Darwinism Under Attack ( Intelligent Design Theory)

Chronicle of Higher Education ^ | 21December 2001 | BETH MCMURTRIE

[f.Christian]

aren't... scientific---floating theories--speculation--guessing--dreams-explanations of madmen!

[azhenfud]

DM,
In support of your statement, here is a website that discusses the improbability of earth being only 10,000 years old and its logical eplaination makes perfect sense in view of the scriptural records.
http://answers.org/newlook/NEWLOOK.HTM#Contents
Notice what this author says about the term "day" and you begin to understand that the term "the evening and the morning were the (?) day" is literally referring to a specific period of creation's history...
Stay well,
Az

[Chipper]

And the 20 Billion year old universe was created by an uncaused-cause (Big Bang). What created the so called "singular" from which all matter came?

It is as much faith to accept this as it is to accept ID.

[Chipper]

so much for the law of conservation of matter huh!

[cogitator]

Richard Lewontin has written that punctuated equilibrium is merely accelerated phyletic gradualism; i.e., the main thing the Gould and Eldredge "discovered" was that evolution doesn't proceed at the same rate everywhere. Lewontin implies that despite the prominence given punctuated equilibrium (partly due to Gould's visibility), it's really no great shakes as a discovery.

Plus, only about 60% of speciation events fit the punctuated equilibrium model. The other 40% are standard-fare phyletic gradualism. So don't attach too much significance to "punctuated equilibrium", despite the publicity given to it by creationists.

[Libertarianize the GOP]

FYI

[ThinkPlease]

And I believe each of the above could also support the genesis account. When you say "hierarchical structure of taxonomy" I'm guessing you're referring to the common features of different species. (That's a wild guess. I'm no scientist and don't feel like looking it up) When man creates machines he uses similar parts to create machines with entirely different functions. I don't think it's a stretch to see a creator doing the same in various species. I've been slammed for using that comparison before but we are creators in our own right, are we not? We advance our technology by using old ideas and tweaking them a bit.

Great, so how does one scientifically go about proving this? This is the forum we're talking about, after all. Anyone can sit around and have a few beers and throw out ideas, but it isn't scientific until you've tested them? How do you scientifically test the idea of a Creator?

[abandon]

so much for the law of conservation of matter huh!

Do you mean matter-energy, since matter is being destroyed all the time in nuclear power plants.

As I understand it, when two virtual particles (they always come in pairs, go figure) come into existence on the event horizon of a black hole, with one of the particles on the inside of the event horizon and the other one on the outside, the one on the inside can get sucked into the black hole before the two virutal particles can anhilate one another. The one on the outside of the even horizon can escape the black hole.

Since the universe is now two particles more massive, the black hole balances the equation by giving up two particles worth of mass (thus, it gained one and lost two). Over time and countless events like this, the black hole loses mass and evaporates while the free virtual particles look like radiation streaming from the black hole.

I think Stephen Hawking was the first to make this hypothesis and the radiation that streams from the black hole is "Hawking radiation."

[Woahhs]

Ping!

[Aquinasfan]

Evolution under attack? It's dead.

It's just that no one's alerted the media.

[laredo44]

However, the theory of evolution as currently taught is fraught with huge difficulties.

As I understand it, physics as currently taught has huge difficulties. Namely, relativity and quantum mechanics are incompatible. That doesn't prevent the teaching of physics.

[Aquinasfan]

The book credited with laying out the philosophical underpinnings of the modern intelligent-design movement was published in 1991 by Phillip E. Johnson, a law professor at Berkeley who claimed that Darwinian evolution is based on scant evidence and faulty assumptions.

True. Darwin on Trial is one of the books of the century, although one has to also give credit to Denton's "Evolution: a Theory in Crisis" which was published in1986.

I read Darwin on Trial in the early 90s. Johnson completely dismantled evoltionary theory for me in around 150 pages. Previously I had regarded evolutionary theory as established scientific fact. I remember thinking, "well, it's over. Now it'll take 40-50 years for this to become conventional wisdom."

[TopQuark]

Junior: The theory of quantum mechanics is maybe completely understood by a handful of physicists on this planet, but that doesn't mean it is full of holes; it simply means it is more involved than the average joe understands.

valhallasone: Major correction -- quantum mechanics is not completely understood by anyone...

A minor correction to the major correction:
quantum theory is well understood by most graduate students, and this is the point Junior was making.

You seem to be confounding two issues: completeness of understanding of a body of knowledge, and completeness of that body of knowledge itself. Contrary to the following,
our understanding of what we know about quantum mechanics as far as we know it is incomplete,
our understanding is complete as far as this area is built.

Granted, some issues are still open --- GUT is but one of them, as you pointed out. Whatever axioms the current theory posits, we can always ask, why have these been chosen, do these axioms follow from some other, even more basic antecedents? This is true, in particular, with respect to the most fundamental elements of quantum mechanics --- a particle's state and the measurement thereof (I presume this is where reference to Bohr leads --- his complementarity principle). As you recall, every particle is presumed to be in a combination of some states that is characterized by the probabilities of each; and, upon measurement, it "materializes" in one of the states with the corresponding probability. This "materialization" is not quite clear, and it is this point that compelled Einstein to write to Bohr, "G-d does not play dice."

Well, not only is this normal in the sense that every science has unanswered questions, but it cannot be otherwise. The (corollary to the) Completeness Theorem of Gödel (1930) states, in essence, that there is no theory that is both complete and internally consistent. Scientists have preference for consistency. Consequently, whatever body of knowledge they leave behind is necessarily incomplete.

Junior: stop pretending --- to me, you sound more like a senior.

[abandon]

That doesn't prevent the teaching of physics.

No, but it should. Since general relativity and quantum mechanics make no sense when read together, both theories are full of cow dung and should be thrown out. They should not be taught in the schools, since, for all we know, a Grand Unified Theory may come along in 20 years and relegate both GR and QM to the dustbin of history.

[Aquinasfan]

#25. Great post, and funny too.

[cogitator]

I read Darwin on Trial in the early 90s. Johnson completely dismantled evoltionary theory for me in around 150 pages.

You should read Kenneth Miller's "Finding Darwin's God". He only takes a chapter to completely dismantle Johnson. (Chapter 4.)

[Aquinasfan]

Access Research Network is the web-site for the ID movement.

[f.Christian]

Evolution under attack? It's dead.

bttt

[Woahhs]

How do you scientifically test the idea of a Creator?

This is part of why these discussions always become so heated. Evolutionist ask questions in the wrong direction so often, "Creationist" are left with little else to conclude but that it's intentional.

ID theory is not about proving a Creator; it's about dis-proving evolutionary theory by making it testable. ID theorists test evolutionary concepts by the tenents of the information sciences, and that's not ground where evolution fairs well. When you want to find out where and how a complex, molecular, programmed system comes about, you don't ask a biologist. You ask an information theorist and/or a chemist.

The existance of an intellegent designer as an alternative explaination is peripheral.

[Father Wu]

That's why it's called the Theory of Evolution right? Last time I checked, a theory wasn't a proven fact. Am I mistaken?