Posted on 12/03/2005 5:28:45 PM PST by Right Wing Professor
TO read the headlines, intelligent design as a challenge to evolution seems to be building momentum.
...
Behind the headlines, however, intelligent design as a field of inquiry is failing to gain the traction its supporters had hoped for. It has gained little support among the academics who should have been its natural allies. And if the intelligent design proponents lose the case in Dover, there could be serious consequences for the movement's credibility.
On college campuses, the movement's theorists are academic pariahs, publicly denounced by their own colleagues. Design proponents have published few papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
The differences result because Creationism begins with the Book of Genesis, an essentially religious approach, and Intelligent Design considers the hypotheses that either the world was created by an intelligent designer or it was not, and considers the weight of evidence on both sides.
By the way, I don't think Creationism is scientific in any way, manner, or form, but I have some sympathy for it. It was an attempt to get religion back into our schools through the back door because our tyrannical courts decided that the freedom of religion clause in the Constitution is meaningless. If it were allowed to teach about religion in school, then it would not be necessary to pretend that Creationism is a science.
Science is not infallible and all scientists are not necessarily credible.
Take the "research" of Edward Cussler of the U. of Minnesota and Brian Gettelfinger of the U. of Minnesota, who conducted a careful experiment to settle the longstanding scientific question: can people swim faster in syrup or in water?
REFERENCE: "Will Humans Swim Faster or Slower in Syrup?" American Institute of Chemical Engineers Journal, Brian Gettelfinger and E. L. Cussler, vol. 50, no. 11, October 2004, pp. 2646-7.
What research?
No, I don't, and you don't either because no one has come up with a universal, empirical definition of species. A bunch of biologists basically get together, take a vote and decide, OK, this is a new species. In fact, it's not that uncommon for biologists to reverse themselves on their "findings" regarding new species.
You may also want to spend less time being superior and study up on what common descent actually means. It means that given enough time, dinosaurs become birds.
Finally, the number of species of sharks is irrelevant. As a FAMILY, the sharks would be the common ancestor to a whole plethora of species over 400 million years.
However, from your final paragraph, it's pretty obvious that you just don't like Christianity and you cling to evolution because it lets you be, to quote Dawkins, "an intellectually fulfilled atheist." And it let's you be superior to boot. What a great stoke to the ego, eh?
For example, in a Markov chain, the state of the process at time s is conditionally independent of the history of the process before time t, given the state of the process at time t. This is not a pattern. This is an independently random process.
Nature could be much more diverse if it were not for predatory races which killed other more viable but less aggressive races.
This sounds a bit provocative?
What you are saying could make sense, but I just don't see it relating to stochatic processes.
http://www.gweep.net/~rocko/sufficiency/node10.html
"Stochastic processes which occur in a deterministic system begin to look like life"
No, I believe it's known as "begging the question," as in, where do you think the TOE requires species to evolve.
The point is lack of ANY descendent species for an ogranism that has been on the earth for 400 million years.
Good thing for your "logic" that you ignored CarolinaGuitarman's posts to the contrary.
Based on extrapolations of the current biosphere from the last mass extinction, millions is not an unreasonable number.
Just exactly how do you determine the number of species that will evolve from a prior species in the absence of any hard information?
What IS unreasonable is to say there are none, when TOE specifically predicts that genetic variation and natural selection would cause species to split off from common ancestors.
You're wrong about "none." You're wrong about causation.
If you have a common ancestor, you have to have descendants.
Nonsense. Every passenger pigeon on earth had a common ancestor. None of them currently have descendants.
But I've got some pretty common ancestors myself.
If all species descend from common ancestors, then all species old enough will eventually have descendants.
Sorry. No. See comment about passenger pigeons. It also applies to dodos.
If the common ancestor of humans and chimps can spawn thousands of species in a few million years (remember, descendant species are the common ancestors of others; you've seen a phylogeny tree, take it the other direction), then it is reasonable to assume that a species 100 times older would spawn many, many more times species than that (remember, it's not a linear expansion).
It's neither reasonable nor logical, and it's not required by the TOE.
It would be much easier to establish common ancestry using living species and living fossils than the fossil record. If it hasn't been done, it's very likely because it can't be done, and that is very damning to the theory.
"Living fossils." Helen Thomas?
Your statements are wrong, and even if they were right, just because it can't be done today doesn't mean it can't be done tomorrow.
This can range from generalized philosophical argument, that the universe in its form and beauty looks more like the work of intelligence that blind chance. But obviously that isn't enough, except as a starting place.
It can also involve particular arguments. For instance, a Darwinist would argue that animals with eyes have a survival advantage over animals without eyes. But how do you explain how the eye gradually evolved over numerous generations, and apparently did so several times among different orders, when only a developed eye would be of any use? Not a fully developed eye, necessarily, but one developed enough actually to see things.
Or, how do you explain the development of wings? If they developed gradually, partial wings would actually be an encumbrance, until they had developed to the point where they would be useful. It's not enough to suggest that full-flight wings developed from gliding creatures, because you still run into the same basic problem of what advantage the progenitors of these gliding creatures had before their wings were developed enough to be useful. Before that, they still would have been encumbrances, something to get tangled up in the bushes while fleeing from predators.
But the main argument has been on the micro level, involving statistical analysis, as anyone knows who has read up on the subject. These arguments are detailed and persuasive.
A curriculum that includes ID is a curriculum that will encourage sophisticated thinking--I would appreciate it if somebody would make the attempt to explain how it could be detrimental.
I expect critical thinking, and I will not gloat when I win the argument.
You have answered your own question. ID is subjective. There can be no objective data that can be gathered as evidence for design. On the other hand, we can physically see and evaluate fossils and their relatedness to one another. We can gather information about cellular components, mechanisms, and do genetic analyses.
While I believe the universe is designed by God, I am content in the knowledge that the conclusions of science do not change the reality of God's creation. Our discoveries and perceptions are finite and pertain only to the materialistic world, they should not threaten anyone's faith.
You ask a very relevant, though somewhat impertinent question.
What is your criteria for acceptable research? Would you take seriously all research, or just published research, or attempts to publish but turned down, or proposed research currently unfunded? Or do you recognize only the musings of Ward Churchill?
How about the research of Stefano Ghirlanda, Liselotte Jansson, and Magnus Enquist of Stockholm University, for their inevitable report "Chickens Prefer Beautiful Humans."
[PUBLISHED IN: Human Nature, vol. 13, no. 3, 2002, pp. 383-9.]
That might describe life in a particular period of time, say from time(a) to time(b), but how does that relate to evolution and/or creationism?
Your subjective/objective contrast makes no sense. Most scientific advances are a combination of mathematical modeling--in the realm of the theoretical--and observation--which is what I meant by "as we see it."
I am aware that what we see are what are called the phenomena, and that a certain amount of work is necessary to get beyond that to underlying realities. This looks like a solid table in front of me, but it can also be understood scientifically as a collection of atoms, electrical charges, particles, and so forth. Still, we start with what we see, the table, and the elements from which it is made.
"What test can you postulate that would allow us to demonstrate the function of Intelligent design? How do I look at a subject and objectively prove that it "looks more like" intelligent design?"
A good starting point might basic common sense. Look at the shirt you are wearing. Can you tell that it was intelligently designed and manufactured? How can you tell that?
OK, so that's not quite a fair question because we know that people manufacture shirts. So let's take another example. Suppose you were walking along the beach and you see the words "E = MC^2" written in large letters in the sand. How would you go about determining if it appeared by random chance with no intelligence?
I am constantly amazed the baloney evolutionists use to try to discredit the theory of Intelligent Design. Can't be falsified? Then I suppose my theory that the words on the beach were written by an intelligent being can't be falsified either.
In a sense it can't. Unless I can show a video of a person actually writing the letters, how can I "prove" that the message wasn't a result of random wind effects? I can't. That is the kind of ridiculous standard evolutionist require for ID.
Without a doubt and once the battle begins they will not be able to turn back. I do pray they know what they are getting themselves into.
Oh I forgot. This is the way scientists talk.
That's because that's what your argument deserved.
You got off easy. You should see how scientists talk about other 'real' scientists when a 'real' challenge is made to a 'real' idea that has broad consensual acceptance. It's similar, but much more sophisticated. Whenever you risk your life on the accuracy and consensual acceptance of scientific theories, and you do it many times every day, think about that.
Crap (like ID) is often dismissed with the kind of rhetoric it deserves.
That's how 'real' science works.
Ahhhh and now the name calling. I love it when you Atheist can't handle the heat. Remember this, if I am wrong then I have lost nothing but if you are wrong then you have eternity to think it over.
Schools teach "electives" so people can get an education in what interests them. People who go to school as a prerequisite to a career in science expect an education in science without having silly myths rammed down their throats by a superstitious school board.
As for those other electives you seem so obsessed with, I suppose you're not the only one interested in those subjects either. You get the education you pay for.
You are way off the mark! Einstein's theories of Relativity (Special and General) superseded Newton's theory because they explained observed phenomena that Newton's could not. That is the way science works. (and ID doesn't) You have heard of the Michelson-Morley experiment, haven't you? Read up on it and you won't be lost in the ether.
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