Creationism/Intelligent Design [Archive]

Rubystars

03-12-2007, 06:19 PM

In the USA, and in a few other countries, there is a movement to teach creationism or intelligent design alongside evolution in public schools. This is mostly a social battle, as there is no controversy within the scientific community at all.

There is, however, a political drive to try to influence schoolboards to teach a religious point of view alongside the scientific one.

Creationism (usually the young earth variety) is what used to be pushed. Now it's morphed into an argument for 'Intelligent Design', which is a cloaked version of the same thing, just stated in more neutral language. It argues that there is empirical evidence for an intelligently designed universe, but usually doesn't directly state the nature of that intelligence.

In the interest of 'fairness' many schoolboards have tried to accomodate creationism, but this 'fairness' is really not fair at all. Evolution has multiple lines of empirical evidence to support it, while creationism has... a religious basis. They should not be presented as equally scientific or equivalent and opposing positions because they're simply not.

I might as well explain my position before we get started on debating this. I am a Christian, however, I accept evolution. While I believe that evolution was guided by God, I don't think that such guidance can be empirically demonstrated, therefore I don't subscribe to ID which tries to do exactly that. We can subjectively infer design, but we can not objectively demonstrate it. There is such a concept in science which is called methodological naturalism. Regardless of religious belief, a scientist must work as if he were an atheist, looking for natural explanations to natural phenomena. When they reach into the supernatural for explanations, they are no longer doing science at all.

Another big beef I have with the so-called 'scientific creationists' besides their lack of methodological naturalism, is that they go about their "science" backwards. They start with the conclusion they want, and then scrape around trying to find pieces of evidence to fit it or support it. The way science works is that you start with the evidence, testing different hypotheses along the way to see where that evidence leads you, without firm commitment to a particular outcome.

AFPheonix

03-13-2007, 05:48 AM

This was one of my biggest problems with being a Bio/chem major while attending church. People's eyes would glaze over and they'd mutter, "oh well I'm glad SOMEONE'S interested in that....", or their eyes would light up and try to talk Creationism. I'd try not to engage them, because really, you can't reason with someone who won't believe what's clearly obvious, or who uses God and supernatural events as trump cards.
The science behind Creationism is so flawed, too, it's terrible. Anyone with half a brain can tell you why it's all total crap, too. However, a lot of people at churches will just eat this crap up and beg for more, so they can go confront evil science people. It doesn't matter how much you debunk this for people, they'll just keep throwing out crap science scenarios and give you this smug look.

I remember when I was in Junior High, a guy named Dr. Chittick, associated with the Creationism Institute came through to do a seminar. Egads, the lies he told. Terrible. And people just unquestioningly believed him. http://www.icr.org/
Here's the website for the group he's affiliated with. Hurts my brain just looking at it.

Frankly, the creation story, along with every OTHER creation story (perhaps including FSM) belongs not in a science classroom, but in a philosophy or comparative religion class.

Rubystars

03-13-2007, 02:06 PM

I actually had a bit of a written debate with Cynthia Carlson, another creationist, wherein she admitted that I would still go to heaven even if I was an evolutionist. I wonder if she was taken to task for that opinion by the ICR.

I set up this page a while back, but I haven't updated it in a long time, so I need to fix some errors in the text and some typoes and such.

http://www.geocities.com/wendyschristianpage/evolution.html

It includes an email exchange I had with an ICR creationist, Cynthia Carlson.

I had a talk.origins post of the month as well, although my views have evolved somewhat since I posted that. The tone of the piece came off as if I thought of Scripture as being completely symbolic, which I definitely don't, but I wasn't really thinking that through at the time.

http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/postmonth/jan03.html

I had gotten pretty involved in the whole debate for a while, although I've taken breaks from it. I found that when I got involved in forums like talk.origins and others that they often tried to attack me for not being an atheist as well as a social liberal like them, and tried to make me feel as if they were right and I was wrong rather than simply having different philosophies. It's frustrating because theism/religion itself can't be proven or disproven empirically and they should respect the fact that I don't agree with them.

I am, in many ways, a conservative Christian, and I wasn't treated very kindly by a lot of people in the EvC community, so I pulled back for a while. I am still very interested in the debate itself though, and I do enjoy a good debate with a YEC now and then. The most frustrating thing for me is how some people will lure people into accepting evolution as compatible with faith (which it definitely is) but then once you accept it will immediately start attacking that same faith in an attempt to make you into clones of themselves.

protege

03-13-2007, 05:08 PM

Another big beef I have with the so-called 'scientific creationists' besides their lack of methodological naturalism, is that they go about their "science" backwards. They start with the conclusion they want, and then scrape around trying to find pieces of evidence to fit it or support it. The way science works is that you start with the evidence, testing different hypotheses along the way to see where that evidence leads you, without firm commitment to a particular outcome.

I think that's the problem many people have with it. Religious nuts are well-known for bending the truths to fit their own agendas...so why is this any difference? Sure, they may uncover evidence that goes against their beliefs, but do you really think they'll let that be known? They'll make such evidence "disappear" as they try to arrive at the answer.

Also, keep in mind that the Bible itself was written thousands of years ago. In those days, technology, and one's education wasn't nearly as advanced now. As such, man's understanding of things was rather limited. He had no idea where he came from or why certain things happened...and, dare I say it, God was an attempt to answer the questions.

Early Christians weren't alone in thinking like this--many early civilizations assigned "gods" to nearly everything in daily like--the sun god, rain god, etc. simply because they couldn't understand what was causing things.

Even so, I don't really think Creation can be proven...simply because there's not enough evidence compared with Evolution.

Rubystars

03-13-2007, 08:37 PM

I think that's the problem many people have with it. Religious nuts are well-known for bending the truths to fit their own agendas...so why is this any difference? Sure, they may uncover evidence that goes against their beliefs, but do you really think they'll let that be known? They'll make such evidence "disappear" as they try to arrive at the answer.

In fairness this isn't confined to creationism or even religion. All pseudoscientific pursuits, such as reflexology, etc. use the same techniques to cover up the fact that their 'science' is really not science.

Also, keep in mind that the Bible itself was written thousands of years ago. In those days, technology, and one's education wasn't nearly as advanced now. As such, man's understanding of things was rather limited. He had no idea where he came from or why certain things happened...and, dare I say it, God was an attempt to answer the questions.

If you substitute God into every gap in your current knowledge, that's called a God of the gaps philosophy, which leaves your concept of God vulnerable to advancing knowledge. A much more reliable philosophy is one in which you believe in the ability of God to work through natural processes, no matter what is discovered.

Early Christians weren't alone in thinking like this--many early civilizations assigned "gods" to nearly everything in daily like--the sun god, rain god, etc. simply because they couldn't understand what was causing things.

There are still a lot of people who say these things have supernatural powers to them. There is a grain of truth in such things. Natural forces are very powerful and greatly affect our daily lives. One thing about Christianity and monotheism in general is that it acknowledges that all of these forces have power, but that all that power is subservient to one God. Therefore you don't need to come up with a god for every natural force, you just have to see God's hand in such forces or in their origin.

Even so, I don't really think Creation can be proven...simply because there's not enough evidence compared with Evolution.

Creation itself can't be proven and it can't be disproven. Creationism, as advocated by various YEC organizations such as AIG, ICR and CSE, can definitely be disproven. In science, you can disprove things but you can't prove them. Proof is for math and liquor. You can, however, build a good solid case for something. Once a concept such as evolution reaches the level of 'theory', it can be treated as 'fact', just as the Cell Theory, the Nuclear Theory, and the theory of gravitation.

Barefootgirl

03-14-2007, 09:14 AM

Great topic, I love this one!

I wouldn't say I am particulalrly conservative but I am a Christian and believe that evolution is "how it all happened". I also accept that the Bibilical accounts of Creation were written by smarter people and priests to expain the world around them to a bunch of prehistoric goat-herders...but here's my problem. Why does the Biblical Creation story follow the scientific theory so closely? Whats the order of creation in the Bible? Light, the land, the Sun and Moon (OK, this is a bit out of order), the continents, plants, animals, man. Its a bit disturbing, to be honest. Was it just good luck? Did the ancient Hebrew writers just observe and guess?

I don't believe in pan-spermia or alien civilisations or any of that crap, but i do find it extremely interesting and thought-provoking.

squall

03-14-2007, 11:48 AM

Well one thing they never mentioned was dinosaurs and prehistoric creatures, even the ice age ones. If you read the Bible word for word, basically they never existed. Where I strayed away from the Bible as any kind of an accurate and truthful document, was the issue of evolution, age of the Earth, all those things. If the Bible can be wrong or forgetful about such things, then it can also be wrong and fictional in alot of other ways. The Bible would have you believe that the Earth is 6000-8000 years old or something like that.

What I can't stand about the people that follow the intelligent design theory is that they want to get the all the schools in the country to teach intelligent design. In Georgia, I hear they are close to making a required curriculum on it. Never mind that there are other religious groups in the country and people who choose not to believe in any religion, let alone Christianity. But some of these people feel that they have the moral high ground and are entitled to shove it down everybody's throats.

AFPheonix

03-15-2007, 04:36 PM

They do mention leviathans and other creatures in say, the book of Job.

What it does say is that god created animals. It doesn't mention any other species by name, so I gather dinosaurs are just kind of in there.

I do think the book of Genesis as we have it now is an amalgam of several creation stories. If you read it carefully, it seems to start going over ground it had already covered, especially after the first, monumental chapter. Also, the writing style varies widely from that first chapter and onward into the stories of Noah et. al.

rahmota

03-17-2007, 08:30 PM

tendomentis

03-19-2007, 05:50 PM

I'd like to weigh in with the ever un-popular "apparent age" theory of the universe. To those who already know this theory and are rolling your eyes, please feel free to skip my post as I certainly am not posting it to offend you.

For those who don't know what it is...

The apparent age theory states (in a nut shell, so forgive any undue paraphrasing) that the universe appears as old as it is because it was created with all semblance of order that would support its existence. I.e., as "Adam" and "Eve" were "created" fully adult, any observer of Adam and Eve ten minutes after their creation could examine their bodies, fingernails, hair growth, bone structure, etc, and determine scientifically that they had been in existance for a period of time greater than ten minutes. Any use of any element of the universe to determine the age of the universe will result in an age consistent with the age of the universe that was intended.

Another metaphor would be a DVD. You can load the DVD, skip to the last chapter, and as far as the characters in the "universe" of the movie know, everything that had happened in the previous chapters of the movie (but you didn't view) STILL happened. The bad guy is about to win because of stupid decisions made by the good guys in chapter 4, but as far as you are concerned it never really happened.

Simplistic, I know. But an apt metaphor nonetheless. Not a popular theory on either side of the debate as it more or less removes the need for the debate at all (and no one feels "victorious" as a result). This takes the "true" age of the universe to a philosophical discussion instead of a scientific.

I tend to hold to any theory that has been scientifically demonstrated as valid, but with the acknowledgment that the facts are such because that is how they were "created" to be.

AFPheonix

03-19-2007, 06:34 PM

tendomentis

03-19-2007, 08:13 PM

"Apparent age" has not reached theory status. That is merely a hypothesis. More importantly, it's a hypothesis that is unlikely to be proven.

I guess since people rolled their eyes enough at these brainiacs who said that God planted fossils in the ground as a test of faith, they had to come up with a different way to phrase it.
I think it's stupid, and frankly, I don't think I'd want a God like that who'd fuck with my head in that kind of manner.

I apologize as I DID misspeak when I identified it as a theory. Hypothesis is a much better description. I doubt very much it COULD ever reach theory status as this hypothesis can not even be scientifically tested.

I, personally, don't see it as God "who'd fuck with my head", but merely God acting as a God of order. Just from a philosophical standpoint, nearly everything that a "higher being" (i.e. God) could conceive of would not make sense to us lower beings, therefore it would always feel like that higher being was "fucking with our heads".

Do you think that doctors are, in the same manner, "fucking with our heads" when they tell us we have to receive a series of vaccinations in a certain order before we travel to medically unsound countries? Just because a person with a limited scope of knowledge/perception can't understand why something is done a certain way does not make it incorrect or malicious.

Bear in mind that these are all just my own musings on the subject at hand, so take them for what little they're worth.

Rubystars

03-20-2007, 05:28 PM

Why does the Biblical Creation story follow the scientific theory so closely?

If you believe in it, you could say that the authors were inspired by God. However, I would advise caution in one way. We are dealing with belief, and the Bible does not need scientific justification. The Bible's topics are spiritual and it is not a science book. Revelations from nature can help to strengthen faith, but they don't objectively demonstrate that it is correct.

I, personally, don't see it as God "who'd fuck with my head", but merely God acting as a God of order. Just from a philosophical standpoint, nearly everything that a "higher being" (i.e. God) could conceive of would not make sense to us lower beings, therefore it would always feel like that higher being was "fucking with our heads".

If God made the earth and universe to appear older than they really are, that implies dishonesty. I don't see how "appearance of age" or "apparent age" creationists can talk about that topic and then say that God is Truth. I believe in a truthful God who wouldn't lie to us.

Oh, and I actually did hear a group of people talking about how Satan may have planted fossils one time. My mouth dropped open I was so shocked. Before I'd heard them, I'd thought that kind of thing was a bad joke, but apparently people really do believe in stuff like that. I thought about bringing my trilobite to scare them with but thought better of it.

Rubystars

03-20-2007, 05:39 PM

Well most of the good comments have already been taken. SO I'll just weigh in on the side of evolution as it is the only theory or statement of how all of things got to where they are. There ought to be a law saying that ONLY scientifically based evolution should be taught in schools.

Evolution as a scientific theory must include things that make it falsifiable. Such a law would be going too far because beds of fossils could be found which included human remains in places they shouldn't be, like Cambrian rocks, or birds could lay eggs that puppies hatch out of. You might laugh but either of these things would be scientific evidence that evolution was false.

It is currently a very well-established theory which has passed the tests it's been put to and made accurate predictions. Evolution predicts that a bird's egg will never hatch a puppy, and that human fossil remains will never be found in Cambrian rock.

The ability to make predictions and falsifiability are two hallmarks of a valid scientific theory. Creationism has neither of the two, which is a major factor in why it's not even a scientific hypothesis.

A better law would be to only allow those theories which have been scientifically established and are accepted by a large portion of the scientific community. That would leave out most pseudosciences by default and would only allow for evolution by default.

That still wouldn't address the question of private schools, which can teach whatever they like, within reason, and I don't believe that the government even should dictate what private schools can or can not teach.

Banrion

03-23-2007, 12:42 AM

Rubystars

03-24-2007, 01:18 AM

Maybe I went to a "progressive" school, but I highly doubt it. Nevertheless, we were taught both, just in different classes. SCIENCE classes taught evolution, while SOCIAL STUDIES taught about creationism. Our entire sophomore year of social studies was about religions, all of the major global religions, past & present.

Well only crazy fanatics have a problem with creationism being taught about in social studies. It's just treating it, or its cousin ID as hard science that's the problem.

These aren't ideas that should be presented in a school atmosphere as something in direct opposition to the other. While logically if presented that you must pick A or B, they cannot co-exist, there is a way to present the material without making a child choose their religion or their biology grade. The teen years are confusing enough, there is no reason to throw these kids into a spiritual debate in school, especially PUBLIC schools where religion should not play a part in education.

Evolution is not religious though. It's just a scientific fact. They should be expected to understand that advancements in Biology are often based directly or indirectly upon evolution, such as developing antibiotics which are harder for bacteria to develop resistance to, or how the flu vaccine needs to be updated every year.

Looking back now, after all the arguments of recent, this is a fine way to present both ideas, without the school supporting one over another, or forcing one idea on a student.

When one idea has scientific merit and one idea has NO scientific merit, only the former should be taught as science. This is not forcing it on students, it's teaching them the facts. If the facts conflict with their doctrines, it shouldn't matter. Are we going to stop teaching that pork is a rich source of protein because it might offend Muslim students?

Just like in real life, both ideas exist simultaneously. If you believe in creationism, you just learn the stuff your science teacher wants, just the facts as presented, with an understanding that it is being taught as something that SOME people believe.

Evolution is not a belief. When you have empirical evidence for something, you don't have to have faith in it or believe in it. Scientists don't "believe in evolution". They accept it based on the evidence.

Religion requires belief, science doesn't.

If you are more for evolution, you learn the creationism beliefs as presented regardless of your personal holding, and recognize it for what it is, something that SOME people believe.

Creationism and even creation itself is a belief, not something you can demonstrate empirically or objectively. See the difference?

I promise you it can be done, I'm pretty sure that not a single person in my social studies class is now a faithful Pagan-Catholic-Muslim-Jew-Buddist-Mormon-Communist, yet we studied ALL of these and their beliefs.

It's the way in which the subjects are taught that's important. Social studies class is fine for teaching about creationism, Science class is not.

rahmota

03-25-2007, 01:21 AM

Rubystars: You are correct I did misphrase the way that sort of law should be. The way I had it was just as big a knee jerk as the folks who want to have creationism taught as a science.

Banrion: Now that is a good way to have both side tauight. In their respectively appropriate places. Evolution as the science it is and creationism (or whatever other guise it is trying to be hidden as) in social studies as the belief system it is.

And to say this about the two. With a belief the condition of something matters upon which way you belief, with science your personal belief doesnt matter (unless we are talking about quantum physics and wierd particles) as to the condition of something. Ie you may not belief that truck is going to hurt when it hits you but science says its gonna sting quite a bit! :)

Seshat

09-22-2007, 02:30 PM

I would like the philosophy of science to be better taught. Basically, I'd like everyone who is capable of learning it, learning that science is the practice of creating disprovable hypotheses, testing them by an attempt to disprove them, and accepting them as tentatively true until they are disproven - which for things which actually ARE true, will be never.

I'd like the majority of people to understand that that method is the best way mankind has yet come up with to approximate the empirical truth of the world around us.

I'd also like them to understand that faith-based truths, such as God's existence, are unable to be disproven, and thus are outside the realm of science. Similarly, philosophical questions such as 'at what point does an ovum and its fertilizing sperm become a person' are outside the realm of science. Science only covers statements which can be disproven. 'The speed of light in a vacuum is fifty kilometres an hour' is a perfect scientific hypothesis - one just has to measure the speed of light in a vacuum.

I don't know if that's likely to happen, but if it did, it'd sure make a lot of things easier. People wouldn't be so fast to complain about it when a doctor says 'I don't know' or an engineer says 'let's find out'. Yeah, I know - that'll never happen. I'm a dreamer.

But science class - ie 'tentative truth class' - isn't the right place to teach stuff like 'In the beginning, God created ....'. That stuff belongs either in religious class - ie 'we believe because we have faith class'.

Another possible place for 'In the beginning...' sorts of studies is a philosophy, comparitive religion, anthropology or sociology sort of class. Where it's 'some people believe this...'

A few months ago, my father and I had a creation-vs-evolution argument. I told him something like this:
"Dad, I don't know whether there was no intelligence involved in creating the world, or if the world was created half a second ago by a God who has an incredible sense of detail and a weird sense of humour.
Either of those is possible, as is everything in between. Maybe God made the Earth by spinning it out of star matter, maybe He made the dinosaurs while He was figuring out brainstems and anatomical configurations. I don't know. And I'm fine with not knowing.
And if God made me, He made me a questioner and a thinker. I'm sure He'll forgive me for not having blind faith, and for keeping the question unanswered in my mind, because He made me this way. And if He didn't make me, if He doesn't exist, that's fine with me too. God's existence or non-existence is something I can't answer, and will never know the answer to."

My Dad isn't like me. He's a believer. He needs something solid, something he knows to be true. And religion gives him that. I'm happy to stand on the wobbly ground of 'I don't know', but I accept that there aren't that many people who can stand here with me.

I guess I wish there were fewer people on either the solid ground or the wobbly ground who keep trying to pull other people onto their patch.

Greenday

09-22-2007, 03:55 PM

If a sociology class teaches a bunch of different religions and cultures, I don't see a problem with that. But if it's a mandatory high school course, and the only thing it talks about is intelligent design, that's well beyond the line of acceptability.

Evolution as a scientific theory must include things that make it falsifiable. Such a law would be going too far because beds of fossils could be found which included human remains in places they shouldn't be, like Cambrian rocks, or birds could lay eggs that puppies hatch out of. You might laugh but either of these things would be scientific evidence that evolution was false.

This doesn't disprove anything. It could just be a perfect example of failed evolution. It doesn't mean evolution doesn't exist.

CancelMyService

09-23-2007, 08:57 PM

Seshat

09-24-2007, 03:29 AM

My main complaint is how the supporters of ID jump through hoops to claim it's not creationism, and it's just so intellectually dishonest. Oh, we aren't saying "God", just an "Intellegent Designer"....what BS.

It's not just dishonest, it's insulting. Do they really think that
A) we won't notice, or
B) we even CARE?

Whether it's 'god' or an 'intelligent designer', it's not disproveable. So it's STILL NOT SCIENCE, DAMMIT!
Teach it in religion class or a social studies class or something. Don't teach it in 'hypotheses disprovable by empirical experiments' class, aka science.

AFPheonix

09-24-2007, 06:46 AM

I would like the philosophy of science to be better taught. Basically, I'd like everyone who is capable of learning it, learning that science is the practice of creating disprovable hypotheses, testing them by an attempt to disprove them, and accepting them as tentatively true until they are disproven - which for things which actually ARE true, will be never.

I'd like the majority of people to understand that that method is the best way mankind has yet come up with to approximate the empirical truth of the world around us.

I'd also like them to understand that faith-based truths, such as God's existence, are unable to be disproven, and thus are outside the realm of science. Similarly, philosophical questions such as 'at what point does an ovum and its fertilizing sperm become a person' are outside the realm of science. Science only covers statements which can be disproven. 'The speed of light in a vacuum is fifty kilometres an hour' is a perfect scientific hypothesis - one just has to measure the speed of light in a vacuum.

I can't remember a single science class that I've taken since High School (and as a Bio major, that's been quite a few) that DIDN'T go over the basic idea of Scientific Method in the first chapter.
I think some of the problem is that the way schools are set up now, kids don't get enough time with science since they're too busy learning to take tests in math and reading. By the time they reach a certain age, science just seems to be a concept that is beyond them. They've lost the desire to learn about the processes going on around them. I've lost track of the number of people that I've run into who just kind of glaze over when any scientific topic comes up, they're that intimidated by it.
Furthermore, I am of the opinion that the humanities have fallen too far to the wayside in education. We are not teaching children the art of thinking through things.

Ugh. There's just so many interconnected issues in education, and in the meantime, we are falling behind other parts of the world in technical fields, which is unfortunate because our ability to innovate and think outside the box is really what fueled our rise to power.

DexX

02-18-2008, 11:56 PM

For a good guide of how various OECD member countries (plus a handful of guest countries) compare in maths, science, and reading, have a look at this (http://www.pisa.oecd.org/dataoecd/15/13/39725224.pdf). It's the brief summary of a report called PISA, run by the OECD. They tested something like half a million students in fifty-odd countries and did a statistical analysis of the results.

I was very pleased with how my beloved Australia did - always top ten, frequently top five - but it must be disturbing for those Americans who truly value a good education to see how poorly the US did across the board. Something needs to be done in a big hurry.

AFPheonix

02-19-2008, 08:44 AM

Yes, it does, before we end up with a generation of dullards.

If I ever squirt out a kid, you can bet that I will be taking an active interest in getting them curious about the world around them, even if it's something as simple as using electrical tape to connect a battery to a wire to a small light bulb.

susfubb

02-19-2008, 08:46 AM

Agreed to Seshat & ASP,

My most cherished dream was to become a math & science teacher - preferably to middle school students, because I knew I could inspire them to my love of the subjects - even if I had to raise field trip funds myself.

Unfortunately, my "counselor said the field was already too "overcrowded" and I would never find a job). Nat'l merit Scholar, 99th %ile SAT & ACT/ 1968, senior class officer, 5th highest GPA out of 566 graduating, blah blah. I get heartsick every time I see that science teachers are in drastically short supply, females especially, and the US is falling far behind the rest of the world. Considering the $$ we "throw" at the problem, these problems keep hitting the fan at accelerating rates.

I certainly hope registered voters are paying attention to the campaign promises. ~jill

Seshat

02-19-2008, 09:31 AM

I have two names, and one TV program, that you will find interesting. Study the lives of the people named, and the TV program - you may well find that someone is willing to work with you on a mass-media show of some form inspired by the three. :D

The names are Professor Julius Sumner-Miller, and the late and much lamented Richard Feynman. The TV show is the Curiousity Show, produced by the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation).

protege

02-19-2008, 05:45 PM

Yes, it does, before we end up with a generation of dullards.

It's already happening. Too many stupid people. Some of that is because we *tolerate* and *reward* stupidity. Look at all the attention lavished on idiots like Paris Hilton and Britney. We make excuses for them -- "It's not his fault since he didn't learn that in school" etc. We also put a bit too much emphasis on sports and other activities. I'm not saying that we *shouldn't* have sports teams and clubs, but they shouldn't rule all.

There was a time when Americans were kicking ass in the technology field. Now we're trying to catch up. If something's not done soon, it might be too late!

Seshat

02-19-2008, 11:25 PM

It's never too late, but it is true that if you don't reverse the trend, all your current crop of science/math teachers and other specialists will eventually die out or retire out. To recover, you'd need to hire from outside your nation to support your self-taught intellectuals.

But yes, it'd be hugely ironic if that happened. Britain's Victorian expansion and America's dominance are the reasons that the current language of intellectuals is English. Britain's lost its dominance, if America loses its as well, intellectuals will probably start needing to learn German or Japanese.

DexX

02-20-2008, 12:58 AM

It's already happening. Too many stupid people.

The frightening thing is that mass stupidity snowballs very quickly, because stupid people with no imaginations often have a tendency to hate smart people. Observe how in many parts of the US the term "college boy" is an insult. Too much pride in "simple-mindedness" and too much resentment of intellectuals fuels a national anti-intellectual political environment. Electing a clown like Bush is only a mild symptom; Pol Pot's killing fields are the ultimate destination.

BookstoreEscapee

02-22-2008, 12:36 AM

It's interesting that I came across this topic, since I have been reading the ABC News message board on this story (http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=4311046&page=1) (warning, I have been sucked into this for the past 2 days; there are nearly 800 posts). The story is about the Florida Board of Ed allowing certain phrasing in their science standards, namely "the scientific theory of evolution" rather than vague dance-arounds like "change over time" (which, if you think about it, is really just the simplest definition of evolution there is). Really, I find it rather ridiculous. But the message boards have some really hard-core anti-evolutionists (and one in particular), who keep saying "it's JUST a theory" and who keep insisting there is proof for all the things the Bible says; their proof is, you guessed it, the Bible. For example, dinosaur fossils prove the Bible because of the reference to Leviathan in Job. Sorry, doesn't work that way. Other serious posters attempt to explain where they are wrong, what evidence there is for evolution, what the technical definition of "theory" is, etc. Then of course there are the inevitable smart-asses who are just baiting them and egging them on. It's really quite amusing. But reading the one poster's comments in particular has me going :eek: and wondering how it is that people can be that narrow minded and willfully ignorant.

When I was in school, I learned about evolution in biology class. We studied the major religions in social studies (though we learned more of the history and practice of those religions, not necessarily the mythology). I was never aware of any debate over creation vs. evolution, etc. Though I graduated HS in 1993; all this debate over teaching Intelligent Design "theory" has really come to the fore in the last several years. Don't know how long the idea has been around, but I only heard of it within the last 5 years.

Even more interesting, a week or 2 ago there was a story about a dinosaur fossil found recently in Mexico. It said nothing about evolution or creation or anything. Just a short report on this fossil and what the critter probably looked like and that sort of thing. The message boards turned into the same exact debate (with some of the same people, too).

AFPheonix

02-22-2008, 05:07 AM

Creationism has been around for a very long time. I was indoctrinated in from a very young age, and I was pretty confused for a long time, since I was being taught classic science in grade school and a literal translation of the creation story at home and at church.
Mom sent me to a christian jr. high and high school, I guess in the hopes that one of her kids would go be a missionary to India or something.
Anyways, the sections on origins of life in junior high science were pretty classic Creationist lies. Lies in a textbook, and we were being taught this with no irony whatsoever.
The poor Biology teacher in High School attempted to teach us classic evolution again, but at that point we had all been so indoctrinated all of our lives we weren't really listening.
It really wasn't until college that I finally got away from the influence of Creationism and could really think for myself that I figured out the truth of the matter, and frankly got quite angry.

Intelligent Design is a relatively new movement, simply because Creationism has been around so long now that people weren't paying attention to it anymore, and they needed to package it in a way that people who were discerning enough to see past Young Earth Creationism could still get sucked in with some lies and trickery.

Boozy

02-22-2008, 03:35 PM

When I was in school, I learned about evolution in biology class.

Are you a Godless creature who does the devil's work and sacrifices babies under the full moon?

Because that's where the teaching of evolution leads. :rolleyes:

BookstoreEscapee

02-23-2008, 01:32 AM

Are you a Godless creature who does the devil's work and sacrifices babies under the full moon?

Because that's where the teaching of evolution leads. :rolleyes:

Sure am! :p

OK, maybe not the sacrificing babies part...did you say something about devil's food cake? <goes off to find dessert>

:D

susfubb

02-24-2008, 07:14 AM

dang, what is it? I got a nose hair trimmer for Xmas and use it "religiously." My teeth are clean & I cannot get a single one of my IRL pals to tell my breath is bad. I only weigh 120 lbs (between 115-125) at 5'6" and dress ok (although I AM an unrepentant hippie).

So whu is it that i keep returning to threads day after day when I've posted an opinion, and the whole thread has just.. quit? I bathe or shower daily, wash my clothes after 1-2 wearings, my bed linens at least once a week, and pluck out that silly hair that pops out of my chinny-chin-chin whenever it damn well pleases, use my organic deodorant (Tom's beeswax) http://www.drugstore.com/qxp38646_334918_sespider/toms_of_maine/natural_deodorant_stick_calendula.htm

So, am I the equivalent of the billy (oops, make that nanny) goat's gruff? ~jill

AFPheonix

02-25-2008, 05:37 AM

It went on for another page and a half, it's just that this was kind of an older thread to begin with, and not too many people have made the pilgrimage from CS to help argue :)

Seshat

02-25-2008, 08:15 AM

Most of the time, when we've said our piece and it doesn't look like anyone's got anything new to say, we tend to let what we've already said speak for us. Most of us only repeat ourselves when it's clear that someone probably hasn't read the old stuff.

DexX

02-26-2008, 05:08 AM

I'm more agnostic these days, but back when I was a Christian, I never believed in Creationism. I always thought evolution happened exactly as science says it happened over billions of years because God wanted it to happen. Evolution is a result of natural laws, and God made those natural laws. Argument over. Lots of Christians believe this, and it means there is no argument to have, because how do you prove that an entirely natural process was originally set up by an invisible deity? It's like trying to prove that God jump-started the big bang.

Seshat

02-26-2008, 09:19 AM

DexX, that's pretty much how my parents helped my brother and I reconcile our Sunday School learning and our school science classes. Another option we had that they helped us lead ourselves to is 'God got better as he went along'.

We'd both had the experience of slowly learning to make things ourselves - for instance, learning to sew by punching holes in paper, then making simple clothes, and gradually working towards more complicated clothes. So someone - even an omnipotent someone - slowly improving and refining a design made sense to us.

BookstoreEscapee

02-27-2008, 01:21 AM

I've been looking through a book of jokes by various comedians at work (while I wait for Access to decide it's not going to do what I want...) and have come across several that are apropos for the handful of threads I have become involved in here...

They're trying to get creationism taught in schools as a science. Creationism taught in schools as a science. Other than the obvious and only objection, it's not one . . . -Bill Hicks

susfubb

02-28-2008, 02:58 AM

The frightening thing is that mass stupidity snowballs very quickly, because stupid people with no imaginations often have a tendency to hate smart people. Observe how in many parts of the US the term "college boy" is an insult. Too much pride in "simple-mindedness" and too much resentment of intellectuals fuels a national anti-intellectual political environment. Electing a clown like Bush is only a mild symptom; Pol Pot's killing fields are the ultimate destination.
To DexX: _ as you can see, I am a newbie, and I have no idea whether members are posting to subjects (including my comments), replying directly to me, or excluding me.

So, I'd like to applaud your observations about the "snowballing of mass stupidity." However, I'd like to add that our education systems are not as responsible as many like to 'believe.'

Simply open a major newspaper and read several headlines & an article or two. The "massive stupidity" is immediately evident in lack of editing, atrocious grammar, misspellings, apostrophe abuse, and misinformation that is seldom (if ever) corrected. Even ONE of the constantly confusing "upcoming" headlines on major network news shows would have gotten me a failing grade back in my HS/ college days in the 60-70's.

The news media seems to have adopted as "hip" such language as pronoun abuse, split infinitives, the frequent use of "so s/he says & so then I says," "like," "yanno," (sometimes every other word) - oh the plethora of ANTI-educational terms is endless.

So please don't blame our teachers for all of this idiocy. It seems "popular" these days to kow-tow to the very lowest denominator ("common" or not). *sigh*

It was difficult enough for ESL students learning to speak "English" - I pity them for waht must be herculean efforts today. ~jill

susfubb

02-28-2008, 03:20 AM

To BookstoreEscapee: You are absolutely correct, and the attempt to force particular religions' versions of "miracle creationism" is not limited to the Bible Belt, Pennsylvania, nor any other locale.

In fact, one of the first instances of creationists winning a majority on a school board & trying to enforce their views upon ALL children was right down the road from us in Vista, CA. It was cover news in "Time Magazine" http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,983140-2,00.html
the NYTimes http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F0CE5DE1231F937A2575BC0A9659582 60
etc. etc. This dominated/ overwhelmed all media beforel the Vista citizens were able to mount a SPEEDY & successful recall campaign. Meanwhile, this majority tried to FIRE all science teachers unwilling to agree to their agenda, and refused to allow Nobel Prize winners & other prominent speakers who showed up at School Board meetings to speak. ~jill

susfubb

02-28-2008, 03:27 AM

Again to escapee. it's probably been copy/pasted here many times (if so, I'll search harder, k?). Still, I thought this one was pretty good:

Jesus and Satan were having an ongoing argument about who was better on his computer. They had been going at it for days, and God was tired of the constant bickering.

Finally, God said, "Cool it. I am going to set up a test that will run for two hours, and I will judge who does the better job."

So Satan and Jesus sat down at the keyboards and typed away.

That searhed.
They moused.
They spreadsheeted.
They reported.
They faxed.
They e-mailed.
They e-mailed with attachments.
They downloaded.
They did some genealogy reports.
They created labels and cards.
They did every known job.

And More.

Jesus worked with heavenly efficiency, and Satan was faster than hell.

But ten minutes before their time was up, lightning suddenly flashed across the sky, thunder rolled, rain poured, and, of course, the electricity went off.

Satan stared at his blank screen and screamed every curse word known in the
Underworld.

Jesus just sighed.

The electricity finally came back on, and each of them restarted their computers. Satan started searching frantically, screaming, "It's gone! It's all GONE! I lost everything when the power went out!"

Meanwhile, Jesus quietly started printing out all of his files.

Satan observed this and became irate. "Wait! He cheated! How did he do it?"

God shrugged and said, "Jesus Saves."

DexX

02-28-2008, 03:50 AM

So please don't blame our teachers for all of this idiocy. It seems "popular" these days to kow-tow to the very lowest denominator ("common" or not). *sigh*

Oh, trust me, I would not even think of blaming teachers for this state of affairs. It's all politics, and I know that teachers do the best they can with the resources provided to them.

susfubb

02-28-2008, 04:33 AM

More jokes here, some good, some OK & some bleah: http://www.weirdity.com/jokes/creationism.shtml

2005 Pennsylvania: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitzmiller_v._Dover_Area_School_District http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitzmiller_v._Dover_Area_School_District

I was reading about David Crandall, former South Dakota GOP representative, and found that he is a convicted pedophile STILL speaking worldwide on the subject: http://66.42.196.197:50002/search/Default.aspx?oload=yes&q=Crandall&search=Go

OK. I spent over 5 years as my primary web (and home) page being Yahoo's debate club: <achristianvsatheistgroup> I was neither an atheist NOR a Christian, nor was I a member of ANY of the organized religions, which I firmly believe have been the WORST bane of mankind in (currently) recorded history. I have 43 semester credit hours (GPA 3.87 in those) invested in the subject of religious/ biblical history and anthropology. If you wish to review my posts in the above club, access "susfubb" as author in an advanced search.

Otherwise, I will happy to discuss, courteously, any related issue with any member here - in whatever forum is most appropriate. I am not here to make enemies, everyone. I am here to build bridges to unite us all. ~jill

susfubb

02-28-2008, 04:41 AM

Cripe - I spent at least 45 minutes finding joke links & explaining my position on organized religion. Then I saw a misspelling (no biggie, but still..) & tried to correct & repost. Now it seems my entire post is lost. :(
I need some help in how to use this forum... ~jill

susfubb

02-28-2008, 04:43 AM

Oh, whew - it DID post. sorry I got alarmed. from now on I will copy all before clicking "post reply" - just in case, heh ~jill

susfubb

02-28-2008, 04:45 AM

NOT going to try correcting "anthropoly" to "anthropology" again, lol

susfubb

02-28-2008, 04:51 AM

Oh, and not correcting "will 'BE' happy to discuss. Probably many more such, because I type with 2 fingers and don't review as much as I should (spell check sucks in that regard - as long as a word seems to be spelled correctly, doesn't matter how it is used).

I simply wanted to mention here that I am listed as "offline" when I am not, and hope others will reply to me regardless of the erroneous listing until I can fix it.

Boozy

02-28-2008, 01:01 PM

susfubb: You can edit your posts by clicking "Edit" at the bottom. That way you can add extra information to a post if you've forgotten something instead of putting another post into the thread. I don't think anyone cares much here, especially because we don't do the post count thing, but I just thought I'd let you know.

Spiffy McMoron

02-28-2008, 06:14 PM

NOT going to try correcting "anthropoly" to "anthropology" again, lol

Fixed. It's all good, and welcome to the board!

EDIT TO ADD: I'm looking forward to one of my classes tomorrow. In it, (It's a religious class) we're having a guest speaker come in and talk to us about creationism, evolution, and the Bible.

Spiffy McMoron

03-01-2008, 02:13 AM

I had my creationism/evolution lecture today, and I've no shame in admitting that it was probably the most interesting single class I have taken in a LONG time.

First off, the most important thing to remember is that religion and science can co-exist; that an evolutionary biologist can be religious and a religious person can believe in the theory of evolution. Some of the other important things to remember is that:
1) There is tons of evidence to prove evolution happened just the way scientists say it did. None of it can be ignored.
2) All it takes is for one piece of evidence to blow evolution out of the water. That has yet to happen, though. (I'm talking about a 200 million year old human skull; something OBVIOUSLY dramatic)
3) One thing to remember: As we know it, humans did not evolve from monkeys. We shared a common ancestor, but we diverged into different species.

Second thing, some definitions:
-Teleology--> the belief that the world has a plan and a purpose
-Dyteleology--> the belief that the world has NO plan or purpose
-Evolution--> scientific theory that natural processes over a vast time space produced all living organisms, including humans
-Creation--> the belief that the world is the product of the Creator

Lastly, there are different types of evolutionists and creationists. The lecturer listed 5 different types of evolutionists/creationists, but it's really more of a continuum--people believe some things, but not others, etc. This is admitted quite condensed, and I welcome people to look into this further. The ones listed are:

Young Earth Creationists: ("Creationist" position) These are the people who think that the universe is 6000 years old, everything was created in 6 literal days, and they believe in the original sin and in Adam and Eve. There is no evolution, but instead God created all.

Progressive Creationists: (Day-Age Theory) This group shares many similarities to the Young Earth Creationists, except they don't believe in the literal six days. They do think that the Earth was created 10-15 billion years ago, but point to similarities in the geologic record and the creation story in Genesis. God had a direct role in the creation of life forms, and an indirect role in the creation of inanimate objects (rocks, rivers, etc.)

Evolutionary Creationists: (Theistic Evulotionists) This is the first of these groups to accept evolution. They also believe that the world is 10-15 billion years old, but they believe that God "jump-started" the process of evolution and have constantly been tinkering and adjusting since then. They see Genesis as the ancients understanding of science at that time, and they believe (just as the other two do) that humans are made in Gods image, and they accept "sin" as the Bible states it.

Deistic Evolution: ("Theistic" Evolution) These people still believe in God, they believe that God did help to start evolution, and they believe in teleology. However, the help He may have provided was indirect, and He has not involved himself since then. (This is classically know as the "Great Watchmaker" analogy.) They believe that humans are the source of ethics, and that the Biblical creation story is a largely irrelevant origins myth.

Dyteleological Evolution: (Athestic Evolution) This group (which apparently make up only 4% of the population in the States) fully reject God and the Bible. They believe that evolution started by blind chance and natural processes, and dismiss anything related to religion as superstitions.

I8DaCookie

03-01-2008, 06:41 PM

Here is a link for a photographic tour of the Creation Museum. There are many amusing comments to the pictures. Takes forever to get through the whole thing though but highly worth it.

http://scalzi.com/whatever/?p=121

AFPheonix

03-01-2008, 06:52 PM

You don't see as many young-earthers any more, although any sect that reads the bible literally are young-earthers.
This is the only group you can pretty much blow out of the water with science, because out of that entire group, they are the only ones who attempt to use religion to explain the natural world.

The other three groups are smart enough to keep religion on its side of the line, and science on its side.

Seshat

03-02-2008, 02:58 AM

I have no objection to people who find their own way to connect science and religion, only to the people who try to overwrite science with religion.

As long as people teach their children science in science class, and religion in religion (or some sort of 'social sciences') class, I'm happy.

AFPheonix

03-02-2008, 04:33 AM

Agreed, Seshat. I also have a problem who try to use science to explain the supernatural. It's usually younger males who've decided they're athiests and now have to evangelize everyone with the message that God is dead. I don't know if they realize how big of pricks they come off as when they do that.

Jadedcarguy

03-02-2008, 07:50 AM

Dyteleological Evolution: (Athestic Evolution) This group (which apparently make up only 4% of the population in the States) fully reject God and the Bible. They believe that evolution started by blind chance and natural processes, and dismiss anything related to religion as superstitions.

That's me right there. I'm honestly surprised it's only 4%.:confused:

Jadedcarguy

03-02-2008, 07:52 AM

A It's usually younger males who've decided they're athiests and now have to evangelize everyone with the message that God is dead. I don't know if they realize how big of pricks they come off as when they do that.

Being an atheist myself, I have to say that those little pukes are just looking for attention, or trying to piss off their parents.

Seshat

03-02-2008, 02:31 PM

That's me right there. I'm honestly surprised it's only 4%.:confused:

My father and I had a big debate about evolution and creation. I told him that as far as I was concerned, the truth could be anything from 'God had no involvement' to 'God made everything a second ago, including the fossil record, the echoes of the Big Bang, and all of our memories'. I don't know, I have no way of knowing, and that's fine with me.

He couldn't understand that - kept trying to tell me that the only way to get Life is to start with Life, and that God absolutely had to be involved.

Eventually I think he gave up trying to convince me. The best he could get from me is 'I have no way of knowing, and that's fine with me'. I accepted that I couldn't convince him that it was possible that God wasn't involved at all.

I think there are probably a lot of people like my Dad - clinging to something that proves (to them) that God had to be involved.

Agreed, Seshat. I also have a problem [with people] who try to use science to explain the supernatural.

I don't - since it wasn't that long ago that the Earth was the centre of the universe and God had placed it there.

However, I have a problem with people who try to use bad science to explain away the supernatural. Rigorous peer-reviewed science with carefully devised experiments and honest reporting of the results is one thing. Go ahead and figure out that thunder isn't caused by Ninepin, the God of Bowling! Fine with me!

But don't try to explain a haunted house with some handwavey mumbling about microclimates. If you think ghosts are microclimates causing tiny fog banks, there are meteorological tools you can use to definitively find out whether there are fog banks present and at what times of day/night. Get them, use them, publish, and expect to have others challenge your findings.

Boozy

03-02-2008, 04:41 PM

It's usually younger males who've decided they're athiests and now have to evangelize everyone with the message that God is dead. I don't know if they realize how big of pricks they come off as when they do that.

Its because young people are at the age where they shake off many of the teachings of their parents. Its basic rebellion and a necessary step in becoming self-sufficient. Since many Americans come from religious homes, it makes sense that many young people become atheists, and that they become vehement about it.

Of course, young people also have not developed any real sense of impending mortality. They know intellectually that they won't live forever, but the thought hasn't really hit home. As they age, and they start thinking in terms of their own mortality, the thought of God and the afterlife becomes more appealing to them. They may not return to their family's religious roots, but they may reconcile their new beliefs with their old, and come to some new form of spiritual philosophy. And some remain atheists; apparently around 4%.

It also takes a more developed and mature mind to accept the possibility that something may always remain beyond the realm of understanding, and that is okay. Young people think they know everything. I sure did when I was young.

As far as science being used for religious purposes: What's always bothered me is quantum physics being used to back up New Age spiritual philosophies. The people who do this show a remarkable ignorance of quantum physics. The new physics is stunning and weird...just not in the way they think. :rolleyes:

AFPheonix

03-03-2008, 05:01 AM

I don't - since it wasn't that long ago that the Earth was the centre of the universe and God had placed it there.

However, I have a problem with people who try to use bad science to explain away the supernatural. Rigorous peer-reviewed science with carefully devised experiments and honest reporting of the results is one thing. Go ahead and figure out that thunder isn't caused by Ninepin, the God of Bowling! Fine with me!

But don't try to explain a haunted house with some handwavey mumbling about microclimates. If you think ghosts are microclimates causing tiny fog banks, there are meteorological tools you can use to definitively find out whether there are fog banks present and at what times of day/night. Get them, use them, publish, and expect to have others challenge your findings.

I mean people why try to prove that God or heaven don't exist through physics or some other such thing. God, if he exists really can't be measured through the tools we use to measure the natural world. Those are the kinds of people I'm talking about. Those types of people are just as bad as Creationists who try to make data fit their preconcieved ideas instead of scrapping their ideas when data shows them to be false.
Your first examples were people who used science correctly: measuring and observing natural phenomina instead of using the supernatural to explain the natural.

Seshat

03-03-2008, 11:30 AM

Ah. Now I get what you're saying. Yes, I agree.

DexX

03-04-2008, 02:34 AM

Did you hear about the young earth creationist who believed in astrology?

He knew about as much about the future as he did about the past.

*ba dum tish*

susfubb

03-05-2008, 10:20 AM

I had my creationism/evolution lecture today, and I've no shame in admitting that it was probably the most interesting single class I have taken in a LONG time.

MOD EDIT: no need to quote so much. People who haven't seen it can easily go back to do so, everyone else has read it. - Seshat.

well, Spiffy, I wrote more than I should, then thought it would be nice to quote you about what you learned in that invaluable lecture. This time, I will simply tell members who missed a GREAT post to scroll back to #51, because when i tried to add a quote.. oh never mind! heh

Your "most important points are great - especially the "humans did not evolve from monkeys (nor even apes)". The regularity with with this "argument" appears from uneducated creationists is astounding.. the number of religious leaders whose sole education is from denominational seminaries is appalling.

As mentioned, I am a biologist with a major degree in botany, a minor in agriculture, and a CCN - Certification from the California Nurserypersons' Association. The 4 hour test for that last was harder than any final I ever took, and I am very proud to pass it on first try (20% chance) & especially be one of the first females to pass it at all.

Still it doesn't seem to matter what I say. 99th %ile on ACT & SAT in 1967-68? naw. National Merit Scholar? bfd. 5th in my class of 565 with a 3.89 GPA when 4.0 was the max? bs. 43 university credits in comparative religion/ biblical & pervious histories? NBD..

So, with your own standing in this club, I applaud your well-wriiten review of an obviously significant, if not life-changing lecture/ experience. If this is a SERIES of lectures, PLEASE continue to share your notes & insights, k? With all due respect, ~jill

Jadedcarguy

03-06-2008, 02:52 AM

tropicsgoddess

03-11-2008, 05:14 AM

I'm all for people having their own opinion and all,as long as it's not being force-fed. As far as creationism and intelligent design goes, just please leave teaching/preaching the creationism stuff for church run schools or religious centered subjects.

Slytovhand

04-24-2008, 09:09 AM

Here I am again... coming in late on the bandwagon...<sigh>

I've got a bit more than 2cents to play with this time :D (crap.. .I just looked at this post - damn it's long!!!)

My degree is in Philosophy, and I'm interested in doing a Masters in Comparative Religions and Spiritualities. I've also thought about doing a degree in science - particularly physics (but I'm crap at it :p) I'm also a practising pagan - Shaman and druid. (ok... maybe 'lazy practising pagan' :p) My last subject for my degree was Religion and the Natural Sciences, and ID was a big thing. I did a 2300 word assignment on the topic of ID - and that's after having to get specific and having to cut down on the words (damn!!!)

Firstly... 'creationism' and 'Intelligent Design' are not one and the same thing. Nor are they even 'close - but with a religious overtone'. That, unfortunately, is what has become of the debate - mostly by the fundy christians who think they've now got a better leg to stand on in the science realm.

I do think that ID should be taught in the science classroom, and not in the religion class room.

If ID gets taught in the religion class, then it gets dumped in as merely another belief that seems to confirm other beliefs, and the science behind it gets ignored - or they'll start to gloss over the real reason that ID became so damn significant. Although, it should get mentioned... I'll get to that towards the end.

It has virtually nothing to do with evolution. Evolution is a (for want of a much better word.. my brain has been slowly dying over the years :( ) 'byproduct' of the way the universe works. The way the universe operates falls in the realm of physics, not biology. Evolution is a biological theory.

ID really says - take a look at all those damn 'coincidences' out there in the universe. (I don't have my stuff on me, so I'm going to throw random numbers here now.. so please don't pull me up on the numbers used, but only on the theory presented).

In order for chemical interactions to occur, they have a certain range of specific values for their environment to fall into before they can occur. ie - water will turn from solid to liquid at approx 1 degree celcius. It turns from water to vapour at approx 100degrees C (depending on pressure etc). In the great course of the universe, that's a massively small range - and yet, here we are with 70% water in our systems. Ok - we could be a completely different species, using some other liquid (solids make it harder to move), and then the argument would continue in a different way.

But... there are levels of radiation, types of radiation, decay rates, wavelengths, frequencies, and a whole stack of other such similar things that all are brought to bear on just what it is that makes this universe tick over... those things that are called laws of physics. They all operate in incredibly small ranges to operate effectively. 10 to the -53?? I don't know - it's a number I recall somewhere in my readings... Paul Davies I think...("The Mind of God", I think).

The masses of coincidences required just for this universe to exist in a stable manner are amazing. And then you add into that this thing called 'life'. And then add in 'intelligent life', etc etc...

Given such small values, and almost infinitely small probabilities of such things being made in such a way that we can be here having this discussion, led many scientists to theorise that there must be some form of Intelligent Designer who put it all together, at least in a way such that those laws would bring forth life (or not.. that just happens to be one of the lucky ones).

ID itself tells nothing about the actual designer itself - other than it should possess logic and rationality. It need not even have any interest in the universe itself other than its original inception. And it also certainly doesn't mean that the designer is still around, nor that there needs to be only 1.

So - that's why I think it should get brought up in the science class - so we get a good healthy and profound respect for this thing we are and live in - and just how close to not even being here we really are.

As for bringing it up in the Religion class.... Guess what? ID theory is a far far more useful and supporting theory for pagan beliefs than it does for christian beliefs. Christians need to start adding various character traits to this ID than any other religion would need to. Not only did the designer create (or allow to be created), but the designer must also now be interested in it's designs, must be interested in having a form of life that can appreciate it's existence, and can worship, and is also compassionate, and thus send down his only son to save us all - so we can have an eternal life in an afterworld (which must also be created...)

Who says this is the original universe that was designed? Why not just put in place the fundmental laws that could allow an infinite number of universes to get 'created' - one from the other... say that Black Holes lead to Big Bangs - in a new universe??

Pagans, on the other hand (other than specific theists) don't need to interpret any form of divine will. We can happily say "The creator did it, and there you go - now, go live your life the best that you can".

And on the subject of the supernatural - who's to say that those laws aren't a part of this universe anyway? Our science is hardly capable of explaining everything... Acupucture seems to work - yet try telling this to scientists who won't go looking for a neuro-chemical response. Maybe, just maybe, mysticism has a very important place in the world that science doesn't want to go near. See... maybe I'm not an idiot for believing in supernatural phenomena.

(ok - now how long was this? I probably should'nt write in 'quick reply'..)

Slyt (bringing the dead back to life)

Seshat

04-24-2008, 03:30 PM

The problem with introducing Intelligent Design in Science class is that it's not science. Science is disprovable hypotheses, and theories which have been tested, not disproven, and thus been accepted pending later disproof.

Intelligent Design is not disprovable, therefore it's not science.

Not that I don't agree with the incredible number of coincidences it takes to get us here. It is pretty damn amazing.

And it's quite feasible - and well within the bounds of a science class - for the science teacher to teach the kids how many coincidences have come about to make us who and what we are.

But it's also the responsibility of a Science teacher to teach Science. If the teachers can keep themselves from providing any emphasis one way or the other, they can say 'some people think X, others think Y, Z and gamma'. But only if they can remain unbiased.

Science class is not the right place to teach any religious, spiritual, or philosophical theories. Only the scientific ones.

Jadedcarguy

04-25-2008, 12:40 AM

Seshat beat me to it. :)

Slytovhand

04-25-2008, 09:53 AM

Oh trust me - the 'unbiased' is essential. Same in the religion class ....

I was thinking more of the "Here is this ID thing, and here is the amount of physics and the coincidences involved that make certain people think this" - rather than actually throwing it up as any sort of 'law' - it is only a theory. More a "here is the science behind.." thing.

No - it's not 'true science' - but then, very rarely is 'true science' really taught in the class room. We get told nice little white lies when we learn stuff, to keep things nice and simple. In the classroom of schools, we get told that we learn is 'true' - not that it's subject to failure (other than in the opening couple of weeks). There is no philosophy of science, which I do believe someone pointed out earlier in the thread.

The way I look at it, ID is in the same or similar ball park as Big Bang theory, or String Theory, or an Infinite Universe, or even Multiple Universes... 'here's the various evidences for and possibly against, make of it what you will'.

I do see your point about ID being unprovable and disprovable though.

Oh - I should point out something that's in my head, and maybe not made it down to print to clarify stuff. I'm only thinking that the ID theory should only be worth ONE lecture in the science class - not an over-ridding idea/l. Say, do a stack of physics or chemistry(as I mentioned, ID doesn't get a whole lot into biology), and then towards the end of a semester, do a lecture on it, and point out just how well it fits together - almost as a throw-away line. Is that too much to suggest?

Slyt

Boozy

04-25-2008, 01:36 PM

The way I look at it, ID is in the same or similar ball park as Big Bang theory, or String Theory, or an Infinite Universe, or even Multiple Universes...

No. Intelligent Design is not at all like these other theories.

These other theories are ultimately provable or unprovable, thereby moving them into the realm of science. Mathematics in conjunction with observational data should eventually shed light on these theories.

The only exception is the multiverse theory, which most theoretical physicists ignore because of its inherent "unknowable" quality.

ID is neither provable nor unprovable and therefore has no place in science class.

AFPheonix

04-25-2008, 04:10 PM

Agh, I had this nice reply written up last night and I couldn't post it for some reason or another.
1) ID is not a theory. It is merely a hypothesis, and a crappy hypothesis at that, since it simply cannot be tested by field trials and experimentation. It has no data to back it up, only the wistful thinking of people who must believe that there is an invisible hand creating the universe. A theory a hypothesis that has stood the test of time and every piece of field data thrown at it.
Evolution has done just that, probably far better than any other theory posited in any branch of science.
2) We exist in this narrow range of "coincidences" because the chemicals that fathered proto-DNA and proteins were selected for in that environment. Remember, our experience with life is really limited to this planet and this solar system. For all we know, there are other parameters in other solar systems that beings rose to meet to become alive. We don't even know that our particular parameters are all that unique in relation to other solar systems out there.
3) The narrow range that life requires is often touted as a reason for a creator by Creationists and ID peeps, but we're really not on the knife's edge of not existing like they'd rather us think. One popular argument of Creationists is how precise the distance the earth has to be from the sun. They like to get all goggle-eyed and spout that a mile or two's difference could mean our destruction!
But wait: if they'd bothered to pick up a child's astronomy book, they'd of course see that our path around the sun is elliptical, and that the difference between the closest and farthest points is quite vast indeed.
As far as pH, this is why buffering solutions arose. Buffers can keep the pH of a solution pretty constant by absorbing or releasing H+ as needed in a large range of conditions. I could go on, but this will already be a monster post.
4) The only thing you need to know about ID is to look at its origin. It went mainstream in a textbook called "Of Pandas And People" in which the authors changed every incident of "Creationism" to "ID". The old and new textbooks are nearly identical except for that one change in verbiage. That frankly tells me all I want to know about this supposed theory.

I don't necessarily like the way kids are taught science, but then, I'm not expecting them to be handed copies of The New England Journal of Medicine and expected to write a report on it. Unfortunately until they get old enough to understand things, they must accept things as truth until they can question it.
I am also disappointed in how little kids are taught to challenge beliefs when they are finally old enough to do so. It quells an inquisitive mind and I suspect that has a small hand into why we as a nation are not churning out the quality scientists we used to.

Greenday

04-25-2008, 04:27 PM

I am also disappointed in how little kids are taught to challenge beliefs when they are finally old enough to do so. It quells an inquisitive mind and I suspect that has a small hand into why we as a nation are not churning out the quality scientists we used to.

Wait, wait, challenging beliefs quells an inquisitive mind? I mean, it's challenging beliefs that leads to new discovery, it doesn't stop people from coming up with new ideas.

Norton

04-25-2008, 04:55 PM

I misread that as well.

I believe he means little is taught to kids about challenging beliefs, not that challenging beliefs is taught to little kids.

Greenday

04-25-2008, 05:35 PM

Yea, that makes much more sense. I don't remember too much of being taught to think for myself, but I did it anyway. Now I'm in college studying chemistry and they pretty much don't leave us with any options but thinking for ourselves. They won't do crap to help us in labs.

Boozy

04-25-2008, 05:36 PM

3) The narrow range that life requires is often touted as a reason for a creator by Creationists and ID peeps, but we're really not on the knife's edge of not existing like they'd rather us think.

Besides, if these conditions didn't exist, we wouldn't be sitting around talking about them.

We think it amazing that we find ourselves here, but we wouldn't be able to think at all if it were any other way. Humanity is kind of biased that way.

Sylvia727

04-25-2008, 09:58 PM

Besides, if these conditions didn't exist, we wouldn't be sitting around talking about them.

We think it amazing that we find ourselves here, but we wouldn't be able to think at all if it were any other way. Humanity is kind of biased that way.

God's greatest creation? Humans. Who figured this out? Humans.

The most astonishing coincidences in nature? The ones that led to the formation of humans. Who figured this out? Humans.

---

I'm going to chime in that "intelligent design" is not science. Did you know that myths, like the "seven days of creation" story told in Genesis or the legend about Persephone in the Underworld for 6 months out of the year, were the forerunners of science? They were the first attempts to understand how the world is put together. Intelligent design, IMHO, ought to be taught in whatever course teaches the scientific myths.

The way I see it, science is all about the "how". How did humans evolve? What string of coincidences led to this? Intelligent Design is all about the "why". Why did human evolve to these parameters? Why this string of coincidences, and not another?

AFPheonix

04-25-2008, 10:12 PM

Wait, wait, challenging beliefs quells an inquisitive mind? I mean, it's challenging beliefs that leads to new discovery, it doesn't stop people from coming up with new ideas.

Oops, I meant how they're NOT taught to challenge beliefs and anything that comes out of the mouth of authority instead of taking it as gospel truth.

Kids are taught a lot of info, but they aren't taught how to think. Maybe kiddy philosophy classes would be helpful or something.

Slytovhand

04-26-2008, 01:28 AM

Ok... here's my thinking.

Is Intelligent Design a subject worth discussing? (no - not the nature of the designer, not bringing religion into the discussion at all, but from a philosophical point of view? In a way not to dissimilar to philosophy and history of science). Just - is it worth a few minutes of thought by someone intelligent?

Secondly - if so, where should it get taught? Kindergarten? Primary school? Secondary? Undergrad? Post-Grad?? Not at all until you've got your degree and start publishing in various journals?? Only on the Fratching forum?

Who, presuming we have a 'yes' to question 1, should do the teaching? School teacher? If so - religion, science, social studies, mathematics? If not, then professors of which school?

I'm believe (hahaha :p) that it should be done when the student is able to grasp what is being argued - which to me says when they've got enough scientific background to understand it - probably around year 10-12 physics.

I also believe (ha ha - take 2), that it should be taught by those most likely to be unbiased about it. Philosophy would be nice, although as APF pointed out, that sort of questioning doesn't take place in schools very often (though is down this a-way a bit more :D). So - that should leave either in religion, science or social studies. 2 of those won't give the parameters and reasoning involved to be of much use. And in religion... anyone seriously think the teacher of that would be unbiased? I've already seen how the argument changes direction from those who don't know what it's really about (it's not against the idea of evolution.. if anything, it holds it up). Besides, ID is a hypothesis about the nature of the universe and how it came to be (not really 'why' - cos it doesn't go into that at all).

So - that leaves us with a science teacher - someone who is unbiased, and should reasonable be able to discuss the relevant points to the ID hypothesis - and it's counters.

After all - in our class rooms, we don't do 'english' and only learn about the english language, we learn about psychology, sociology, anthropology, history etc. In history, we learn about history, and also geography, language, religion, anthropology and sociology, and many more. Sometimes biology will go into the realms of ethics. No subject can be taught alone.

So - I think it (ID) merits once lecture in the science class. And in doing so, kids will be taught to challenge beliefs ...

On a similar tangent (now that didn't really make sense, did it??) - just because fundamentalists propose an idea, doesn't not in and of itself make the idea bad. Yes - they have their motives, and their motives may suck... but good things do come out of bad purposes. Look at the breakthrough in technology, medicine, IT etc due to the amount of money thrown into military R&D, through the expansionist period throughout our history. Didn't the Romans build roads so that they could move their troops faster and keep them well supplied (as well as allow faster couriers)?? The byproduct was much faster transport for trade, but that wasn't the original purpose.

Slyt

AFPheonix

04-26-2008, 07:38 AM

It belongs squarely in a philosophy and comparative religions class. Those could easily be taught alongside history in high school. I really do think that students should delve into the ideas of where we come from and how it should affect where we go from here.
Religious studies can be taught from a historical and objective point of view, although probably an agnostic or athiest teacher would be best for that :p
I really don't have a problem with discussing the idea that there's something bigger than us and could have guided the processes that formed us and our environment, but it needs to be done in the correct forum.

I am a strong believer that only science should be in science class. Otherwise we get stupid crap like we have now where some school districts are required to put stickers in the front of their texts that say that Evolution is only a theory. Damn straight it's a theory, and a damn good one at that! But of course that's not what they meant at all. It's a slippery slope to dumbing our kids down and I simply don't want to risk it.

Rapscallion

04-26-2008, 07:58 PM

People who say that Evolution is only a theory misunderstand what a theory is.

A hypothesis is an untested idea. It hasn't withstood the rigours of scientific inquiry.

A theory is an idea that has been tested, perhaps altered slightly along the way as required, and is provable under further repeated investigation.

For example, there is a theory of gravity, and it is still being altered from time to time as more investigations into such phenomena as black holes etc occur.

Rapscallion

AFPheonix

04-26-2008, 08:27 PM

Yes. Isn't it scary how some people who can control how schools spend money can't even comprehend a small vocabulary lesson like that? Ridiculous.

Seshat

04-27-2008, 04:40 AM

Slytovhand

04-27-2008, 02:49 PM

I believe that there should be a class in which children learn mythology, historic religions, history of spirituality, and history of philosophy.

And with that grounding, they can then move onto how science developed from religion, spirituality and philosophy; and the philosophy of science, and what science actually IS.

Also, this class can cover modern religions, modern non-religious spiritualities, and modern philosophies.

Intelligent Design belongs in this class.

I'd vote for that! It'd be good if you could teach 'respect' for it all as well...

I remember all to well doing religion and having anything non-christian literally laughed at on occasions. "How could you possibly believe something like that?"...ummm - the same way you choose to believe that someone who died on a cross like thousands of others could save your soul!! (sorry-- I hope no-one is going to take that as an insult - I'm just trying to be ...'objective'..seeing christianity from a non-christian's POV).

Jadedcarguy

04-27-2008, 03:59 PM

...ummm - the same way you choose to believe that someone who died on a cross like thousands of others could save your soul!! (sorry-- I hope no-one is going to take that as an insult - I'm just trying to be ...'objective'..seeing christianity from a non-christian's POV).

I say that all the time. Christianity IMHO is just as silly as the rest, but it's accepted. That makes all the difference.

Slytovhand

04-27-2008, 06:39 PM

I say that all the time. Christianity IMHO is just as silly as the rest, but it's accepted. That makes all the difference.

In some bits of the world...

I heard that some people were arrested in ?Ghana the other day for practising witchcraft - by casting spells and cursing men by having their penis shrink. Now, some here might laugh (cos of the witchcraft bit, not how they're cursing), but in that culture, it is believed and true to the extent that there are laws against it (not the belief, but the particular use to which it was put).

Slytovhand

04-27-2008, 07:45 PM

Hey allls....

I just hopped onto Wiki and looked up ID on there. Ok - it may not be the best source in the world for information, but it does fully explain to me exactly how many people are seeing this debate.

Please understand that when I was studying it, it was in a philosophy class for university, and therefore we had selected reading. Some of that selected reading included the major players listed who have shown their christian tendencies (Behe and Dembski being the most cited).

But... being in Australia, we did a lot of looking at the works of Paul Davies - especially from books such as "The Mind of God" (which I do heartily recommend to get a fairly non-religious view of the ID argument...within reason!). It might be worth a quick squiz over his wiki heading - it's pretty short... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Davies

(quoted from Wiki...)

In the book proper, Davies briefly explores: the nature of reason, belief, and metaphysics; theories of the origin of the universe; the laws of nature; the relationship of mathematics to physics; a few arguments for the existence of God; the possibility that the universe shows evidence of intelligent design; and his opinion of the implications of Gödel's incompleteness theorem, that "the search for a closed logical scheme that provides a complete and self-consistent explanation is doomed to failure."

It is because of this - AND THIS ALONE - that I've argued the way I have. If I had been thinking of ID from the POV shown in Wiki under the ID heading.... damn right it shouldn't be in the science class!

I hope I haven't appeared as too much of an idiot or fool in my posts because of this :p

Slyt

Sylvia727

04-27-2008, 10:37 PM

Jadedcarguy

04-27-2008, 10:45 PM

In some bits of the world...

I heard that some people were arrested in ?Ghana the other day for practising witchcraft - by casting spells and cursing men by having their penis shrink. Now, some here might laugh (cos of the witchcraft bit, not how they're cursing), but in that culture, it is believed and true to the extent that there are laws against it (not the belief, but the particular use to which it was put).

I heard about that on the radio the other day. I was laughing my ass off. :D

Slytovhand

04-28-2008, 09:38 AM

Arguing the science behind ID would make it rather difficult to put this in a philosophy or history class, but it still doesn't belong in a science room proper. Perhaps it could be explored in "History of Science" or a "Morals of Science" class. I stand by my previous statement that the "why" of science is not true science.

Ok - 2 thoughts occurred to me on this.

Firstly - given that there isn't much of a History or Morals of science class in our schools (and rarely in our universities)... where then?

Secondly - is the science class that sacrosanct? After all, it would be the perfect subject (ID) to explain exactly where science stands in our world, what it can and can't do, and to an extent, why. For that matter, (other than the limitations of not understanding the actual science behind it) I would think that science classes should be teaching history and morals of science somewhere in their curriculum.. I'd prefer at the beginning - but that leaves the problem of not understanding some of the facts that would almost be necessary (ie - explaining the importance of evolution without understanding what it really is). If our science students aren't taught the history and philosophy behind it, then they come out as automatons, who believe that science is the be all and end all - with little power to 'think' but only 'regurgitate' (IMHO).

Slyt

Boozy

04-28-2008, 01:37 PM

I took several "History of Science" classes in university, and neither were offered under the Science department. They were history courses offered within the Liberal Arts department. And the reason they were considered history courses is because they used typical historical research methods.

Science courses are taught using the scientific method. Science class is sacrosanct because the scientific method is sacrosanct.

Seshat

04-28-2008, 02:54 PM

At my university, the Science department had a science historian in it. He happened to be a friend I'd met through the local Star Trek club, so I spent some time with him.

My own degree course was in computer science, and we had a computing-humanities sort of professor in our department. He taught a history of science class to the first years, and various ethics, human interface, organisation theory and information theory courses in later years in the degree.

I think a history-and-philosophy-of-science section has a place in the science curriculum, and could be taught by the science teachers. It would just need to be clear when the humanities-of-science was being taught, and when actual science-science was being taught.

Slytovhand

04-28-2008, 04:00 PM

Science courses are taught using the scientific method. Science class is sacrosanct because the scientific method is sacrosanct.

Almost getting a little OT, but.....

I know the benefits of the scientific method and all, and yeah - it's good. But.. what about the mystical experience?? The scientific method has a bit to answer for with the "well - if we can't measure it, then it doesn't count' (yeah - ok... it's a way to look at it). Someone mentioned reflexology earlier in the thread. Ok - it doesn't pass as a science - but it still has positive effects. Acupuncture isn't a science, yet it works.

Maybe it's a badly distorted view of the place of the method, but there are definite attitudes of 'well - if it hasn't been proven scientifically, then it's crap!"

Oh - Boozy - as for the other point as for where it could be taught, I was specifically referring to schools, not universities. When I did ID in uni, it was part of Arts, and Melbourne Uni has a History and Philosophy of Science dept (HPS). If you've got the net, it's sort of worth a quick squiz to see the sort of stuff they've got there!!

Slyt

Boozy

04-28-2008, 04:09 PM

I know the benefits of the scientific method and all, and yeah - it's good. But.. what about the mystical experience?? The scientific method has a bit to answer for with the "well - if we can't measure it, then it doesn't count'

I have read books on cosmology by several very reputable scientists, and not one of them believes that experiences outside of the scientific method "don't count"....they just fall outside the realm of science.

IDrinkaRum

04-28-2008, 09:21 PM

Okay, not sure if anyone has mentioned this tidbit in the thread but here is what I remember from a few years ago:

Scientists were able to "recreate" the Big Bang, but they were unable to get even an amoeba to show up after all was said and done.

Science has always said: Big Bang, out of that osmosis came planets, and simple single celled organisms that morphed into larger more complex organisms, etc., etc.

Something else must have happened to get everything kick started (Big Bang or whatever). We won't find out until we die if there is a heaven/hell/purgatory/whatever.

Intelligent Design? Evolution? Doesn't matter, does it really?

Boozy

04-28-2008, 10:02 PM

Scientists were able to "recreate" the Big Bang...

That is completely incorrect.

Such an event has yet to be recreated. The Large Hadron Collider experiment at CERN hopes to come close to creating the conditions present at the time of the Big Bang, but it has not been tested yet.

I'm also a little confused as to how scientists could "recreate" the first few billion years of the planet's evolution without actually waiting several billion years.

IDrinkaRum

04-28-2008, 10:49 PM

As i said it was a few years ago that I read the article. Basically, what I remember of it, they were able to do the all the things to get the explosion, but it was dubbed a failure because nothing else happened.

I too found it odd that they gave up so quickly, but I was just putting that out there. There are probably religious die-hards that use that as an argument against evolution.

AFPheonix

04-29-2008, 02:55 AM

IDrinkaRum

04-29-2008, 03:07 AM

AFPhoenix - Very well said. That is actually what I believe.

For those who don't know. I had a basic upbringing of Roman Catholicism. (My mother had had religion shoved down her throat while growing up and she vowed her children wouldn't have the same upbringing - which is true. We were baptized, had our communions & confirmed, but otherwise, Church wasn't the end all and be all of our existence).

Anyway, I do believe in God and I do believe that He/She/It had a hand in creating the universe and earth and the people and other universes. In Genesis, it reads, "And God looked on this world and saw that it was good." This denotes that. (Thank you Conjunction Junction). If this world is good, then that world isn't. Maybe it was just referring to Mars or Venus or Planet Tikachumba in Universe XYZ which is a kabillion million trillion zillion miles away from us and we will never know.

Creationism and evolution may or may not be able to live side by side. One or both might end up being wrong. (We could have all been put on the earth by space aliens from other planets and every once in a while, new people are added or whatever - who knows?) I just wish the people (and I'm not talking about the people on the board, but people in general) on each side of the debate could be open minded about what the other is saying.

Just MHO.

Seshat

04-29-2008, 03:25 AM

I know the benefits of the scientific method and all, and yeah - it's good. But.. what about the mystical experience?? The scientific method has a bit to answer for with the "well - if we can't measure it, then it doesn't count' (yeah - ok... it's a way to look at it). Someone mentioned reflexology earlier in the thread. Ok - it doesn't pass as a science - but it still has positive effects. Acupuncture isn't a science, yet it works.

Maybe it's a badly distorted view of the place of the method, but there are definite attitudes of 'well - if it hasn't been proven scientifically, then it's crap!"

That is a distorted view of the place of science, yes. And people who have that opinion have a misunderstanding of the place of science as well. In the first place, science never proves - it only disproves.

Reflexology, kinesiology, chiropractic, acupuncture and the like are incredibly difficult to do double-blind tests with. And the medical field almost requires a double-blind test - it's the best way humanity has yet come up with to eliminate the placebo effect.

Once someone comes up with a way to empirically test those practices, while eliminating the placebo effect, they will be testable by the scientific method. Until then, the best scientists can do is to shrug and say 'anecdotal evidence shows that they work for some people'.

Scientists were able to "recreate" the Big Bang, but they were unable to get even an amoeba to show up after all was said and done.

So scientists have been able to create a parallel universe? With as much energy as this universe, as many billions of stars, tens of billions of planets, comets, meteors....

Sorry, but the amoeba is a complicated little device, and I wouldn't expect it to show up within a decade of a tiny (on a cosmic scale) collision in a single collider.

My own expectation is that random chance would take many billions of star-planet-moon combinations to create the conditions which might, if you're lucky, create a protein molecule. Which, if you're even luckier, might turn into a virus or bacterium. Which, if you're luckier still, might develop into a cell.

Science has always said: Big Bang, out of that osmosis came planets, and simple single celled organisms that morphed into larger more complex organisms, etc., etc.

The Big Bang theory was developed last century. Evolution theory the century before. Both theories were tested rigorously against all the disproofs their detractors could find, and only accepted as tentatively true once their detractors could not disprove them. I wouldn't call that 'always'.

Evolution is still only one fossil-find from being discredited. A single bone of the wrong type in the wrong geological stratum can discredit Evolution. Once that bone has been itself tested and disproof rigorously attempted - and the disproofs failed - Evolution would be discredited and scientists would be working to find a hypothesis that matched all the evidence.

The Big Bang theory is still tentative: it does not explain all the observed phenomena. Theoretical physicists and cosmologists are attempting to come up with hypotheses that do explain the full range of cosmic phenomena.
For a really short overview of the Big Bang theory, including a brief precis on problems with it, check out NASA on Big Bang (http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/universe/).

Creationism and evolution may or may not be able to live side by side. One or both might end up being wrong. (We could have all been put on the earth by space aliens from other planets and every once in a while, new people are added or whatever - who knows?) I just wish the people (and I'm not talking about the people on the board, but people in general) on each side of the debate could be open minded about what the other is saying.

Science responds to what is seen around us. Science talks about 'how'. Religion also responds to what we see around us, but it additionally responds to our sense of the mystical. Religion talks about 'why'.

Science says 'the world was spun out of nothingness'. Religion says 'and God was the spinner'.

Science says 'mankind gradually developed out of the same evolutionary branch as the other Great Apes'. Religion says 'God got better at developing the species He wanted, as He went along'.

Science says 'it's an amazing coincidence that we're here at all'. Religion says 'it looks like a coincidence, but God knew what He was looking for, and He guided the coincidence'.

They're not incompatible. It's just that Science isn't asking the same questions as Religion is.

I'm essentially a scientist. Despite that, I know that there are phenomena in this world that Science can never explain - or at least, not in my lifetime.
I am happy to stand on the uncertain ground of 'I don't know'.
I don't know whether the universe is billions of years old, or whether God created it a second ago right down to the incredible detail of putting memories in my head. And I'm fine with that. If God wanted to make a world which looked like it had been in existence for billions of years, that's His prerogative.

And if He chose to make humans inquisitive types and put us on such a world, then He obviously is happy with us developing paleontology and geology and cosmology and the like. If He didn't want that, He could have easily given us a world which looked much younger.

IDrinkaRum

04-29-2008, 02:04 PM

Seshat - At least you can acknowledge not only your scientific side, but your religious side. I think that's a step in the right direction.

What i don't like are the people who say only science is correct or only religion is correct.

You're right: God made us thinking beings who like to ask questions and research and stuff. And if he didn't like it, he would have done something by now to discourage it somehow.

Seshat

04-30-2008, 07:01 AM

Seshat - At least you can acknowledge not only your scientific side, but your religious side. I think that's a step in the right direction.

A step? :D

I'm deeply spiritual. I just don't wave it around like a flag. My spiritual life permeates my whole life - everything I do, say and think. It just does so quietly.

Part of my spiritual belief, however, is that I have a duty to respect other peoples' spiritualities. I presume that everyone is either happy with their spiritual/religious beliefs, or is capable of going to their local library/surfing the net and doing a study in comparative religion.

I don't proselytise, and in fact, such behaviour offends my beliefs. It's an effort not to rant at door-to-door 'missionaries' or street preachers.

However, I will gladly explain my beliefs and my faith to those who ask.

What i don't like are the people who say only science is correct or only religion is correct.

Nor do I. Science is never correct - it is, at best, an approximation of the truth. However, it's the closest approximation that humanity has reached so far.

Religion ... well, religion answers a different need in the human being than the search for objective truth. It answers a need for a kind of subjective Truth that I don't really have the words to describe.

Religion isn't about 'how does it rain?', but about 'what is the meaning of life?' Religion (and also spirituality and philosophy) asks larger questions than science does.

You're right: God made us thinking beings who like to ask questions and research and stuff. And if he didn't like it, he would have done something by now to discourage it somehow.

Exactly.

Slytovhand

05-01-2008, 06:26 AM

Ok... I gotta bite :D

I have read books on cosmology by several very reputable scientists, and not one of them believes that experiences outside of the scientific method "don't count"....they just fall outside the realm of science.

Why? I am a believer that pretty much everything in the physical universe can be looked upon at a 'scientific' angle that is, there are processes that can be looked at, measured, prodded and poked... but sometimes those things get left behind. (things more ephemeral such as ethics would be a bit of an issue :p) There has been experimentation in acupuncture, but not the fantastic results that help to pinpoint it down. What I do find is how easy it can be to belittle much anecdotal evidence in the 'face' of science (yet... such evidence encourages scientists to go bush to look for 'drugs'. Oh - and they tend to forget synergy between the chemicals in the plants to find that one 'active ingredient').

So...IF acupuncture works, and IF there is actually a force called Qi, then it would help us getting a little bit towards some of the other big questions that religion asks, but science wants to avoid. Yes - they are big IF's.. but unless someone focusses on them, we'll never get there. Electricity was always around - it didn't suddenly get created when someone discovered it.

I just sometimes think that science decides what's 'disprovable' after a only few experiments and then let it go.

I spose I just get annoyed that things get thrown to either the 'debunked' or the 'that's religion' way of things way too soon. As someone mentioned, rain used to be the province of the Gods, now it isn't. Who's to say what else is or isn't? If the creator of the universe wasn't actually a 'god' but in fact an alien scientist performing an experiment in a petri dish, shouldn't our scientists, eventually, be able to find evidence of that?? If they don't look, they'll never find.

Despite that, I know that there are phenomena in this world that Science can never explain - or at least, not in my lifetime.

(my emphasis) which is exactly my point...

I think it was the mathematicians or theoretical physicists able to 'recreate' the Big Bang - not an actual redoing of it again (I'd've thought we may have noticed if they had :p) Although... given the infinite universes idea...perhaps not.......

What i don't like are the people who say only science is correct or only religion is correct.

Maybe it's both? Maybe it's neither?? Maybe we're only a thought experiment in someone's mind???

You're right: God made us thinking beings who like to ask questions and research and stuff. And if he didn't like it, he would have done something by now to discourage it somehow.

Wasn't that the Dark Ages? Or the fundamentalists who decided to burn all the books? Or the Pope who wanted Galileo to recant?? (just joking :p)

But... it does predetermine the quality of that god. What is the nature of God/s ??

Couldn't God (or whatever) and the way god's things are manifested be considered a truth to be investigated? (or do I just have a weird way of seeing the way things happen???? ) Getting back to the OP, is there evidence to suggest a lack of intelligence in the design? Isn't that a question scientists could work on? Or mathematicians?

(arrghhh,... probalby shouldn't post when I've got a head cold... sorry if I'm sounding...fratchy )

Slyt

AFPheonix

05-01-2008, 07:03 AM

There are many natural processes such as rain that were explained through mysticism. That doesn't mean that mystical things can or even should be explained by science.
All it means is that something that was miscatagorized as spiritual was able to be recatagorized as natural once the proper tools and knowledge were available to examine and test it.

I think what you're objecting to is not science, but perhaps scientists who haven't yet devised experiments to test the things you want them to. Yes, some scientists may then say that something is not provable, but that doesn't make them right. All science can say about something like that is "I don't know, but we'll find out".

The problem with using a non-supernatural being as a Designer in ID hypothesis is that they are then subject to the very evolutionary processes we experience. How can one guide something that he himself is affected by? No, ID can only work if it presupposes a supernatural being, and then that makes it untestable via the Scientific Method and therefore unscientific.

Slytovhand

05-01-2008, 07:26 AM

I think what you're objecting to is not science, but perhaps scientists who haven't yet devised experiments to test the things you want them to. Yes, some scientists may then say that something is not provable, but that doesn't make them right.

Points to Pheonix :D (oh - that's the noun, not the verb...)

Ummm - curious... 'should' (always a good word at the best of times) our science be limited to our own 'actual' world only? What about possible worlds, or worlds which, in all reality, we will never be able to find out about with any certainty? There is a hypothesis (from Roger Penrose and S Hawkings I think...) that suggests we (our universe) is the product of a previous Black Hole. There is also a hypothesis that suggests that all Black Holes create new Baby Universes. If this is true, then there should only be speculation about the nature of those universes - both before and after ours. If this is the case, is there any point trying to look at them, in the same vein as ascertaining a designer of them. After all, while there might be 'evidence' to suggest things about them, we really can't go and find out....

Boozy

05-01-2008, 11:11 AM

Ummm - curious... 'should' (always a good word at the best of times) our science be limited to our own 'actual' world only? What about possible worlds, or worlds which, in all reality, we will never be able to find out about with any certainty?

The other worlds theory is intriguing, and mathematics could someday even prove that they exist. But how exactly are scientists supposed to make testable predictions about worlds that do not interact with our reality in any way?

The question is not "should" science be limited to our reality. The question is, how can it not?

If you or others want to explore the possible nature of other universes with your minds, great. I'll bet a lot of physicists fantasize about that kind of thing too. But don't call it science.

Seshat

05-01-2008, 02:08 PM

What I do find is how easy it can be to belittle much anecdotal evidence in the 'face' of science (yet... such evidence encourages scientists to go bush to look for 'drugs'. Oh - and they tend to forget synergy between the chemicals in the plants to find that one 'active ingredient').

Anecdotal evidence can only be observation - it's what leads scientists to go looking for a hypothesis, which then gets tested. If it passes the tests it becomes a theory. It's not belittled - it's just not an appropriate basis to build a theory on. Theories are created by repeatable experiment.

The reason anecdotal evidence is what "encourages scientists to go bush to look for 'drugs'" is precisely what I said above: anecdotal evidence is the thing that leads scientists towards theories.

So...IF acupuncture works, and IF there is actually a force called Qi, then it would help us getting a little bit towards some of the other big questions that religion asks
<snip>
I just sometimes think that science decides what's 'disprovable' after a only few experiments and then let it go.
<snip>
I spose I just get annoyed that things get thrown to either the 'debunked' or the 'that's religion' way of things way too soon.
<snip>
If the creator of the universe wasn't actually a 'god' but in fact an alien scientist performing an experiment in a petri dish, shouldn't our scientists, eventually, be able to find evidence of that?? If they don't look, they'll never find.
<snip>
Couldn't God (or whatever) and the way god's things are manifested be considered a truth to be investigated?
<snip>
Getting back to the OP, is there evidence to suggest a lack of intelligence in the design? Isn't that a question scientists could work on? Or mathematicians?

My answer to all of this boils down to one word.

HOW?

How do you investigate the presence or absence of God?

How do you investigate the intelligence or lack of intelligence in the design of the universe?

How do you look for Qi?

How do you look for evidence that the world was created by a giant scientist working in a giant petri dish?

Scientists are humans. Just like you and me.

Now, I'm pretty sure, Slyt, that you've mentioned living in Melbourne before. That's a city with several universities and a fine state library. You therefore have access to a significant subset of the body of human knowledge.

You're absolutely free to go looking in the experiment results of previous scientists, and to absorb the existing knowledge, existing observations on the universe.

You have the same resources available to you as any theoretical scientist, and a great deal more than any scientist of previous generations.

(Admittedly, you lack the resources of many modern experimental scientists, but they have to go through about a decade of proving themselves before they get them - and even then they have to go through an experiment-approval process before they're allowed near the supercollider.)

You're perfectly free to go ahead and work on any problem you think 'they' should be working on. You're human, just like them. And you have most of the resources 'they' have. For free, even. Or for the cost of a train ticket into the city.

Ummm - curious... 'should' (always a good word at the best of times) our science be limited to our own 'actual' world only? What about possible worlds, or worlds which, in all reality, we will never be able to find out about with any certainty?

The scientific method:

1. Observe.
2. From those observations, attempt to develop a hypothesis.
3. Figure out ways to disprove that hypothesis by experiment or observation.
4. Attempt to disprove the hypothesis.
5c. If the attempts succeed, repeat from step 1.
5b. If the attempts fail, tentatively accept the hypothesis as a theory. Repeat from step 1.
5c. As technology improves and observations increase, repeat from step 4.

This method cannot be performed on things which we cannot observe. It also cannot be performed on hypotheses which cannot be disproved.

If you can think of ways to apply this method to other worlds, to the presence or absence of God, or more mundanely, to the presence or absence of Qi - go right ahead and apply it.

Write up a paper, explaining your hypothesis, your disproofs, and your proposed or practiced experiments - including results. A university library will have many examples of papers available, and the library staff may be able to point you to a mentor if you need one.

Your paper, presuming it is in an appropriate format, will be peer reviewed.

Peer review involves other scientists checking that your hypothesis explains current observations in the relevant field and that your disproofs actually are valid disproofs against your hypothesis. They then perform your experiments and check that your results approximately equal theirs within the tolerance for that particular science.
(Physics tends to require a great deal of precision, biology doesn't. No two pea plants are identical, after all.)

Should your paper pass peer review - congratulations. You'll have just scientifically studied something you considered scientists to have ignored. And it will be added to the body of human knowledge.

However, for the most part, the things science doesn't study are things it can't study.

There is a hypothesis (from Roger Penrose and S Hawkings I think...) that suggests we (our universe) is the product of a previous Black Hole. There is also a hypothesis that suggests that all Black Holes create new Baby Universes.

Scientists do have a method for speculating on things they can't study: they do 'thought experiments'. The most famous thought experiment is 'Schrodinger's Cat (http://www.lassp.cornell.edu/ardlouis/dissipative/Schrcat.html)'.

Thought experiments and other such speculations are how scientists figure out things they can't actually study. But they don't call their speculations 'hypotheses' or 'theories' or even 'science' - because they're not science. They're speculations and thought experiments.

If this is true, then there should only be speculation about the nature of those universes - both before and after ours. If this is the case, is there any point trying to look at them, in the same vein as ascertaining a designer of them. After all, while there might be 'evidence' to suggest things about them, we really can't go and find out....

I really don't know what you're trying to say here.

Seshat

05-03-2008, 11:54 AM

Getting back to the OP, is there evidence to suggest a lack of intelligence in the design? Isn't that a question scientists could work on? Or mathematicians?

I'm a bit cranky, courtesy of a bit of bad design in the human body. So I'm going to take this on.

Signs of a lack of intelligence in the design of the human body.

1. To quote an anatomy professor I had "The playground (uterus) is positioned between the sewer (bowel) and the drain (urethra)". BAD design. Causes a lot of problems.

2. The proximity of the anus and vagina to the urethral opening in the human female. Women get urinary infections SO easily. Placing the urethral opening somewhere less vulnerable would have been intelligent.

3. The human (and great ape) spine. Using a suspension bridge design as a support structure? Hello! Instant recipe for serious problems!

4. The food and liquid intake crossing the airflow conduits. Can you say 'choking hazard'?

5. Menstruation. At LEAST install a sphincter! Even better, devise a method for which the endometrium can be reabsorbed. Rabbits can reabsorb embryos and even foetuses in times of malnutrition, so the technology is obviously available to our hypothetical deity. Why not use it?

. . . I could go on, but I think I've covered enough.

AFPheonix

05-03-2008, 04:18 PM

You forgot humans and their teeth that need constant care. Good thing we've developed dentistry....

Slytovhand

05-03-2008, 04:46 PM

Boozy

05-03-2008, 06:20 PM

Also - I was going to say 'Chaos Theory', but then I'm really skating on thin ice on that one, cos I don't know a hell of a lot about it... but it is the term that various scientists will use.

Chaos Theory actually points away from intelligent design, since it basically states that extraordinarily complex systems arise from very basic and simple ones.

Sylvia727

05-04-2008, 04:26 AM

Signs of a lack of intelligence in the design of the human body.

YES. I'm going to have to remember this argument for future use. I for one would love to have a menstration sphinctor. Also, as long as we're redesigning the human body, could we eliminate the hymen? And get some protection for male genetalia? I know about temperature control, but c'mon, this way is just asking for trouble.

Slytovhand

05-04-2008, 10:07 AM

Why have sex at all?? <ducks>

So - seriously though... how many issues and problems does the world have because of it? Go name all the great inventors and creators of the world - the one's who stand out in history... now name their 'partners'... and how many were celibate? (yeah - ok... not really a good argument, because most of the time we know nothing about their personal lives...but hey, it was worth a shot :p)

But society does seem to be so massively geared around it... go take a look at the sex industry, and the Great Porn Debate...

Let alone the testosterone that is involved in so much violence....

Can't we all just... spontaneously spawn?? :p

Boozy - re: Chaos Theory - my thought was directed more towards not being able to predict it in any way, and that the very 'theory' seems to go against the Scientific Method - other than saying "umm...dunno about that one". Maybe that's just the one great irony the Intelligent Designer put into the system :p (and my last paper was on why Chaos was a valid argument against and ID :D got a credit for it... but it supposed too many things )

Oh - I had a thought... if a human skull was found in the Cambrian layer, it wouldn't automatically throw a curve-ball at evolution... it just means other things need to be taken into account... like aliens, or time-travel...

AFPheonix

05-05-2008, 05:21 AM

I'm only familiar with super basic physics 101 level stuff, although I am trying to wade through The Fabric Of The Cosmos by Brian Greene. Kind of a layman's book on string theory and other newer physics theories. You might find it interesting, Slyt. I tend to gravitate towards Biology topics because, well, that's my area of study. I'm a nerd that way.

I like sex, I'm not about to do away with it :p But if you want one example of scientists who got it on, there's always the Curies ;)

No, the Scientific Method works quite well in every science field. In pharmacology, basically organic chemists ponder what kind of molecule they want with an assortment of R groups, do a specific set of reactions to make that molecule, then test it to see how it binds to substrates and what it will do in organisms.
Those pots o' chemicals yield several different molecules usually, several of which end up being turned into different drugs. For example, the active ingredients of Prilosec and Nexium are enantiomers of each other. They do essentially the same thing, but because Nexium is more specific to the area where they both bind, it tends to work better. Prilosec, because it's older, is far cheaper and works almost as well as Nexium.
Same story with Celexa and Lexapro, or Cymbalta and Strattera.
Biology is a huge field that can incorporate parts of physics and chemistry into its study. If we take a small area of say, cell biology, one could easily imagine seeing a particular type of glial cell in the central nervous system, hypothesizing what exactly it does, and then testing that hypothesis by staining it in various ways and viewing it with several different kinds of microscopes (light, TEM, SEM, etc), using spectroscopy and other methods to see what types of chemicals it produces if it shows evidence of being a secretory cell, and on and on. Pick up any of the science journals and you can see examples of many different studies and experiments, how they were set up, and the data gleaned from them. These are available at just about any library.

Seshat

05-05-2008, 01:50 PM

ummm... Seshat and AFP... I was thinking more along the lines of physics, not particular biology. Mostly because, IFF ID is at least slightly plausible, it won't be in the form of a Judeo-Christian God.. so human supremacy (which I think is partly why the fundamentalists were pushing for it) is out the door.

I wasn't saying anything about human supremacy. It's just human biology that was really annoying me the other night.

The same urethral/vaginal/anal placement arguments can be made for most mammals. The 'suspension bridge as support structure' argument can be made for any vertebrate that spends significant amounts of time upright.

So you're tossing out the Judeo-Christian god. Okay. What are the qualities of your intelligent designer? What are the parameters we can work with?

If you're going to have a designer with an interest in Terran life, I can point out the weaknesses in the planet he's made for the life to exist on, and how precarious the life is.

If your intelligent designer just wants a bunch of rocks and balls of gas floating around in the cosmos, and is interested in a massive game of billiards, I'll grant you that I lack the cosmology to provide any evidence of lack-of-intelligence. But that hypothesis doesn't provide much opportunity to need intelligence to set it into motion anyway.

Getting onto your previous post Seshat... yeah, you're right, but having access to information does not give access to research equipment. You have, though, made me think of going to do a Grad Cert in History and Philosophy of Science at Melb Uni. :D

Knowledge is always useful.

But as for the research equipment: firstly, I said that. Secondly, there's an immense body of research results available to you. For any question you can think up, someone's probably already done the research, and someone else has probably already repeated the experiment to prove repeatability. Use their results.
You'll find them in one of the libraries you have access to - probably several of them.

If you did have access to the research equipment, you'd have to do that test for prior knowledge anyway. May as well go looking now.

Oh - and I had another thought. Unless I'm taking the 'scientific method' way too literally, it seems to only work in the world of physics. In medicine (for example), they take the observation, do the experiment and expect a number of failures. Even once they've decided that they've found what they're looking for, there will still be a number of failures. But...I could be grasping at straws on this argument :p

You're probably ignorant of 'double-blind' testing, and the methods scientists use to account for variation in biological experiments.

The short version is: scientists know that biological experiments are vastly different from ones for physics and chemistry. They use probability math, controls, placebos and other techniques to get empirical results which account for the variability.

My previous point was (as you were pointing out) is that 'science' (however it might be defined) sometimes decides in advance what it can and can't 'disprove', in light of a lack of evidence.

This is why experiments are required to be repeatable, and hypotheses are peer-reviewed.

'Science' is not one huge monolithic structure composed of a group mind. It's done by a bunch of scientists, some of whom hate each other with the kind of vehemence that Apple/Microsoft/Linux fans would envy.

Scientists who modify their facts to fit their theories get caught. Scientists who form bad (not-disprovable) hypotheses get caught at peer-review.

Where there is lack of evidence, but means to acquire it, the evidence is collected when a scientist who is interested in the subject acquires the funding to do the collecting.

Where there is lack of evidence, and lack of a means to acquire evidence, the question is put on hold pending technological change. And often discussed philosophically.

(tell me - honestly, am I sounding like an idiot in arguing this debate? No - seriously, tell me....)

Not an idiot, but occasionally uninformed. There is a difference.

Why have sex at all?

To promote greater genetic diversity than simple cloning or cell division can provide.

You did ask.

Oh - I had a thought... if a human skull was found in the Cambrian layer, it wouldn't automatically throw a curve-ball at evolution... it just means other things need to be taken into account... like aliens, or time-travel...

Neither hypothesis has any empirical or evidential support other than the skull in the Cambrian layer.

Should such a skull be found, the relevant scientific communities would be re-examining all the evidence they have, trying to come up with a hypothesis which fits all the evidence.

Yes, aliens and time travel may fit the evidence. If so, they'd be taken seriously and further evidence sought. But if the only evidence for them is a single out of place bone, neither is likely to be the hypothesis of best fit.

aniwahya

05-30-2008, 06:45 AM

Boozy

05-30-2008, 11:41 AM

I think teaching only one theory and ignoring or mocking the other theory that you don't personally agree with is a sign of insecurity in your own professed belief.

Evolution is not a belief. It is a scientific fact, regardless of what the religious right is telling you.

For those of you who are still unclear on why evolution is called a theory, let me remind you that gravity is also called a theory in scientific terms. We do not question the existence of gravity.

Creationism is a belief without scientific merit or the potential to be tested in any way.

AFPheonix

05-30-2008, 05:31 PM

Actually, you CAN observe evolution in action. I did so myself in some of the creeks above Multnomah falls where new fish species that are hybrids of others are evolving after being cut off from their parent populations. This is only one small example.

Oh, and humans didn't come from monkeys, silly. Monkeys and humans evolved from a common ancestor. Feel free to peruse a biology textbook. It will be eye-opening.

Slytovhand

05-30-2008, 05:58 PM

I think that it can't hurt to bring up other view points in a respectful manner. Technically neither creationism nor evolution can be definitively proven, so in my eyes both are equally valid.

By proven I mean that creationists cannot have their God create a new planet in order to prove that it is possible. Nor can an evolutionist take a species and show that it evolved from another species (monkey to human) without a shadow of a doubt.

I think teaching only one theory and ignoring or mocking the other theory that you don't personally agree with is a sign of insecurity in your own professed belief.

And the argument isn't about teaching such things.. only where.

Now... while I'm all for ID to get a mention in the last lecture of senior physics, I wouldn't throw Creationism into it.. nor into Biology.

For me, that's a place for Social Studies or Comparative Religion.

(If I've managed to confuse some of you by apparently doing a back-flip... it's only because ID doesn't say anything about the designer, nor about intent or purpose. Creationism does talk about those things)

Slyt

aniwahya

05-30-2008, 09:41 PM

Evolution is not a belief. It is a scientific fact, regardless of what the religious right is telling you.

For those of you who are still unclear on why evolution is called a theory, let me remind you that gravity is also called a theory in scientific terms. We do not question the existence of gravity.

Creationism is a belief without scientific merit or the potential to be tested in any way.

Evolutionary fact can be interpreted to support different conclusions. Not all schools of Creationism claim that their god created the world with wave of their hand and then walked away, perfect world now formed.
Evolution can happen, that is fact. The question of how it happened and the measure of evolution, or what started it is full of conjecture. There is no such beast as absolute certainty when approaching this discussion, so I do not see the harm in opening a dialogue to intelligently discuss other schools of thought. In fact, for people who lean towards science and logic you would only be strengthening the belief in evolution for a great many students.
Discussing in the classroom that not everyone believes that life evolved from primordial ooze containing random elements that came together in perfect harmony to form the perfect chemical composition to form living creatures, is not something that I feel is a threat to belief in evolution. I am not promoting that creationism and intelligent design be taught in classrooms, as gospel truth (pun intended because I am an eviiiil girl) or otherwise.What I am promoting is that schools at least discuss, however briefly, that there are other schools of thought. Even if you don't believe in creationism or intelligent design, hearing the argument for the other side can only strengthen your conviction in evolution and lead to intelligent discussion of it. Of course it would probably be more at home in a debate class or public speaking class, than a science class.

Slytovhand

05-31-2008, 06:49 PM

Ah! I'm (and probably others on this thread :D :waves:) am glad of your last sentence...

I agree though. Religion ought to be taught as a matter of course in schools... the comparative type of religion...

The problem of doing the evolution/creation type stuff, is that there are so many forms of it, and so many religions, that to do it justice, it's going to be bloody hard, and take many classes.

Monotheistic versions are fairly easy... 1 God, bored, created stuff, *bling* done!

But polytheistic... way too many versions (though very similar in nature...). And too many deities to name quickly...

Oh... Seshat..Not an idiot, but occasionally uninformed
Possibly not as much as you might be thinking... It's more that I happen to believe certain things that science has chosen to either disregard, or ignore, or say doesn't exist at all (even if it isn't 'true' science that is doing that) that annoys me, so I argue against it in some ways... I did do my science at school... Chem and Bio.. passed too :D Even know some History of Science too....

Seshat

08-02-2008, 05:24 PM

Evolution can happen, that is fact. The question of how it happened and the measure of evolution, or what started it is full of conjecture.

A good science teacher (and yes, not all science teachers are good) will do as many of mine did when I asked questions that are beyond the scope of science: they'll tell the student that Science does not an cannot answer that, explain why, and refer them to their choice of philosophy, spirituality and/or religion. (One of the available philosophies being 'well, noone really knows, and we can't figure out how to find out'.)

There is no such beast as absolute certainty when approaching this discussion, so I do not see the harm in opening a dialogue to intelligently discuss other schools of thought.

There is no harm in discussing it. However, it should not be discussed in a way which misleads people into thinking that issues beyond the scope of science are science.

That sort of misunderstanding is what leads so many psuedo sciences, and makes so many fake scientists rich selling snake oils and miracle cures. Some of which are flat-out dangerous!

Discussing in the classroom that not everyone believes that life evolved from primordial ooze containing random elements that came together in perfect harmony to form the perfect chemical composition to form living creatures, is not something that I feel is a threat to belief in evolution.

Evolution is not a belief. Evolution is a theory, and noone is supposed to 'believe in' theories. Theories are 'well, this is the closest we have so far to the objective truth'.

In fact, 'believing in' a theory can actually be harmful to scientists. It makes it easier for them to change the facts to fit the theory, rather than changing the theory to fit the facts.

Indeed, a good science class will reinforce that there are conflicting theories. But I don't know if you'd be happy with the way my concept of a good science class would introduce either Creationism or Intelligent Design.

I'd be showing them both as examples of undisproveable theories, and thus ineligible to be called science.

Though I probably would refer the students to philosophy and/or comparitive religion to learn more about both. But I'd reinforce that neither is science.

What I am promoting is that schools at least discuss, however briefly, that there are other schools of thought.
<snip>
Of course it would probably be more at home in a debate class or public speaking class, than a science class.

My schools had a weekly class where a guest teacher from one of the local churches taught us whatever they believed in. I suspect a program like that would be suitable for you.

Possibly not as much as you might be thinking... It's more that I happen to believe certain things that science has chosen to either disregard, or ignore, or say doesn't exist at all (even if it isn't 'true' science that is doing that) that annoys me, so I argue against it in some ways... I did do my science at school... Chem and Bio.. passed too :D Even know some History of Science too....

If I recall correctly, I said that because you claimed that Intelligent Design is a scientific theory. Until someone comes up with a useable test for disproving ID, it cannot be a scientific theory.

There's a hell of a lot of non-science which claims to be science. :( One of the things which pisses me off is when people say 'Science says this' when it doesn't. Including when 'Science' is blamed for disregarding, ignoring, or claiming the nonexistence of something. So yeah - that clashes directly with your own annoyances stated above.

Slytovhand

08-03-2008, 12:36 PM

If I recall correctly, I said that because you claimed that Intelligent Design is a scientific theory. Until someone comes up with a useable test for disproving ID, it cannot be a scientific theory.

Nope - not me... I would have said that the original ID came about by looking at the universe from a scientific point of view.. you know, all those 'coincidences' about just how fragile life is, and yet, we just happen to have those conditions around... as well as other things that form the stars and all...

No, ID isn't a scientific theory, but it's not as divorced from science as many other beliefs... that's all I'm saying...

Slyt

AFPheonix

08-04-2008, 12:51 AM

Nope - not me... I would have said that the original ID came about by looking at the universe from a scientific point of view.. you know, all those 'coincidences' about just how fragile life is, and yet, we just happen to have those conditions around... as well as other things that form the stars and all...

No, ID isn't a scientific theory, but it's not as divorced from science as many other beliefs... that's all I'm saying...

Slyt

It may seem that way because there are people trying to make facts fit their preconceptions. This is not science at all. It's a trap that good scientists must avoid at all costs.
When people see "coincidences", it's because they haven't completely explored a topic of study to its very end. there's a lot of things that we still haven't been able to study fully yet since we are still limited by the tools we have at hand. But there are many more that we have figured out.
One of the most common things ID proponents will trot out is the idea of "irreducible components" like the human eye or a flagellum, but scientists have been able to show how both of these structures arose from other structures that may not have been used for the final product's ultimate purpose before.

Slytovhand

10-24-2008, 02:47 AM

Damn - I just realised something...

I will now categorically state in an absolute, no uncertain way (and, interestingly enough, way that does not contradict anything I've said before)...

I do NOT think that ID is science! Not in any way shape or form!

I do think that it is something born of science, and thus has it's place in the science class, but it itself is not a science..

Ok???

I just realised after your post APF, over in Atheism.

Oh - as for but scientists have been able to show how both of these structures arose from other structures that may not have been used for the final product's ultimate purpose before.
Ah... but where did those things come from??? What was before the Big Bang? And how did it happen? Where did all that stuff come from? Is it not 'fair' to bring into a science class not only what has been figured out, but also what hasn't? And, if there is a competing theory (hypothesis, suggestion even), doesn't it merit some mention.

ie "Hey kids. Well, science has yet to provide any information on miracle healings. We've got stacks of evidence to say it happens, but we've got absolutely no ideas how it can happen. But, there is one idea as to why it does..." (btw - no, I'm not referring specifically to god here... chi, alternative energies, and a stack of other theories abound...).

Otherwise, science gets held up as the all-wise all knowing parent to everything. No, as said, science doesn't know everything... but it (or it's proponents) claim that everything can be known! "Oh, we just don't have the tools for that yet.." Science will never admit it is wrong (oh, yes, it's theorems and hypotheses are wrong, but science itself is never wrong... Even if God pops his head up and says "yep, I did it all", science will still be saying "ah, yes, but where did you come from, hey??" nope - never wrong!)

I know, I just know I'm going to get flamed for this.....:D

Jadedcarguy

10-24-2008, 04:44 AM

I know, I just know I'm going to get flamed for this.....:D

Flamed?!?! Whatever for? ;)

I will give you a reasonable explanation of why you are horribly mistaken, though.

As you said, ID isn't science. but, it isn't borne of science either. Not by a damn sight. It's borne of a religious drive to try and take back the minds of children while they can still be molded. It is based entirely on supposition and willful ignorance. To presume that a system you don't entirely understand is divinely inspired in ludicrous and damaging. ID is religion in an ill-fitting lab coat.

Creationism is proven incorrect time and again and with every new fossil discovery, of which there are quite a few lately I'm happy to say. No transitional species? We have many. The creationist take? Misidentified. We have blind repeatability of both carbon and radiometric dating. The creationist take? False. We have correlation of tree rings and carbon dating. The creationist take? False.

See where I'm going? The most powerful jackhammer of reason and evidence can not get through the wall of dogma that these folks have built around themselves. If it can't be hammered into the Biblical mold of How Things Happened, it is declared "bad science" or heresy and discarded. A fact, totally ignored based on a preconceived set of ideals. It is so sad.

As laymen, we are only exposed to the tiniest fraction of biological and geological science that is done day in and day out every single day that supports evolution and natural selection every time. Evolution is falsifiable by definition, yet nothing discovered since Darwin wrote Origin of Species has done so. If it were to happen, and it could happen, the theory would be trashed and they'd have to figure out another way of looking at the evidence. It's pretty unlikely though.

I urge you to do an internet search and look at some of the papers that are published online.They can be boring and dry, but they will open your eyes to the real science that goes on behind the scenes and allow you to hopefully grasp why evolution is accepted as fact by the vast majority of scientists. Trust me, there is no debate. Ben Stein is full of shit.

One more thing: many creationists like to throw around the phrase "It's just a theory". Do you know what a theory is in the realm of science? Analysis of facts and their relation to one another. Have a quick look at this page (http://www.fsteiger.com/theory.html) for a better explanation. It's a quick read, and it has a comic!! :)

No guessing, no speculation is needed or wanted. Evolution is widely considered as fact. The theory of evolution is the study of how and when animals lived and died, how they change over time, and how it all works together.

AFPheonix

10-24-2008, 04:49 AM

Not necessarily. I don't agree with you, but I won't flame you. I think it is perfectly acceptable for a science teacher to tell the class that at this point there are lots of things we don't know. Science is ok with not knowing, but it will find out, as long as it is a measurable, testable thing.

But still, philosophy does not belong in a nuts and bolts class like science. One, it confuses the issue, two, there's simply too much to go over material-wise as it is. A section on ethics would be perfectly suitable for upper level classes, but unfortunately bringing in unmeasurable and untestable ideas like chi and whatnot I find to be unacceptable in a class that is all about the measurable and testable.

Slytovhand

10-24-2008, 06:52 AM

A) to Jaded... I also would urge you to do some research on ID. No, not the Creationist version - the scientific and philosophical version (not 'scientific' as in 'it's a science', but as in 'those scientists who don't subscribe to any particular religion, yet still can't call themselves an atheist' version).

I'll put this into really big print to get my point across... INTELLIGENT DESIGN IS NOT THE SAME AS CREATIONISM!!!

And remember - this is coming from a PAGAN!!!!

Sure, sprout off all the crap that creationists talk about, and how they bought into the whole ID thing... but don't for a minute suggest that the 2 are one and the same thing!

For one thing - ID fully supports the science behind evolution! for that matter, evolution supports ID.

Please - read some of the stuff not being sprouted by the christians....

AFP... (I'll get your initials right sometime :p I'll have to go editing some other posts now....)

Point 1 - yep, I agree with that. Science can be a bugger at the best of times, so I was only suggesting it hit the physics as a small interesting discussion topic.

Point 2 - if ethics is unmeasurble and untestable, why does it have a place, where discussion of where the universe is not? Yes, I'm talking philosophy (not religion...). Chi - actually, it is measurable and testable! It has been tested (maybe not rigourously and thoroughly enough to pass the scientific theory test, but it has been done. Can't say that it is therefore unmeasurable nor untestable. Just hasn't had enough done yet...

Super big question then, based on Science is ok with not knowing, but it will find out], as long as it is a measurable, testable thing.

Does that mean that only things that are measurable and testable by us humans (or any other races that we deem compatible enough) exist? Is it possible for things to exist that we will never know about? Hey - first thought that comes to mind is alternate dimensions.... Oh, we've got the maths that 'prove' they exist... but doesn't actually prove they do.

As I think I've said, I do think it's a great idea that kids learn that science has it's limits, and just because science is completely unable to prove or disprove something, does not make that thing any less real or valid. Teaching that in religion or humanities would be a complete waste of time and effort (as the creationists will oh so gladly tell you :D)

Boozy

10-24-2008, 12:02 PM

Slytovhand

10-24-2008, 01:31 PM

See what I can do, Boozy. Actually, I was thinking of checking through my notes (have a feeling trawling the net will be easier :p)

Edit: finding stuff...

This page (http://www.asa3.org/ASA/education/origins/design2.htm) has a stack of links - it's for a uni lecture, so isn't too bad. Still fairly concentrated with Christian stuff though.

I found this one as well (http://www.actionbioscience.org/evolution/nhmag.html) - but it's more useful for looking at some of the specific arguments - both for and against. The bottom has links that the individual proponents would suggest. (personally, I don't have much time for Dembski, but I like Behe (I think - might be confusing him with someone else. And, as I've said, I really like Paul Davies - who isn't on this site :( Probably cos he's Australian, and isn't christian :p)

Thomas Woodward has written a couple of books on the history of the ID debate (but I haven't read them). The comments made in Amazon seem to indicate that what he has to say is 'fair' regarding this debate - from both sides. Also, apparently the science is well outlined... First (http://www.amazon.com/Doubts-About-Darwin-History-Intelligent/dp/0801064430/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1224859774&sr=1-4) & Second (http://www.amazon.com/Darwin-Strikes-Back-Defending-Intelligent/dp/0801065631/ref=pd_sim_b_1). Might be worth taking a brief look at the comments at the bottom.

Here (http://www.pbs.org/thinktank/transcript1244.html) is an interview explaining the basics, by a couple of those on both sides of the fence...

Now... my preferred author...One (http://evolutionarydesign.blogspot.com/2006/10/paul-davies-plea-for-sanity.html), two (http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2007/04/19/160480.aspx), three (http://www.andrewjaffe.net/blog/science/000237.html) is a review of one of his books, four (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/jun/26/spaceexploration.comment) is better...

Ok, this (http://www.idthefuture.com/2006/10/does_george_smoot_nobel_laurea.html) does come from the biased camp, but is from a purportedly non-biased astrophysicist. This basically is the reasoning why I'm in the ID camp. (personally, Micheal Behe's stuff on the flagellum has been debunked - because it presumes that it was designed that way, rather than being the last and, rather coincidentally, useful, in a long line of changes. Plenty of things that came and went before it which was useful - and sometimes not - and now you end up with it. Sort of like tonsils... they probably used to have a purpose - but now??)

More theory... (http://home.planet.nl/~gkorthof/kortho44.htm) - with criticism and arguement for and against.

And lastly, while I'm at work, I can't hear or access this stuff (http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/einsteinsgod/unheardcuts.shtml), but I'm hoping it's good.

Does this help at all?? :D

Slyt

AFPheonix

10-24-2008, 08:46 PM

Point 2 - if ethics is unmeasurble and untestable, why does it have a place, where discussion of where the universe is not? Yes, I'm talking philosophy (not religion...). Chi - actually, it is measurable and testable! It has been tested (maybe not rigourously and thoroughly enough to pass the scientific theory test, but it has been done. Can't say that it is therefore unmeasurable nor untestable. Just hasn't had enough done yet...
Until Chi can be measured in terms of units (say wattage or some such) then it unfortunately must remain in the realm of the untestable and not of the natural world. We discussed ethics in several classes, including Molecular Biology in college and some other 400 level classes. I feel that is appropriate for budding scientists at that point to remember how their research affects the rest of the world. That is why those belong in higher level science classes. I feel that even your version if ID is best placed in a philosophy or comparative religion class because it is dependent more on individual truth. Your version of a creator is obviously not the same as my mother's. Does either have to be wrong or right? In any case, it is not provable, nor of the realm of the natural world.

Does that mean that only things that are measurable and testable by us humans (or any other races that we deem compatible enough) exist? Is it possible for things to exist that we will never know about? Hey - first thought that comes to mind is alternate dimensions.... Oh, we've got the maths that 'prove' they exist... but doesn't actually prove they do.

As I think I've said, I do think it's a great idea that kids learn that science has it's limits, and just because science is completely unable to prove or disprove something, does not make that thing any less real or valid. Teaching that in religion or humanities would be a complete waste of time and effort (as the creationists will oh so gladly tell you :D)

No, it just means that only things that are measurable and testable belong in a science class. Things that are more ephemeral and spiritual belong in a philosophy or religion class. That is the only point I am attempting to make. My personal, spiritual truth is not yours. Nor is yours mine. I'm really ok with that.
I do think humanities are a great place to teach that sort of thing. I think that every school should have philosophy classes again, because they teach kids how to think for themselves. I do not agree with kids having only classes in which they only have the opportunity to learn stuff by rote, only to forget it after their standardized test.

Jadedcarguy

10-25-2008, 05:05 AM

Slytovhand

10-25-2008, 02:00 PM

***Warning - long post ahead****

Firstly - disclaimer... I only briefly skimmed over those sites, so it is quite possible there is some crap in there :p Also, there could be some doubling up.

Secondly - this is basically the reason I am an ID person (these quotes are also from somewhere in those links...)

Stephen Hawking wrote, "If the rate of expansion one second after the big bang had been smaller by even one part in a hundred thousand million, the universe would have re-collapsed before it ever reached it present state." Slightly faster than the critical rate and matter would have dispersed too rapidly to allow stars and galaxies to form. George Smoot describes the creation even[t] as "finely orchestrated."

"The scientist is possessed by the sense of universal causation ... His religious feeling takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection."

Albert Einstein

"A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with the physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question."

Sir Fred Hoyle

“We do, of course, have an alternative. We could say that there was no creation, and that the universe has always been here. But this is even more difficult to accept than creation.”

Barry Parker
Creation—the Story of the Origin and Evolution of the Universe

"Every one of these forces must have just the right strength if there is to be any possibility of life. For example, if electrical forces were much stronger than they are, then no element heavier than hydrogen could form ... But electrical repulsion cannot be too weak. if it were, protons would combine too easily, and the sun ...(assuming that it had somehow managed to exist up to now) would explode like a thermonuclear bomb."

Richard Morris
The Fate of the Universe

Nobel Laureate Arno Penzias:

In summary, therefore, astronomy leads us to a unique event, a universe which was created out of nothing, one with the very delicate balance needed to provide exactly the conditions required to permit life, and one which has an underlying (one might say "supernatural"), plan.

(from The New York Times, Jan. 2, 1979)

Obviously - these merely quotes and in no way constitute 'proof' (obviously), but gives an idea of where I stand.

I prefer to think that the universe is like a massive jigsaw puzzle, and every tiny piece of 'necessity' that makes this universe work the way it does (electron spins, co-efficients, atomic valences etc etc) all fits perfectly together. Not just that they all fit into 1 box, but that they all fit into a coherent whole - a picture that is recognisable and coherent. It is rational and reasonable. There is no 'chaos', no 'randomness'. If something doesn't seem to fit, there is a 'reason' for it. The fact that science can give answers says to me that it has all been put together so that answers are possible - they make sense.. the universe appears to be 'intelligible'.

Now, unless you accept multiple universes, or that this has happened almost immeasureable times before, then it's one hell of a leap of faith to say we got all that right in just 1 showing (ie - Big Bang happened once, and once only). "It just is" doesn't cut it for me.

Ok, done now... :D

Jadedcarguy

10-25-2008, 09:50 PM

I can't speak for the rest of those guys, but you must know that Einstein was an atheist. :p

Jadedcarguy

10-25-2008, 11:43 PM

OK Slyt, I read through your links and honestly there is nothing there that is new or compelling, simply the same old same old of looking at the complexity of all that is, not being able to fathom what can happen over billions of years because the human mind is unable to grasp how long that truly is, and swan-diving off the cliff of assumption.

Think about what we know now as a species. Compare it to what we knew 100 years ago. 200. 300. 1000. We didn't know shit back then and compared to what we will know in another 100 or 200 years, we don't know shit now. Think about what people will think of us in 200 years. We will be their "primitives".

Evolution is real. It is testable, repeatable, and potentially falsifiable. ID is not. ID is wishful thinking based on the human mind's inability to accept that we are animals.

I don't mean to say that we should behave like animals. We shouldn't. We are self aware. I'd go so far as to say we are the only life form on the planet that is truly self aware(don't talk to me about dolphins or apes. they may be close, but they're not self aware). Because of that we are able to grasp how our actions affect other people, other animals, other cultures, the environment, and society. From that alone stems morality, right and wrong. We don't need dogma or a desire to please an immaterial sky daddy in order to behave. It comes from being decent to others out of a desire to have others be decent to us. That would be a far easier task globally if we would all simply stop worrying about who's sky daddy is better.

Eliminating ID brings us one step closer to eliminating religiously derived walls and boundaries.

Flyndaran

10-25-2008, 11:49 PM

I can't speak for the rest of those guys, but you must know that Einstein was an atheist. :p
First off, as much as I would like to include Einstein as a fellow non-believer, he most definitely not an atheist. One of his most well known quotes involves god not playing dice. That was why he never could understand quantum physics, despite it being a natural outgrowth of his own theories.

Of course what one astrophysicist thinks about theology matters... Wait, no it doesn't mean squat.
I wouldn't care what my mechanic says about cooking.

Jadedcarguy

10-26-2008, 12:26 AM

First off, as much as I would like to include Einstein as a fellow non-believer, he most definitely not an atheist. One of his most well known quotes involves god not playing dice. That was why he never could understand quantum physics, despite it being a natural outgrowth of his own theories.

Of course what one astrophysicist thinks about theology matters... Wait, no it doesn't mean squat.
I wouldn't care what my mechanic says about cooking.

Einstein was certainly not a religious man. Most would call him an atheist or agnostic. Theists would certainly like to claim him as one of their own but they simply can't when the quotes they use are seen in context. But don't take my word for it. Link (http://atheism.about.com/od/einsteingodreligion/tp/Was-Einstein-an-Atheist-.htm)

Slytovhand

10-26-2008, 02:02 PM

Ok... as I've said before, I don't see ID as being a form of science. I do see that there are reasonably compelling reasons to believe that there was something out there (and that's other than my own beliefs).

Now... Flyn - I certainly wouldnt' want to be listening to a religious person about theology - they've already decided what's true, and what's not. If I listen to an astrophysicist, I can at least get an idea of whether they're trying to pull my leg or not. I'd be asking a scientist to see if there is valid reason to think such things. Evolution isn't really all that hard to follow, or to believe. What is a bit of a mindspin for me is that a hunk of rock about 5 billion years ago somehow managed to create produce 'life'... not saying it didn't, just saying it's a mindspin.

I don't know about Einsteins beliefs. All I can do is post what appears to be a quote from him saying "Well - I'm not sure that there isn't something out there that didn't have something to do with this...".

And JC, I still think you're throwing ID into religion too much. Sure, it's big pushers have a specific agenda to uphold and defend - and there is an ulterior motive involved - but that in itself doesn't mean it doesn't have a place. Although I haven't really mentioned it (cos it's what's in my head, and I haven't gotten around to realising you're not telepathic :p), is that I think it's fine to belief in some sort of ID. I don't see a real need to even try to 'prove' said existence though. (although, if people are going to poo-poo it, then I'll go and defend it :D)

Now - evolution is still only a 'theory', which, in scientific circles is a great place to be, but it still doesn't mean it's right - no matter how much people want to say it's the bee's knees. I sort of love (read: hate) how people jump onto ID and compare it to evolution as it's only protagonist - or that ID gets it's 'proofs' only from evolution. It doesn't (which is what some of those links are about). So it's not the past 3 or so billion years that has much place in this argument. It's actually about the first few trillionths of a second around the beginning of the Big Bang (see Stephen Hawking's quote at the beginning of my last post). It's that bit before the universe came into being where ID should be looked at. 5 billion years later is a complete waste of space (and time). After all, electrons spin in only 1 of 2 ways. You take a ball, put it into a wind tunnel, and no way is it going to spin in only 1 of 2 ways.. why do electrons? Valences... what's the deal there? These are fundamental questions of physics - not biology, and no, science doesn't have answers to this. But these fundamentals were in place from the instant of the Big Bang - dare I say even before it. Again - you've only got 1 chance at getting it right - and there are billions of things that need taking care of (all those pesky laws and that...). Like some of those I linked and quoted - there's something a bit 'fishy' going on.

So... any non-evolution comments at all??

Flyn - surely, your mechanic just might be a fantastic cook?? I know I can whip up a few good things :D (I can burn rice too.....don't play computer games while cooking!!!!!)

Oh - JC, yeah, I tend to agree with your comment on religion and walls and boundaries as well... 'spiritualism' and religion are 2 different little bunnies...

Flyndaran

10-26-2008, 10:54 PM

...
Flyn - surely, your mechanic just might be a fantastic cook?? I know I can whip up a few good things :D (I can burn rice too.....don't play computer games while cooking!!!!!)...
Of course he could be. But what are the chances that he is if all you know about him is that he is a famous mechanic? Pretty darn low. It's the fallacy known as an appeal to authority. Even the single most skilled, knowledgeable, intelligent biochemist can be wrong about a particular biochemical statement. They may even be right, but for the wrong reasons.

A famous paleontologist, Baker, makes wild shakey statements about dinsosaurian physiology all the time. But he got one right about the carnivores almost certain endothermic metabolism, and he gets hailed as a maverick genius. He was right, but for the wrong reasons as the evidence at the time of his claim was not sufficient to make that claim publically.

...Oh - JC, yeah, I tend to agree with your comment on religion and walls and boundaries as well... 'spiritualism' and religion are 2 different little bunnies...

I don't get organized religion, so I certainly don't get unorganized individual religion aka spirituality.
I think I'll tackle that topic when mainstream religion makes sense to me... not something I really expect to happen in my life... But hey, hope abounds. :)

I simply don't have the genes/mental architecture to have or even understand the concept of faith which seems necessary to any form of religion or spirituality.
I really try to understand it, but it feels like a born blind person asking someone to describe colors. Or, from my perspective, it feels like a normal person, me, asking others to describe why they believe things that seem to be believed in, BECAUSE they have no evidence. That faith concept both terrifies me and seriously confuses me.

To me it seems like a delusion that should cause massive havoc and destruction of rational societies... But since it doesn't and some religious people claim to do good things becuase of their religious beliefs, I get really confused about the whole issue.
The most open minded, and yet rational person I know is a mildly retarded christian. Just knowing her has kept me from falling down the attractive rabbit hole of overly aggressive atheism.
The fact that she will radically adjust her paradigm when faced with sufficient evidence, is something I find amazingly admirable for any human, let alone a religious "slow" woman.
She had been told all her life about the evils, satanic, nonsense of atheists and pagans... But when she met me and my life partner, she threw out the beliefs that did not fit her observations of our niceness and general morality.

Jadedcarguy

10-27-2008, 12:37 AM

Ok... as I've said before, I don't see ID as being a form of science. I do see that there are reasonably compelling reasons to believe that there was something out there (and that's other than my own beliefs).

From a scientific standpoint there are no compelling reasons to accept ID. From a philosophical one, sure. We'll just leave it at that, OK?

I don't know about Einsteins beliefs. All I can do is post what appears to be a quote from him saying "Well - I'm not sure that there isn't something out there that didn't have something to do with this...".

Einstein said a lot of things that can be seen as religious when taken out of context. I urge you to read some sites that effectively refute those claims. A quick google will turn up quite a few.

And JC, I still think you're throwing ID into religion too much.

I totally disagree. In your words................

Sure, it's big pushers have a specific agenda to uphold and defend - and there is an ulterior motive involved

Religion is the driving force behind the ID movement. They want it in science classes because they are losing young minds to reality, and that does not bode well for their continued existence. However, if they get their way it does not bode well for the future of American science. Foreign scientists are already stepping in to fill the roles once held by American minds simply because our scientist's hands are tied by dogma. Thousands of people suffer everyday, some dying, from ailments that could be eliminated through stem cell research, yet we as a society block it at every turn because of archaic beliefs. If today's children are taught ID as science, like the ID pushers want, the future looks bleak indeed. So no, I'm not throwing ID into religion too much.

- but that in itself doesn't mean it doesn't have a place.

It does have a place. Philosophy classes or religious schools can teach it all they want. Not in science class, though. It has no place there.

(although, if people are going to poo-poo it, then I'll go and defend it :D)

That depends on how it's being poo-pooed. Look at it this way. Alchemy was once considered the forefront of science. Today it is considered hopelessly quaint and of no use to science, so it is studied in philosophy and history classes if at all. As long as it stays there mainstream science will say nothing of it. See what happens, however, if someone tries to incorporate it into a modern chemistry book. :) The outcry would be deafening.

Now - evolution is still only a 'theory', which, in scientific circles is a great place to be,

Damn right it's a great place to be. The theory of gravity is "only a theory", yet we stay firmly planted in our chairs because of it. If a discovery is made that changes the theory of gravity significantly, we would stay in our chairs because gravity would continue on. It's the same with evolution. Every single new fossil find, every plant fiber, every bone, has the potential to falsify evolution, yet it doesn't. It strengthens it. Sometimes we have to reevaluate what was thought previously about a certain species, but nothing comes to light that says evolution is wrong. It is a fantastic theory.

Here are two definitions of theory, from MW (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/theory).

1: the analysis of a set of facts in their relation to one another.

6 c: a body of theorems presenting a concise systematic view of a subject <theory of equations>

This is the definition of the word that relates to its use in scientific circles. Pretty cut and dry, and notice the use of the word 'facts'. A fact is something that is true. Evolution is a set of facts, the theory is how they fit together.

Here's the definition that religious types like to use to "disprove" evolution.

6 b: an unproved assumption

If the scientific community were using that definition of the word, then the attack would be valid. They're not, and it's not.

It's actually about the first few trillionths of a second around the beginning of the Big Bang (see Stephen Hawking's quote at the beginning of my last post). It's that bit before the universe came into being where ID should be looked at.

Hawking is an agnostic, so you don't get to use his quotes to prove ID either.

As far as the moment before the Big Bang is concerned, there is no way we can know what happened, and no way we likely ever will. Like God, it resides outside of known space and time, and is therefore unmeasurable and untestable. So what exactly should be looked at?

After all, electrons spin in only 1 of 2 ways. You take a ball, put it into a wind tunnel, and no way is it going to spin in only 1 of 2 ways.. why do electrons?

Electrons aren't in a wind tunnel. Look at it another way, put a ball in a bathtub. It will likely float. Yet electrons go down to the bottom of the tub and further, to the center of the earth. Why not the ball? Why is the ball behaving differently than the electrons?

Valences... what's the deal there? These are fundamental questions of physics - not biology, and no, science doesn't have answers to this.

Valences are indeed a scientific conundrum, yet I would consider them more a fundamental question of chemistry, not physics. But again I say so what? At one point many of the scientific truths we take for granted were conundrums that could not be explained. Explanations were found, as I'm sure valences will be explained one day. I've said it before and I'm sure I'll have to say it again, a lack of understanding does not prove the supernatural.

there's something a bit 'fishy' going on.

No there isn't. If you dive into it with a preconceived assumption that there is a creator and all of this has a divine purpose, sure it seems fishy. If you go in with an open mind and simply look at evidence, it actually makes sense.

Think of it this way. If you get called for jury duty and the defendant in the case is a certain race and is accused of a crime that has been perpetrated against you in the past by an individual of the same race, you could reasonably be assumed to have a preconceived notion of guilt and would not be selected for that jury because it could skew the results. Your results have been skewed because of your assumptions with ID as well.

You have assumed there is a creator. In that, you will see a creator when you look at the evidence of life, cosmology, geology, chemistry, physics and so on. Try looking at it without that assumption.

Edit: And again here I am with the epic post length. :D

Slytovhand

10-27-2008, 02:11 PM

Okies... back to the long posting again :p

Flyn - the fallacy is Appeal to Inappropriate Authority. I still say an astrophycisist is a good authority to be looking at all the 'coinicidences' that occur in the make up of the universe. And a logician to see what logically follows and what doesn't.

Sucks the way that crap people get credited for great things - and vice versa. Also.... just because either of those 2 things happens, is not good enough reason to ignore the stuf they come up with... (sort of like racism... it's not relevant). The Romans killed thousands of people in their expansionist policies, and enslaved even more. They also happened to have built a stack of things (like aqueducts). We don't ignore the inventions because of the bad things they did...

Besides - your mechanic may have spent the previous 15 years as a top chef in international hotels, before getting jack of it and wanting to work on cars.... (yeah - ok, so you need to ask). It sort of annoys me (not related to this thread, btw...) how pop singers and movie stars etc aren't allowed to voice their opinion about, say, politics, and get told to 'stick to what they do best'. Why... anyone can study and make intelligent informed decisions. Just because the rest of the population doesn't, doesn't mean some can...

/rant

Organised religion... yeah - dunno! Sheep... People needing someone else to tell them what they should believe... the spiritual side of things is a very personal connection with what you believe. It makes far more sense to me than just listening to someone else's interpretations and experiences. I too, don't get that 'God' is there for everyone, but you've got to go through someone else first... 'My lot' go direct - go to the source (of whatever that may be - each according to each individual's beliefs).

JC - so, Einstein never said anything along the lines of "you know, sometimes I'm not so sure that science can explain everything about this universe" - without it actually meaning "Hey - just kidding :p". Hmmm - I don't think so. No - I'm not saying he was a believer of any particular deity type... just saying he wasn't a raving atheist. All I'm saying is that he at least expessed agnostic thoughts publicly... and perhaps even suggested why he had those thoughts.

In part I agree with what you said about ID and religion. But that's part of the problem - while the whole ID debate rages between science and fundy christians, that's all it will be. They hijacked the entire thing (even though ID will very nicely denounce a few christian basic concepts :D). Bloody fundamentalists... grrrrr....... And because it's been hijacked, it is far less likely to either a) be taken seriously, or b) to concentrate on the real reasons for why some people - such as those mentioned - like the idea.

I also totally agree that people are getting brainwashed - but that's religion in general. People aren't taught to think and discuss things critically. They make irrelevant arguments that make no sense whatsoever. ID specifically makes NO assertions as to what the designer is actually like - other than being rational (for the reasons I said above).

Oh - I'm not 'proving' ID - I'm just showing supporting arguments or thoughts.

Pre-Big Bang... what??? Are you seriously suggesting science shouldn't be taking a shot at that? Or, say, what happens when you go into a Black Hole?? (one mathematical thought is that Black Holes create 'Baby Universes' - Lee Smolin I think is the guy to see...).

Electron spin - that's only an example I was using to indicate - there are a stack of random possibilities, but somehow, the universe only chooses a few specific ones. Also, that the universe is precise, and in that precision, complex. Such precision and complexity is, to me, not through mere chance. If not mere chance - then what's the other option.

Question - if you managed to win lotto once (and yes, you purchased a ticket), is that chance or otherwise? Sure - chance is a good back here. What about winning it the week after as well? And the week after that, and the week after that? At what point do you look at the number of winnings in a row and say "Hmmmm - maybe it's not chance, but something is going on. Someone has rigged this thing up...".

Oh, so true - lack of proof is not evidence against - or vice versa ... (hang on - that doesn't make sense :p) Ok... no, supernatural isn't proven by lack of understanding. But lack of understanding, and previous ability to find explanation is just as unable to disprove supernatural agencies.

Your last comment (pre-edit)... it's not just accepting the facts and the evidence that makes the other questions. It's asking the big one...why? And how? And not just accepting the 'it just is' as a good enough answer. Strangely enough, it's just this very thinking that science has done really good at finding answers for....

Jadedcarguy

10-28-2008, 03:12 AM

Slyt, here's a piece on a letter that Einstein wrote himself discussing his religious "views". Pretty cut and dry.

Link (http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/may/12/peopleinscience.religion)

In his own words, "childish superstition".

As for ID being "hijacked" by religion, here's an article from the Washington Post discussing it's origins. It is a pretty old idea that keeps getting trotted out to refute science. Nevertheless, it was originally posited by individuals with a religious bent.

Link (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48938-2005Mar19.html)

Anyone who would go to all of the trouble to mash together various grades of bullshit in order to get something resembling chocolate cake has a nefarious purpose, no? ID has a nefarious purpose. It's entire reason for being is to build a case for a creator. Whether that's God of some Wiccan idea of Mother Nature, it doesn't matter. It's masquerading as science and always has.

As for the rest,

Pre Big Bang not being looked at? Large Hadron Collider, anyone? The experiments being done there may give us a glimpse at the events of the moment. As far as what happened before, if it falls outside our ability to look, there isn't much to see. If our tech becomes advanced enough to decipher the moments before BB, I'm sure science will be all over it. I never suggested we shouldn't look, just that we currently can't.

Electron spin. Yes, they spin one of two ways. Why not three? Or four? Well, the atom would most likely destroy itself if that happened, so there's your answer. No need for the supernatural.

Lotto?? Come on, you're smarter than that. Creationists like to do that, take something that is well understood by science, not so much by the general population, and use psuedo-science and common experiences to make it make "sense". It still doesn't make it true.

You want to talk about chance? What if the dinosaurs hadn't been wiped out 65MYA? That was mammals' big break, you know. Would humanity even have arisen? Would cetateans have evolved to fill the niche we take? Would anything? All unanswerable of course, but amazing to ponder.

Yes, science does a bang-up job of answering why and how. I think you're talking about the greater 'Why?' though. The 'why' that inevitably comes with being self aware. Personally, my reason to be here is to make the most of it. The way I see it we only get one go round. If we spend time trying to appease the supernatural, that's less time left to enjoy life. :)

Flyndaran

10-29-2008, 12:50 AM

Asking what created the universe is no more enlightening than asking what created the creator.

Asking what happened before the big bang, and time itself, is asking what were you thinking before you were a single celled fertalized egg.
They're nonsense questions assuming facts that are stated at the beginning to not be true.

What's the sound of one hand clapping?
Clapping is defined as two hands coming together to produce a sound.
One hand precludes the completion of such an act, therefore the question is meaningless.

Flyndaran

10-29-2008, 12:54 AM

The scientific method and science in general will determine what is, what is and is not possible, and all sorts of facts and aspects of reality.
Rational analysis of statistics, likely outcomes, etc. might even tell us what we should do to attain our goals. But of course, it won't tell us what those goals are. We choose what we want.
Big whoop. I don't label that a critical flaw in science.
The sidewalk won't tell you which way to go.

otakuneko

10-29-2008, 06:00 PM

Saying "God did it" is pretty much throwing up your hands and saying, "I can't explain it, so I'll pull something outta my ass."

May as well say a wizard did it.

IMHO.

Slytovhand

10-31-2008, 07:22 PM

JC - like you're first post up there... too bad about the links not actually doing what you intended though. Especially the first one... Let me quote from the bottom of it: His position on God has been widely misrepresented by people on both sides of the atheism/religion divide but he always resisted easy stereotyping on the subject.

"Like other great scientists he does not fit the boxes in which popular polemicists like to pigeonhole him," said Brooke. "It is clear for example that he had respect for the religious values enshrined within Judaic and Christian traditions ... but what he understood by religion was something far more subtle than what is usually meant by the word in popular discussion."

Despite his categorical rejection of conventional religion, Brooke said that Einstein became angry when his views were appropriated by evangelists for atheism. He was offended by their lack of humility and once wrote. "The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility."

Sorry - not so 'cut and dried'... And still fits exactly what I was suggesting when I brought his quote into it. His view of organised religion would count as 'cut and dried'.

Secondly, that 'history' of ID... sorry, crap version of history. ID (but not by name, of course) was posited well before Plato and Socrates - that's 2500 years ago. And that's the stuff we actually know about! Hence why there are references scattered throughout ID works of Neo-Platonic Forms. Aquinas, Paley and the others, having been brought up on Plato as a matter of course (via Aristotle) just refined it for their particular times and ideologies.

I'm not saying that religion doesn't try to steal it for it's own uses (ie - hijack), but that doesn't mean that creationists are a bunch of tools! (and ineffective ones, at that). Has it a 'nefarious purpose'? Well, yes, that's what it's become. Roads were built to ease communications amongst troops, and make it faster for them to travel across the Roman Empire, and for supplies to said troops - thus a 'nefarious purpose'... do we disavow road usage now?? (yeah, I can see the obvious argument... let's try something a bit different then...)

I never suggested we shouldn't look, just that we currently can't. Sorry - my bad!

Electron spin. Yes, they spin one of two ways. Why not three? Or four? Well, the atom would most likely destroy itself if that happened, so there's your answer. No need for the supernatural.

Ah - but therein lies my point... that's the way the universe has been 'designed'. As was pointed out, the big 'WHY' doesn't get an answer - only that it just happens to be that way.

Lotto.. actually, still a valid enough point for some non-religious ID believers. Again - 'it just is' isn't always a good enough answer. As I said (which no-one on here has yet even bothered to touch with a 10 foot pole...), as far as we know, the universe had 1 shot at getting it 'right'. The odds of 'getting it right' are, in a non-punny way, astronomical. From that point of view, and introducing Ockham's Razor, which actually does make more sense. Sure, it leaves open the door of who created the creator, but still....

I like your end comment :D

Flyn I - well, if you ask a religious person that question, it's enlightening...:p As for unfertilized eggs, I know people who can tell you (and, there are people, including myself who have past life memories).

Flyn II - ah... that'd be great - if it wasn't for the fact that scientists have gotten it wrong on so many occasions, that I don't seriously think it can, definitively tell us "what is and is not possible, and all sorts of facts and aspects of reality". Perhaps that's just the hubris of those scientific geniuses of the time, and hopefully we've learnt from those embarrassing moments to not make such hasty assumptions, but I felt it still needed to be said.

Otakuneko - I presume you're also atheist?

Jadedcarguy

10-31-2008, 07:59 PM

JC - like you're first post up there... too bad about the links not actually doing what you intended though. Especially the first one... Let me quote from the bottom of it:

Sorry - not so 'cut and dried'... And still fits exactly what I was suggesting when I brought his quote into it. His view of organised religion would count as 'cut and dried'.

Fine. Here's another one. Link (http://www.skeptically.org/thinkersonreligion/id8.html) Call him agnostic, call him atheist. Just don't call him a believer. Better yet, google "Einstein Atheist" and read it for yourself. Plenty out there.

Secondly, that 'history' of ID... sorry, crap version of history.

Not crap, just condensed. If I had posted a detailed account of it's history you'd still be reading it. :p

I'm not saying that religion doesn't try to steal it for it's own uses (ie - hijack), but that doesn't mean that creationists are a bunch of tools! (and ineffective ones, at that). Has it a 'nefarious purpose'? Well, yes, that's what it's become. Roads were built to ease communications amongst troops, and make it faster for them to travel across the Roman Empire, and for supplies to said troops - thus a 'nefarious purpose'... do we disavow road usage now?? (yeah, I can see the obvious argument... let's try something a bit different then...)

I'm beginning to think we're having two different arguments. I've never said 'abolish ID', just keep it out of science curriculum.

Your road analogy is indeed flawed, as they were built to move people. That movement can have many different purposes, good or bad. ID was created for..............what, exactly? What's its purpose, other than to misinform?

Ah - but therein lies my point... that's the way the universe has been 'designed'. As was pointed out, the big 'WHY' doesn't get an answer - only that it just happens to be that way.

You're asking me to give you proof of 'no designer', I can't do that any more than you can prove there is one. My point is there are explanations for the way things work that don't require the supernatural. Science can't explain everything, but it can explain more every day. Think of what it will explain in 100 years. The "why" of electron spin could be taught to 2nd graders by then.

Lotto.. actually, still a valid enough point for some non-religious ID believers. Again - 'it just is' isn't always a good enough answer. As I said (which no-one on here has yet even bothered to touch with a 10 foot pole...), as far as we know, the universe had 1 shot at getting it 'right'. The odds of 'getting it right' are, in a non-punny way, astronomical. From that point of view, and introducing Ockham's Razor, which actually does make more sense. Sure, it leaves open the door of who created the creator, but still....

But still, what exactly? If the creator 'just is', I say the universe 'just is'. As far as one shot at getting it right, we wouldn't be here to discuss it otherwise. Again I say so what. Something we don't understand does not need supernatural guidance to be real, it needs more study to be understood.

If you want to ponder a creator of some sort do it in a theology or philosophy class, just don't treat it as fact and try to use it in science curriculum!

I like your end comment

Thanks.

Slytovhand

11-01-2008, 07:14 PM

Ok... I'll call him agnostic :p but from what you've linked, I'd definitely say he wasn't an atheist (as he says in his own words!)

History of ID...ah, but you'd be presuming that I'd still be reading for that long :p

I'm beginning to think we're having two different arguments. [/quote

Possibly....

[quote]I've never said 'abolish ID', just keep it out of science curriculum. <snip>
If you want to ponder a creator of some sort do it in a theology or philosophy class, just don't treat it as fact and try to use it in science curriculum!

As I've said previously, I don't think it is 'fact', and I wouldn't go so far as to 'teach' it in the science class. Not in the same context as what I think you mean.

I'll reiterate what I've said previously in this thread (umm - maybe go back about 8 or 10 pages :p). One lecture, senior year, end of semester, not assessed, discussion on the 'how did this universe come into existence?'. Chuck in a few ideas - Baby Universes, Multiple universes, ID (non-religious version). Discuss limitations and inadequacies of science. Similar sort of class as ethics - no proofs, just discussions and 'evidence'.

Why?

Let me quote a bit from one of your links, JC..."Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind." (not that I see ID as 'religion' anyway, as I've said many times...)

Now - a bit OT... we consider time to be linear and 'moving' in a 'forward' direction. What if it's not? (Only thinking of this cos it came up on that other forum I got booted from, under a thread 'Future Sense of Self'. It also sort of mirrors ?Roger Penrose's? theory of an infinitely expanding and contracting universe - but not only is matter going through this cycle, but also time. You just made me think of it talking about electron spins to grade 2's)

And no, ID wasn't created to misinform - that's what the creationists did with it. You know, this wouldn't even be a discussion if the christians hadn't gotten a hold of the idea and ran with it. Well... ran through the street yelling "Eureka eureka, I've found it"... while banging cymbols and paying a band and herald to announce their presence throughout town.... After all, the idea had been around for ages (would've been quite a few scientists who believed in some sort of designer all throughout history) and it wasn't much of an issue...

Seshat

11-02-2008, 07:19 AM

It's probably time to toss my opinion in again.

Intelligent Design is not science - not as I know it, not as I learned it in university. Science, as I understand it, follows a very specific pattern and purpose.

The pattern is this:
1. See something the scientist wants to understand. (Observation part 1)
2. Form a hypothesis. (Observation 2)
3. Determine repeatable ways to prove the hypothesis false in experiments viable with current technology.* (Experimentation part 1)
4. Test the hypothesis with those experiments. (Experimentation 2)
5. Publish your hypothesis, suggested experiments, and results. (Publish/Peer review)
6. Have other scientists attempt those experiments, come up with other experiments, and generally try to prove your hypothesis false. (Peer Review 2, possibly with a return to experimentation)
7. Revise the hypothesis in light of the disproofs that have been achieved (most likely outcome) OR
8. Accept the hypothesis as tentatively true: ie, as a Theory.

* Some astrophysicists, cosmologists, and quantum physicists work with hypotheses which we don't yet have the technology to test. Their work never makes it past 'hypothesis'. Some of those hypotheses are to be tested in the Large Hadron Collider.

Evolution is a theory. It passes all those tests.
1. It explains something which has been observed.
2. Its initial hypothesis was described in 'On the Origin Of Species'.
3. There are experiments which can clearly disprove evolution - evolution will be disproven entirely if someone finds a human bone in a layer of dinosaur fossils!.
4. The hypothesis has been repeatedly tested experimentally by thousands of scientists doing hundreds or thousands of different digs, observations, fruit-fly-breedings, and so forth. It's also tested experimentally (and informally) on a daily basis by every breeder of dogs, cats, cattle, sheep, wheat, and even goldfish.
5-8. There have been thousands of publications of the hypothesis, the experiments, the results of the experiments, the changes to the hypothesis in light of the experiments...

Intelligent Design fails this test.

1. It passes 'observation'. Yes, an awful lot of people look at the world and say 'isn't it amazing how it all fits together? I wonder how that happened.'
2. It's a hypothesis. It's a tentative method of explaining the observation.
3. Determining a repeatable test to prove intelligent design false with current technology... um. Ur. Um..... how?

I call the astrophysicists, cosmologists, and quantum physicists scientists because they try to come up with experiments. They admit that a hypothesis is untestable, or they say 'hmm... well maybe one day in the future we'll figure out a way to collide hadrons' or 'hey, can I get a copy of the data from the radio telescope, I think I know how to use that to calculate Dark Matter'.....

To me, Intelligent Design isn't a theory - it's not possible to make a repeatable experiment that will disprove it; and no such experiment has ever been done and thoroughly peer reviewed.
Therefore it's a hypothesis. It's in the same realm as string theory, Schrodinger's Cat, and the idea that I need my lucky trackball to play Oblivion with.

Science doesn't try to explain the inexplicable. Science doesn't care WHY evolution happened - that's beyond the scope science tries to reach.

I wish the devoutly religious really understood that. Science doesn't reach into religion's realms. God is beyond Science' scope.

Slytovhand

11-02-2008, 04:15 PM

Uh-oh...Seshat's back... I'm in trouble now.... :D

Ok, firstly, TBH - not interested in going over the "ID isn't science" argument. It's not. Never has been, never will... Looks like another thead should be started up if that's going to be the only argument that's going to be offered...

The only debate really comes down to... in a science class room, is the only thing that is ever permissible to discuss, science?

It is quite clear to me that the answer is a resounding "NO!"

I can see the eyes roll now.

Well - let me say that in a standard class, part of what is taught is:

English
Comprehension
Discipline
Respect
Crititcal and Thinking
Questioning techniques
Time Management
Mathematics
History (what science student hasn't heard of Gallileo, Kepler, Curie, etc... well, ok, probably most of them these days :p)
Sociology (as per above)
and a bit of Religion (ooh - Gallileo, Kepler et al again... given the whole 'context in which they were working')
and sometimes - Ethics

So... is a discussion of ID so taboo???

Next...

What do they 'teach' in Religion?

ok, half of the above, but not a lot of critical reasoning, nor logic, certainly not mathematics, possibly not even ethics.

Let me also ask another question about our schools. Do we want our students discussing things like the Big Bang? I would presume it to be a given. If so, surely surely surely, the question of 'What is the origin of our universe?' has to come up. do our science teachers just ignore it? Do they leave it to the religion teaches? .. yeah, like that'll be an unbiased class.

Besides, ID in religion class??? hahahahaha.... they wouldn't know where to start... other than the aforementioned misinformation. If they tried to teach it there, you may as well start adding in 'evolution' as well.

Kids aren't stupid, unless they are taught to be. And yes, these days, they are often taught to be. For me, this is a chance to stop our kids being ignorant and stupid.

And lastly, should 'miracles' be looked at in a science class, or should they remain firmly entrenched in religion. There are no doubt a lot of quite normal scientific reasons for the 'miracles' that occur throughout religious mythologies. Do they get ignored because the cross the boundaries? Do we not bother to look at the vapours and oils of the Fraxinella plant which can ignite given appropriate conditions, merely because it has had it's name thrown into the ring of possible "Burning Bushes" of Moses' journey?

Umm - running out of thought now - this reply has been open for about 5 hours now :p