How to teach evolution & Evidence for Creationism II

[Insidious Rex]

Originally Posted by The Gaffer

Now, one of the great strengths of US culture is its diversity. However, if I was American, I would be worried about how science is increasingly being spun by interest groups. I would think that would discourage scientists from working there.

Ive been worried for years. It takes time to swing the pendulum away from the highest level of excellence and thats what is happening now. I fear it will take even longer to swing it back once we get a hold of our senses and realize what a hole we are digging. You see the most cutting edge stuff now moving over to scientists based in places like Korea and Canada and all over Europe. An ominously bad precedent if you are an american... I never thought in the 21st century in this great country we would be battling the fundamentalists who want to take us back to the dark ages as far as science is concerned.

[brownjenkins]

Originally Posted by Insidious Rex

Ive been worried for years. It takes time to swing the pendulum away from the highest level of excellence and thats what is happening now. I fear it will take even longer to swing it back once we get a hold of our senses and realize what a hole we are digging. You see the most cutting edge stuff now moving over to scientists based in places like Korea and Canada and all over Europe. An ominously bad precedent if you are an american... I never thought in the 21st century in this great country we would be battling the fundamentalists who want to take us back to the dark ages as far as science is concerned.

possibly... but many times the press tends to blow things out of proportion... the fact that the kansas school board seems to be the only one even considering these types of changes is a good sign

[Insidious Rex]

Well its other school boards around the country as well (PA, GA, some others). And its not only the creationist wackos its the attack on things like stem cell research and environmental sciences and of course the whole celibacy as sex education thing. Its across the board really. Any issue the fundamentalists see as counter to their way of thinking. Hopefully most of these will be thwarted but they got quite a big head after the election last year that they felt gave them a "moral mandate" to reak havoc on so many straight forward widely accepted things. And all this because of gay marriage and to some extent abortion bringing so many folks to the polls to vote republican. What does gay marriage have to do with evolution anyway exactly?

[brownjenkins]

good point... but if history is any indicator, they will go too far and things will once again swing back in the other direction... the last few elections have been extremely close, so it won't take much

i'm just glad i live in the northeast

[Rían]

Originally Posted by Count Comfect

Had a post written, then the comp deleted it. Grr.

*sends comfort tea to Count*

We're not taking the Vatican's line on whether evolution is science, but rather pointing to it as a source of evidence or belief that the Bible and evolution do not conflict.

Shall I point to the Vatican's line on birth control when that discussion comes up?

SETI searches for signs of design in things we could design. Therefore, since we know of the existence of at least one actor that is capable of the act in question, we can search for others.

No, absolutely NOT! (IMHO, that is ) I think this is totally incorrect, and this is a crucial point. It looks for signs of intelligence of a type that we can analyze (i.e., LIKE ours); the magnitude is irrelevant. IDers are starting to say, "What are some observable, analyze-able, measureable characteristics of things that we KNOW are designed?" and then looks at things that we DO NOT KNOW if they are designed or not, and compares them. SCIENTIFICALLY. JUST like SETI scientists would. But it is in its infancy, and needs a lot more development. Scientific objections are one thing, but there are MANY people that are just going nuts over even letting curious, intelligent scientists who have something they want to investigate scientifically even have a CHANCE. And that tells me that those on the evolution side that are objecting via things like personal insults, etc., are NOT scientifically neutral, by any means.

ID looks for signs of design in things we could not design, nor do we have any evidence that there is any being who could do so.

No, it is looking for signs of an intelligence LIKE ours - IOW, recognizeable to us.

To take the age-old example of an arrowhead - it implies an Indian, but only if you know Indians exist or have existed. If you don't, it's just a rock.

No, I disagree. If someone discovered an arrowheads on Mars, I imagine they would think it was NOT a naturally-occuring rock, don't you? All that an arrowhead shows is that an intelligence like ours probably had something to do with it. And that is EXACTLY what ID is trying to analyze - what are things that are measureable, defineable characteristics of things produced by intelligence?

What thing that's happened in Pennsylvania? The Dover trial? Or 8 out of the 9 Dover school board members getting voted out of office over the ID issue?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/11..._board_booted/

Wow, interesting! Well, that's the right of the parents - go vote for what you think is good for your children! However, they got the Kansas stuff TOTALLY wrong, which is a shame. But I'm not surprised given the all-too-often hysterical attitude of anti-IDers

[Count Comfect]

How in blazes is it an intelligence "like ours" if it can design life from near-scratch? We can't do that. We have no hope of doing that any time in the foreseeable future. It is definitively unlike ours in that its very defining characteristic, the capability to design life, is beyond our capacity.

The crucial thing about SETI is that it looks for things within our capabilities. That means that we know something exists that is able to do it, and therefore we can compare what we see (ie a radio signal) with what radio signals produced by something (us) capable of designing their production look like. ID is totally and completely not like that. We cannot compare it to any known design because we know of nothing that is capable of such a design. We don't know what the differences between designed life and undesigned life are or would be. There is no possibility of scientific comparison like there is for SETI.

What sort of intelligence "recognizable to us" is capable of designing life? None. We can't recognize it because we have no proof that such an intelligence exists anywhere. We CAN recognize our own kind and level of intelligence, as SETI looks to do because we can compare it with US.

If humans were extinct, and no creatures capable of making arrowheads existed or were remembered, and a scientific, intelligent supergoat found an arrowhead, it would think it was just a natural rock formation. Why? Because it would have no knowledge of or proof of a being capable of making such an object, and therefore it would have to attribute its creation to random chance.

"what are things that are measureable, defineable characteristics of things produced by intelligence?" - What things? As it stands, this question is unanswerably broad, because different "things" have different characteristics produced by intelligence acting on them. An arrowhead and a candy bar, for instance, each have clear indicators of being designed (since we know there is someone to have designed them). But they don't share any single design flag that says universally "if this is present, it was designed." Each case of design has its own indicators. But we cannot know what designed life would look like, so we cannot say what the characteristics of LIFE under conditions of intelligent design would be.

This is the greatest fallacy to me - the assumption that because I can compare something I know I can make with a similar thing nature made and tell them apart (which, btw, isn't always true, actually, I have to admit), I can somehow extrapolate that to other things, including things I don't know that there is Anyone who can make. I mean, the extrapolation fails if I try to extrapolate "this stone tool has a distinct bulb of percussion, showing someone intentionally struck it at this point - therefore it is designed" onto, say, even a wood tool. "Indicators" or "characteristics" are too broad and variable to extrapolate from one item to another. You can compare radio waves with other radio waves to check for design - you can't compare radio waves to life. And we have no reference point for the correct check, which would be designed-life-to-undesigned-life.

All IMHO of course

[rohirrim TR]

could you guys make your posts short and sweet, i am so lost in this topic i have no idea what your arguing about, the vatican? american politics? what happened? since Kansas made the changes, now you don't want to talk about it?

[Nurvingiel]

I had a post in response to two of your posts if that's more on track (p. 16). Not that I'm hinting.

[Jonathan]

Originally Posted by RÃ*an

Since when have you guys started accepted things that the Vatican said?

It's just funny to see that the most devout Catholics in the world are less fundamentalist than American Protestants

Originally Posted by RÃ*an

So do you think that all SETI scientists should be stripped of the name "scientist", kicked out of all scientific areas, and called names?

Sure, you could go into the human genome and search for hidden messages like "God was here" written in morse code with adenine bases. However, the ID people are looking for signs of something supernatural whereas the SETI folks don't. There is no room for the supernatural (scince science is evidence-based and supernatural things can never be proved) in science and that's how it should be.

Originally Posted by rohirrim TR

could you guys make your posts short and sweet, i am so lost in this topic i have no idea what your arguing about, the vatican? american politics? what happened? since Kansas made the changes, now you don't want to talk about it?

Aw, c'mon. It's the long posts I find the most interesting

[Rían]

"short and sweet"? HERE?!

(wait, I just did it!)

[Spock]

...even shorter would be nice

[Curubethion]

BTW...Pope Benedict XVI has just officially spoken against evolution, fyi.

[rohirrim TR]

thats it bic C, short and, you have established that the topic is indeed, the vatican, so now that kansas has approved the change, what are the evolutionist response on this forum going to be?

almost universally evolutionist have taken to ridiculing, and insulting the state of kansas, and, its people so i already know how some of you are going to answer, but, i'm curious anyway.

[Nurvingiel]

Originally Posted by Curubethion

BTW...Pope Benedict XVI has just officially spoken against evolution, fyi.

I thought that Vatican did accept evolution.


How's that for a short post Rohirrim TR!

[rohirrim TR]

quite excellent, i'm not against medium length posts you know just big long ones that i don't have time or energy to even try to read
BTW were you going to bring up something from page 16 or whatever or am i getting people mixed up? any way i think my post length seems to be growing hmm....

[Count Comfect]

I did post about Kansas, rohirrim, a page or so back. Said I disagreed with their definition of science, but because they hadn't published the new standards in full yet I couldn't say much more.

[Insidious Rex]

Originally Posted by rohirrim TR

quite excellent, i'm not against medium length posts you know just big long ones that i don't have time or energy to even try to read

You must have an extra hard time with those science text books then. Theyve been known to go on for pages and pages!

[rohirrim TR]

Originally Posted by Insidious Rex

You must have an extra hard time with those science text books then. Theyve been known to go on for pages and pages!

that was a low blow *clutches chest*

[Nurvingiel]

This is the post I was referring to Rohirrim TR (copied here in full):

Originally Posted by rohirrim TR

i haven't seen Behe's arguements but, i doubt they could be any worse than the circular reasoning that evolutionists are so very fond of using.

I would agree that circular reasoning is equally bad no matter who is doing it. Of course, someone trying to explain evolution in a silly way doesn't mean evolution is actually a lousy theory. I don't think I ever use circular reasoning when explaining evolution, but if I ever do, please smack me with a Clue Bat. *hugs science*
I try to evaluate theories based on the best and most logical arguments for it that I've heard. I think the best arguments reflect the theory most accurately. The stopping point for me with ID as a scientific theory (obviously it is a perfectly valid philosophy/world view/religious theory) is that an Intelligent Designer must exist for the entire theory to exist. In other words, all parts of the Intelligent Design theory depend on God existing.

Originally Posted by rohirrim TR

that doesen't prove ID it would indicate that evolution doesn't seem to be doing much either, but, i digress, that is an isolated example if you could provide me with a link to more info i would be interested.

It could also suggest that the factors weren't controlled in the experiment that should have been, the experiment was approached in the wrong way, the scientists were asking the wrong questions, or a number of other factors. Evolving bacteria is very complex; it's highly possible that mistakes or oversights were made in the experiment. (But as you mentioned, more information would be needed.)

Another possibility is that neither ID nor evolution are true. (Though rejection of an entire scientific theory should be due to many diverse and detailed experiments IMO. Accepting or not accepting a philosophy is a personal matter - I think how one evaluates one's beliefs is very personal and hopefully involves careful thought.)

[Nurvingiel]

(Ignore this. My last post didn't update the thread.)