solomon - 900 B.C.

Isaiah = Isaiah - 700 B.C.

Jeremiah, Lamentations = Jeremiah - 600 B.C.

Ezekiel = Ezekiel - 550 B.C.

Daniel = Daniel - 550 B.C.

Hosea = Hosea - 750 B.C.

Joel = Joel - 850 B.C.

Amos = Amos - 750 B.C.

Obadiah = Obadiah - 600 B.C.

Jonah = Jonah - 700 B.C.

Micah = Micah - 700 B.C.

Nahum = Nahum - 650 B.C.

Habakkuk = Habakkuk - 600 B.C.

Zephaniah = Zephaniah - 650 B.C.

Haggai = Haggai - 520 B.C.

Zechariah = Zechariah - 500 B.C.

Malachi = Malachi - 430 B.C.

Matthew = Matthew - 55 A.D.

Mark = John Mark - 50 A.D.

Luke = Luke - 60 A.D.

John = John - 90 A.D.

Acts = Luke - 65 A.D.

Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 Thessalonians, 2 Thessalonians, 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, Titus, Philemon = Paul - 50-70 A.D.

Hebrews = unknown, best guesses are Paul, Luke, Barnabas, or Apollos - 65 A.D.

James = James - 45 A.D.

1 Peter, 2 Peter = Peter - 60 A.D.

1 John, 2 John, 3 John = John - 90 A.D.

Jude = Jude - 60 A.D.

Revelation = John - 90 A.D.

Darwin, (you know who Darwin is right?) who himself came up with the evolution theory, said that he himself was made ILL at the thought of the human eye. He said that it was much too complicated to have evolved, since one part of the eye can't function without the other.



No, he didn't.

http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CA/CA113_1.html

As you can see, he first suggests the eye is too complex, and then goes about debunking that idea.

[QUOTE=Northharon]
No it isn't.


They already do.
Thats fine.., if it isn't

Oh they do? I just read a book Science Matters, Robert M. Hazen, James Trefil where they do teach evolution as fact.
And it seems that Stephan Jay Gould do so too..

Oh they do? I just read a book Science Matters, Robert M. Hazen, James Trefil where they do teach evolution as fact.
And it seems that Stephan Jay Gould do so too..
How about you pick up a biology book.

[QUOTE=Grave_n_idle]

Yeah you don't teach Japanese in Spanish class, but if there is evidence that Japanese and Spanish are in the same language group you can mention it, that it could be so without angry people crying out that does not belong to Spanish.
There is no mhytologie to say: You see, the first life is so highly complex that it is so improbable that it came into being by chance that it looks like there is an intelligence behind it.
I never said, we should teach the Bible in science.
By the way it is not science to teach evolution as a fact.
I am ok if we just say the theory.

Erm... huh?

If we use the Spanish and Japanese allegory, then ID/Creationism and evolution are NOT in the same language group... they would, in fact, be as disparate as Braille and International Sign Language... sure, both are 'languages' - but very few are able to communicate through both - and they are practically exclusive.

How can you make ANY statments about the complexity of the first life? UNLESS you accept a mythology (like the Christian/Judaist mythology) we STILL don't even KNOW what that first life was - although we can make guesses.

And, does it matter that it is complex? Does it matter that it is unlikely? Is there ANY point discussing the 'probability' of something that has already happened? The answer is, of course, NO.

Example: Shuffle a deck of cards. Pull out just one card. You look at it. Did you know that the odds were only 1 in 52 that you were going to draw that card? (No matter WHICH card). Wow - how unlikely is that!

And then you do it again.... and again, the chances of any given one card are 1 in 52. And yet, despite that, you've drawn a card. Wow - SUPER unlikely! Twice in a row, you managed to pull a card which had a 1 in 52 probability.

You see - probability is all well and good for assessing the likelyhood of something yet to come... but it serves no practical purpose in the study of what has already gone.

How about you pick up a biology book.

I am sorry I just don't have a biology book lying around here...
Maybe I will look it up, if I am again in a library.
But however, Sephen Jay Gould teaches at the Havard University and is a biologist...

Actually, you might want to do a little more research, we actually DO know who wrote the bible, and I don't understand where you'd get that we don't. I've listed the authords below. There's about 40 different authors that wrote the bible over a period of about 1500 years.

Darwin, (you know who Darwin is right?) who himself came up with the evolution theory, said that he himself was made ILL at the thought of the human eye. He said that it was much too complicated to have evolved, since one part of the eye can't function without the other.

Not to mention that the big bang theory itself is used to prove the possible existence of a God by many. By saying that things can just all of a sudden "happen" and life appears, you're also saying that life could've come suddenly into existence by means of higher life. (oh, and the likeliness of the complexities of life suddenly happening out of nowhere by chance without a higher source, is about the likeliness of an explosion in a printing lab forming an unabridged dictionary.)


Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy = Moses - 1400 B.C.

Joshua = Joshua - 1350 B.C.

Judges, Ruth, 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel = Samuel / Nathan / Gad - 1000 - 900 B.C.

1 Kings, 2 Kings = Jeremiah - 600 B.C.

1 Chronicles, 2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah = Ezra - 450 B.C.

Esther = Mordecai - 400 B.C.

Job = Moses - 1400 B.C.

Psalms = several different authors, mostly David - 1000 - 400 B.C.

Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon = Solomon - 900 B.C.

Isaiah = Isaiah - 700 B.C.

Jeremiah, Lamentations = Jeremiah - 600 B.C.

Ezekiel = Ezekiel - 550 B.C.

Daniel = Daniel - 550 B.C.

Hosea = Hosea - 750 B.C.

Joel = Joel - 850 B.C.

Amos = Amos - 750 B.C.

Obadiah = Obadiah - 600 B.C.

Jonah = Jonah - 700 B.C.

Micah = Micah - 700 B.C.

Nahum = Nahum - 650 B.C.

Habakkuk = Habakkuk - 600 B.C.

Zephaniah = Zephaniah - 650 B.C.

Haggai = Haggai - 520 B.C.

Zechariah = Zechariah - 500 B.C.

Malachi = Malachi - 430 B.C.

Matthew = Matthew - 55 A.D.

Mark = John Mark - 50 A.D.

Luke = Luke - 60 A.D.

John = John - 90 A.D.

Acts = Luke - 65 A.D.

Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 Thessalonians, 2 Thessalonians, 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, Titus, Philemon = Paul - 50-70 A.D.

Hebrews = unknown, best guesses are Paul, Luke, Barnabas, or Apollos - 65 A.D.

James = James - 45 A.D.

1 Peter, 2 Peter = Peter - 60 A.D.

1 John, 2 John, 3 John = John - 90 A.D.

Jude = Jude - 60 A.D.

Revelation = John - 90 A.D.

Sorry, my friend... but this is utter hogwash.

We have, for the most part, absolutely NO idea who wrote ANY of the scripture. We have the names 'given to' some of the texts, and we have persons for whom certain texts are ALLEGED to have been creations... but we have no actual EVIDENCE to PROVE who wrote ANY of the Biblical scripture.

I could go through the list, but I'm not going to bother... except to point out the most obvious flaw in your chain.

How do you explain Moses writing ALL the books of the Pentatauch?

Think about it, then get back to me.

[QUOTE=Northharon]

Erm... huh?

If we use the Spanish and Japanese allegory, then ID/Creationism and evolution are NOT in the same language group... they would, in fact, be as disparate as Braille and International Sign Language... sure, both are 'languages' - but very few are able to communicate through both - and they are practically exclusive.

How can you make ANY statments about the complexity of the first life? UNLESS you accept a mythology (like the Christian/Judaist mythology) we STILL don't even KNOW what that first life was - although we can make guesses.

And, does it matter that it is complex? Does it matter that it is unlikely? Is there ANY point discussing the 'probability' of something that has already happened? The answer is, of course, NO.

Example: Shuffle a deck of cards. Pull out just one card. You look at it. Did you know that the odds were only 1 in 52 that you were going to draw that card? (No matter WHICH card). Wow - how unlikely is that!

And then you do it again.... and again, the chances of any given one card are 1 in 52. And yet, despite that, you've drawn a card. Wow - SUPER unlikely! Twice in a row, you managed to pull a card which had a 1 in 52 probability.

You see - probability is all well and good for assessing the likelyhood of something yet to come... but it serves no practical purpose in the study of what has already gone.

Sure they are not in the same language group, I never assumed that.
I just wanted to explained it by your analogy.

Yes we do not know how the first life looks like, but the simplest life form we know about is so complex that it is highly improbable that it came into existance by chance.

Sure it can happen even if it is inprobable, I never said it can not happen.
But the fact of life does not support the fact of evolution. Evolution is just a theory which try to explain fact of life.

Sorry, my friend... but this is utter hogwash.

We have, for the most part, absolutely NO idea who wrote ANY of the scripture. We have the names 'given to' some of the texts, and we have persons for whom certain texts are ALLEGED to have been creations... but we have no actual EVIDENCE to PROVE who wrote ANY of the Biblical scripture.

I could go through the list, but I'm not going to bother... except to point out the most obvious flaw in your chain.

How do you explain Moses writing ALL the books of the Pentatauch?

Think about it, then get back to me.

he must not have heard about the source theory either...

Sorry, my friend... but this is utter hogwash.

We have, for the most part, absolutely NO idea who wrote ANY of the scripture. We have the names 'given to' some of the texts, and we have persons for whom certain texts are ALLEGED to have been creations... but we have no actual EVIDENCE to PROVE who wrote ANY of the Biblical scripture.

I could go through the list, but I'm not going to bother... except to point out the most obvious flaw in your chain.

How do you explain Moses writing ALL the books of the Pentatauch?

Think about it, then get back to me.


If you've ever read the bible, alot of the books are the authors accounting their own life stories. It would be like me writing a novel without putting my name on the front... but the story persistently mentions things from my point of view and my accounts of things, and I mention my own name on the inside of the book... how odd huh?

well that actually happens, its called ghostwriting...

If you've ever read the bible, alot of the books are the authors accounting their own life stories. It would be like me writing a novel without putting my name on the front... but the story persistently mentions things from my point of view and my accounts of things, and I mention my own name on the inside of the book... how odd huh?

ever read any pseudopigrapha? books with authors like adam and eve, michael, gabriel, inoch and much more. its not uncommon to write a book in another name that is popular to give value to your writing...

ever read any pseudopigrapha? books with authors like adam and eve, michael, gabriel, inoch and much more. its not uncommon to write a book in another name that is popular to give value to your writing...

Yeah I think you seriously missed my point buddy.

Sorry, my friend... but this is utter hogwash.

We have, for the most part, absolutely NO idea who wrote ANY of the scripture. We have the names 'given to' some of the texts, and we have persons for whom certain texts are ALLEGED to have been creations... but we have no actual EVIDENCE to PROVE who wrote ANY of the Biblical scripture.

I could go through the list, but I'm not going to bother... except to point out the most obvious flaw in your chain.

How do you explain Moses writing ALL the books of the Pentatauch?

Think about it, then get back to me.

You pose a very interesting question. It would seem as though all the books in the Pentatauch would take a lot of time to write. However, Moses wrote ONLY 5 books. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. The dates written were ?-1445, 1445-1405, 1405, 1444-1405, and 1405 respectively. Now I am sure you are smart enough to understand that those dates correspond to B.C. Since you are obviously smart enough to get that then I don't see how you can't understand how he wrote 5 books. Down through history their have been plenty of people who have authored many more books and pages then Moses did. Ironically, those authors were not being "inspired" by God himself. Moses had the greatest motivation in the world at his side.

Not to mention that the big bang theory itself is used to prove the possible existence of a God by many. By saying that things can just all of a sudden "happen" and life appears, you're also saying that life could've come suddenly into existence by means of higher life. (oh, and the likeliness of the complexities of life suddenly happening out of nowhere by chance without a higher source, is about the likeliness of an explosion in a printing lab forming an unabridged dictionary.)
To play the Devil's Advocate...

Not really. No one said that life suddenly appeared except literal creationists (irony!). Even then, evolution would not be like an explosion creating a dicitonary. The very word evolution takes in a long, drawn out process. Besides, dictionaries really have no rhyme nor reason to them - there would be no reason for letters to form themselves into those orders at all. Why in the world would "antidisestablishmentarianism" have to appear, given the laws of nature? There's no real reason.

Contrarily, evolution is the logically progression from one form to another. Those forms that survive pass on their genes to the next generation because the others didn't survive. Thus, the environment guides life to its "conclusions": forms of animals. The Cretaceous Period gave rise to angiosperms because they survived and flourished extraordinarily, and gymnosperms survived the flood of angiosperms because they weren't necessarily outdated. Sharks have been around for millions of years because they are very well adapted, while (most of) the dinosaurs suddenly (in relative terms) died out because of a drastic change in the environment with which they could not cope. Just a few examples.

Evolution is guided by outside stimuli and internal adaptation. In no way is it really random, while a dictionary is immensely random when considered as a grouping of (equally randomly designed) symbols.

You pose a very interesting question. It would seem as though all the books in the Pentatauch would take a lot of time to write. However, Moses wrote ONLY 5 books. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. The dates written were ?-1445, 1445-1405, 1405, 1444-1405, and 1405 respectively. Now I am sure you are smart enough to understand that those dates correspond to B.C. Since you are obviously smart enough to get that then I don't see how you can't understand how he wrote 5 books. Down through history their have been plenty of people who have authored many more books and pages then Moses did. Ironically, those authors were not being "inspired" by God himself. Moses had the greatest motivation in the world at his side.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

Yeah I think you seriously missed my point buddy.

no i didnt. you must have missed mine...

I am sorry I just don't have a biology book lying around here...
Maybe I will look it up, if I am again in a library.
But however, Sephen Jay Gould teaches at the Havard University and is a biologist...

You do realize he is dead?

He was a paleontologist....

http://www.hno.harvard.edu/gazette/2002/05.16/99-gould.html

To play the Devil's Advocate...

Not really. No one said that life suddenly appeared except literal creationists (irony!). Even then, evolution would not be like an explosion creating a dicitonary. The very word evolution takes in a long, drawn out process. Besides, dictionaries really have no rhyme nor reason to them - there would be no reason for letters to form themselves into those orders at all. Why in the world would "antidisestablishmentarianism" have to appear, given the laws of nature? There's no real reason.

Contrarily, evolution is the logically progression from one form to another. Those forms that survive pass on their genes to the next generation because the others didn't survive. Thus, the environment guides life to its "conclusions": forms of animals. The Cretaceous Period gave rise to angiosperms because they survived and flourished extraordinarily, and gymnosperms survived the flood of angiosperms because they weren't necessarily outdated. Sharks have been around for millions of years because they are very well adapted, while (most of) the dinosaurs suddenly (in relative terms) died out because of a drastic change in the environment with which they could not cope. Just a few examples.

Evolution is guided by outside stimuli and internal adaptation. In no way is it really random, while a dictionary is immensely random when considered as a grouping of (equally randomly designed) symbols.
Yeah, when I read that crap I can't help but wonder how you people feel that what I believe is rediculous.

no i didnt. you must have missed mine...

So how would the people who wrote the bible be pseudographing under another's name if these people hadn't been claimed yet to have ever existed until the bible was written... I think you're right, i'm not sure what you must be getting at.

Yeah, when I read that crap I can't help but wonder how you people feel that what I believe is rediculous.
I can't make a value judgment on anyone's beliefs. I personally came to the conclusion (because I am religious!) that I don't care how the Earth came to be. I believe God played a part; but whether that part was at the Big Bang (completely possibly, given we know nothing about how it would happen), in guiding evolution, in sitting back and letting evolution take its course and placing spirits in bodies that had evolved to a sophisticated enough state to comprehend eternal ideas, or in spontaneously creating the world by his word out of nothing, I don't care. I believe this world, as most Christians (and I am Christian) believe, will be destroyed and renewed and everything done here will receive irrelevance as compared to what will happen beyond.

The real issue is here and now - how we treat our fellow man - and this is what Christ really appears to care about. Statements about helping others in need in complete selflessness are all over the Bible (which I have mostly read), while I have found no requirement that one believes that "God created the earth spontaneously in 6 twenty-four-hour days and literally rested for 24 hours on the third."

I was just trying to differenciate dictionaries and descendancies.

Now that I realize you're not being pretentious, but seeing it from both sides... it makes so much more sense to me. I guess you can say that I think people who've never read the bible but assume that science weighs against it are a bit rediculous. How can you assume something without seeing both peices of evidence?

To play the Devil's Advocate...

Not really. No one said that life suddenly appeared except literal creationists (irony!). Even then, evolution would not be like an explosion creating a dicitonary. The very word evolution takes in a long, drawn out process. Besides, dictionaries really have no rhyme nor reason to them - there would be no reason for letters to form themselves into those orders at all. Why in the world would "antidisestablishmentarianism" have to appear, given the laws of nature? There's no real reason.

Contrarily, evolution is the logically progression from one form to another. Those forms that survive pass on their genes to the next generation because the others didn't survive. Thus, the environment guides life to its "conclusions": forms of animals. The Cretaceous Period gave rise to angiosperms because they survived and flourished extraordinarily, and gymnosperms survived the flood of angiosperms because they weren't necessarily outdated. Sharks have been around for millions of years because they are very well adapted, while (most of) the dinosaurs suddenly (in relative terms) died out because of a drastic change in the environment with which they could not cope. Just a few examples.

Evolution is guided by outside stimuli and internal adaptation. In no way is it really random, while a dictionary is immensely random when considered as a grouping of (equally randomly designed) symbols.

To play the devils advocate...!

I have to admit that you know your scientific dates, terms, events, periods, ect ect ect. This, moreover, makes it seem as though you have come to the right conclusions. Your conclusions, ironically, could not be farther from the truth. You have stated (according to your last paragraph) that "Evolution is guided by outside stimuli and internal adaptation." I would agree with you that living organisms adapt and change, but this only happens inside their own species (i.e. microevolution). Creationists do not disagree with microevolution. So far, however, evolutionary scientists have not come up with any TRUE evidence of macroevolution. Macroevolution being that creatures within their species adapt and change into a new species. Now if you would be so kind as to consult your database of scientific knowledge and tell me where this has happened, I would be greatly obliged.

Futhermore the reasoning in the first part of your response seems somewhat sloppy. Life, whether taken in an evolutionary/creation standpoint, really did just come into being. In creation God spoke life into existence. In evolution living "organisms" just popped into existence from non-living matter. We believe God has been existing in infinity so he sat around for awhile and then created life instantly. Even if you say that the "prebiotic soup" or whatever you say was there was there for a long time. You cannot get away from the fact that in evolution life really did just pop into existence (e.g. the evolutionary term "spontaneous generation"). Maybe you should try to clarify what you mean when you say that evolution is long and drawn out, therefore life slowy came into being? Please clarify better, for us all, in your next response.

Now that I realize you're not being pretentious, but seeing it from both sides... it makes so much more sense to me. I guess you can say that I think people who've never read the bible but assume that science weighs against it are a bit rediculous. How can you assume something without seeing both peices of evidence?
And, again to play the Devil's Advocate, the evolutionists think the same way about people who have never closely investigated the Theory of evolution (and not just Darwin) and yet believe religion is against it completely. ;)

I've run into both types of intolerance - and mostly they both have the same proficiency at flaming. Oh well, so much for many a civilized discussion... :rolleyes:

Kudos NorthHaron

And, again to play the Devil's Advocate, the evolutionists think the same way about people who have never closely investigated the Theory of evolution (and not just Darwin) and yet believe religion is against it completely. ;)

I've run into both types of intolerance - and mostly they both have the same proficiency at flaming. Oh well, so much for many a civilized discussion... :rolleyes:


Oddly enough I'm one of those people who don't feel that science and religion are at odds at all. I've yet to find any piece of evidence that they are. I believe they embrace and prove each other.

Goodnight though, my puppy is whining and he wants to go to bed. He's having a difficult time accepting that his master came from apes.

To play the devils advocate...!

I have to admit that you know your scientific dates, terms, events, periods, ect ect ect. This, moreover, makes it seem as though you have come to the right conclusions. Your conclusions, ironically, could not be farther from the truth. You have stated (according to your last paragraph) that "Evolution is guided by outside stimuli and internal adaptation." I would agree with you that living organisms adapt and change, but this only happens inside their own species (i.e. microevolution). Creationists do not disagree with microevolution. So far, however, evolutionary scientists have not come up with any TRUE evidence of macroevolution. Macroevolution being that creatures within their species adapt and change into a new species. Now if you would be so kind as to consult your database of scientific knowledge and tell me where this has happened, I would be greatly obliged.

Futhermore the reasoning in the first part of your response seems somewhat sloppy. Life, whether taken in an evolutionary/creation standpoint, really did just come into being. In creation God spoke life into existence. In evolution living "organisms" just popped into existence from non-living matter. We believe God has been existing in infinity so he sat around for awhile and then created life instantly. Even if you say that the "prebiotic soup" or whatever you say was there was there for a long time. You cannot get away from the fact that in evolution life really did just pop into existence (e.g. the evolutionary term "spontaneous generation"). Maybe you should try to clarify what you mean when you say that evolution is long and drawn out, therefore life slowy came into being? Please clarify better, for us all, in your next response.
Well, macroevolution is simply microevolution... over a greatly longer period of time. If a single species was introduced into two different habitats with no contact with each other and kept apart for, say, a couple million years, microevolution will have continued to the point that the two populations would no longer be able to mate with each other if brought into contact - thus, becoming two new species. There is no observation of "macroevolution" because we simply haven't been around long enough observe it. There are examples, however, of implied macroevolution - I believe that there are two species of squirrels that were one before the Grand Canyon formed, but since the first population was split, in the time of several thousand years the two groups became mutually incompatable - two separate species.

"Spontaneous generation" makes me laugh. No, seriously, spontaneous generation was the term they used when they thought corn and rags in a corner produced rats and rancid meat produed maggots. Basically, evolution says that life began as the most basic building blocks - molecules got together and formed proteins, which then began to perform simple enzymatic functions and grew because of those to develop reactions to light (beginnings of photosynthesis) and continued from there. I'm not a biologist; to learn more, you'd have to look elsewhere. Life back then - billions of years back - was extremely simple. So simple that it was barely life. But that's the theory.

To learn my opinion of the creation debate, read my other posts.

Oddly enough I'm one of those people who don't feel that science and religion are at odds at all. I've yet to find any piece of evidence that they are. I believe they embrace and prove each other.

Goodnight though, my puppy is whining and he wants to go to bed. He's having a difficult time accepting that his master came from apes.Oh, it's not science and religion that are at odds. It's some of the scientific and religious that are. :D

And goodnight.... I have to go to bed.

[QUOTE=Grave_n_idle]

Sure they are not in the same language group, I never assumed that.
I just wanted to explained it by your analogy.

Yes we do not know how the first life looks like, but the simplest life form we know about is so complex that it is highly improbable that it came into existance by chance.

Sure it can happen even if it is inprobable, I never said it can not happen.
But the fact of life does not support the fact of evolution. Evolution is just a theory which try to explain fact of life.

No - the simplest life forms we know are so simple, we are not even entirely sure they are 'life'. I refer, of course, to virii... which are little more than self-replicating molecules.

As a chemist, I can make chemicals that form self-replicating molecules in the lab - without 'needing' to be alive. I fear the gap between 'life' and 'not life' is far more blurred than you seem to believe.

I'm really not even sure what your last paragraph means. Evolution makes no attempt to explain where life came from or how. Evolution is merely the observed tendency of the fittest entity in a given niche, to thrive - and adapt.

Futhermore the reasoning in the first part of your response seems somewhat sloppy. Life, whether taken in an evolutionary/creation standpoint, really did just come into being. In creation God spoke life into existence. In evolution living "organisms" just popped into existence from non-living matter. We believe God has been existing in infinity so he sat around for awhile and then created life instantly. Even if you say that the "prebiotic soup" or whatever you say was there was there for a long time. You cannot get away from the fact that in evolution life really did just pop into existence (e.g. the evolutionary term "spontaneous generation"). Maybe you should try to clarify what you mean when you say that evolution is long and drawn out, therefore life slowy came into being? Please clarify better, for us all, in your next response.

For one thing evolution has never defined how life started. That is abiogensis to which you are intermixing with evolution. It is a common mistake.

Well, macroevolution is simply microevolution... over a greatly longer period of time. If a single species was introduced into two different habitats with no contact with each other and kept apart for, say, a couple million years, microevolution will have continued to the point that the two populations would no longer be able to mate with each other if brought into contact - thus, becoming two new species. There is no observation of "macroevolution" because we simply haven't been around long enough observe it. There are examples, however, of implied macroevolution - I believe that there are two species of squirrels that were one before the Grand Canyon formed, but since the first population was split, in the time of several thousand years the two groups became mutually incompatable - two separate species.
To learn my opinion of the creation debate, read my other posts.

I cant speak for NorthHaron, but I think what was meant was like a squirrel becoming a cat....

I cant speak for NorthHaron, but I think what was meant was like a squirrel becoming a cat....Which evolution states wouldn't happen...

If you've ever read the bible, alot of the books are the authors accounting their own life stories. It would be like me writing a novel without putting my name on the front... but the story persistently mentions things from my point of view and my accounts of things, and I mention my own name on the inside of the book... how odd huh?

Before you get up on your high-horse, my friend... and decide to patronise, perhaps you should think about the possible experience levels of your opposition.

You assume that, simply because I disagree with you, I must not have read scripture. Perhaps it's a valid guess, but you'd find it hard to be more wrong. In fact, unless you have read scripture in the NATIVE languages, you are going to find yourself somewhat on the defensive on this one.

Have you ever read the Lemony Snicket books? Just as a curiousity?

They claim to be written by a fellow calling himself "Lemony Snicket". They also claim, internally, to be historically true. I'm SURE you must see the parallel I am alluding to.

Have you ever read the Lemony Snicket books? Just as a curiousity?


Funny you mention them. I am up to book 6. For a kids book, they are not bad.

You pose a very interesting question. It would seem as though all the books in the Pentatauch would take a lot of time to write. However, Moses wrote ONLY 5 books. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. The dates written were ?-1445, 1445-1405, 1405, 1444-1405, and 1405 respectively. Now I am sure you are smart enough to understand that those dates correspond to B.C. Since you are obviously smart enough to get that then I don't see how you can't understand how he wrote 5 books. Down through history their have been plenty of people who have authored many more books and pages then Moses did. Ironically, those authors were not being "inspired" by God himself. Moses had the greatest motivation in the world at his side.

Curious... you assumed I meant that the books took too long to write.... I wonder how thorough your reading of scripture has been.

Got your scripture close to hand?

Could you please take a moment to give me a little insight into Deuteronomy 34:6?

Funny you mention them. I am up to book 6. For a kids book, they are not bad.

I've only read the first three, myself (enough to know what a horrible abortion the movie was...), but you are quite right. They are really quite good... well written, educational, moral... altogether a commendable effort.

So how would the people who wrote the bible be pseudographing under another's name if these people hadn't been claimed yet to have ever existed until the bible was written... I think you're right, i'm not sure what you must be getting at.

Let me explain something for you.

There was a strong Hebrew tradition, long before the Christian movement, yes? You are aware of a character in that earlier tradition named Enoch (Hannaukh), yes?

Are you also aware that, a good few centuries after the alleged time of Enoch, there was a scripture written under the name of Enoch?

It is quite easy to assume the name of a character already in circulation... be it OLD circulation, or new. Is the Enoch of the 'Book of Enoch' the same patriarch of the old Hebrew tradition?

Oddly enough I'm one of those people who don't feel that science and religion are at odds at all. I've yet to find any piece of evidence that they are. I believe they embrace and prove each other.

Goodnight though, my puppy is whining and he wants to go to bed. He's having a difficult time accepting that his master came from apes.

The amusing thing is, MOST scientists see NO conflict between religion and science. What they object to, is the teaching of religion AS THOUGH IT WERE science.

I cant speak for NorthHaron, but I think what was meant was like a squirrel becoming a cat....

Which.... has to do with what?

This 'fish turn into bananas' approach to evolution is most baffling. It makes no religious sense, it makes no scientific sense. I wonder why such things keep being suggested?

Which.... has to do with what?

This 'fish turn into bananas' approach to evolution is most baffling. It makes no religious sense, it makes no scientific sense. I wonder why such things keep being suggested?

Hmm I wonder if we have another Hovind supporter. Hovind likes to talk about life spring out of rocks or something to that affect.....

Well, macroevolution is simply microevolution... over a greatly longer period of time. If a single species was introduced into two different habitats with no contact with each other and kept apart for, say, a couple million years, microevolution will have continued to the point that the two populations would no longer be able to mate with each other if brought into contact - thus, becoming two new species. There is no observation of "macroevolution" because we simply haven't been around long enough observe it. There are examples, however, of implied macroevolution - I believe that there are two species of squirrels that were one before the Grand Canyon formed, but since the first population was split, in the time of several thousand years the two groups became mutually incompatable - two separate species.

"Spontaneous generation" makes me laugh. No, seriously, spontaneous generation was the term they used when they thought corn and rags in a corner produced rats and rancid meat produed maggots. Basically, evolution says that life began as the most basic building blocks - molecules got together and formed proteins, which then began to perform simple enzymatic functions and grew because of those to develop reactions to light (beginnings of photosynthesis) and continued from there. I'm not a biologist; to learn more, you'd have to look elsewhere. Life back then - billions of years back - was extremely simple. So simple that it was barely life. But that's the theory.

To learn my opinion of the creation debate, read my other posts.

This is all very Punny! Get it? Ha ha...nevermind.

Ok, so macroevolution is simply just microevolution. This is essentially is not true. Microevolution is adaptation and change within the created kind or with in a species (created kind refering to, in the creationist standpoint, the kind that God created). Now, when you had said that " If a single species was introduced into two different habitats with no contact with each other and kept apart for, say, a couple million years, microevolution will have continued to the point that the two populations would no longer be able to mate with each other if brought into contact - thus, becoming two new species" the fact that this happened is true. There was an expirement done in which scientists took creatures in one species an seperated them for awhile. They put them together and they could not interbreed with each other. The interesting fact however is that they did not become another species. They were just a "sub-species." There is evidence to the fact that within different species of the world we have sub-species. Even though a certain creature cannot interbreed with a creature that it had done in the past with does not mean it became a new species.

Another problem with modern evolutionary theory is that it just attempts to fill in the gaps. Scientists have not observed macroevolution nor have found evidence to it. They have FAITH that it will happen sometime in the future and that they will be their to witness it. They take for granted macroevolution to be true before ever having evidence for it. This clearly distorts a lot of the conclusions they come to, especially on how man evolved. Simply put their has been NO evidence for macroevolution. There is the possiblity that we might come across it sometime in the future, but so far we need to be rational at this point in time and rationality, to the evidence at hand, does not point away from special creation.

To use an analogy to help you better understand. Kelley Thomas (producer). Puzzle of the Ancient Wing. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, "Man Alive" television series, 1981. Patterson says "Evolutionists ultimately believe, to use an example from secular television, that frogs turn into princes. But if the mechanism turned out to be the kiss of a princess, rather than time, chancde, and the properties of matter, then the evolutionary explanantion for change would be wrong, and the theory falsified in this instance. Whether its the changing of frogs into princes, fish into philosophers, or molecules into man, calling evolution a fact without at least broadly specifying a mechanism is both non-science and non-sense-unless evolutionists are willing to consider the kiss of a princess a potentially valid evolutionary hypothesis!"

Sorry, this took so long. I will now address the other objections to my responses in my next post.

Hmm I wonder if we have another Hovind supporter. Hovind likes to talk about life spring out of rocks or something to that affect.....

I think Kent Hovind took over from the Wizard when he left the Emerald City.

(After all, he is arguably the 'King of the Strawmen"....)

:D

This is all very Punny! Get it? Ha ha...nevermind.

Ok, so macroevolution is simply just microevolution. This is essentially is not true. Microevolution is adaptation and change within the created kind or with in a species (created kind refering to, in the creationist standpoint, the kind that God created). Now, when you had said that " If a single species was introduced into two different habitats with no contact with each other and kept apart for, say, a couple million years, microevolution will have continued to the point that the two populations would no longer be able to mate with each other if brought into contact - thus, becoming two new species" the fact that this happened is true. There was an expirement done in which scientists took creatures in one species an seperated them for awhile. They put them together and they could not interbreed with each other. The interesting fact however is that they did not become another species. They were just a "sub-species." There is evidence to the fact that within different species of the world we have sub-species. Even though a certain creature cannot interbreed with a creature that it had done in the past with does not mean it became a new species. Could you give me evidence of such an experiment? As far as I know, the natural occurences of gene drift and population separation mechanisms haven't been replicated in the lab.
Another problem with modern evolutionary theory is that it just attempts to fill in the gaps. Scientists have not observed macroevolution nor have found evidence to it. They have FAITH that it will happen sometime in the future and that they will be their to witness it. They take for granted macroevolution to be true before ever having evidence for it. This clearly distorts a lot of the conclusions they come to, especially on how man evolved. Simply put their has been NO evidence for macroevolution. There is the possiblity that we might come across it sometime in the future, but so far we need to be rational at this point in time and rationality, to the evidence at hand, does not point away from special creation. Yes, there is evidence for macroevolution. Fossils. The fact that there are no fossils of human beings of certain times shows that human beings weren't around at those times. Fossils also show a gradual progression and macroevolutionary development. I've heard somewhere that an example of what it would take to disprove macroevolution is a fossil of a rabbit from the cambrian age.

There was an expirement done in which scientists took creatures in one species an seperated them for awhile. They put them together and they could not interbreed with each other. The interesting fact however is that they did not become another species. They were just a "sub-species."

Linky please. It would depend heavily on the "creatures" used.


There is evidence to the fact that within different species of the world we have sub-species. Even though a certain creature cannot interbreed with a creature that it had done in the past with does not mean it became a new species.

Let's have some fun. What about Mules?


Another problem with modern evolutionary theory is that it just attempts to fill in the gaps. Scientists have not observed macroevolution nor have found evidence to it.

Ok Evolution doesn't attempt to "fill in the gaps" It just explains the process.


They have FAITH that it will happen sometime in the future and that they will be their to witness it.

No. FAITH is a religous term. The belive it because there is evidence that suggests it will happen.


They take for granted macroevolution to be true
before ever having evidence for it.

The evidence at hand suggests the possiblity. You find something to disprove it, guess what people will change their viewpoints.

Macroevolution is argued in the evolution ranks.


This clearly distorts a lot of the conclusions they come to, especially on how man evolved. Simply put their has been NO evidence for macroevolution. There is the possiblity that we might come across it sometime in the future, but so far we need to be rational at this point in time and rationality, to the evidence at hand, does not point away from special creation.

Fossil record my boy. It suggests a great deal.

Unless of course you want to take the stance of Mud People being created.


calling evolution a fact

M'kay, I guess you haven't read much of this thread. Evolution doesn't deal in facts. It just a discription of the process.

[QUOTE=Northharon]

No - the simplest life forms we know are so simple, we are not even entirely sure they are 'life'. I refer, of course, to virii... which are little more than self-replicating molecules.

As a chemist, I can make chemicals that form self-replicating molecules in the lab - without 'needing' to be alive. I fear the gap between 'life' and 'not life' is far more blurred than you seem to believe.

I'm really not even sure what your last paragraph means. Evolution makes no attempt to explain where life came from or how. Evolution is merely the observed tendency of the fittest entity in a given niche, to thrive - and adapt.

A virus is still so complex that it have nuclei acid and protein. They need a host to reproduce, so it does not seem that it was the first form of life.

Often the "fact" evolution is used,that many people argue that there can not be Intelligent Design. It is often used to explain existence of life without a creator, out of a naturalistic worldview. You are talking about natural selection, thats an aspect of evolution.

Linky please. It would depend heavily on the "creatures" used.


Let's have some fun. What about Mules?


Ok Evolution doesn't attempt to "fill in the gaps" It just explains the process.


No. FAITH is a religous term. The belive it because there is evidence that suggests it will happen.


The evidence at hand suggests the possiblity. You find something to disprove it, guess what people will change their viewpoints.

Macroevolution is argued in the evolution ranks.


Fossil record my boy. It suggests a great deal.

Unless of course you want to take the stance of Mud People being created.


M'kay, I guess you haven't read much of this thread. Evolution doesn't deal in facts. It just a discription of the process.

Sorry about the delaying. I have now just set up an account and will be able to respond. I was filling in for my friend while he was on the phone. Now that I am up and running I will be able to respond.

[QUOTE=Grave_n_idle]
Often the "fact" evolution is used,that many people argue that there can not be Intelligent Design. It is often used to explain existence of life without a creator, out of a naturalistic worldview. You are talking about natural selection, thats an aspect of evolution.

Actually no. People argue against the ID simply because it's crap science. It can't even pass as a hypothesis.

How do you test of the existence of God?

Evolution has never set out to prove or disprove the existence of God.

Curious... you assumed I meant that the books took too long to write.... I wonder how thorough your reading of scripture has been.

Got your scripture close to hand?

Could you please take a moment to give me a little insight into Deuteronomy 34:6?

Yeah take the moment, but i know what you will find and is your argument.
A lot scolars easily accept, as I am doing (although I am not a scolar) that the last chapter was written by Joshua or someone else in Moses 'inner circle'.
This supports the theory that each successor prophet writes the last chapter of his predecessor's book.

I think you misunderstand me.

I do not mean to say that it is obvious that 1 + 1 = 2, but rather that the obvious reason 1 + 1 = 2 etc, is because (some) human beings find it useful to go about doing things in such a way that the result is 1 + 1 = 2 etc. Whatever evidence is good enough to 'prove' that there are strips on the US flag, is good enough to prove that 1 + 1 = 2.


perhaps, but i've been conditioned not to think like that. i can't see it as any more than an assumption based on empirical evidence (which mathematicians use only as a last resort when nothing else works) that may or may not be subject to alteration at some point in the future, as absurd as they may seem.

i do not, of course, doubt it at all. but i must formally accept it's status as questionable.


Well of course not, but is there any particular reason to doubt the 'obvious' in this case?


although i am not an expert in set theory, i do believe that the set theorists and mathematical logicians are content with the natural numbers. after the natural numbers, however, there is a great deal of divergence in opinion.

so, in short: no.


Are you certain nothing is certain? ;)


if i was certain that nothing is certain then obviously something would be certain as i see you recognize by your usage of the winky emoticon. hence i cannot be certain that nothing is certain, i can only be uncertain of whether there exists certainty or not, ie i cannot know whether certainty exists. but if you are not certain about certainty it is not certainty. i can only uncertainly declare that there is no certainty, which is a complete worthless statement. but this is my point - we cannot even be certain about whether we're certain about certainty.

if absolute truth exists, and it may in some capacity, i can only say that it is not mathematical in nature, or at the very least that it does not resemble any mathematics that we have today.

[QUOTE=Northharon]

Actually no. People argue against the ID simply because it's crap science. It can't even pass as a hypothesis.

How do you test of the existence of God?

Evolution has never set out to prove or disprove the existence of God.

No it has not set out to prove or disprove the existence of God.

But just let me quote Richard Dawkins: "Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fullfilled atheist."
Out of a naturalistic view surely you will embrace the theory of evolution and there can not be any other form of origin of life as we have it now.
In general the arguments of the people who argue for ID critize the theory of evolution and thats no crap science.

Let's leave open the possibility that global warming is caused by lack of pirates! After all, it's possible, if you ignore all that evidence stuff that says it isn't


i know of no evidence that disproves this hypothesis, although i know of no evidence that supports it either.

And in maths we'll make sure to teach students... uh... something stupid and unmathematical, and claim it's an 'alternative' to maths. Maybe it could involve rubiks cubes and sudoku puzzles.

you're not attempting to make fun of me are you? i'm quite serious about what i said about euclidean geometry. look it up.

You do realize he is dead?

He was a paleontologist....

http://www.hno.harvard.edu/gazette/2002/05.16/99-gould.html

No honestly I did not, but since Stephen J. Gould considered himself an evolutionary biologist, I assume he taught evolution also out of the biological view.

http://www.annonline.com/interviews/961009/biography.html

Is it not the job of science to show and look at all possible avenues when looking at an issue..just becasue it is a theory doens't mean its ture..under certain variables it is. and that why science is flawed. you have to have a controlled enviroment which really doens't prove anything.

Not to mention that the big bang theory itself is used to prove the possible existence of a God by many. By saying that things can just all of a sudden "happen" and life appears, you're also saying that life could've come suddenly into existence by means of higher life. (oh, and the likeliness of the complexities of life suddenly happening out of nowhere by chance without a higher source, is about the likeliness of an explosion in a printing lab forming an unabridged dictionary.)

bad analogy at the end dude but i won't chastize you. really, i won't.

the currently accepted big bang theory is, i believe, M-theory. now, at this point we're really talking theory and a very young one at that.

but the idea is that there are these things floating around in the eleventh dimension (which is very small) that smashed into each other and created the big bang. big bangs happen all the time. there are infinitely many parallel universes around us where life may or may not have happened. so, you can say that there's a tiny chance of life developing from the big bang....and i would agree with you. but there's a very high chance of life developing at least once out of billions and billions of big bangs.

furthermore, the idea on the beginning of life is that it happened very, very, very slowly. first a couple of proteins stuck together on a rock or something, then years and years later they got organized into some kind of membrane, et etc...

....so the idea is not that some zap of lightning from zeus shot down and created life in a quick moment. the first life form was a very, very long time coming......

[QUOTE=The Black Forrest]
In general the arguments of the people who argue for ID critize the theory of evolution and thats no crap science.

True its not crap science. Its no science at all towards supporting ID. ID supporters jump on gaps or different particulars in evolution. Showing one or two gaps in evolution (that are usually acknowledged by the scientific community, as its self-correcting nature demands) does not make the mountain of other evidence any less valid.

ID is crap science because (as stated by various other members of NS) it provides no testable or falsifiable hypotheses. When an ID supporter critiques evolution is does not support ID. Just because i can prove that friend A didn't steal my beer it does not automatically mean that friend B did.

[QUOTE=The Black Forrest]

No it has not set out to prove or disprove the existence of God.

But just let me quote Richard Dawkins: "Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fullfilled atheist."
Out of a naturalistic view surely you will embrace the theory of evolution and there can not be any other form of origin of life as we have it now.
In general the arguments of the people who argue for ID critize the theory of evolution and thats no crap science.

Dawkins is one man. There is nothing that says an athiest can't put his own spins on things. Science is used to justify things all the time.

Fact remains. Evolution has never set out to prove or disprove the existence of God. Just because Dawkins has decided to take a stance, it doesn't define evolutions stance.

Again evolution and abiogensis are two different topics. No true scientist "embraces" evolution. He accepts it as the best explanation at the moment.

As to the ID comment; There is nothing wrong with critizing evolution. It's part of the process and it's encouraged.

However, presenting faith based arguments and making statements that are just outrightwrong is what get's people ignored and or ridculed.

[QUOTE=Northharon]
And, does it matter that it is complex? Does it matter that it is unlikely? Is there ANY point discussing the 'probability' of something that has already happened? The answer is, of course, NO.

Example: Shuffle a deck of cards. Pull out just one card. You look at it. Did you know that the odds were only 1 in 52 that you were going to draw that card? (No matter WHICH card). Wow - how unlikely is that!

And then you do it again.... and again, the chances of any given one card are 1 in 52. And yet, despite that, you've drawn a card. Wow - SUPER unlikely! Twice in a row, you managed to pull a card which had a 1 in 52 probability.

You see - probability is all well and good for assessing the likelyhood of something yet to come... but it serves no practical purpose in the study of what has already gone.

this is, again, a bad analogy. if anything it argues for the existence of a god pulling the cards. the chances that you pull a specific card randomly are 1/52, which is actually pretty good compared to some things. the chances that you pull a card at all are very high. in this case it doesn't matter what the card is, it matters that you are physically pulling it.

yet you're arguing that nobody is playing the deck.

when trying to build complicated physical or biological systems of the past we of course must take into account the concept of probability. in fact, now that quantum physics rules supreme, right or wrong, it's ALL about probability.

i already went through why it's actually extremely probable, given the current theoretical framework of the creation of our universe, that life would develop randomly on at least one planet in at least one solar system in at least one galaxy in at least one universe.

now, it's true that the probability of an event happening after it's already happened is one. that's not the point. the point is that if our model is any good it shouldn't have a near zero probability of life developing; and our model has a high probability of life developing, so it's all good.

Linky please. It would depend heavily on the "creatures" used.


Let's have some fun. What about Mules?


Ok Evolution doesn't attempt to "fill in the gaps" It just explains the process.


No. FAITH is a religous term. The belive it because there is evidence that suggests it will happen.


The evidence at hand suggests the possiblity. You find something to disprove it, guess what people will change their viewpoints.

Macroevolution is argued in the evolution ranks.


Fossil record my boy. It suggests a great deal.

Unless of course you want to take the stance of Mud People being created.


M'kay, I guess you haven't read much of this thread. Evolution doesn't deal in facts. It just a discription of the process.
Here we go again...

My "linkys" are at the bottom.

I guess you must have a new definition of what a species is. Defining terms is important when we talk about things like this, but I hope you understand that a mule can still breed and is not completley sterile ("linky" #2). The mule would have to diverge and become sterile sometime in the future for this "macroevolution" to take place ("linky" #3 what is funny about this link is that it takes the evolutionist side). "linky" #1 is sort of a probable definition of what a mule is and then a succesive argument on what it should be, could be, maybe would be, and so on.

In your statement that evolution explains the process I would disagree. It trys to explain a process and in so doing fills in the gaps (gaps referring to macroevolution) with a little bit of faith.

Faith has only to do with religion?!!!!! What the... I do not know where to begin with this statement. I guess I could start with the fact that faith is an action which is not limited to "religious" (I would contend that religion is just an over arching view of reality, but lets just take for granted it has to do with belief in God) matters. Faith is the confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing. For instance (I would not have to do this if you did not understand the concept of faith) since I can not know everything in the universe I have faith that through the evidence that has been given to me that my parents are not dead right now (an idea) even though they could be and I would not know until someone communicated that to me sometime in the future. Evolutionists (as in ppl who believe evolution as the starting point of life) have faith that macroevolution took place sometime, someplace, somewhere, and that they will be able to observe it taking place sometime in the future to more firmly back up their posistion.

Evolution doesnt deal in facts. "Fossils exist" is that not a fact? As for the fossil record showing any intermediate form of life that is altogether a creature that shows transformation into a new "species" I have not heard of or seen any yet and many evolutionists have admitted the same thing.

I am sorry once again that this took so long. I am on a friends laptop and the organization of the windows is hard to keep straight. I am going to bed, but please e-mail me if you have some more objections. I will try to get back on and answer the others that were brought up, but it is fairly hard when their are several.

1.) http://en.wikipedia.org
2.) http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/nov2000/973316601.Ge.r.html
3.) http://anthro.palomar.edu/synthetic/synth_9.htm

Contrarily, evolution is the logically progression from one form to another.

Thus, the environment guides life to its "conclusions": forms of animals.

Evolution is guided by outside stimuli and internal adaptation. In no way is it really random,

pft.

platonist.

Darwin's believed that if any part of his theory was proven wrong then the entire theory was wrong. Evolution is your religion. You will stick by it without even knowing anything about ID. New evidence is out for dna:
www.gewo.applet.cz/health/DNA_1e.htm

Our(terrestrial life's) dna seems to be made up of information that is, to me, undeniably like computer code. I didn't really like the above link, however it is very very interesting. Here is an exerpt:

"A group of researchers working at the Human Genome Project will be announcing soon that they made an astonishing scientific discovery: They believe so-called non-coding sequences (97%) in human DNA is no less than genetic code of an unknown extraterrestrial life form."

[QUOTE=Grave_n_idle]

A virus is still so complex that it have nuclei acid and protein. They need a host to reproduce, so it does not seem that it was the first form of life.

Often the "fact" evolution is used,that many people argue that there can not be Intelligent Design. It is often used to explain existence of life without a creator, out of a naturalistic worldview. You are talking about natural selection, thats an aspect of evolution.

I don't know where you get your view of what 'evolution' is 'about'.

Evolution neither confirms NOR denies the possibility of a 'Creator'. In fact, it doesn't make ANY comments about a creator, at all.

Many Christians believe in evolution... why? Because evolution describes a MECHANISM, not a CAUSE. It still leaves room for 'god', it just doesn't claim of deny godlike responsibility.

If you feel that threatens the need for a creator... I'm afraid that is more an issue of your personal faith, than a problem with the theory.

Yeah take the moment, but i know what you will find and is your argument.
A lot scolars easily accept, as I am doing (although I am not a scolar) that the last chapter was written by Joshua or someone else in Moses 'inner circle'.
This supports the theory that each successor prophet writes the last chapter of his predecessor's book.

And yet, just a few pages back, you were claiming we KNEW who wrote every book of the Bible... and now you are ADMITTING you have NO IDEA who wrote the last book of Deuteronomy?

If you can't even be sure who wrote the Pentatauch, wht supports your argument that you can possibly know who wrote ANY of the scripture.

You can make guesses, sure - based on your assumption that the Bible is a supernaturally imbued text.... but those assumptions are worth nothing when it comes to providing EVIDENCE.

You also ignore, of course, the fact that Moses is unlikely to have been carrying much in the way of writing materials around in the desert with him. HOW could he have 'written' the texts? He was raised in Egypt... HOW could he have written the texts in Hebrew?

No it has not set out to prove or disprove the existence of God.

But just let me quote Richard Dawkins: "Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fullfilled atheist."
Out of a naturalistic view surely you will embrace the theory of evolution and there can not be any other form of origin of life as we have it now.


Poppycock. Evolution makes NO comments about the first ORIGIN of life - secular OR religious.


In general the arguments of the people who argue for ID critize the theory of evolution and thats no crap science.

Even if evolution were proved WRONG, that would do nothing to make ID any more 'right'. You describe it as though the world were divided into just two choices.

[QUOTE=Grave_n_idle]

this is, again, a bad analogy. if anything it argues for the existence of a god pulling the cards. the chances that you pull a specific card randomly are 1/52, which is actually pretty good compared to some things. the chances that you pull a card at all are very high. in this case it doesn't matter what the card is, it matters that you are physically pulling it.

yet you're arguing that nobody is playing the deck.

when trying to build complicated physical or biological systems of the past we of course must take into account the concept of probability. in fact, now that quantum physics rules supreme, right or wrong, it's ALL about probability.

i already went through why it's actually extremely probable, given the current theoretical framework of the creation of our universe, that life would develop randomly on at least one planet in at least one solar system in at least one galaxy in at least one universe.

now, it's true that the probability of an event happening after it's already happened is one. that's not the point. the point is that if our model is any good it shouldn't have a near zero probability of life developing; and our model has a high probability of life developing, so it's all good.

On the contrary, the very simple premise that probability AFTER the fact is ALWAYS 1, is EXACTLY the point that needed to be made.

'Oh, tigers are just TOO unlikely'... well they can't be TOO unlikely, because they are here. They are obviously just likely enough - regardless of how you BELIEVE they got there.

Not that I disagree with your assessment... I think it's pretty obvious that given (effectively) infinite time, and (effectively) infinite space, sooner or later, somewhere - you are going to find life.

However I do disagree with your assessment of my playing cards. The playing cards are not an analogy to creation - they are an example of probability. No matter WHICH card is drawn, the odds are 1 in 52 - which is probably not odds you would want to bet on. I don't need to compare this with some cosmic card-player - I am just showing how unlikely even everyday events can be - if you EXPECT a certain result.

1. school is a place of learning
2. a place of learning for all - religious or not.

i would like to assume that religion should play no part in governance or the state, and have no place in education - but evidently this is the hotly contested issue (now you know where i stand)

so why do i say this?
to answer, lets make some assumptions about the theories of evolution and creationism (ID, whatever its all one and the same really - at least for the purposes of this thread)

1. evolution is a scientific theory that has large amounts of evidence - both physical and theoretical (but provable within the laws of physics) - that means it is the best means it is the best theory we've come up with yet. it could be wrong, but - scientifically - this is unlikely (only in small details).
it is an a-theist (seperation intended) idea in that it does not require faith or belief in the existance of some kind of god.

2. creationism has no concrete physical evidence. any theoretical evidence comes from a 2000 year old book, whose authors we don't know. many of its assumptions are impossible under the laws of physics. without faith it makes no sense - it requires belief in god. it is not a comparable scientific theory to evolution.

to summarise: religion should not be taught alongside credible science.
so, agree, disagree?

Disagree. You should check out James P Hogan, Kicking the Sacred Cow.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0743488288/qid=1125848186/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/103-0323610-3859044?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

At the very least, he kicks some pretty big holes in evolution, and makes some pretty good cases for intelligent design.

Just because evolution appears to be "the best we've got so far" to some people doesn't mean it should be the only thing taught in the classroom.

I also think that people who are upset with creationism (or as I prefer, intelligent design) sit back and ignore the fact that evolution is taught almost as FACT instead of UNPROVEN THEORY by many teachers. If you were being honest and fair, you'd support an overview of the major theories.

Religion is one of them.

I am sorry I just don't have a biology book lying around here...
Maybe I will look it up, if I am again in a library.
But however, Sephen Jay Gould teaches at the Havard University and is a biologist...
Buy one. Get a good college level textbook and actually read what they have to say about evolution rather then some crap ID argument.

Hawkintom']Disagree. You should check out James P Hogan, Kicking the Sacred Cow.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0743488288/qid=1125848186/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/103-0323610-3859044?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

At the very least, he kicks some pretty big holes in evolution, and makes some pretty good cases for intelligent design.

Just because evolution appears to be "the best we've got so far" to some people doesn't mean it should be the only thing taught in the classroom.

I also think that people who are upset with creationism (or as I prefer, intelligent design) sit back and ignore the fact that evolution is taught almost as FACT instead of UNPROVEN THEORY by many teachers. If you were being honest and fair, you'd support an overview of the major theories.

Religion is one of them.
Religion is not a scientific theory. It has...oh, no evidence.

Religion is not a scientific theory. It has...oh, no evidence.

Intelligent design has scientific evidence. And intelligent design leads to several possible conclusions, one of which is religion. Not a specific religion, but a belief in a higher power.

Check the book out, I think it will surprise you.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0743488288/qid=1125848186/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/103-0323610-3859044?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

Evolution is a horrible theory that is only taught becuase it is entrenched and we have very little better. It is almost preposterous when you honestly get to looking at it.

why is christian idiology being imposed in science in this cenrtry? is america becoming a christian biased country.
as a bhuddist this should be a good thing because the christian message is supposed to be a peacful one, but the childrens association with religion and science could be screwed up with too

Hawkintom']Intelligent design has scientific evidence.

No. No, it doesn't.

^ He's right, you know.

"Intelligent design has scientific evidence"
this cant be true as science would have to prove god to be real scientificly and christians cant say that god is like this cos they have a set of beliefs set up by humans an not gods...and fail to come up with concrete scientific evedince of its existance

i bet the idea of imposing christianity on children in science lessons was a christians one

This is quite good (if it hasn't already been posted):
http://www.swarthmore.edu/NatSci/cpurrin1/textbookdisclaimers/wackononsense.pdf

Once again, we've blindly put a belief in that science is supreme.

Once again, we've blindly put a belief in that science is supreme.

Nice rhetoric. What does it mean, and how do you back it?

Once again, we've blindly put a belief in that science is supreme.

Oh, how stupid of us.
We should obviously all believe that a magical, invisible man in the sky did it all, then created a load of evidence to the contrary to fool us all into thinking otherwise, but is still terribly insecure about it and worries that people don't sing enough songs about him any more.

science will inevitably kill god as science becomes so amazing and complex why isnt the mechanism of science a working part of gods existance..
speaking as a pagan with nordic roots :D

Oh, how stupid of us.
We should obviously all believe that a magical, invisible man in the sky did it all, then created a load of evidence to the contrary to fool us all into thinking otherwise, but is still terribly insecure about it and worries that people don't sing enough songs about him any more.


BAHAHAHAHAHA
an evil red man with horns an a pointy stik is real but darwins theory of evolutions silly?

you evil freind commuter? youl go to hell for that statement

BAHAHAHAHAHA
an evil red man with horns an a pointy stik is real but darwins theory of evolutions silly?

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=sarcasm

Nice rhetoric. What does it mean, and how do you back it?

See my other thread on The Supremacy of Empirical Evidence. :D

Oh, how stupid of us.
We should obviously all believe that a magical, invisible man in the sky did it all, then created a load of evidence to the contrary to fool us all into thinking otherwise, but is still terribly insecure about it and worries that people don't sing enough songs about him any more.
In other words, you just told me that the common human shouldn't be trusted and therefore needs to place the trust on somewhere else. You chose empirical evidence, something you can comfortably prove and therefore believe. Which proves my point. Even atheists admit humans are sinners. :D

In other words, you just told me that the common human shouldn't be trusted and therefore needs to place the trust on somewhere else. You chose empirical evidence, something you can comfortably prove and therefore believe. Which proves my point. Even atheists admit humans are sinners. :D

Have you been drinking?

This post makes no sense.

See my other thread on The Supremacy of Empirical Evidence. :D

Link?

Oh - and relevence?

Oh, how stupid of us.
We should obviously all believe that a magical, invisible man in the sky did it all, then created a load of evidence to the contrary to fool us all into thinking otherwise, but is still terribly insecure about it and worries that people don't sing enough songs about him any more.
I KNOOOOWWW YOU WERE BEIN SARCASTIC I WAS BACKING UP YOUR STATEMENT YOU TART

you know that christianity has changer so mutch this millenium that it would be completely unreconisable 900 years ago (mainly due to constantine turning "birtha" (christians origonal name for god meaning father/mother creator) to a male god which is an exact copy of the sun god constantine worshiped (forgotten his name) but that is why god is a man in the new testament whitch the pagan constatine hade re written for political perposes. now that i educated you , you can be a wikid pagan like me an worship the mother nature (et cetera)

sry bout my spellin, but why dont they teach that christianity is a sham like a historian/ scientist/ sphyciatrist easily could

No. No, it doesn't.

Oh, ok - you've swayed me with your argument. :rolleyes:

"Intelligent design has scientific evidence"
this cant be true as science would have to prove god to be real scientificly and christians cant say that god is like this cos they have a set of beliefs set up by humans an not gods...and fail to come up with concrete scientific evedince of its existance

Intelligent design doesn't have to prove God (or god) to be real.

First off, it is a theory - like evolution - which has not been proven either way.

Second, it doesn't need God to be true.

Keep in mind, the discussion is whether evolution and creationism should be taught in school. We are talking about those theories in respect to the question "where did we come from?" Not "where did the universe come from," since evolution wouldn't attempt to answer that question anyway.

When considering the question, "where did we come from?" there is not need for a god/God to necessarily be involved in intelligent design.

Notice, the very phrase is "intelligent design," not "perfect designer."

I'd also point out that the anti-creationist can no more scientifically argue their stance than the creationists. Most of you seem to think that saying "no, that is wrong" constitutes scientific method.

Neither side knows. And that includes your side.

Hawkintom']Oh, ok - you've swayed me with your argument. :rolleyes:

Not my argument, friend.

There are established 'rules', if you will, of science... which we call the 'scientific method'.

In order to be considered through the scientific method - there are certain steps that have to be taken.

A phenomenon must be observed taking place. This phenomenon will ideally be repeatable... but MUST be verifiable.

ID produces no repeatable OR verifiable data.

The second stage is the formation of a hypothesis, based upon the observation.

ID produces no hypothesis based on observation - instead, it STARTS with an assumption that there is a designer.

The third stage is the comparison of experimental results, with the mechanism of the hypothesis. This requires repeatable performances, again. It also requires further verification. Ideally, it also requires being able to 'duplicate' the effect observed, experimentally.

ID doesn't compare the results with the hypothesis. It HAS it's 'hypothesis' carved in stone, and attempts to see if experimental results can conform to that ideal.

The final stage is re-engineering the flawed hypothesis. Where differences are found between experimental data, and the hypothesis, the hypothesis must conform to the data, unless the data can be found to be flawed.

ID doesn't modify it's hypothesis. It operates on the premise that there is a designer. Where material is found that fails to substantiate, that piece of evidence is considered inconclusive.


Add to this, scientific hypotheses MUST be falsifiable. It MUST be possible to prove a scientific hypothesis/theory to be flawed. This means all aspects of that theory must ALSO be provable as flawed.

An intelligent designer cannot be witnessed or measured. There is no 'falsification' process to disprove a 'god' or 'godlike' being.

Thus - even at the most basic stage (the falsifiable assumption), ID is NOT scientific theory.... thus, it has no 'scientific' evidence.

Once again, we've blindly put a belief in that science is supreme.

In spite of tremendous evidence to the contrary.

How often do you hear something like, "Bran muffins are good for your heart?" for years and years. Later you hear, "Bran muffins aren't good for your heart afterall." Anyone live through the denial of AIDS in the 80's? Science was DEAD wrong.

How about global warming? Oh, you believe in that? If you'd have been born 40 years earlier you would have thought it was an ice age coming, because thats what science was selling then.

How many of us saw the world come to a starving end when the population reached 5 billion. "Science" said it would, but science was wrong. And Paul Ehrlich STILL publishes crap and people believe him.

Evolution? It's not even slightly logical. It's proponents have to deceive like crazy (http://www.wayoflife.org/fbns/fbns/fbns239.html) and (http://www.regnery.com/regnery/010309_iconsevo.html).

How about relativity? You'll note that it goes by "relativity" rather than "The theory of relativity" nowadays, because people believe it. But it hasn't been proven and it has HUGE problems. It is a lot like Newtonian physics. It appears to be ok within certain ranges, but outside of those ranges we have no way of knowing for sure, yet we assume it is correct.

Science has a horrible track record, not much better than religion. Scientists wrap their lives up in a viewpoint and then defend it with everything they have. Openmindedness and admitting wrong is almost unheard of and it hinders our ability to understand the world we are trying to study. As a result, science moves slowly and hangs on to wrong ideas way too long.

Hawkintom']Intelligent design doesn't have to prove God (or god) to be real.


No - but it does require a 'godLIKE' entity.

Hawkintom']
First off, it is a theory - like evolution - which has not been proven either way.


No. ID is not a theory, certainly not by scientific interpretation of that word.

And, I'm afraid your anti-science roots are showing, if you beleive that evolution could be 'proven either way'.

Hawkintom']
Second, it doesn't need God to be true.


No - but it DOES require a godLIKE enitity.

Hawkintom']
Keep in mind, the discussion is whether evolution and creationism should be taught in school. We are talking about those theories in respect to the question "where did we come from?" Not "where did the universe come from," since evolution wouldn't attempt to answer that question anyway.


No - we are talking about whether it should be taught as a theory against evolution. So, the REAL question is, SHOULD ID be taught in SCIENCE class?

Most scientists have no problems with the religious preaching whatever they like, in religion classes.

Hawkintom']
When considering the question, "where did we come from?" there is not need for a god/God to necessarily be involved in intelligent design.


No - but, again - there IS a need for a godLIKE entity. Which CANNOT be falsified.

Hawkintom']
Notice, the very phrase is "intelligent design," not "perfect designer."


And?

Hawkintom']
I'd also point out that the anti-creationist can no more scientifically argue their stance than the creationists. Most of you seem to think that saying "no, that is wrong" constitutes scientific method.


Wrong, I'm afraid. There is a wealth of evidence that dates the Earth at far beyond the Creationist assertion. There are transitional fossils that make a liar of 'all creatures being created perfect'. There are radioactive materials with halflives that would have had to occured before the world was made. There is evidence that no 'flood' has covered the ENTIRE Earth in the last ten thousand years.

There is a WEALTH of evidence that Creationism is scientifically untenable.

Hawkintom']
Neither side knows. And that includes your side.

But, only the scientists ADMIT they don't know.

Hawkintom']Intelligent design has scientific evidence. And intelligent design leads to several possible conclusions, one of which is religion. Not a specific religion, but a belief in a higher power.

Check the book out, I think it will surprise you.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0743488288/qid=1125848186/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/103-0323610-3859044?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

Evolution is a horrible theory that is only taught becuase it is entrenched and we have very little better. It is almost preposterous when you honestly get to looking at it.
Have you ever taken a class in evolutionary biology? Have you ever even glanced at a college level biology text?

Christ, HIV doesn't cause AIDS? Yeah, that's why viral loads and anti-body detections are the key ways of measuring its progress. Take your bullshit elsewhere, and feed it to some people who don't know science.

There are established 'rules', if you will, of science... which we call the 'scientific method'.

In order to be considered through the scientific method - there are certain steps that have to be taken.

A phenomenon must be observed taking place. This phenomenon will ideally be repeatable... but MUST be verifiable.


Ok, you've just ruled out evolution then. Show me where it has taken place...


ID produces no repeatable OR verifiable data.

The second stage is the formation of a hypothesis, based upon the observation.

ID produces no hypothesis based on observation - instead, it STARTS with an assumption that there is a designer.


I don't think that is true. It starts with the OBSERVATION that there is no evidence of evolution. Then it tries to answer how life could exist in its current form if it did not evolve from a lesser form.

The third stage is the comparison of experimental results, with the mechanism of the hypothesis. This requires repeatable performances, again. It also requires further verification. Ideally, it also requires being able to 'duplicate' the effect observed, experimentally.


Which again takes evolution out of the mix as well.

There's a reason for that. These aren't going to be easily, or perhaps even possibly, tested theories in a lifetime. Same for most of the astronomy crap out there that people hang their hats on, like dark matter and string theory.

You can't test that. You just look for observations that tangentially back up your theory. The big bang isn't testable under your criteria. It is just an idea that fits with SOME of the observations we are making about the universe now. And it has flaws as well.


ID doesn't compare the results with the hypothesis. It HAS it's 'hypothesis' carved in stone, and attempts to see if experimental results can conform to that ideal.


So does Big Bang and most astronomy theory. Heck, so does evolution for that matter.

ID doesn't modify it's hypothesis. It operates on the premise that there is a designer. Where material is found that fails to substantiate, that piece of evidence is considered inconclusive.


Hey, I'm not the guy with all the answers and I am ALL FOR showing what supports and what doesn't fit with ANY and ALL hypotheses and theories. But to imply that ID is less honest, and less scientific than evolution is doing just what you said above. You are ignoring the evidence that doesn't fit your hypothesis.

An intelligent designer cannot be witnessed or measured. There is no 'falsification' process to disprove a 'god' or 'godlike' being.


Then I assume Big Bang is not a scientific theory to you, because it fails this test as well.

Hawkintom']In spite of tremendous evidence to the contrary.

How often do you hear something like, "Bran muffins are good for your heart?" for years and years. Later you hear, "Bran muffins aren't good for your heart afterall." Anyone live through the denial of AIDS in the 80's? Science was
DEAD wrong.

Bran muffins ARE good for the heart... and they are also NOT good for the heart. As with most everything, there are positive effects and negative effects. Bran muffins ALONE are certainly not a panacea... adn that's the problem.

It's just like all these people drinking milk today, because it helps you lose wait. YES. It HELPS. But people assume it is some kind of elixir... and that is the problem. Not the science, but how it is TREATED.

And, on the subject of AIDS denial - if you are going to talk about it, you must have researched the matter, right? You are, then, aware that MOST of the problem with 'denying' AIDS was political. In fact, it was the science community that investigated the Gay-Related Immuno-Deficiency Syndrome (GRIDS), and discovered it was NOT gay-specific. (Hence the AIDS name).

Hawkintom']
How many of us saw the world come to a starving end when the population reached 5 billion. "Science" said it would, but science was wrong. And Paul Ehrlich STILL publishes crap and people believe him.


The world IS starving. Very few people have enough to eat. And yet, the richest nations suffer a plague obesity, while millions starve.

Hawkintom']
Evolution? It's not even slightly logical. It's proponents have to deceive like crazy (http://www.wayoflife.org/fbns/fbns/fbns239.html) and (http://www.regnery.com/regnery/010309_iconsevo.html).


Piltdown man was proved to be flawed BY the scientific community. Science is not above admitting it's mistakes. Science is not above re-examining it's OWN assumptions.

Would that the same could be said about most religious people...

Hawkintom']
How about relativity? You'll note that it goes by "relativity" rather than "The theory of relativity" nowadays, because people believe it. But it hasn't been proven and it has HUGE problems. It is a lot like Newtonian physics. It appears to be ok within certain ranges, but outside of those ranges we have no way of knowing for sure, yet we assume it is correct.


No - it's still called the Theory of Relativity. Perhaps YOU are on first-name-terms with it? No theory is ever considered 'perfect' by the scientific community, that is why they constantly rework them.


Hawkintom']
Science has a horrible track record, not much better than religion. Scientists wrap their lives up in a viewpoint and then defend it with everything they have. Openmindedness and admitting wrong is almost unheard of and it hinders our ability to understand the world we are trying to study. As a result, science moves slowly and hangs on to wrong ideas way too long.

Sounds like you don't like scientists much. Did one bite you, as a child?

"Scientists wrap their lives up in a viewpoint and then defend it with everything they have".... evidence?

"Openmindedness and admitting wrong is almost unheard of.." ... evidence?

"science moves slowly"... what does this even mean? IS being thorough a bad thing?

"and hangs on to wrong ideas way too long..."... evidence? Which of these 'wrong ideas' are scientists hanging on to? What about religion.... surely the Christian faith is 'hanging on' to ideas that are millennia old...?

You wouldn't happen to be from South Carolina, by any chance...?

Hawkintom']In spite of tremendous evidence to the contrary.

How often do you hear something like, "Bran muffins are good for your heart?" for years and years. Later you hear, "Bran muffins aren't good for your heart afterall." Anyone live through the denial of AIDS in the 80's? Science was DEAD wrong.

How about global warming? Oh, you believe in that? If you'd have been born 40 years earlier you would have thought it was an ice age coming, because thats what science was selling then.

How many of us saw the world come to a starving end when the population reached 5 billion. "Science" said it would, but science was wrong. And Paul Ehrlich STILL publishes crap and people believe him.

Evolution? It's not even slightly logical. It's proponents have to deceive like crazy (http://www.wayoflife.org/fbns/fbns/fbns239.html) and (http://www.regnery.com/regnery/010309_iconsevo.html).

How about relativity? You'll note that it goes by "relativity" rather than "The theory of relativity" nowadays, because people believe it. But it hasn't been proven and it has HUGE problems. It is a lot like Newtonian physics. It appears to be ok within certain ranges, but outside of those ranges we have no way of knowing for sure, yet we assume it is correct.

Science has a horrible track record, not much better than religion. Scientists wrap their lives up in a viewpoint and then defend it with everything they have. Openmindedness and admitting wrong is almost unheard of and it hinders our ability to understand the world we are trying to study. As a result, science moves slowly and hangs on to wrong ideas way too long.

So, it must be magic that puts electricity in your home, allows your car to move, and you to use your computer to post nonsense, eh? Science works. The evidence is all around you. But feel free to remain delusional.

No - but it does require a 'godLIKE' entity.

No, it doesn't. Not at the earth level anyway. We could have been seeded by another intelligent race. Where they came from? Well, they'd have to answer that, but seeding could explain how we came to be here on earth and how we might have been intelligently designed without GOD or god being involved.

A race of "aliens" flying around the galaxy seeding planets might seem unlikely, but so is lightning striking a primordial soup of proteins and creating life that evolved to the sophistication we see today.

And, I'm afraid your anti-science roots are showing, if you beleive that evolution could be 'proven either way'.


You are making lots of bad assumptions about me based on where you think I'm coming from, and I think you are making those assumptions because you think I'm arguing for creationism. I'm not. I'm arguing against evolution and I'm arguing against "junk science."

I am not a biologist, but I am pro-science and I have a degree in Engineering Physics with a minor in Math. (Which is not bragging, I'm sure there are more educated and more intelligent here on the board, I'm just telling you that I understand science and I am pro-science.)

No - we are talking about whether it should be taught as a theory against evolution. So, the REAL question is, SHOULD ID be taught in SCIENCE class?

Most scientists have no problems with the religious preaching whatever they like, in religion classes.


I have a problem with countless people being shoveled the crap of evolution into their heads to the point that they don't even question it as adults too. If you are going to teach crap like evolution, then ID is just as reasonable.

Wrong, I'm afraid. There is a wealth of evidence that dates the Earth at far beyond the Creationist assertion. There are transitional fossils that make a liar of 'all creatures being created perfect'. There are radioactive materials with halflives that would have had to occured before the world was made. There is evidence that no 'flood' has covered the ENTIRE Earth in the last ten thousand years.


Ooops, you're quoting the Bible now. Why? I haven't. I may be Muslim. (I'm not, I lean very Agnostic to tell you the truth.) Again, you are making huge assumptions.

I believe the earth to be billions of years old. Save yourself some typing and stick to arguing the SUBJECT and not the person.

There is a WEALTH of evidence that Creationism is scientifically untenable.


There is a wealth of evidence that says evolution is scientifically untenable.


But, only the scientists ADMIT they don't know.

I must be a scientist then...

Hawkintom']Ok, you've just ruled out evolution then. Show me where it has taken place...

# New species have arisen in historical times. For example:

* A new species of mosquito, the molestus form isolated in London's Underground, has speciated from Culex pipiens (Byrne and Nichols 1999; Nuttall 1998).

* Helacyton gartleri is the HeLa cell culture, which evolved from a human cervical carcinoma in 1951. The culture grows indefinitely and has become widespread (Van Valen and Maiorana 1991).

* Several new species of plants have arisen via polyploidy (when the chromosome count multiplies by two or more) (de Wet 1971). One example is Primula kewensis (Newton and Pellew 1929).


# Incipient speciation, where two subspecies interbreed rarely or with only little success, is common. Here are just a few examples:

* Rhagoletis pomonella, the apple maggot fly, is undergoing sympatric speciation. Its native host in North America is Hawthorn (Crataegus spp.), but in the mid-1800s, a new population formed on introduced domestic apples (Malus pumila). The two races are kept partially isolated by natural selection (Filchak et al. 2000).
* The mosquito Anopheles gambiae shows incipient speciation between its populations in northwestern and southeastern Africa (Fanello et al. 2003; Lehmann et al. 2003).
* Silverside fish show incipient speciation between marine and estuarine populations (Beheregaray and Sunnucks 2001).


# Ring species show the process of speciation in action. In ring species, the species is distributed more or less in a line, such as around the base of a mountain range. Each population is able to breed with its neighboring population, but the populations at the two ends are not able to interbreed. (In a true ring species, those two end populations are adjacent to each other, completing the ring.) Examples of ring species are

* the salamander Ensatina, with seven different subspecies on the west coast of the United States. They form a ring around California's central valley. At the south end, adjacent subspecies klauberi and eschscholtzi do not interbreed (Brown n.d.; Wake 1997).
* greenish warblers (Phylloscopus trochiloides), around the Himalayas. Their behavioral and genetic characteristics change gradually, starting from central Siberia, extending around the Himalayas, and back again, so two forms of the songbird coexist but do not interbreed in that part of their range (Irwin et al. 2001; Whitehouse 2001).
* the deer mouse (Peromyces maniculatus), with over fifty subspecies in North America.
* many species of birds, including Parus major and P. minor, Halcyon chloris, Zosterops, Lalage, Pernis, the Larus argentatus group, and Phylloscopus trochiloides (Mayr 1942, 182-183).
* the American bee Hoplitis (Alcidamea) producta (Mayr 1963, 510).
* the subterranean mole rat, Spalax ehrenbergi (Nevo 1999).


# Evidence of speciation occurs in the form of organisms that exist only in environments that did not exist a few hundreds or thousands of years ago. For example:

* In several Canadian lakes, which originated in the last 10,000 years following the last ice age, stickleback fish have diversified into separate species for shallow and deep water (Schilthuizen 2001, 146-151).
* Cichlids in Lake Malawi and Lake Victoria have diversified into hundreds of species. Lake Malawi in particular originated in the nineteenth century and has about 200 cichlid species (Schilthuizen 2001, 166-176).
* A Mimulus species adapted for soils high in copper exists only on the tailings of a copper mine that did not exist before 1859 (Macnair 1989).


There is further evidence that speciation can be caused by infection with a symbiont. A Wolbachia bacterium infects and causes postmating reproductive isolation between the wasps Nasonia vitripennis and N. giraulti (Bordenstein and Werren 1997).

I don't think that is true. It starts with the OBSERVATION that there is no evidence of evolution. Then it tries to answer how life could exist in its current form if it did not evolve from a lesser form.

There isn't? News to me. News to just about every other scientist. News to Darwin, who laid out quite a bit of it in Origin of Species...

Read this: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/080537146X/qid=1125858179/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-4983743-3684142?v=glance&s=books&n=507846


Which again takes evolution out of the mix as well.

There's a reason for that. These aren't going to be easily, or perhaps even possibly, tested theories in a lifetime. Same for most of the astronomy crap out there that people hang their hats on, like dark matter and string theory.

You can't test that. You just look for observations that tangentially back up your theory. The big bang isn't testable under your criteria. It is just an idea that fits with SOME of the observations we are making about the universe now. And it has flaws as well.

You'd expect certain things to show up as a result of the big bang. We've seen ratios of production that matches the big bang theory's predictions spot on. You have a better hypothesis?


So does Big Bang and most astronomy theory. Heck, so does evolution for that matter.

Wrong. The big bang and evolution have been changed quite a bit. Example: The addition of Mandelian genetics to prove the mechanism of natural selection, and movement towards puntucated equalibrium rather then gradualism.


Hey, I'm not the guy with all the answers and I am ALL FOR showing what supports and what doesn't fit with ANY and ALL hypotheses and theories. But to imply that ID is less honest, and less scientific than evolution is doing just what you said above. You are ignoring the evidence that doesn't fit your hypothesis.

Wrong. Show me evidence that doesn't fit with evolutionary theory.


Then I assume Big Bang is not a scientific theory to you, because it fails this test as well.
But the big bang has been measured. The effects of it are widly known, and match up near perfectly with the theory. Just because you haven't studied it doesn't mean that it is wrong.

Have you ever taken a class in evolutionary biology? Have you ever even glanced at a college level biology text?

Well, I did take biology in college and passed. It has been some time ago. My specialization was in the engineering and physics side of things. Thanks for asking though.


Christ, HIV doesn't cause AIDS? Yeah, that's why viral loads and anti-body detections are the key ways of measuring its progress. Take your bullshit elsewhere, and feed it to some people who don't know science.

I'm gonna assume you misread my post, combined with probably being too young to have lived through that era. However, I'll explain further for you since you appear to be very upset.

I said, "How often do you hear something like, "Bran muffins are good for your heart?" for years and years. Later you hear, "Bran muffins aren't good for your heart afterall." Anyone live through the denial of AIDS in the 80's? Science was DEAD wrong.

For those of you who don't know. Science was in DENIAL about the dangers of HIV and AIDs until the very late 1980's. Science was wrong. Had "science" accepted the evidence sooner, countless lives would have been saved.

Hopefully that will clarify things for you, and perhaps you will feel a little embarassment and think more carefully before you speak next time, rather than just reacting to your misunderstanding.

Hawkintom']Ok, you've just ruled out evolution then. Show me where it has taken place...


Fossil evidence shows certain 'macroevolution' trends.

The Pepper Moth is a good example of 'microevolution' trends.

The macroevolution trends are supported by the microevolution trends.

Hawkintom']
I don't think that is true. It starts with the OBSERVATION that there is no evidence of evolution. Then it tries to answer how life could exist in its current form if it did not evolve from a lesser form.


You 'observe' that there is 'no evidence' for evolution?

How do you 'observe' absence? Surely, it can ALWAYS be argued that absence COULD mean you just aren't looking right?

And, if you think there is 'no evidence' for evolution, you CERTAINLY are not looking right.

Hawkintom']
Which again takes evolution out of the mix as well.


So you keep saying.

Hawkintom']
There's a reason for that. These aren't going to be easily, or perhaps even possibly, tested theories in a lifetime. Same for most of the astronomy crap out there that people hang their hats on, like dark matter and string theory.

You can't test that. You just look for observations that tangentially back up your theory. The big bang isn't testable under your criteria. It is just an idea that fits with SOME of the observations we are making about the universe now. And it has flaws as well.


I agree with you on Dark Matter, String Theory... hell, even SuperMassive Blackholes.

However, there are definite proofs for something LIKE the Big Bang. Not just experimental recreations of post-Bang matter... but also mathematical proofs that show common roots for ALL the matter in this expanding universe... at ONE common time.

Hawkintom']
So does Big Bang and most astronomy theory. Heck, so does evolution for that matter.


Proof, my friend. It is your ally.

Hawkintom']
Hey, I'm not the guy with all the answers and I am ALL FOR showing what supports and what doesn't fit with ANY and ALL hypotheses and theories. But to imply that ID is less honest, and less scientific than evolution is doing just what you said above. You are ignoring the evidence that doesn't fit your hypothesis.


You claim to be the guy with the answers, though... that's the problem. You seem to feel you can comfortably dismiss all the evidence for evolution... because you have a 'better' explanation.

I haven't implied ID is less honest... just that it ISN'T science. And it isn't.

Hawkintom']
Then I assume Big Bang is not a scientific theory to you, because it fails this test as well.

How so?

So, it must be magic that puts electricity in your home, allows your car to move, and you to use your computer to post nonsense, eh? Science works. The evidence is all around you. But feel free to remain delusional.

Practical science works my friend. Science where people try to answer things like "where did the universe come from?" or "where did man come from" or "what is a pulsar" or "where is an electron on that atom right now?" or "what is a photon?" has a much worse track record.

And even with all those things you mention, science had to overcome its own inertia to get where we are today. The only reason we are is because of capitalism and companies that didn't care about WHO was right or wrong, but WHAT was right and wrong using those things to make money.

Hawkintom']Well, I did take biology in college and passed. It has been some time ago. My specialization was in the engineering and physics side of things. Thanks for asking though.

And you show a shocking ignorance of it. I'd suggest taking a refresher course or stay in your area of expertise

I'm gonna assume you misread my post, combined with probably being too young to have lived through that era. However, I'll explain further for you since you appear to be very upset.

I said, "How often do you hear something like, "Bran muffins are good for your heart?" for years and years. Later you hear, "Bran muffins aren't good for your heart afterall." Anyone live through the denial of AIDS in the 80's? Science was DEAD wrong.

For those of you who don't know. Science was in DENIAL about the dangers of HIV and AIDs until the very late 1980's. Science was wrong. Had "science" accepted the evidence sooner, countless lives would have been saved.

Hopefully that will clarify things for you, and perhaps you will feel a little embarrassment and think more carefully before you speak next time, rather than just reacting to your misunderstanding.
No, I read the book you suggested. It claims that HIV does not cause AIDS. That loses any credibility that it has in my opinion. And it isn't AIDs, it is AIDS. Acquired ImmunoDeficiency Syndrome.

Hawkintom']No, it doesn't. Not at the earth level anyway. We could have been seeded by another intelligent race. Where they came from? Well, they'd have to answer that, but seeding could explain how we came to be here on earth and how we might have been intelligently designed without GOD or god being involved.

A race of "aliens" flying around the galaxy seeding planets might seem unlikely, but so is lightning striking a primordial soup of proteins and creating life that evolved to the sophistication we see today.


Any race tht can engineer life, and invisibly plant it on this world, WITH evidence that suggests it was created some other way, and leave NO evidence of their passing - IS godlike.

An, also, non-falsifiable... so it all becomes irrelevent whether you believe in hyperspace-hoppin martians, or big floaty ghost god.

And, if you think lightning and goo are the ONLY current model of origin of life on earth... well...

Hawkintom']
You are making lots of bad assumptions about me based on where you think I'm coming from, and I think you are making those assumptions because you think I'm arguing for creationism. I'm not. I'm arguing against evolution and I'm arguing against "junk science."

I am not a biologist, but I am pro-science and I have a degree in Engineering Physics with a minor in Math. (Which is not bragging, I'm sure there are more educated and more intelligent here on the board, I'm just telling you that I understand science and I am pro-science.)


You have argued for ID. ID is not scientific. No scientist would accept ID as scientific, because it fails to fit the 'requirements' of science.

Therefore, you have less of an 'understanding' of science than you proclaim.

Hawkintom']
I have a problem with countless people being shoveled the crap of evolution into their heads to the point that they don't even question it as adults too. If you are going to teach crap like evolution, then ID is just as reasonable.


Why is evolution crap? Show facts, my friend... not more Baptist Hate Propoganda. Show real evidence.

And, again, you make the same mistake. Do you not ralise that, even if Evolution IS bull... that doesn't make ID ANY MORE TRUE?

Hawkintom']
Ooops, you're quoting the Bible now. Why? I haven't. I may be Muslim. (I'm not, I lean very Agnostic to tell you the truth.) Again, you are making huge assumptions.


You mentioned Creationism. I make no assumptions - I just responded to your silly assertion that science had nothing to say against Creationism.

Don't you even read your OWN posts?


Hawkintom']
I believe the earth to be billions of years old. Save yourself some typing and stick to arguing the SUBJECT and not the person.


Sure. Whatever you say. What was your point, then?

Hawkintom']
There is a wealth of evidence that says evolution is scientifically untenable.


Like what? Hollow rhetoric doesn't cut it... and if you start bringing out tired old horses like 'Irreducible Complexity', I'm going to start doubting your rationality on this subject...

Hawkintom']
I must be a scientist then...

So you say... still awaiting evidence. (Of ANYTHING, apparently).

Bran muffins ARE good for the heart... and they are also NOT good for the heart. As with most everything, there are positive effects and negative effects. Bran muffins ALONE are certainly not a panacea... adn that's the problem.

You're sidestepping the issue. Science, as most people get it spoonfed to them, is often grossly wrong. Evolution is a gross example.


And, on the subject of AIDS denial - if you are going to talk about it, you must have researched the matter, right? You are, then, aware that MOST of the problem with 'denying' AIDS was political. In fact, it was the science community that investigated the Gay-Related Immuno-Deficiency Syndrome (GRIDS), and discovered it was NOT gay-specific. (Hence the AIDS name).


Now you are understanding me better. You're just missing one last connection. The scientific community IS POLITICAL. If you did your doctoral thesis on evolution, you aren't going to take well to evidence that your beliefs are incorrect. Science moves at a glacial pace because scientists are unable to set aside their egos and move on to better ideas quickly.


The world IS starving. Very few people have enough to eat. And yet, the richest nations suffer a plague obesity, while millions starve.


That's not true, and you have to know it. People starve where the POLITICIANS won't let food in to them. We have enough. We are going off-topic here, but trust me, you DON'T want to line up with Ehrlich. If it wasn't so sad, it would be comical, how wrong he was.

Furthermore, if people reproduce uninhibitedly in an ecosystem that cannot support them (read: desert) then there will be localized shortage of food as nature does its thing.


Piltdown man was proved to be flawed BY the scientific community. Science is not above admitting it's mistakes. Science is not above re-examining it's OWN assumptions.


It took forever! That is my point. They fought tooth and nail before it was agreed that it was flawed. How many other huge flaws are out there that are still being fought for by people with a vested interest?
Would that the same could be said about most religious people...


No - it's still called the Theory of Relativity. Perhaps YOU are on first-name-terms with it? No theory is ever considered 'perfect' by the scientific community, that is why they constantly rework them.


Again, you are sidestepping. My point is that - like evolution - most people take it for granted, even though it has flaws.


Sounds like you don't like scientists much. Did one bite you, as a child?


No, but a dog did once. And I like dogs. Once again, you are arguing against me instead of for your theory. Can we get back to evolution and ID?

You wouldn't happen to be from South Carolina, by any chance...?

Sorry, Space Coast of Florida. NASA country. My father worked there until he retired in 99 and my brother is still there.

I've generally found that people attack the other person when they are losing an argument. Shall we discuss ID and evolution again...

Hawkintom']
For those of you who don't know. Science was in DENIAL about the dangers of HIV and AIDs until the very late 1980's. Science was wrong. Had "science" accepted the evidence sooner, countless lives would have been saved.

SOME scientists (and a LOT of politicians) avoided the subject, hoping it would go away.

Look at the overall information gleaned on GRIDS/AIDS in the 80's and you'll see that, for the most part, the science community actually OVER-estimated the risk.

# New species have arisen in historical times. For example:

* A new species of mosquito, the molestus form isolated in London's Underground, has speciated from Culex pipiens (Byrne and Nichols 1999; Nuttall 1998).


Right, now can you show me a mosquito that has evolved into something ELSE besides another kind of mosquito? (Or ANY other animal?)



You'd expect certain things to show up as a result of the big bang. We've seen ratios of production that matches the big bang theory's predictions spot on. You have a better hypothesis?


Which is what it really boils down, right? One person thinks their hypothesis is better than the other person's hypothesis, and since neither can be proven and both have flaws, then it just becomes a matter of preference.

Wrong. Show me evidence that doesn't fit with evolutionary theory.

The fossil record? How come we have dinosaurs aplenty, but nothing to definitively show evolution in action?

Hawkintom']Practical science works my friend. Science where people try to answer things like "where did the universe come from?" or "where did man come from" or "what is a pulsar" or "where is an electron on that atom right now?" or "what is a photon?" has a much worse track record.

And even with all those things you mention, science had to overcome its own inertia to get where we are today. The only reason we are is because of capitalism and companies that didn't care about WHO was right or wrong, but WHAT was right and wrong using those things to make money.

This has been pointed out before, but science is not a game of "we're right and you're wrong", it's a process of experimentation and accumulation of data. Theories are developed in response to data- it's a system similar to the investigation of a crime scene, in which the investigators piece together evidence to help create a picture of what happened. Only in the case of most science (like evolution), it's an ongoing process, where we're constantly accumulating new data, and thereby refining the picture. We've gathered mountains of data over the many, many decades since Darwin presented evolution as a scientific theory. Other ideas *have* been presented, but so far only evolution best fits the evidence provided. If something comes along that better fits the evidence, or new data comes along that discredits the old data, the scientists studying it would go with that. Hell, most scientists chomp at the bit for such a thing, because they'd have their names written up in the history books for decades to come. Take cold fusion (one of the big scientific holy grails) for instance; we know that it is now possible, but it's not what we hoped it would be- it requires far more energy to make it work than what it puts out, thus disappointing physicists who wanted so much more.

Science allows room to be proven wrong; in fact, it depends on it. It doesn't claim to know everything, nor does it claim to be infallible. It simply provides the best explanation for current data. That's it, that's all.

You claim to be the guy with the answers, though... that's the problem. You seem to feel you can comfortably dismiss all the evidence for evolution... because you have a 'better' explanation.


No I don't. Keep in mind the original discussion here. Should ID be taught next to evolution in schools. I think yes, because I thinkn they are probably both hugely flawed. I want children to be educated that evolution is NOT fact and it has gaping holes in it and one way to do that is to allow people who support creationism or ID to teach their beliefs as well.

My point is that I think evolution is very much like a religion. It is a "scientific religion" that some people believe the same way that creationists believe in creationism.

Evolution is like the string theory and such. The evidence isn't very good, its not very available, and it is unlikely that it can be proven. It is a wild-ass-guess that went critical mass. Even Darwin pulled WAY BACK from his original assertions in his later years.

Hawkintom']Right, now can you show me a mosquito that has evolved into something ELSE besides another kind of mosquito? (Or ANY other animal?)

Not nessicary. You should know that. The time scale is too massive, but once the speciation barrier is breeched, the possiblities are endless. We've proved that speciation can happen, and that populations diverge to fit ecological niches, the two keystones upon which evolutionary theory rests.


Which is what it really boils down, right? One person thinks their hypothesis is better than the other person's hypothesis, and since neither can be proven and both have flaws, then it just becomes a matter of preference.

No. Evolution has no real flaws (unlike ID, which makes no sense) and has entire databanks full of evidence. Where is this evidence for ID?



The fossil record? How come we have dinosaurs aplenty, but nothing to definitively show evolution in action?
Something like this:
The following are fossil transitions between species and genera:

1. Human ancestry. There are many fossils of human ancestors, and the differences between species are so gradual that it is not always clear where to draw the lines between them.

2. The horns of titanotheres (extinct Cenozoic mammals) appear in progressively larger sizes, from nothing to prominence. Other head and neck features also evolved. These features are adaptations for head-on ramming analogous to sheep behavior (Stanley 1974).

3. A gradual transitional fossil sequence connects the foraminifera Globigerinoides trilobus and Orbulina universa (Pearson et al. 1997). O. universa, the later fossil, features a spherical test surrounding a "Globigerinoides-like" shell, showing that a feature was added, not lost. The evidence is seen in all major tropical ocean basins. Several intermediate morphospecies connect the two species, as may be seen in the figure included in Lindsay (1997).

4. The fossil record shows transitions between species of Phacops (a trilobite; Phacops rana is the Pennsylvania state fossil; Eldredge 1972; 1974; Strapple 1978).

5. Planktonic forminifera (Malmgren et al. 1984). This is an example of punctuated gradualism. A ten-million-year foraminifera fossil record shows long periods of stasis and other periods of relatively rapid but still gradual morphologic change.

6. Fossils of the diatom Rhizosolenia are very common (they are mined as diatomaceous earth), and they show a continuous record of almost two million years which includes a record of a speciation event (Miller 1999, 44-45).

7. Lake Turkana mollusc species (Lewin 1981).

8. Cenozoic marine ostracodes (Cronin 1985).

9. The Eocene primate genus Cantius (Gingerich 1976, 1980, 1983).

10. Scallops of the genus Chesapecten show gradual change in one "ear" of their hinge over about 13 million years. The ribs also change (Pojeta and Springer 2001; Ward and Blackwelder 1975).

11. Gryphaea (coiled oysters) become larger and broader but thinner and flatter during the Early Jurassic (Hallam 1968).


The following are fossil transitionals between families, orders, and classes:

1. Human ancestry. Australopithecus, though its leg and pelvis bones show it walked upright, had a bony ridge on the forearm, probably vestigial, indicative of knuckle walking (Richmond and Strait 2000).

2. Dinosaur-bird transitions.

3. Haasiophis terrasanctus is a primitive marine snake with well-developed hind limbs. Although other limbless snakes might be more ancestral, this fossil shows a relationship of snakes with limbed ancestors (Tchernov et al. 2000). Pachyrhachis is another snake with legs that is related to Haasiophis (Caldwell and Lee 1997).

4. The jaws of mososaurs are also intermediate between snakes and lizards. Like the snake's stretchable jaws, they have highly flexible lower jaws, but unlike snakes, they do not have highly flexible upper jaws. Some other skull features of mososaurs are intermediate between snakes and primitive lizards (Caldwell and Lee 1997; Lee et al. 1999; Tchernov et al. 2000).

5. Transitions between mesonychids and whales.

6. Transitions between fish and tetrapods.

7. Transitions from condylarths (a kind of land mammal) to fully aquatic modern manatees. In particular, Pezosiren portelli is clearly a sirenian, but its hind limbs and pelvis are unreduced (Domning 2001a, 2001b).


The following are fossil transitionals between kingdoms and phyla:

1. The Cambrian fossils Halkiera and Wiwaxia have features that connect them with each other and with the modern phyla of Mollusca, Brachiopoda, and Annelida. In particular, one species of halkieriid has brachiopod-like shells on the dorsal side at each end. This is seen also in an immature stage of the living brachiopod species Neocrania. It has setae identical in structure to polychaetes, a group of annelids. Wiwaxia and Halkiera have the same basic arrangement of hollow sclerites, an arrangement that is similar to the chaetae arrangement of polychaetes. The undersurface of Wiwaxia has a soft sole like a mollusk's foot, and its jaw looks like a mollusk's mouth. Aplacophorans, which are a group of primitive mollusks, have a soft body covered with spicules similar to the sclerites of Wiwaxia (Conway Morris 1998, 185-195).

2. Cambrian and Precambrain fossils Anomalocaris and Opabinia are transitional between arthropods and lobopods.

3. An ancestral echinoderm has been found that is intermediate between modern echinoderms and other deuterostomes (Shu et al. 2004).

Science allows room to be proven wrong; in fact, it depends on it. It doesn't claim to know everything, nor does it claim to be infallible. It simply provides the best explanation for current data. That's it, that's all.

But that is my point. The best explanation for current data can be fatal if it is taken as absolute truth. And that happens all the time.

Evolution is not even necessarily the best explanation. It is an attempt to explain something that we DO NOT KNOW the answer to right now, and we may never know it. Why not temper our teaching of it with those facts?

Hawkintom']You're sidestepping the issue. Science, as most people get it spoonfed to them, is often grossly wrong. Evolution is a gross example.


'Most people' are not scientists... and there exists an unfortunate partial-illiterate class of scientists.

Do not judge science, by it's lowest-common-denominator representatives.

Is an MTV science program going to be perfect science? No - it is aimed at a market that wouldn't 'get' the heart of the matter... so you get pop-corn science.

Hawkintom']
Now you are understanding me better. You're just missing one last connection. The scientific community IS POLITICAL. If you did your doctoral thesis on evolution, you aren't going to take well to evidence that your beliefs are incorrect. Science moves at a glacial pace because scientists are unable to set aside their egos and move on to better ideas quickly.


No - to the greater extent, science is NOT political. Almost scarily so.

It isn't so much that people won't let go... but why SHOULD you let go, until something better comes along?

Hawkintom']
That's not true, and you have to know it. People starve where the POLITICIANS won't let food in to them. We have enough. We are going off-topic here, but trust me, you DON'T want to line up with Ehrlich. If it wasn't so sad, it would be comical, how wrong he was.

Furthermore, if people reproduce uninhibitedly in an ecosystem that cannot support them (read: desert) then there will be localized shortage of food as nature does its thing.


You started the off-topic, my friend.

If you are a scientist, you know that the predictions made 25 years ago WOULD be true, if science hadn't come up with better ways to grow food, more efficient crops, superior irrigation.

At the moment, although more than half of the world is starving, we are not losing TOO MUCH ground, because science is keeping pace with population.

Hawkintom']
It took forever! That is my point. They fought tooth and nail before it was agreed that it was flawed. How many other huge flaws are out there that are still being fought for by people with a vested interest?
Would that the same could be said about most religious people...


No - they didn't fight tooth and nail. In the case of Piltdown, it was largely ignored for a couple of decades. Hardly the desperate rearguard you suggest.

Hawkintom']
Again, you are sidestepping. My point is that - like evolution - most people take it for granted, even though it has flaws.


And the flaws are.... what?

You are hollow rhetoric, my friend. All sum, and no substance.

Hawkintom']
No, but a dog did once. And I like dogs. Once again, you are arguing against me instead of for your theory. Can we get back to evolution and ID?


You KKEP making blanket assertions about the evils of scientists. I just wonder why you hate them so much.

I'm not arguing against you - just wondering what the source of the irrational fear of science is.

Hawkintom']
Sorry, Space Coast of Florida. NASA country. My father worked there until he retired in 99 and my brother is still there.

I've generally found that people attack the other person when they are losing an argument. Shall we discuss ID and evolution again...

Amusing. You find my thought that you might be from South Carolina an 'attack'? You are insulted by the comparison, then?

Off-topic perhaps, but there were non-ID reasons why I thought you might be Carolinian. Ah well.

And, considering you have veered from String Theory to AIDS in your tirade against scientists... I find it somewhat cute that you are prompting the thread back on topic...

Hawkintom']But that is my point. The best explanation for current data can be fatal if it is taken as absolute truth. And that happens all the time.

Evolution is not even necessarily the best explanation. It is an attempt to explain something that we DO NOT KNOW the answer to right now, and we may never know it. Why not temper our teaching of it with those facts?
You mean besides the fact that evolution is a model?

It helps us predict what will happen in the future with species. Evolution provides a strong bedrock for most of biology, especially ecology, when we have to watch. Claiming that no new species will ever arise is silly. Will evolution change? Of course, as we learn more, the details will shift quite a bit (especially the taxa arguments), but the core won't change, unless something extremely unexpected happens.

It's like the ideal gas law. It doesn't hold true exactly, but it does give a nice model of what should happen.

Hawkintom']But that is my point. The best explanation for current data can be fatal if it is taken as absolute truth. And that happens all the time.
Of course most scientists will tell you that nothing in science is an absolute truth only the best explanation they have available at the time.

Evolution is not even necessarily the best explanation. It is an attempt to explain something that we DO NOT KNOW the answer to right now, and we may never know it. Why not temper our teaching of it with those facts?
Actually in science evolution is the best explanation for how humans developed at the present time. It can change but as of right now its the best we've got.

Hawkintom']But that is my point. The best explanation for current data can be fatal if it is taken as absolute truth. And that happens all the time.

Evolution is not even necessarily the best explanation. It is an attempt to explain something that we DO NOT KNOW the answer to right now, and we may never know it. Why not temper our teaching of it with those facts?

No it's not 'absolute truth', but the evidence is strong and compelling. Just because forensics scientists did not personally witness John Wayne Gacy kill young men and stuff their corpses in his basement, doesn't mean that they didn't have compelling evidence that suggested he did it. Just because there were no witnesses to the crime doesn't mean that Gacy didn't commit the crime. Or do you think all those who have been convicted of murder should go free because no evidence can be seen as infallible?

Now, you say that evolution isn't the best explanation. Do you have a better one? Because if you do, I'd like to hear it.

Hawkintom']Right, now can you show me a mosquito that has evolved into something ELSE besides another kind of mosquito? (Or ANY other animal?)


I understand. You don't like evolution because you don't understand it, right?

A mosquito wouldn't become a 'different' thing... it's offspring would inherit certain characteristic.... which they would pass on to their offspring... which THEY would pass on... etc. After a few thousands/millions of years, you'll have a mosquito-ish creature which isn't a mosquito.

Kind of like the evolution from Miacids into cats, dogs and bears.

What is it about the anti-Evolution crowd that so desperately wants to see a fish evolve into a banana, before they'll accept it?


Hawkintom']
Which is what it really boils down, right? One person thinks their hypothesis is better than the other person's hypothesis, and since neither can be proven and both have flaws, then it just becomes a matter of preference.


No - it shouldn't be a matter of preference. It SHOULD be a matter of which has better evidence.

Hawkintom']
The fossil record? How come we have dinosaurs aplenty, but nothing to definitively show evolution in action?

I guess you just haven't looked.

Any race tht can engineer life, and invisibly plant it on this world, WITH evidence that suggests it was created some other way, and leave NO evidence of their passing - IS godlike.


Come on now... engineering DNA isn't way beyond our capabilities right now. Vast space travel is, but we can already "theorize" ways that might be possible. Let's say something like wormholes existed and a race learned how to use them. They wouldn't have to be godlike to seed planets with life.

Advanced sure, but by godlike, I would assume we are talking about something that could have created the UNIVERSE, not just travel around from world to world and seed planets.

We're playing semantics games. My point is that you don't have to believe in a "Christian God" to believe that ID is a fair argument over evolution.


An, also, non-falsifiable... so it all becomes irrelevent whether you believe in hyperspace-hoppin martians, or big floaty ghost god.


...or a universe of matter and energy that came from nothing or has always been here or...

Hey, I'm the first to tell you that creationist arguments that something had to create the universe are circular and they quickly turn to a God that has always been. But that is the point, we cannot comprehend the circumstances in which we find ourselves in right now. It's great to try to understand them, but for one side to say they know and that the other side is just WRONG is folly.


And, if you think lightning and goo are the ONLY current model of origin of life on earth... well...


I'm simplifying, but that's still more or less the same logic of any evolutionary theory. Something amazing had to happen at some point. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.


Why is evolution crap? Show facts, my friend... not more Baptist Hate Propoganda. Show real evidence.


The fossil record... Most life appears at the "Cambrian Explosion." Evolution would predict a slow, but somewhat steady increase in the variety of life.

Random mutation. No mutation ever observed has added to the genome. Some take away, and even occasionally this will result in some sort of survival benefit within the species, but it does not create something new.

Someone metioned Pepper Moths. That wasn't evolution. In some areas, darkening of the moths preceded the darkening of the tree bark. Furthermore, moths don't normally rest on the trunks of trees the way the textbooks taught. They had to GLUE THEM ON to try and support the theory. The Pepper Moth genome already included the ability for the moth to change color when the environment changed. It wasn't evolution. It was adaptation within rules that the genetic makeup of the moth already allowed for.

And, again, you make the same mistake. Do you not ralise that, even if Evolution IS bull... that doesn't make ID ANY MORE TRUE?


I most certainly realize that. Furthermore, you are making assumptions again, since I have not SAID any such thing. My point, which is apparently more difficult to understand than I imagined, is that evolution does not deserve exalted status in the classroom. It is no better than ID and if it is going to be taught, so should ID.

Like what? Hollow rhetoric doesn't cut it... and if you start bringing out tired old horses like 'Irreducible Complexity', I'm going to start doubting your rationality on this subject...


Ok, doubt away. But please enlighten me. Why is irreducible complexity not an argument against evolution?

And I'm really dumb I guess, but please explain this as well... Let's say GREEN EYES was a huge advantage to a ZEBRA (I'm just using easy to grasp examples here.)

One day a ZEBRA mutuates to have GREEN EYES. It mates (more than others, since this is a positive trait), but GREEN EYES are a recessive trait. And since there are no other GREEN EYED ZEBRAS (unless mutation struck twice in the same area at the same time, etc...) How will any of its offspring have GREEN EYES?

Hawkintom']No I don't. Keep in mind the original discussion here. Should ID be taught next to evolution in schools. I think yes, because I thinkn they are probably both hugely flawed. I want children to be educated that evolution is NOT fact and it has gaping holes in it and one way to do that is to allow people who support creationism or ID to teach their beliefs as well.

My point is that I think evolution is very much like a religion. It is a "scientific religion" that some people believe the same way that creationists believe in creationism.

Evolution is like the string theory and such. The evidence isn't very good, its not very available, and it is unlikely that it can be proven. It is a wild-ass-guess that went critical mass. Even Darwin pulled WAY BACK from his original assertions in his later years.

Evolution - whether flawed or not, is scientific.

ID is not.

Thus, it should not be taught in science class.

If you think the evidence for evidence is not 'very good'... you must not look for it... there has been some pretty good evidence posted just in this thread.

Oh - and Darwin =/= evolution.

Now, you say that evolution isn't the best explanation. Do you have a better one? Because if you do, I'd like to hear it.

So "spontaneous generation" was a good theory because no one had a better theory, even though it was wrong?

http://biology.clc.uc.edu/courses/bio114/spontgen.htm

:confused:

Hawkintom']So "spontaneous generation" was a good theory because no one had a better theory, even though it was wrong?

http://biology.clc.uc.edu/courses/bio114/spontgen.htm

:confused:
It was disproven.

Hawkintom']But that is my point. The best explanation for current data can be fatal if it is taken as absolute truth. And that happens all the time.

Evolution is not even necessarily the best explanation. It is an attempt to explain something that we DO NOT KNOW the answer to right now, and we may never know it. Why not temper our teaching of it with those facts?

Evolution is a theory. It is taught as such, when it it taught scientifically.

Thus, it IS tempered by our uncertainty, and then fact that we may never know.

That still is no excuse to introduce spiritualism into the science classroom.

Hawkintom']Someone metioned Pepper Moths. That wasn't evolution. In some areas, darkening of the moths preceded the darkening of the tree bark. Furthermore, moths don't normally rest on the trunks of trees the way the textbooks taught. They had to GLUE THEM ON to try and support the theory. The Pepper Moth genome already included the ability for the moth to change color when the environment changed. It wasn't evolution. It was adaptation within rules that the genetic makeup of the moth already allowed for.
I mentioned the pepper moths when someone made the rediculous arguement that when the environment changes the things living there die or move. I never said it proved evolution. It goes along with natural selection.



I most certainly realize that. Furthermore, you are making assumptions again, since I have not SAID any such thing. My point, which is apparently more difficult to understand than I imagined, is that evolution does not deserve exalted status in the classroom. It is no better than ID and if it is going to be taught, so should ID.
The point is that evolution isnt given an exalted status in the classroom. Its taught in science because evolution is a scientific explaination. ID can be taught in a religion class or a philosophy class but not a science class since its hypothesis can not be tested or falsified. This means that ID is not a scientific arguement and hence should not be in a science class.