There are a couple neat events coming up next week:
On Wednesday, April 5…
5:00 PM, OH 165
Lecture by Cornelius Hunter, biophysics professor at Biola University and author of Darwin’s God: Evolution and the problem of evil and Darwin’s Proof: The triumph of religion over science.
7:00PM, OH 155
Panel Discussion
Come hear both sides of the story!
Panelists:
Representing Evolution:
Richard Harrison, EEB, Cornell University
Kern Reeve, NBB, Cornell University
Representing Intelligent Design:
Cornelius Hunter, Biophysics, Biola University
______________________________
Sponsored by the Intelligent Design Evolution Awareness (IDEA) Club and the Bioethics Society of Cornell
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March 31st, 2006 at 8:15 am
Allowing this type of conversation gives legitimacy to the Itelligent Design argument by treating these issues as equal. In reality there is very little science involved in ID because the proponents won’t publish their ‘work’ in peer reviews and allow the rest of the scietific community an opportunity to examine it. They prefer to publish in mainstream media and prey upon people’s religious beliefs in pushing their narrow agenda. When a school like Cornell has a forum such as this they list it on their websites to prove there is a hotbed of contention within the scientific community, when the truth is scientists dismiss ID as psuedo-science.
March 31st, 2006 at 9:30 am
No, they aren’t equal! ID has logic, reason, physics, genetics, etc. squarely behind it.
All you need to do is demonstrate “design” at any level in any living creature and you’re faced with the dilemna of proving it doesn’t reflect intelligence. If at any point you find that you cannot, you have proven intelligent design once and for all.
So far the greatest minds in science have failed miserably to replicate a SINGLE living thing from scratch. Billions have been spent on reverse engineering living things and NOONE has yet managed to duplicate one.
Adaptation is not “evolution” it is merely a marvelous means of coping with change. It’s not some great all powerful design engineer that can “create and design living things”. “Natural Selection” is, in reality, overuled by the status quo, ask any breeder.
Did i hear someone mention, “pseudoscience”?
Wayne Hollyoak
www.scifaith.com
Wayne Hollyoak
March 31st, 2006 at 11:35 am
and right after that:
QED - you just demonstrated that “design” and “intelligence” are not good paradigms for explaining living things.
March 31st, 2006 at 12:56 pm
What would you suggest? “natural selection” sure doesn’t cut it. Acquiredd
traits perhaps?
Wayne
March 31st, 2006 at 1:36 pm
I’m afraid this is all false. Don’t forget that ID recently went to court in Dover, Pennsylvania. They had the chance to present all of the logic, reason, physics, genetics, etc., that they wanted in defense of their ideas. Try reading the transcripts of the trial. Try reading the judge’s decision.
All of the ID arguments collapsed under careful scrutiny and cross-examination. Even the top ID proponent admitted that ID wasn’t really science.
Conservatives and religious folks at Cornell should be embarrassed that the ID hoax is visiting their campus. ID is a black eye for the conservatives and Christians who are struggling to do real intellectual work.
March 31st, 2006 at 2:56 pm
B Spitzer:
The Dover trial was to determine whether or not Intelligent Design used government resources to promote religion, not to disect its scientific value. The court of law is not where the validity of scientific theories is established.
Some parts of ID have been debunked. The original version of Ireducible complexity, and, if you count them as ever having been valid, most of the layman arguments. The revised version of irreducible complexity has neither been proven nor disproven, and I’ve read through it. The logic is sound, though its applicability to the real world has yet to be shown.
March 31st, 2006 at 4:00 pm
I think Cornell, or any university, is absolutely an appropriate place for a healthy debate. Certainmly more appropriate than high schools, where our god-squad bretheren want it taught. Unfortunately, the scientific and education communities must take on this debate. The ID crew has repeatedly demonstrated a surprising disregard for the truth. Their messaging constantly misrepresents the reality of scientific evidence for evolution and ID. This is political PR at its worst. Which, unfortunately, means we have to sink to their level in this argument.
Brad
March 31st, 2006 at 4:14 pm
No, they aren’t equal! ID has logic, reason, physics, genetics, etc. squarely behind it.
All you need to do is demonstrate “design” at any level in any living creature and you’re
faced with the dilemna of proving it doesn’t reflect intelligence. If at any point you find
that you cannot, you have proven intelligent design once and for all.
Since you seem to know about logic, maybe you could explain the ‘argument from ignorance’ and the ‘false dilemma’ in your second paragraph.
March 31st, 2006 at 4:16 pm
If at any point you find
that you cannot, you have proven intelligent design once and for all.
Maybe you could also expound on the difference between “cannot” and “have not”. Unknown does not imply unknowable.
March 31st, 2006 at 5:31 pm
If you find a drop of water, you forever demonstrate that water exists.
You cannot divorce intelligence from the concept of “design”. If you can
demonstrate that any “design” exists in a living system, you must account
for the “ordering” activity that has taken place.
This is the dilemna.
Wayne Hollyoak
www.scifaith.com
April 1st, 2006 at 1:22 am
I’m no scientist or anything but I’ve been taught biology 11 and evolution. I’m going to state two proven laws that contradict evolution from what I have learned
First is the modern cell theory, which states:
1.All organisms are made up of cells.
2. New cells are always produced from pre-existing cells
3. The cell is a structural and functional unit of all living things.
4.The cell contains hereditary information, which is passed on from cell to cell during cell division.
5. All cells are basically the same in chemical composition and metabolic activities.
Evolution is stating is that a cell came from a bunch on non-living chemicals. The cell theory says that new cells always come form pre-existing cells.
Second is the law of thermodynamics Which states that natural process over time go to disorder. Which are obvious as we see People grow older. Also evolution states that overtime the species evolved from this single cell and became better and more complex. Which is the opposite of the Second law of thermodynamics.
Also I can use some simple logical arguments against evolution.
Say your in a junk yard and you see a brand new corvette. Would you think that it just evolved form the parts? Of course not. Obviously some on had created this car. The same thing applies for the earth and everything in it which is millions of times more complicated than that car. Also if you parked that car in a garage for 50 years would you think that it would be shinier or get more horse power and new wheels. Obviously not. If you’ve ever heard of the abiogenisis theory that Aristotle made in order to explain the world around him. He discovered that when you leave a dirty shirt and some old food on the ground, that after a week or two he would come back and see that there where mice and bugs living in it. So he thought that non-living matter turned into living matter. This theory was accepted within the scientific community with out question until the 17th century when some scientist try to disagree with this theory one of them named Francesco Redi but he was unsuccessful. It wasn’t tell 1862 when louis Pastuer disproved abiogenisis with a series of careful experiments. Nowadays we look on that and say how dumb can u be be (not to be mean). But that was there understanding of the world at that time. There’s a famous saying that say’s “The policies of today are the common sense of tomorrow” I’m not sure who said that but I learned in social class when learning about world war 2. So the same saying could be applied to today’s unproven science like the evolution theory which maybe in 10 or 15 years
from now could be seen as illogical and people may laugh and say haha man from monkey. But what I’m trying to say is that we may think were so smart and know everything but in reality we know little because in 50 or a hundred years we could know so much more about everything and people may laugh about our ideas and theories of any kind. Also Darwin living back in the 1800’s he believed that he may have found an answer to the origins of life but he said himself “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.” So someone with less understanding about the world around him, stated that if the world was to complex from what he had understood at the time, then what he understood is that his theory could be abolished if living species were more complicated than what he imagined. Cells and life are far more complex then what he could of imagined. And even us now still don’t fully understand life and how everything works. But in such a big questions like our origin of life and why we are here should not be taken lightly. Because these questions alone define us gives us meaning or purpose. Or if you believe in evolution there is no meaning or purpose in life, no reason to be a good person to , respect others or even yourself because all that we are is animals that came from a bunch of lifeless meaning less chemicals. Is that really what you want to teach the young people of today? That life is meaningless and useless. No wonder why our world is so screwed up. Maybe its from teaching us a meaningless existence or maybe it just the way people are now. But I believe that this life has meaning and purpose. I believe that God created this world (the God of the bible). This world is far too complex for it to be randomly created through a big bang causing so much order with out a guiding hand. I’m not going to preach at you or anything but the origins of life is a big topic that can effect the very way people think about them selves and others.
April 1st, 2006 at 12:53 pm
Natural processes over time go to disorder IN A CLOSED SYSTEM. You need to go to your science teacher and ask for a full refund.
April 1st, 2006 at 1:22 pm
Palidor, why should high school student be entitled to a refund? All the teacher can do is present the information; he or she can’t force the student to pay attention.
The point you make about closed systems, while true, is perhaps not even necessary for refutation of the silly contention above. If evolution is supposely contrary to the second law of thermodynamics, what I would ask is, where do you get babies from? If you can’t have local decreases in disorder, how does a baby grow?
The fact that the sun provides plenty of energy to allow for decreases in disorder on earth explains WHY the “second law” antievolution argument is specious, but the fact that it MUST be specious is made clear by a little observation.
April 1st, 2006 at 6:11 pm
“Closed system”, you can’t be serious??? You mean living things
are not open systems, they don’t get sick, sunburnt, fight,
mutate, and so on?
It’s quite true. The 2nd Law stands squarely in the face of any
theory that supposes ordered systems can just happen. Babies
develop as a result of a super complex code stored in a way that
is both efficient, fragile and carefully designed to orchestrate
cellular differentiation to the most precise timing and execution
of an system of fabrication in the known universe.
You are far more knowledgable than i was in High School!!
April 1st, 2006 at 6:21 pm
Closed system??? What, a sardine can?
Does a high school student need to set well educated adults
straight on basic physics?
If you don’t think living things are open systems, visit a hospital,
or watch CSI or something!
Hmm, what’s a mutation then.
Wayne Hollyoak
April 1st, 2006 at 6:49 pm
High School Student,
Excellent point about the high turnover of ideas in “science”.
Today’s heralded wisdom is bound to become tomorrow’s embarassment.
People are very reluctant to accept their frailty as human beings.
This may not happen to the scientific establishment this time it
they can learn from people who are trying to point out their folly.
The way things are now, when “evolutionism” is exposed for what it
really is, i wonder if “science” will have any credibility at all.
Wayne Hollyoak
www.scifaith.com
April 2nd, 2006 at 1:01 am
Haha. Sorry I can’t help myself.
I love it when the old SLOT argument is traipsed out.
Its’s been doifn the creatitionist rounds for decades now:
Fully debunked:
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CF/CF001.html
Please not that dembski has never used his design filter in an expirement, nor detected design.
Previsiously designed things:
Giant’s Causeway
Canals on Mars
uh - oh, no we were just ignorant that’s all. Folks have been explaining the unkown using the supernatural for too long now.
Faith is fine, but don’t dress it up as science.
No method, no hypothesis…
If you think we need design to give us meaning your wrong. design is not teh foundation of morality. If you think God is, then say it, don’t Lie in his name.
April 2nd, 2006 at 1:10 am
Ok well i got some of my info wrong but is that all u guys have against my arguments what about the cell theory or some of my logic. I know u guys are smarter and more knowledgeable than me. But do my arguments make sense and provide anything against evolutions thinking or are some of my facts wrong. What do u guys think about what Darwin said. Or the impact of evolution on teens nowadays could that be a reasonable statement or just some dumb idea. Please be honest
April 2nd, 2006 at 1:38 am
o haha i should have read the above agruement before i wrote that
April 2nd, 2006 at 1:40 am
opps i meant agruement(s) not 17
April 2nd, 2006 at 1:53 am
No one is berating you for debating.
But advancing old creationist arguments isn’t the way to go.
I wouldn’t blame teaching evolution for all societies ills, personally.
There’s a lot of evidence for evolution:
talk origons lists 29 I believe.
The begining of life is abiogenesis, not evolution, so you shouldn’t attack evolution on that front.
Why attack it at all?
Surely you’d be better of giving a better scientific theory with greater explanative power?
But, “god it did” doesn’t really fit the bill.
April 2nd, 2006 at 3:47 am
for number 17. ok I read the website but isn’t entropy the amount of randomness in a
system and it says “but sometimes order increases as entropy increases” but that just
contradicted itself because as entropy increases then randomness increases so how is that
causing order.
Could we ever have a completely closed system? No, for example hot
liquid in the best thermos eventually cools down. So u see palidor u may think the
systems closed but to what, it can’t be completely to everything.
Ya increases in order are
possible, think about that junk yard and think about people going there and building a car
from the junk. Ya the order increases but with a hand to guide it.(about the God thing im
just stating what I believe how the world was created and try to prove or provide answers
that could make it possible, and I realise that you can’t prove Gods existents) Ok you
may say about the river increasing entropy but as the rocks tumble on each other the big
go to the bottom and the small to the top and yes that does decrease entropy visually. But
as they tumble and move the rocks break down and little pieces form into sand and
increases in entropy and eventually the rocks break down to tinny pieces. So in the long
run entropy increases. Also the website says “You can see order come and go in nature in
many different ways. A few examples are snowflakes and other frost crystals, cloud
formations, dust devils, ripples in sand dunes, and eddies and whirlpools in streams. See
how many other examples you can find.” But has anyone seen it in cells or life itself. I’ve
seen order go but not come. Otherwise we would be able to get younger which isn’t
happening. We only get older and less new and youthful.
Wasn’t abiogenesis
disproved 150 years ago.
don’t a lot of evolutionist advance old evolutionist
agruements. Beside what wrong on improving old ideas in the first place to my
knowledge the evolution theory was made in the 1800’s.
u say why attack it at all
but if the people back in the 1700’s didn’t attack what scientist thought to be real which
is the abiogenisis theory (or many others that like scientist thought we could never fly) then us today would still think that food turned into mice and
microbes. Science is the search for truth and in order to find truth you may have to go
against other peoples ideas or theory’s.
also for the fossil records, how come
there aren’t any transitional fossils of monkeys evolving to people or half dog birds. Or a
cow horse. And if monkey evolved to man then why are there still monkeys would they
have changed to because where most advanced then them and decreased in entropy.
April 2nd, 2006 at 3:53 am
Rich,
29 falls pretty short of all living things being evidence of “design”.
Abiogenisis? A better and more honest term is “spontaneous generation”/
Sadly, i used to believe that a living thing could spontaneously
generate, “given just the right conditions and a good jolt of
lightning”. So much for Frankenstein “science”. That’s what “abiogenisis”
amounts to. Used to be an evolutionist, too. That is, until grad
school.
Wayne Hollyoak
www.scifaith.com
April 2nd, 2006 at 4:09 am
u say why attack it at all
but if the people back in the 1700’s didn’t attack what scientist thought to be real which
is the abiogenisis theory (or many others that like scientist thought we could never fly) then us today would still think that food turned into mice and
microbes. Science is the search for truth and in order to find truth you may have to go
against other peoples ideas or theory’s.
ya and people thought there was a lot of evidence to prove that man could never fly according to there understanding at the time.
April 2nd, 2006 at 1:56 pm
Go back and read this whole chain from the beginning and I am amazed how little support for ID there is in these arguments. Many of the supposed pro-ID discussion has been more anti-evolution. I find that whole line of thinking seriously suspect. Rather than prove ID, you keep trying to tear down Evolution. No wonder every single legal challenge to ID has resulted in failure. Science is about proof and there is turnover in science as new things are learned and new explanations come out. No one ever said Science doesn’t change. But the theories of evolution of Charles Darwin, and others, have stood up for over 150 years. And ID, in it’s current form, pretty well started when the Supreme Court, in 1987, ruled that Creationalist Science wasn’t science. Hmmmm, rather than tear down evolution, go back to the lab and prove ID. At that point it will be welcome in the classroom as a competing theory, but first let it get to the point of actually being a theory and not just a singular point of view with no scientific support.
Ted
April 2nd, 2006 at 2:08 pm
Interesting website — http://www.uwosh.edu/colleges/.....roject.htm which lists over 10,000 Christian clergy who have signed an open letter in support of evolution.
These three lines are my favorites:
“We believe that the theory of evolution is a foundational scientific truth, one that has stood up to rigorous scrutiny and upon which much of human knowledge and achievement rests.”
This also showed me how little ID support there is across Christians. It seems to be the province of a small group of fundamentalists who refuse to see anything but what they want to see.
“To reject this truth or to treat it as “one theory among others” is to deliberately embrace scientific ignorance and transmit such ignorance to our children.”
Right here is the reason I don’t believe any college should treat ID like it has equal footing with Evolution. It is not just a simple theory, it is not anti-God, and I am not the Anti-Christ as one of my co-workers has suggested because I refuse to renounce my religious upbringing and join his fundamentalist church. Arguing that teaching both is fair is ridiculous. One has withstood 150 years of science study and enhancement, the other is a religious point of view with no scientific standing. Looks like one belongs in biology class and the other should remain in a theology or sociology class.
“We believe that among God’s good gifts are human minds capable of critical thought and that the failure to fully employ this gift is a rejection of the will of our Creator.”
Many of the theories of science we hold as truths were first put forth by some very religious people. Gregor Mendel, the father of Geneticd was a Monk, Darwin himself was trained in a theogical school. The Wright Brothers were devout Christians. I have been told that once when Wilbur Wright was asked about reconciling his beliefs with his advances in science he put forth an interesting idea. God gave me this brain and not to use it would be against what I see as his wishes.
April 2nd, 2006 at 2:53 pm
Wednesday’s events…
As a public service announcement, the IDEA Club press release on next week’s events:
……
April 2nd, 2006 at 6:48 pm
Er…that was sort of my point, Wayne. I literally cannot believe that you don’t realize you’re actually arguing against your own argument.
April 2nd, 2006 at 7:24 pm
okay folks, one more time, knocking one theory isn’t arguing for another.
In science, you take the theory with teh most explanative power,and keep refining it.
Abiogenesis dissproven? NO. Eh - that’s a bit like ‘physics’ being dissproven. Abiogenesis is ilfe from no life - geez special creation could even fall into that is scientifically proven, athough you start having ‘first cause’ issues.
One there was no life, now there is, so something happened…
as for ” I’ve
seen order go but not come. Otherwise we would be able to get younger which isn’t
happening.” you might want to take a basic logic course to see what you did wrong here… Or just some set theory.
So far this thread has just proffered more old creationist arguments. Where is the research FOR ID? The mechanisms, the experiments?
Charlatans / Lying for jesus?
April 2nd, 2006 at 9:13 pm
ok ya your right bashing one theory don’t make up for another. But about the abiogenesis yes there was no life and now there is. So out of nothing came life. So if life was created by nature in abiogensis with out a designer then how come we don’t see non-living things go into living things now. or if nature could do it how come we can’t. so i think that it would be more logical for an intelligent designer to create us then nature. becuase we can’t see nature creating any more of life from nothing like in the begining. also theres so many religions out there that worship some sort of god. which points out that there somesort of desire in humans for a higher being. ok and i don’t know any machanism and experiment for id. but i can use logic (if it works). ok and don’t say im lying for jesus cuz thats just dumb. anybody could be wrong or have your facts mixed up that doesn’t mean your lieing. That means sombody just proved you wrong. and you learn from mistakes.
April 2nd, 2006 at 9:21 pm
But Rich, that seems to be the majority of the ID argument. Rather than proof of their own ideas, they spend more time trying to tear down others. The first time I asked someone what ID was I got a 10 minute lecture on how the Earth is only 6000 years old and the whole fossil record is a lie. When I asked what that had to do with ID, he looked at me like I was nuts. His ideas boiled down to:
1. The laws of thermodynamics are wrong so carbon dating is false.
2. Geology and geological strata was formed in one event and in one year. It’s all the result of Noah’s Flood.
3. The fossil record has holes in it, so it must be wrong.
4. Evolution is only a theory so it isn’t true.
5. Evolution is the reason our whole society is messed up.
It killed me that at no time did he offer even an explanation of ID or any of the proof behind it. And nothing he has communicated to me since that first conversation has been any different. He keeps challenging Evolution while offering no support for ID. He doesn’t realize that when he takes a swipe at evolution there is a ton of material supporting it. Wikipedia helps me more than it helps him!
The 10,000 clergy letter I posted earlier has him stumped. He truly believed that ID was a Christian-wide belief and not just a small sect of fundamentalists.
He does think i am the Anti-Christ and can’t believe I even believe in God at all. I have been having aload of fun tweaking him on a regular basis.
Ted
April 2nd, 2006 at 10:04 pm
I retract my earlier statement. It’s your English teacher that needs to give you a refund.
April 3rd, 2006 at 3:23 am
“ok ya your right bashing one theory don’t make up for another. But about the abiogenesis yes there was no life and now there is. So out of nothing came life. So if life was created by nature in abiogensis with out a designer then how come we don’t see non-living things go into living things now”
what do you expcet to happen, a gazelle suddenly apear with a puff of smoke.
The first life was very small and very simple, and evolved from there.
Abiogenesis may have happened many times and may still be happening, but to such small organisms you’d need a microscope to see…
April 3rd, 2006 at 9:48 am
Wasn’t abiogenesis
disproved 150 years ago.
No. You may be thinking of “spontaneous generation”. Or you could be just completely crazy. I do not have sufficient evidence to decide at this time, but you keep supplying more.
April 3rd, 2006 at 9:51 am
Say your in a junk yard and you see a brand new corvette. Would you think that it just evolved form the parts?
No I wouldn’t. We know that if we put two corvettes in a cage with food and water, and come back in a month, there won’t be a litter of little puppy corvettes. THEREFORE, corvettes are not like living organism. THEREFORE, I wonder why you would try to use them in an analogy for a living organism.
April 3rd, 2006 at 9:57 am
Also Darwin living back in the 1800’s he believed that he may have found an answer to the origins of life but he said himself “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.”
You are quote mining”>. Take a look at the full paragraph by Darwin and see if it doesn’t read a bit differently:
If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find out no such case. No doubt many organs exist of which we do not know the transitional grades, more especially if we look to much-isolated species, round which, according to my theory, there has been much extinction. Or again, if we look to an organ common to all the members of a large class, for in this latter case the organ must have been first formed at an extremely remote period, since which all the many members of the class have been developed; and in order to discover the early transitional grades through which the organ has passed, we should have to look to very ancient ancestral forms, long since become extinct.
April 3rd, 2006 at 3:01 pm
Good point wamba!
I see this in many responses from ID proponents. They love to use only the parts of a quote that can support their own position to some tiny degree. They never look at the context of what was said and what the author of the quote meant. Darwin did recognize that there was something that could blow him completely out of the water, but to date nothing has been found that disproves evolution and natural selection. At least nothing that makes scietific sense.
I did enjoy the trial transcripts from Dover where two leading proponents of ID (Behe and Dembski) agreed that the only way ID could be accepted as science would be to expand the definition of science to include the supernatural. I guess this means if Kansas succeeds in requiring ID in the science classroom, we can expect Astrology to be replacing Astronomy, Alchemy to replace Chemistry, and Phrenology (bumbs on the head) to replace Pyschiatry.
Ted
April 3rd, 2006 at 3:54 pm
Ted — You point right to the heart of the irony of the ID argument. They claim to be seeking the truth, but seem to have no problem with lying to get there. Behavior, I might add, no “athiest Evolutionist” scientist would consider acceptable for making an argument in their field.
April 3rd, 2006 at 4:12 pm
Sorry for not closing that link properly.
I doubt that high school student has read Darwin’s Origin of Species, more likely he copied the quote from a Creationist site without checking the original source. HSS, please note: Creationists sites are not an accurate source of info. If you are honest you will check your facts with reliable sources in the future. Or you could go the Duane Gish route and just keep repeating the same lies no matter how many times you are corrected. Your choice.
TH:
Dembksi did not testify in Kitzmiller v. Dover. You may be thinking of Scott Minnich? Behe is the one who admitted that his definition of “theory” would include astrology. The court decision and trial transcripts are available at Talk.Origins
April 3rd, 2006 at 4:18 pm
So if life was created by nature in abiogensis with out a designer then how come we don’t see non-living things go into living things now. or if nature could do it how come we can’t.
Life exists now. So if resources were available, they would probably get eaten up by existing life before new life could evolve.
As for laboratory experiments, we don’t know the exact conditions of the early earth. Nonetheless, give me a beaker the size of a planet and half a billion years to run experiments and I’ll give it a good try.
April 3rd, 2006 at 4:31 pm
HSS: Or if you believe in evolution there is no meaning or purpose in life, no reason to be a good person to , respect others or even yourself because all that we are is animals that came from a bunch of lifeless meaning less chemicals. Is that really what you want to teach the young people of today? That life is meaningless and useless.
Here’s a link for the Fallacy Files. You should brush up on your logic. You could start with “Appeal to Consequences”.
I think we should teach our children the best science we have. ID does not fit that description, evolution does.
April 3rd, 2006 at 5:10 pm
Ok well i got some of my info wrong but is that all u guys have against my arguments what about the cell theory or some of my logic.
We’ve shot so many holes in your “logic” there’s nothing left. As for how we might have got from no life to the first cell, read up on the RNA World theory.
April 3rd, 2006 at 5:56 pm
Might want to check out “First cause” as well.
April 3rd, 2006 at 7:37 pm
haha ya probaly i know im not the greatest english wrighter
ill leave it up to you scientists to agrue cuz u guys are really smart. but i still don’t believe in evolution. maby in the future ill become a scientist then ill be able to agrue ID or some other one but i guess not now. Only time will tell what the true origin of life will be. or maby it won’t who knows.
April 3rd, 2006 at 11:25 pm
Just a gentle reminder that a bit of courtesy is never amiss in these sort of discussions. If you want to argue for anything particular, making disparging comments about other people’s teachers may not be the best way to go about it, and in hardly any situation is it really appropriate.
April 3rd, 2006 at 11:33 pm
“Science” does really need a major overhaul. It’s not the discipline
itself that’s messed up. It’s the egotism and all the belittleing, whathaveyou/
Really, what difference does someone’s command of grammar, spelling, etc.
make?
There are those that are convinced that the mysteries of the universe and
living things can be understood. The truth is, we can only guess. As far as
origins, or creation as it’s better known, we don’t know squat. And maybe
those of us that see great skill and wisdom in living things. The ecosystem, the timing of each
live cycle, the tides, season, the artistry and attention to every detail on even the smallest insects. Most ID proponents prefer to take a humbler approach.
The distant past is much more difficult to understand due to the poor condition of the record left behind.
The scientific establishment claims to have origins pretty much figured out. This egotism and elitism is infecting evangelical schools as well. Pride and arrogance is the way of the fearful. Prejudice and hatred is as sign of insecurity.
People that are secure with their ideas and opinions don’t react with ridicules and namecalling. The youth of today are realizing this. ID folks aren’t easliy intimidated, espectially those that have solid science training and critical thinking skills. They are the ones that have shown little fear of teaching balanced treatment in the classroom. As the world can clearly see, the scientific establishment and the proponents of evolutionary creation stories are in a real tizzy about it.
The cry is, “don’t let them legitimize ID!!!” Legitimize ID, are you joking? If, evolution is such a sure thing, then why not say, “come one, go at it!”. We’ll give you egual time and everything!” Young people aren’t stupid today. They aren’t intimidated by ridicule and rejection. Look at the Punkers and the popular gand, called, “We Are Scientists”. They prefer real communication and ideas that square with their experience and care little about credentials and eloguence.
If the scientific establishment wants to keep Darwin’s creation story aliveih the imaginations of the next generation, they better start coming down off it’s high horse and admit that it can be wrong. You use the old eloquence and elitist trash and they will call you to task. And rightly so. That’s the whole problem with the so called, “peer review” system. It’s designed to massage the elite, “experts”, and lends credibility to patronizers, not inovators and free thinkers. The internet is rapidly abolishing the stifling old system.
April 4th, 2006 at 3:16 am
Balderdash.
The scientific method (methodological naturalism) goes where the evidence leads it.
Neo-Darwinistic theory has been refined many many times and continues to be so.
The concept of equal time of course is amusing. I’d like to see it in ethics classes, churches, history etc…
A very silly concept - teach what’s right and has been validated by science.
The IDiots can’t do ONE PIECE OF RESEARCH, but you want it taught in classrooms to those forming opinions?
With regard to peer review and unpopular viewpoints:
Consider the theory of plate tectonics. When it was first proposed, it was rejected by most scientists. Did the advocates of plate tectonics immediately stop their research and form a public-relations firm to lobby that their ideas be taught in public school? No. Instead, they continued to do research, amass evidence, and publish their ideas in scientific journals. When the evidence became sufficiently convincing, a large number of scientists accepted plate tectonics, and now the idea is standard in planetary geology. Only after this happened did schools begin to teach it. That is how science works and that is the process that ID advocates are trying to avoid having to go through. They want to have the respectability of science without doing any of the hard work.
April 4th, 2006 at 10:13 am
The scientific establishment claims to have origins pretty much figured out.
Uh, no. Origins of life is generally acknowledged to be a very difficult field, given that the relevant events happened roughly four billion years ago under conditions that are not well understood. Many things about the origins of life are not now known. Some of them may never be known. Remember though, that unknown does not mean unknowable.
If, evolution is such a sure thing, then why not say, “come one, go at it!”. We’ll give you egual time and everything!”
Why not teach the Flat Earth theory? Why not teach astrology, as Behe would have us do? Why not teach the geocentric universe? Because they are wrong, and there already isn’t enough class time to teach everything that children need to be taught.
Also, as is painfully obvious to anyone who has read this entire thread, the criticisms aimed at evolution by religiously motivated Creationists are simply not very good. I would support the teaching of legitimate shortcomings of evolution, but ID proponents and other Creationists don’t have any. Instead we find that their arguments betray a poor understanding of established science, and a faith-based desire to disbelieve established science, even after their shoddy evidence has shown for what it is.
April 4th, 2006 at 10:59 am
Humbler approach? By that do you mean the approach where you close your eyes? The distant past is harder to understand, but does that mean you don’t try? Science isn’t against competing theories, that happens all the time. What science is against is psuedo-science, junk-science, crap-science, and any other label you want to put on pet theories that have no real thinking behind them. ID hasn’t earned the chops to be on par with evolutionary theory and until it does, it doesn’t belong in the science classroom as science. It isn’t a theory, it isn’t even a hypothesis. Your own words say that it is a religious viewpoint that may never be proven! But by the same token, should you stop trying to prove it, no! Keep working on it, but do not demand the rest of the world take your viewpoint seriously until it meets the criteria of being a valid hypothesis.
I could write a book that says “There is no gravity, the Earth just sucks!” Would that give me the right to petition school boards to have my ‘theory’ taught? I could even gather a group of mush-minded supporters and go the public debate routine and force a school board to teach it. It still doesn’t change to fact that my idea isn’t science. It also doesn’t change the fact that the scientific community will pretty much ignore me until I reach a point of actually getting taught in a science class. At that point the community has the right and responsibility to come down on my crap-science ideas and make sure I don’t get into a classroom. It is their responsibility to make sure junk-science doesn’t get into the classroom. It is also their responsibility to ensure alternative theories are taught, but again these things must be valid alternative theories to the current thinking. Valid in terms of science, not the court of popular opinion.
Public opinion still remembers Paul Revere based on a poem that came out years after his death. How many people know that Paul Revere set forth with two other riders and he was captured by the British and his horse confiscated before he completed the famous ride? William Dawes started with him and they were later joined by Samuel Prescott. Prescott was the only rider to actually reach Concorde. There were other riders who took the warning considerably longer than the 19 miles Revere rode. One, Isidore Bissell (not sure of the spelling) rode over 300 miles to take the warning from Boston to Philidelphia. I guess Longfellow couldn’t find a good rhyme for Bissell.
Ted
April 4th, 2006 at 11:10 am
And your cry is to “Teach the Controversy” because of your failure to have ID taken seriously as a scientific theory you will stop at nothing to gain acceptance in every level except the only one that counts, as Science.
Giving a psuedo-science idea like ID equal time does offer legitimacy that you have failed to gain by going to route of science. You have failed to provide any published evidence, so you cry out for fair and equal treatment — when you refuse to offer the same level of treatment for Evolution.
Recently one of my friends, an ID supporter, asked why should evolution be taught in school because it is only a theory and as such has holes. Interestly enough he supports an idea that is less than a scientific theory. He requires absolute proof, such that a court might require before sentence, but accepts no proof at all for ID. I love that double-standard.
At least there is proof of evolution, lots of it. But take a step beyond that. All science is composed of theories. These are the theories that explain gravity, light, the atom. These theories keep airplanes in teh sky and your car’s engine operating. They explain how we see and how we keep our feet on the ground. If you refuse to believe in science’s theories, don’t use an elevator, because the engineering in the elevator cable is based on a theory. Now before you tell me gravity is a “law” and not a theory, but before you do that get the definitions straight. There is a LAw of gravity that describes what gravity does, but there is also a number of theories that explain how gravity does it. And those theories have changed over the years, like much of science. But the change is based on a better, more complete, more proven scientific standard and not just a viewpoint without any proof.
Ted
April 4th, 2006 at 1:43 pm
In all honesty, the scientific community, when they argue against ID, rarley offer evolution as the reason ID is a bad idea. The proof they offer against ID is your own evidence, or I should say lack of evidence. The scientific community cares little for each individual theory, each one is the realm of a sub-group within the community as a whole. What the community gets protective about is the process of determining what is science and what isn’t. Many ideas were initially laughed at, but the scientists who believed them kept at it, gathered the evidence, honed their explanations, and published their finding in scientific publiscations designed to open their research up to their contemporaries, which include people who agree and disagree with them. If the scientific community had no free-thinkers and innovators, you would be riding a horse, the Internet wouldn’t exist, and so many of the advances we enjoy today would have never happened. Is the peer review system perfect? No, I won’t say it is. Scientists aren’t perfect either. They are a collection of individuals, but as a group they have come to better conclusions because of that process than they did before there was a scientific method.
What they expect, and what I expect, is that before any topic is introduced as science, it meets the process and stands up to scrutiny. Evolution has for over a century and a half. It has changed . . .OK, I will use the word evolved . . . based on new knowledge and experimentation. Science is based on knowledge, facts, observations, and extrapolation. If it stands no chance of being proven, it’s not science and you can whine all you want, if it’s not science then it doesn’t belong in the science classroom.
You can call me to task in any way you want. I will stand by science for my understanding of the world around me. Science doesn’t tell me why I am here, but they can tell me how I got here. What I do with my life is up to me and I base it on what I was taught by my family, my church, my education, and my own experiences. Science doesn’t teach me how to live my life, but how I came to have a life to live. My parish priest helped shape my thinking processes and I would like to believe he would be proud of how I turned out. I am a family man with one grandchild (to date!). I served in the military, work hard to support my family, and insure they get the best education they can, including secular and spiritual. I am glad my adult children don’t have the tiny closed mind the supporters of ID seem to have. When they read the articles in the paper on it they did their own research into it. They visited the Discovery Institute website and the Thomas More Law Center site as well. They followed the Dover trial and read how ID lied to the Ohio School Board also. They discussed it with their church leaders, their friends, and co-workers and came to their own conclusions. They did all this without discussing it with me for which I was thankful. Each of my children came to a similar conclusion that ID hasn’t been proven and doesn’t belong in the science class. One of them even took a sociology course which address ID and said she learned a great deal, but still cannot think about supporting ID as a scientific theory.
Prove it first and then it will actually be a theory. Keep trying to have it judged in the court of popular opinion and it will always remain in the realm of psuedo-science. They also suggested quit arguing against evolution and do what every other theory has done, which is prove itself and if proven other theories will be replaced. But as long as you focus on disproving evolution, you cannot move ahead with ID. Whether you like it or not, even if you disprove evolution, that doesn’t automatically prove ID is better. My daughter put it that just because you prove 1+1 is not longer equal to 2, that doesn’t make it equal to 3!
Ted
April 4th, 2006 at 10:26 pm
The comments about teachers giving refunds were probably out of line, and for that I apologize.
Wayne, I actually agree with you 100% on this one! I would bet that Justice John “Activist Judge” Jones or any radical, secular, atheistic, Godless Darwinist would also feel the same way.
April 4th, 2006 at 10:45 pm
That one you’ve got a bit mixed up there
You’re thinking spontaneous generation, not abiogenesis.
Abiogenesis is interesting, and a worthwhile pursuit, but it really is out of the realm of evolutionary theory. We can’t, for example, actually rule out panspermia, the seeding of life from elsewhere, though it’s not up there in likelihood. Evolutionary theory is concerned about what happened from life’s inception up to now (and in future).
There are a lot of transitional fossils (here and here, for example), actually, at least between ‘monkey’ and man. Of course, these are phrasings that are used a lot in anti-evolutionary websites, repeating the same set of untruths, if you look for “transitional, fossils, monkey, man”. If you replace “monkey, man” with “hominids”, you’ll get better information.
In the realm of “dog-birds”, you won’t find them. The split between the bird and mammal branches actually pre-dates the dinosaurs. When species family lines split any distance at all, they split for good.
The “why are there still monkeys?” question sounds like a real objection on the surface, but if you take a closer look at it, it’s not. Evolution is just the larger scale of what happens every day when creatures are born, and it’s seriously like asking “why do you still have cousins?”. Or, a little further out, “why are there both squirrels and chipmunks?”, or “why are there both Asians and Causasians?”. Your family tree can branch, but that doesn’t require that only one set of great-great-great grandchildren are allowed to be around.
Evolutionary theory does not say that we are descended from chimpanzees. Modern-day chimpanzees will never evolve into humans, can never evolve into humans. Neither will any other non-human apes, monkeys, etc. We don’t share any common ancestors with any other living primates until between five to seven million years ago.
*grin* I know you’re getting a lot of the arguments from creationist sites - I remember practically the entire list, and they haven’t corrected it for decades. The second law argument is particularly odd - entropy is a measure of useless energy, energy that you can’t use to do work. “Randomness” is an inaccurate picture. Living processes interfere with the move to higher entropy, harnessing it a little like a dam harnesses the power of a river, even though the water does eventually get to the sea.
I’m pleased to see you’re on here, though. At least you’re out here scrapping where people can fight back and forth instead of just staying safe. Keep up the good work
April 5th, 2006 at 7:35 pm
ok ya that makes sense but how come the differences between man and animals are so distinct. Like anybody can tell if the creature is man or say, monkey. Also how come theres only one human race. If evolution where true wouldn’t there be more variations in people. “They will maintain that for humans the concept of “race” is meaningless: that there are no biologically significant human group differences, hence no human races.” From http://www.highbeam.com/librar.....720A7A0F0B
ya I did get that mixed up I meat spontaneous generation
you rock wayne
April 5th, 2006 at 11:35 pm
Not to break up the thread, but I found an interesting link: Scientists find missing link between fish and land animals
I wonder what the ID people think of this…
April 6th, 2006 at 12:44 am
Animals are all very different in behaviour and looks. It may be a little gross to think about, but it’s on the inside that animals are amazingly similar, especially the younger they are. There may be differences in sizes and shapes, but the workings, arrangement, etc. are similar. Kidneys, bones, tongue, heart, bladder, immune system. The fact that we can do medical experiments on rats and rabbits and actually have the results mean something is related to this.
Take a look-see for comparative anatomy. Unfortunately, it’s the stuff of comparative anatomy textbooks - they don’t like to give the cool material away, but you can find some (like here.
Something that’s a bit of a segueway into your next questions… there’s a small fraction of genes that’s responsible for most of the outward changes. A lot of the rest is tried and true fundamental genes for things like burning energy and even nerves (it’s pretty freaky that the genes for nerve gaps are still similar between flies and us, so much so that you can even use human genes to repair the corresponding damaged fly genes).
It’s almost an old saw that there’s of all the variation between people, only up to 15% of it is due to race, yet that gives us our obvious differences in hair, general eye colour, skin colour, amount of junk-in-the-trunk…
Often, when you find this in nature, it means that something nasty and relatively recent happened that reduced the population to a small group. It’s actually pretty impressive that we didn’t go extinct. Estimates are that we went through a severe population bottleneck some 70-75,000 years ago (also here). We haven’t been isolated enough in the approximately 5,000 generations to drift far enough apart save for looks.
Skin color is a pretty strong adaptation in that short a time. We’ve managed to make that a little less important in recent history with supplements, diet and sunscreen, but it would have been important for our outdoor, working lifestyle.
(I think it’s kinda nifty that vitamin D is produced in your skin from cholesterol)
You could always run your own evolution experiment (if you could freeze yourself for the duration) and find some red-haired nerds that look like Pauly Shore who find big feet sexy, and put them on an island, and see what happens
Cheers, mate
April 7th, 2006 at 4:04 am
still waiting to see this ID research, though…
April 7th, 2006 at 3:55 pm
There is now, but there wasn’t at one time. Homosapian’s are the current dominating race, but there were several others. Homoneanderthalis, homohabilis, homoerectus to name a few. All could be catagorized as human beings. But look at the evidence. One of more of these groups existed at the same time, but competition or other factors (disease, lack of adaptability, poor diet, environmental changes . . .) meant that they are no longer with us. There are theories addressing why each one disappeared, and who knows in a few million years someone may be looking at a homosapian’s skull and wondering what happened to us.
For example, and this is partly science fiction and partly factual. What could happen is the planet keeps warming up? One possibility is a gradual increase in the CO2 level of the atmosphere. There reaches a point where the CO2 level would be lethal to us poor homosapians. That is the factual part, what happens past that is pure science fiction. Maybe a few children born have a higher resistance to CO2, and after a few generations there is a more pronounced difference in how their lungs operate. We might have a whole new genus called homodioxygenis populating the world. Poor old homosapians just didn’t have the adaptability to survive.
I am not saying that will happen, but that idea has been put forth as how some of the other groups may have died out. Massive climactic change over centuries or even a single catastrophic event. Why are there no other ‘people’? Because right now, they didn’t surive long enough to build a large enough population to survive. That almost happened to homosapians several times in history.
Read Darwin’s research on the finches and you can see how his thinking worked. In Darwin’s time each group of finches was isolated and developed different characteristics. So something happened to encourage the survival of the new ‘type’ while discouraging the survival of the older type. By the time Darwin saw them, they had pretty well settled down in their own niche. Look at Australia? Look at the amazing diversity of animals there, a place that was isolated for a long time when it’s land connections disappeared. Look at the changes in North America after discovery by Europeans.
You can even make a similar study of the Native America tribes. If things continued where they were heading the tribes might have all died out. Instead there are efforts ongoing to make sure that doesn’t happen. But if Europe had never discovered North America and it remained isolated for millions of years. What differences would exist between Native Americans and Europeans? There are a number that do exist today, but they are considered minor adaptations. If you took the time frame they were in isolation and stretch it, who knows what differences might have happened. You can see what might have happened to homoerectus or homohabilis as an extension of what has happened with Native Americans when Europens and they competed for the same resources. Interesting thought, well at least to me.
Ted
April 8th, 2006 at 12:07 pm
still waiting to see this ID research, though…
April 8th, 2006 at 12:46 pm
Rich,
You just don’t get it. The scientific establishment is out to squash ID in every way shape and form.
Anyone who publishes ID research is black listed and harassed. Things will change, but that’s the
situation right now -as you well know.
Besides, ALL unbiased biological research IS ID supportive. It’s only the OGGING based stuff that’s is
made to sound contrary.
Wayne Hollyoak
www.scifaith.com
April 8th, 2006 at 2:43 pm
Oh man, that’s hilarious.
“Yeah, we’ve got tons of ID research! Once this gets out, ID will be the cornerstone of all science. We just can’t, uh, you know, show it to you yet, because we’re afraid of the rampaging Scientific Establishment Shock Troops.”
April 8th, 2006 at 3:58 pm
Not my words, but:
When the theory of continental drift was first introduced, it was treated with enormous skepticism. But those who supported the idea didn’t write articles in newspapers entitled “Continental drift is sorely misunderstood”. They did what real scientist do: they looked for evidence and presented it to their peers. Eventually continental drift (in the form of plate tectonics) became widely accepted and today it is found in most high school science texts, not because the President had said in an interview that alternatives to conventional geology should be taught, but because the weight of evidence convinced the scientific community that it was correct.
If Intelligent Design proponents followed and passed this peer review process, ID would be taught in schools as science the way plate tectonics is taught now (despite the claim in this article that this is not their objective). Intelligent Design should not be taught in science classes precisely because its proponents have not followed this process.
Clearly you can take an unpopular but correct scientific idea into mainstream science through peer review. Try again.
April 8th, 2006 at 4:19 pm
Palidor,
Typical, and blatant misquote by ID opponents.
Wayne Hollyoak
www.scifaith.com
April 8th, 2006 at 4:21 pm
But you do want science changed to include the supernatural, right?
April 8th, 2006 at 4:22 pm
Rich,
Go ahead and try yourself. See how far you get.
Wayne Hollyoak
www.scifaith.com
April 8th, 2006 at 4:35 pm
Rich,
It’s not science, but the establishment that put’s science in their hypernaturalistic box. If, in the
good example you give, the writer would mention any doubts of biological evolution in his fine article, he would
have been denied publication in mainstream publications. That’s just how it is currently.
Wayne Hollyoak
www.scifaith.com
April 8th, 2006 at 4:36 pm
You’re having casuastion issues on may levels.
They are rejected for being unscientific and or factually incorrected.
“looks like” and “I can’t see how” are not scientific in nature, no matter what faux science terms you coin to say them. And you can’t test them so as to refine your theory.
I’d fail trying to do scientific ID research, because it ISN’T SCIENCE.
April 8th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
Hey wayne - how would we put supernatural in science.
What has man ever whitnessed that has a supernatural influence.
Instead of Force = Mass x Acceleraion, so we need
Force (and possible god effect) = mass (and possible god effect) x accleration (and possible god effect)
Where’s the predictive power in that?
Here’s another for you - and think about it.
Is the designer
(a) irreducibly complex
(b) specifcally complex
By ID’s argument, I’d say a resounding “Yes!” - and we know what that means..
April 8th, 2006 at 5:16 pm
Rich,
We’d say we don’t know everything.
Wayne Hollyoak
www.scifaith.com
April 8th, 2006 at 5:26 pm
That’s very zen, or perhaps a little evasive.
April 8th, 2006 at 5:34 pm
This week in science 101:
“we don’t know everything”
next week in science 101:
“we don’t know everything”
I can see a problem with that.
April 8th, 2006 at 7:35 pm
(:
Wayne Hollyoak
www.scifaith.com
April 8th, 2006 at 10:51 pm
Oh, but Wayne, you expect evolution to know everything. Does this sound familar:
“Evolution is only a theory, so it isn’t factual.”
“Evolution has holes so it is poor science.”
You expect one level of proof for ID, yet try and require a different level for evolution. THat tactic failed in Dover and I expect it to fail everywhere people see ID for what it is — junk, unproven nonsense, a theological argument of a tiny sect of fundamentalist christians.
Ted
April 9th, 2006 at 11:49 am
Wayne, the only reason Intelligent Design is so under the spotlight in the first place is because they managed to present it to local school boards as a way to sneak creationism into schools while trying to pretend to everyone else that it’s science, and that they skipped not just the “peer review”, but the research itself, and put it directly into schools.
Even if you pretend the ID conjecture is plausible on the surface, the lesson plans they come up with it (especially the ones in Ohio) are the same old bad (especially in that they misrepresent evolution) creationist arguments that you would have seen back in the Arkansas trial re: “creation science”.
The Intelligent Design need to keep doing research before they get close to this point, especially since their research as it stands is pretty poor. I took the time to pore over Dembski’s “No Free Lunch” paper, and the bulk of the paper talks about not being able to get to a specific point A without extra information. Fair enough, though not exactly novel.
It’s at the end of the paper where poor scholarship shows. Dembski’s algorithm assumes a single target point A, and then says that evolutionary theory does as well (the “teleological” argument, that evolution is out to produce you specifically). On that he is wrong. Secondly, his algorithm is constructed in such a way that it would be amazing if your children even had the same number of limbs as you did, since without extra information (which he ascribes to “intelligence”) it’s a random search through all possible life forms every time.
* * *
I’ll have to take a bit of issue with you on science excluding the supernatural “just because”. If the supernatural is observable and imparts a significant bias, whether it be a deity, ghosts, telekinetic powers, what have you, then it can be considered natural. Where astrology falls down is not because it’s not testable, but because its assertion that planets and stars can affect your personality must be taken to mean that it must impart a bias, and bias is statistically measurable. “Better than chance” is the operative phrase.
Not everything that increases our knowledge is science. A lot of it is just… knowledge. If I were teaching learning disabled science students and found that the boys learned better if I use their names in violent examples (”Okay, we’ve got hydrochloric acid - so first you take Brad, and you kill ‘im!”), but that girls don’t, that’s useful knowledge, but it’s not science. I could even spread that to every other teacher on the continent, and it still wouldn’t be science. We’re not doing controls, we’re not trying to find a basis. Finding out that King Rameses ate goose feet as a delicacy increases our knowledge, but it’s still not science.
Sometimes knowledge can inspire science. Sometimes knowledge comes out of science. Knowledge is the “what”, science is the “how” and the “whether”. (Religion can be the “for what purpose”) If I was really hell-bent on finding out why learning disabled boys do so much better with the new Violent Example technique, I’d have to design experiments to make sure that it wasn’t bias of disposition towards boys, that it wasn’t just an illusion… to start with. Maybe it just changes my disposition because it amuses me so, but I’m uncomfortable with violence towards women, so my discomfort shows when I try it with girls, and that’s the actual reason.
If I pass the first few benchmarks, perhaps then it’s time to get brain scans of the students. (Mmmm, brain scans
* * *
*laugh* I’ll agree with one thing on your site, though: Big Bang Theory is bogus, and I think your reasoning for it is sound (how’s gravity going to work on a dissipating mass?). I’ve been following it since I was 10. Big Bang and Steady State were still fighting at the time.
It’s been getting worse. The solutions are unstable (we went from constant expansion, to slowing down then accelerating, to just accelerating over the course of the past five years), the stars are too old, COBE’s data came back too smooth for a lumpy universe, etc. Then there’s dark energy. Oh, god. Holding redshift equals velocity as sacrosanct is what led us into this mess.
Hubble’s sometimes credited with the theory, but that’s a bit unfair. 1929 is when they pinpoint his discovery. See what Hubble said in 1942.
I just think the universe is old and “ordinary”.
Cheers
April 10th, 2006 at 7:07 am
Ritchie,
Lots of good comments:
1. The Dover schoolboard’s approach to including ID could have been different. At the same time,
seems that there could have been some attempt to give them some alternatives besides international
disgrace and slapping $2mil fees on the schools to pay off their opponents’lawyers and stuff.
But, when you think about it, if it took 2mil to fight them in court, the prosecution must have been
pretty uncertain they could win.
2. Haven’t read “No Free Lunch”, yet. I will though.
3. The “supernatural” suggests above natural laws and physics, “paranormal” implies
“low probability events”. Scientists should be free to express their thoughts in these areas,
but do so without demanding that others agree.
4. It might be interesting to test whether “learning disabled boys” might do better academically if they could
are taught to cope better with fears and inadequacy.
Wayne Hollyoak
www.scifaith.com
April 10th, 2006 at 9:46 am
I did have a little fun this weekend. A friend is exploring different graduate degree programs and came across on from the Institute of Creation Research in California that offers a Master’s Degree in Creation Science. She was laughing because apparently it isn’t a Master of Science degree but theology degree.
Love the news releases on the potential missing link and the Discovery Institute’s so-called “Center for Science and Culture” calls the discovery of the Tiktaalik roseae is no threat to Intelligent Design. Then it goes on to basically say
In my opinion the Discovery Institute will deny any find within the fossil record as a transitional form, as they have done with each one scientists have discovered. Business as usual, ignore the science that disagrees with your personal beliefs and muddy the waters by tossing around scientific words and calling it science. Gotta love it, misdirection at it’s best.
Ted
April 10th, 2006 at 1:15 pm
Wayne Hollyoak Says
…
Besides, ALL unbiased biological research IS ID supportive…
That’s right, any and all research results are compatible with the “God did it” explanation. It explains everything. That’s why it explains nothing.
April 10th, 2006 at 5:09 pm
I’m not sure I understand this argument. With a trial as momentous as this one, I wouldn’t think anyone would be screwing around with “Well, we know we’re going to win, let’s just mail this in!” The ID side also expended considerable resources in defending their case.
Using the same argument, why does the Discovery Institute need to hire a PR firm to pitch their “science” to the public?
April 11th, 2006 at 6:17 pm
“Scientists should be free to express their thoughts in these areas,
but do so without demanding that others agree.”
Without experiments, hypothesis or evidence?
Then they’re not really scientists are they?
Philophers, perhaps.
April 11th, 2006 at 10:03 pm
Hey there, Wayne
It could have been, but the board members had really been on about trying to get creationism into the school, especially Bill Buckingham. They did this despite advice, and drummed the dissenters out of the board, smearing them as atheists (which they were not). Intelligent Design was just for the merest veneer of non-violation of the Constitution.
The plaintiff’s lawyers offered a pre-trial “cease and we’ll stop”, but the board would have none of it, and fought back with pro bono representation. In the defense counsel’s opening statements:
The Dover board acted dishonorably, and with all the lying in court, getting and then hiding textbook donations in church, video evidence, etc. it became evident that the purpose and the effect was nothing of the sort.
If they picked creation science instead of Intelligent Design, then the status of Intelligent Design would never have been called into question, but since the textbook was Of Pandas and People, and since the board was defending itself on the premise that Intelligent Design was science, and thus they weren’t in violation of the Establishment Clause, Intelligent Design itself had to go on the stand.
The transcripts are pretty long, but pretty fascinating reading. The decision is a fairly effective summary of the twenty-odd days of trial, though it misses the effective flavour of some of the high points (like the “40 days” quote).
There is an “out” for Intelligent Design itself in the decision:
Basically, if they can keep their act together and find something genuine, there’s nothing to prevent Intelligent Design (if true) from coming to the fore in the future. That said, they’re not remotely ready yet, and people should not be trying to sneak it into schools.
The price of some trials, even when you factor in punitive damages, astounds me. Having read the transcripts, they did an amazing job, though I’m still pretty sure I’d balk at the price tag. That said, however, the judgment was said to be reasonable, given the amount of research and representation. From the decision:
This means that they were not going for punitive damages, just costs. Fortunately (albeit not fortunately enough) for the school board, they settled with the school board for $1,000,011. The $11 part was a bit kitchy - but every defendant got a $1 check. (Perhaps there’s a minimum award rule in cases like these, along the lines of the way you can never bid less than $1 in the Price is Right or sell your home/car for less than $1?)
The paper’s a bit thick on the math, which takes some slogging to get through, but you can actually get the meaning from the text itself, because he discusses it a bit.
I’m not so sure of those definitions. Paranormal researchers certainly didn’t think that the phenomena (clairvoyance, telekinesis, telepathy) were actually low probability events - they’re more along the lines of events for which there is no known rational explanation. It’s only been after a lot of intense research that the basic consensus is that the phenomena themselves do not actually exist.
Supernatural isn’t really a different term, though it has a slightly different flavour to it (ghosts would be considered both, angels would be “supernatural” in most peoples’ views, spontaneous human combustion would be “paranormal”)
That isn’t to say you couldn’t study either of them. As a matter of fact, they still do. There are plenty of “power of prayer” studies, for example. These can be peer-reviewed. Demonstrating an unexplained bias can lead to interesting things. It has to be replicable, though (which is where cold fusion fell down, for example), and biases in the experiment have to be accounted for (I wouldn’t rely on the Gartner Group for the statistics, for example
).
Intelligent Design has a lot of self-published stuff. They don’t have an awful lot of luminaries, though, and even their best scholarship is arguably pretty bad so far. It may be that better intellectuals would actually find something. It may also be, however, that there’s nothing to find.
Scientists should be and are usually free to speculate on any number of things. Lots of them comment on things outside their own domain. The problem isn’t usually “the scientific establishment” in general that violates that freedom, it’s the petty politics in some departments at some colleges and universities that kick out rivals or bow to public pressure.
(Behe still works at Lehigh, as an aside).
Some of them grow up like that; attitude has a lot to do with it. A great many learning disabled folks are pretty darned smart - they just can’t stay focused, or can’t translate English back and forth into math, or the spacing and rotation of letters is confused. People with dyslexia are made to feel pretty stupid.
We’ve seen some impressively enlightened learning disabled kids, though, too. Ones whose parents gave them the options, realized what was going on soon, etc. There are some pretty good coping strategies.
A couple of insights I gained from the indirect exposure (my wife taught some of these kids at one point). If you give truly attention-deficit disorder kids caffeine, they calm down. From what I was told, it’s almost like they’re on the bring of falling asleep (without the visible signs), and the jiggling and doing stuff is a way to keep themselves conscious.
There was a pretty interesting video for parents and teachers about what it’s like to be learning disabled. One part, on dyslexia, simulated what it was like to be dyslexic. They changed all the letters around that were rotations of one another (q, p, d, b), and altered the spacing, and had the parents and teachers read out the passage. Afterwards, they were having difficulty (as was I, watching the tape) recalling a lot of detail about the story. You spend so much time decoding that you don’t have a lot to commit to memory, which is why dyslexics appear forgetful when reading. (I’ve studied foreign languages; it’s kind’ve the same thing there
)
Cheers!
– Ritchie
April 11th, 2006 at 10:46 pm
Yes, Michael Behe still works at Lehigh, but the disclaimer on his website is interesting:
During the over trial there was a press release that Lehigh doesn’t let him hold classes in ID under the cover of the Biosciences department.
Another leading ID proponent. William Dembski, is leaving his position in Kentucky. Nothing to do with ID, according to the press release, but to work at a theological school nearer to his home.
Ted
April 12th, 2006 at 4:12 pm
But, when you think about it, if it took 2mil to fight them in court, the prosecution must have been
pretty uncertain they could win.
Wayne — This is a very intersting comment. First, you need to understand that $2M is NOTHING in a trial. REad a few companies’ 10-Ks to see how much corporations spend per case to litigate standard commercial disputes.
Second, I could interpret your comment that you’re trying to imply a certain level of validity to ID because the prosecution spent SO MUCH to try to win. Don’t go there, girlfriend! That’s one of the most B.S. arguments the ID folks put up all the time — the scientific establishment is afraid of ID because its true. That’s completely wrong, but standard ID playbook material. There’s a bitter irony in that. The people who claim to be working to a higher power than us unGodly scientists, feel no discomfort in flat-out lying.
April 12th, 2006 at 9:53 pm
To say that ID propenents have not published in “peer-reviewed” literature either shows you are ignorant or willfully dishonest. I suggest you do a little more research before making stupid statements. Also, even if you were correct (which you are not), keep in mind who the “gate keepers” of peer-reviewed publications are. Case closed.
April 13th, 2006 at 7:37 pm
Have my previous commenst Re peer review been deleted?
April 13th, 2006 at 10:22 pm
Ken,
Please try again. The leading proponents of ID, Behe and Dembski are two names that come to mind right this second — Johnson as well, have stated they haven’t published in traditional scientific peer review publications. That is fact, not my opinion. The reasons they give are self-serving and indicate they haven’t attempted to pass the gatekeepers. They have avoided it by publishing through more popular media and through ID-supported organizations like the Discovery Institute. It’s easy to publish to an audience who are already convinced. Wasn’t it Ashley Montagu who once said “Science has proof without any certainty. Creationists have certainty without any proof.”
I will agree there are gatekeepers, but that doesn’t stop other scientists from publishing, through those same publications, other very unpopular ideas. Plate tectonics was a poorly accepted idea for a long time. Many other theories, some that were eventually proved to be false have been published . .remember Cold Fusion? So they can claim all the prejudice they want, they can claim they were afraid for their tenure, they can claim no one understands, or is smart enough to understand how brilliant they are — but I see it as a smokescreen to avoid showing how little they have actually done to support their own ideas. Don’t blame me for pointing that out to you.
Ted
April 14th, 2006 at 12:16 am
ID peer review debunked:
http://www.pandasthumb.org/arc.....wed_r.html
“willfully dishonest” to use your phrase.. (behe)
http://www.pandasthumb.org/arc.....ed_on.html
Thanks!
April 17th, 2006 at 3:24 pm
Shhh! It&#