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nbcrusader said:


Is ignoring the holes or filling with unprovable theories just as anti-intellectual?

Especially the life from nothing aspect of evolution.

Create a single living cell in a lab and have a better argument.


please: point out these "holes" that are "ignored."

my understanding is that there are limits to human knolwedge. but we are pushing those limits every day.

what is anti-intellectual is to say that we shouldn't bother ourselves with resolving scientific inconsistencies or untangling puzzles. we should recognize that what God really wants is for us just to stop learning.
 
got2k9s said:




IT OFFENDS the scientific community to even consider that a supernatural being exists, because it is so comfortable to rest in ones belief of superiority.



What is your basis for this repeated statement?

The last number I heard was that something like well over 50% of scientists believe in God


They just don't look to their religious beliefs to translate into scientific theories, or laws.
 
nbcrusader said:


I don't see that at the core of ID



many accept some parts of the evolution theory

they can look at their house cat

and a lion and allow that they came from a common ancestor.
 
got2k9s said:


Oh, you're not being rude? Continually telling me to go back and learn this or that . . . or 'understand the argument before I criticize,' etc. You certainly are treating me like you think I am stupid. But perhaps you can't help it, as that's obviously an extension of your elitism.

I am not failing to understand the terms of the debate - - I understand them perfectly.

What I am trying to say, and am getting TIRED of saying, is that everyone ignoring the elephant in the room is idiotic. It is a FEAR OF RELIGION in the school system that drives the "anti-ID" side of the debate just as much as you all say that RELIGION drives the "pro-ID" debate.

IT OFFENDS the scientific community to even consider that a supernatural being exists, because it is so comfortable to rest in ones belief of superiority.

BAH!

So, stop trying to point me in the direction of 'education' or 'intellect' and step down off that high horse.



it is not calling you stupid to say that you are uninformed.

i don't know a thing about cricket, so it would be safe to say that i am not unintelligent, just uninformed about cricket.

but you seem to want to feel persecuted, so i'll leave you to it.
 
A_Wanderer said:
Earth being spherical, thats a scientific theory and that could technically be disproven

Why do you say "technically?"
It either can or can't be disproven, right?

You are right, scientific theories never become the absolute truth, that is because they are not religion. They are tweaked and modified to explain what is observed,

How do you ever have peace that what you believe in is TRUE, then? It does baffle me how it's so comfortable . . .

(for instance why are there drone bees? what evolutionary purpose is for these insects to aid the colony? They themselves dont get to breed so what leads to the evolution of sterile animals? - the answer turns out to be the degree of relatedness between the drones and the queen and the breeding males, the drones by enabling the sucess of that breeding are actually ensuring that their common genetic material gets passed down,

Hmmm, interesting.
Their common genetic material is what is passed down, but it is their "unique" genetic material that makes them sterile.
So, the mutation that caused *that* gets passed down, just due to proportion of liklihood in the first place, right - - how does the relatedness of the drone to the queen and breeding males affect it at all?

This is moot anyhow because ID would not disprove evolution, ID is adressing the first life forms. In that it cannot provide the evidence, using the religious minded canard of "absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence"

Yet, even a brief mention of it is ABSENT from the classroom.
It's disturbing.
 
nbcrusader said:


Is ignoring the holes or filling with unprovable theories just as anti-intellectual?

Especially the life from nothing aspect of evolution.

Create a single living cell in a lab and have a better argument.
Lets put the formation of the first life forms in context. We are talking about the entire surface area of the planet, and quite possibly volume at depth as the place of reaction. There is a highly reducing atmosphere, a planet giving off large ammounts of gas through volcanism and impacts from meteorites. There are innumerable places and permutations of reactions that could take place at any given moment in time. Now take this situation and spend one billion years allowing chemical reactions to take place. Is it not plausible that at least once a molecule was formed that could replicate on its own and have some basic form of metabolic process? It is no doubt highly unlikely, but thats the beauty of probability, if we have a near infinite ammount of tries the probability is that it is going to occur.

We have known from the Miller experiment in the 1950's that the basic amino acids can be formed in these conditions, subsequently we have found that clays can aid in the formation of strands of these. We can form "cells" abiotically under similar conditions.

An important molecular clue about the origin of life comes from common attributes within life - namely RNA and it's role in tranfering information. I recomend looking up RNA world online for some information about a few competing ideas in the origin of life on Earth.

The "life from nothing" aspect of evolution is population pressures acting upon naturally formed and competing self-replicating molecules. Regardless of how the first life forms got here it does not disprove evolution, because population pressures still apply even to "intelligently designed" life forms.
 
Irvine511 said:
it is not calling you stupid to say that you are uninformed.

but you seem to want to feel persecuted, so i'll leave you to it.

I didn't say you called me stupid. I said that you were TREATING me like you thought I was. And you were.

Oh, yes, poor little me. Please leave me to my pity-party.

I just call a spade a spade. Sorry if you don't like it.
 
Because even with "God's existence" as a theory, must an attempt to prove it take place before it's decided, in the scientific community, that it's UNPROVABLE?
Devise a proof of God?

Prayer to a Christian God having an influence on sick peoples health while prayer to Allah or Polytheist Gods do not. If there was something statistically significant about praying to that particular deity and it had an effect on peoples health then perhaps that God exists - such a result would certainly warrant investigation.

Measure the soul, now the essense of the religious metaphisical is the soul, weigh people before and after death, see if there is an instantaneous loss of mass. Put them in a closed insulted environment, if the soul is made of energy then perhaps there will be a change in tempreture at time of death.

Kill Believers - just get a few million true believers and start killing them off one by one, surely the God as he is painted would intervene somehow to stop the slaughter..... okay maybe that ones too far.

But religious minded folk have their own proof, religious iconography, weeping statues that for some reason weep oil and dye, mysterious shrouds that radiocarbon date back to the middle ages and not to the time when some guy called Jesus supposedly existed. These "proofs" have been disproved by scientific investigation, won't stop believers though because that investigation is going to be somehow flawed, the measurements cannot be properly taken with these things and the results are upset by Gods will.

Are any of these suggestions legitimate ways of proving the existence of God? What about quantifying that euphoric orgasmic feeling that believers have through understandings of neurochemistry - finding here and now explanations for feelings.
 
Why do you say "technically?"
It either can or can't be disproven, right?
Proof the earth is round, use measurements of shadows at the same time and measure the differences.

But (just thinking) what if the Earths roundness was actually some sort of higher dimensional twist where a 2D plane was contorted into an apparent 3D sphere. Some strange thing that nobody ever expected like we were living in a hologram universe. Such a thing would disprove a spherical earth.

Although given what we know I think that the spherical earth theory has a high threshhold of evidence, evolutionary biology also has a very high threshold of evidence that it can explain best and is a large aprt of the reason that "alternative beliefs" that fail to explain as much are not given the same respect within the scientific community.
 
Let me ask you something, A_Wanderer . . .

Is there ONE theory of origins/evolution . . . the whole shebang - - - all of it - - - ONE theory that is commonly accepted WITHOUT VARIATION in the world-wide scientific community?
 
I am gone for the night . . . but A_Wanderer, I look forward to your response.

Also, my question about the drones . . . lemme know. :D

Have a good one, everyone. Everyone. EVERYONE.

(hee hee!)
 
No I do not think that there is a grand unifying theory of evolutionary biology or of the origin of Life on Earth that every single scientist thinks is right. You have Darwinian Natural Selection, Punctuated Equalibrium, Sexual Selection, Evolutionary Advantages of Social Behaviour, Kin Selection etc. There are common threads within all of these such as empiricism and falsifiability.

I think that there is widely accepted evidence, such as vestigial traits in many organisms, the fossil record ~ evidence for extinction, transitional forms and life throughout deep time (over millions of years), mutation and variation are also widely accepted as it heritability and the science of genetics.

Evolutionary biology is a field of ongoing research, there are different theories of how species evolve, the rate of evolution within populations and if the rate has been the same in the past.

The origin of life is a very tough question, we do not have fossils that go back right to the beginning, we have some indirect evidence of life such as the Banded Iron Formations that show the atmosphere seasonally alternating between reducing (native iron) and oxidising (rust). There is also the molecular evidence that is researched. Because the field is still in it's infancy it is hotly debated, and there are different camps as to how life came to dominate the planet. I would suspect that as with most things we will accumulate enough evidence to begin to eliminate certain possibilities, disprove assumptions and get closer to what was actually going on in those early days.
 
got2k9s said:

If they can believe in God without proof,
why not believe in Creationism/ID without it?

they do,

they call this their religious beliefs
and they go to church, also


and a MD will use medical procedures to heal the sick
he may also go to church and believe in God and may say a prayer,
but he will not say his praying healed the sick

If he wants to be a faith-healer,
he should not do this under his Medical license.
 
The evolution of worker sterility rests upon the survival or the maximum genetic material.

The Queen Eggs are marked with a type of pherenome that ensures that they will be preferentially treated. There is a frequency of workers that do in fact have the ability to lay eggs (~1/1000) however they do not have this marker pherenome.

The workers relationship to a queens offspring is that they are half siblings (that is they share 25% genetic material) the worker relationship to another workers offspring is that of half sibling offspring (that is 15% shared genetic material).

Because the drones themselves cannot breed they will nurture and protect the larvae with the closest genetic similarity - the queens offspring. By selecting positively for the queen offspring at the extent of reproducing worker offspring it ensures that reproducing worker genes do not gain a high frequency within the population and ensuring that the workers in the colony remain overwhelmingly the sterile offspring of the queen.
 
got2k9s said:


If they can believe in God without proof, why not believe in Creationism/ID without it?
That is the difference between faith and science. Scientists are human beings too and as such they have the same potential to believe. They can also distinguish between faith and logic, divine and material, and not bring their personal faith in God to the table when dealing with observation and investigation of the world.

Any hypothesis without evidence is not to be believed. If somebody tells me that my life is out of order because of my Chi I will not take them at their word, because I do not think that Chi exists - it cannot be measured. Likewise for most alternative medicines and scams. Quakery florishes because of peoples ignorance.
 
A_Wanderer said:
Likewise for most alternative medicines and scams. Quakery florishes because of peoples ignorance.

Still, though, most alternative medicine can, at least, be scientifically tested, even if only to be debunked (but not all of it is deemed to be quackery).

Melon
 
I feel like this is going in circles :huh:

Everything I have to say on this matter I've said on page 10 of this thread.

One thing I'd like to add though - I've gone to private, Christian schools since I was 4 years old (I'm now 21) and I can't ever remember discussing Creationism/ID in a science class....nope...I don't think so. We have, however, discussed it in great length in theology, religion, history (along with the creation stories of countless other religions and cultures), and sociology classes (in the context of how culture influences the interpretation of Scripture). I've never real felt it was necessary or important to discuss ID in my biology classes; I'd rather disect animals and leave the theology to the theology professor.

Just thought I'd make that clear b/c some of the posts in this thread are making it seem like Christians demand Creationism be part of a parochial curriculum, which in my experience is not the case. My parents spent more on my elementary and high school education than most people do on college ($7000/yr) and we'd be damned if we were only every exposed to a single creation story being passed off as science. I'm grateful for the sacrifices my parents made for my pre-college education and I think, if anything, it's taught me to be more open-minded, rather than close-minded to anything that isn't mainstream Christian thought.
 
OK, I'm curious how those proponents of ID on FYM would make it science-worthy. I don't want to be linked. Want to hear it in your own words not using the Bible as a core source, not taking it as an a priori truth for now. How would you argue ID outside of scripture? I'm assuming if you are a proponent of ID, you already know what independent scientific as opposed to philosophical arguments are applicable. I'm willing to hear you out.
 
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A_Wanderer said:
Lets put the formation of the first life forms in context. We are talking about the entire surface area of the planet, and quite possibly volume at depth as the place of reaction. There is a highly reducing atmosphere, a planet giving off large ammounts of gas through volcanism and impacts from meteorites. There are innumerable places and permutations of reactions that could take place at any given moment in time. Now take this situation and spend one billion years allowing chemical reactions to take place. Is it not plausible that at least once a molecule was formed that could replicate on its own and have some basic form of metabolic process? It is no doubt highly unlikely, but thats the beauty of probability, if we have a near infinite ammount of tries the probability is that it is going to occur.

We have known from the Miller experiment in the 1950's that the basic amino acids can be formed in these conditions, subsequently we have found that clays can aid in the formation of strands of these. We can form "cells" abiotically under similar conditions.

An important molecular clue about the origin of life comes from common attributes within life - namely RNA and it's role in tranfering information. I recomend looking up RNA world online for some information about a few competing ideas in the origin of life on Earth.

The "life from nothing" aspect of evolution is population pressures acting upon naturally formed and competing self-replicating molecules. Regardless of how the first life forms got here it does not disprove evolution, because population pressures still apply even to "intelligently designed" life forms.

I think this is where we get to the romantic notions of evolution. If we have billions and billions of years (add Carl Sagan voice here), anything is possible.

The complexities of a single cell are such that, if you have all the components right next to each other, and they attempt to form thousands of times per second, the odds that they would form into a cell suggest that is improbable within the entire lifespan of the universe. That's just for one cell.

Even if this occured in stages, the mathematical odd of it occuring do not improve significantly enough to establish clear likelihood of life from nothing.

The Miller experiment, widely cited as evidence of life from nothing, only produced subcomponents of components of a cell. This does not mean we've created a living cell in the lab.
 
BonosSaint said:
OK, I'm curious how those proponents of ID on FYM would make it science-worthy. I don't want to be linked. Want to hear it in your own words not using the Bible as a core source, not taking it as an a priori truth for now. How would you argue ID outside of scripture? I'm assuming if you are a proponent of ID, you already know what independent scientific as opposed to philosophical arguments are applicable. I'm willing to hear you out.

For me it is the simple mathematical impossiblity of life from nothing over the lifespan of the universe.

Mathematical models which support evolution (such as the estimation of the number of planets that could support life) are flawed in that they only consider certain factors and ignore others that create our unique life-supporting planet called Earth.
 
BonosSaint said:
OK, I'm curious how those proponents of ID on FYM would make it science-worthy. I don't want to be linked. Want to hear it in your own words not using the Bible as a core source, not taking it as an a priori truth for now. How would you argue ID outside of scripture? I'm assuming if you are a proponent of ID, you already know what independent scientific as opposed to philosophical arguments are applicable. I'm willing to hear you out.

You don't. ID is not a scientific theory; it's a topic of theological discussion and Scriptural exegesis.
 
People who support ID most likely do more harm to their belief system than good for it.

The whole movement is comprised of conservative Christians that publicly say they agenda is not about supporting their religious beliefs.

They are trapped into "bearing false witness".

It is sad for a child in a Christian home to hear their elders make these statements, when it is clear the remarks are falsehoods.
It may cause children to loose confidence in their leaders/ parents.
 
deep said:
People who support ID most likely do more harm to their belief system than good for it.


Please explain....


How could believing in ID harm a belief system that is based on the supreme authority of God?

Or am I mistunderstanding and you're referring to a more specific situation where Christians that use this belief in science?
 
LivLuvAndBootlegMusic said:
I feel like this is going in circles :huh:

Everything I have to say on this matter I've said on page 10 of this thread.

One thing I'd like to add though - I've gone to private, Christian schools since I was 4 years old (I'm now 21) and I can't ever remember discussing Creationism/ID in a science class....nope...I don't think so. We have, however, discussed it in great length in theology, religion, history (along with the creation stories of countless other religions and cultures), and sociology classes (in the context of how culture influences the interpretation of Scripture). I've never real felt it was necessary or important to discuss ID in my biology classes; I'd rather disect animals and leave the theology to the theology professor.

Just thought I'd make that clear b/c some of the posts in this thread are making it seem like Christians demand Creationism be part of a parochial curriculum, which in my experience is not the case. My parents spent more on my elementary and high school education than most people do on college ($7000/yr) and we'd be damned if we were only every exposed to a single creation story being passed off as science. I'm grateful for the sacrifices my parents made for my pre-college education and I think, if anything, it's taught me to be more open-minded, rather than close-minded to anything that isn't mainstream Christian thought.

I had a very similar experience. I went to Catholic high school, a Catholic college, then transferred to a Quaker college (I was not then, and am not now, any of those religions -- the schools were simply better than the area public ones, which quite frankly sucked. The family, ie., my dad -- who was the only one who gave a shit about that stuff -- was Methodist.) In those schools, science was taught in science classes, religious elements were discussed in religion/theology, philosophy, history, literature, etc., classes.

I don't get why people want ID taught in science classes public schools when it isn't even taught there in all religious schools. :shrug:
 
LivLuvAndBootlegMusic said:


Please explain....


How could believing in ID harm a belief system that is based on the supreme authority of God?

Or am I mistunderstanding and you're referring to a more specific situation where Christians that use this belief in science?

I took it as meaning the latter -- the pushing it as science.
 
indra said:


I had a very similar experience. I went to Catholic high school, a Catholic college, then transferred to a Quaker college (I was not then, and am not now, any of those religions -- the schools were simply better than the area public ones, which quite frankly sucked. The family, ie., my dad -- who was the only one who gave a shit about that stuff -- was Methodist.) In those schools, science was taught in science classes, religious elements were discussed in religion/theology, philosophy, history, literature, etc., classes.

I don't get why people want ID taught in science classes public schools when it isn't even taught there in all religious schools. :shrug:

Exactly. It's almost funny to watch!
 
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