Posted on 03/22/2006 6:22:07 PM PST by Central Scrutiniser
Huge crowds extend Darwin exhibit in New York
Wed Mar 22, 2:54 PM ET
NEW YORK (AFP) - A monumental Charles Darwin exhibition in New York has been extended by five months amid an overwhelming public response to what was touted as a scholarly rebuke to opponents of teaching evolution in US schools.
The American Museum of Natural History said Wednesday that nearly 200,000 people had visited "Darwin" since it opened three months ago.
Originally slated to close at the end of this month, the exhibition will now run through August 20, said museum spokesman Joshua Schnakenberg.
"Darwin" had opened amid furious debate in many school districts over the teaching of the 19th century naturalist's evolutionary theory and the first trial on the teaching of the God-centered alternative favoured by many religious groups, "intelligent design," or ID.
That trial, in Pennsylvania, ended in defeat for the evangelical right with the judge in the case decrying the "breathtaking inanity" of the school board in the town of Dover which backed the concept that nature is so complex it must be the work of a superior being.
"Our conclusion today is that it is unconstitutional to teach ID as an alternative to evolution in a public school science classroom," the judge said in his ruling in December.
An early section of the New York exhibit is devoted to the question, "What is a Theory?" and seeks to clarify the distinction between scientific theories and non-scientific explanations about the origins and diversity of life.
"This is really for the schoolchildren of America. This is the evidence of evolution," said the exhibit's curator, Niles Eldridge.
In a Gallup poll released last October, 53 percent of American adults agreed with the statement that God created humans in their present form exactly the way the Bible describes it.
Thirty-one percent stood by the "intelligent design" stance, while only 12 percent said humans have evolved from other forms of life and "God has no part."
Can you identify for me any everyday phenomenon, in our common experience, for which there exists a supernatural explanation competitive with a natural explanation? Examples of everyday phenomena: sun rising, kids getting earaches, weeds growing in the garden, etc.. Just one example of such a phenomenon where the explanation is plausibly supernatural?
Yes, because they're falsified."
Or because they are untestable at the time (such as when atoms were hypothesized) Your implication that a hypothesis that cannot be tested must be untrue is patently incorrect.
I assume you mean by falsified that you mean they are disproven... am I incorrect in this? Otherwise, I do not know how you can falsify a hypothesis.. DATA and EVIDENCE can be falsified, but how do you misrepresent your own hypothesis?
I haven’t though this through, but God has been the subject of debated throughout the progression of philosophy, and divine intervention is historically and logically consistent with that. And since God is not disproved, ID is not a “logical fallacy”. God and ID may or may not be unimpressive as a philosophy, but their relevance is well grounded.
I base it upon a simple comparison of complexity. A dna has far more components, by entire orders of magnitude, than there are notes in any musical composition I know of. Even the DNA of a bacterium is highly complex, containing at least 3 million units, all aligned in a very precise, meaningful sequence.
When a person speaks of Truth, it implies moralism. There are no absolute truths. Hypotheses abound. They are proven and disproven regularly. So you are talking relativism (very interesting concept, thank you!)
http://www.carm.org/relativism/relativism_refute.htm
Some excepts:
Refuting relativism
Relativism is the philosophical position that all points of view are equally valid and that all truth is relative to the individual. But, if we look further, we see that this proposition is not logical. In fact, it is self refuting.
All truth is relative
If there are no absolute truths, then you cannot believe anything absolutely at all, including that there are no absolute truths. Therefore, nothing could be really true for you - including relativism.
What is true for you is not true for me
That is your reality, not mine Is my reality really real?
We all perceive what we want
If our perceptions are contradictory, can either perception be trusted?
If my reality is that your reality is false, then both cannot be true. If both are not true, then one of us (or both) is in error.
"The fact that a thing draws large numbers of people makes the real intellectual value of it highly suspect."
That would explain why I don't have any friends.
Okay, good point. A hypothesis must be testable IN PRINCIPLE. But you're right, it may not be technologically feasible to test a hypothesis at a given point in time.In that case, it remains a hypothesis until the technology is developed.
But that's not the case with ID. It is not testable even IN PRINCIPLE.
Your implication that a hypothesis that cannot be tested must be untrue is patently incorrect.
I never made that assertion. A hypothesis must be testable to be considered scientific. If the technology does not yet exist to test it, then you have to wait. But at least you know that some day, it probably will be testable.
This is not true of ID.
I assume you mean by falsified that you mean they are disproven... am I incorrect in this?
Yeah. Please tell me, what data could possibly falsfify ID? And you don't have to limit yourself to data that it is technologically feasible to gather today. Data that plausiblely could be gathered someday is good enough.
Thanks for the ping!
This conjecture is based on the logical fallacies of irreducible complexity and specified complexity.
One of the problems with ID is that it is an extremely confusing term.
ID: bad science, bad theology, bad philosophy, and on top of it all, bad philology.
You both missed the most important part...there's a tortoise at the exhibit!
Not one, but two! It's tortoises all the way down...
Either God had something to do with our existence, or He didn't. It's a matter of faith that He did. It's a matter of faith that He didn't.
For instance, the sun rising. Some of us see this and feel it couldn't just happen by chance. The sun doesn't just exist of its own accord. Neither does the earth. Nor do we exist just by some fluke. Nor are we able to see a sunrise because a bunch of mutations just happened to occur which produced eyes, optic nerves, brain capacity for vision, etc., not to mention the aesthetic capacity to see the beauty in a sunrise, etc.
Others believe otherwise. That's their right to believe that, but it doesn't mean their position is any more scientific. It's just their biased default position as opposed to our biased default position.
We use the term "scientific explanation" a lot, but really all science can do is describe things, not explain them. We haven't the foggiest idea why things work as they do. Drop a rubber ball and it falls to the ground. Gravity, right? Yes, that's the name of it, but why does it exist? Where did it come from?
Many of us feel there's something outside the observable universe. We have faith in God. We aren't wrong simply because you don't share our opinion (and admittedly, vice-versa).
So why does gravity exist and work the way it appears to? Some of us believe God authored it. Others believe it just happens to exist and just happens to work the way it works. But believing the latter isn't an explanation. Try explaining WHY gravity exists. Where did it come from? Why does light exist? Why do you exist? Why are you aware of your own existence? Science can describe some of those things, but it can't explain any of them.
Suggesting that God exists is no less scientific than theorizing the existence of other universes or dimensions, or considering the possibility of life in other galaxies, or, as someone noted, the Greeks theorizing about atoms when they had no possible way of discovering them.
We just look at the world from different perspectives. I respect that. It's why I never preach to you!
This is a complete red herring, and as such, all of your post which follows is as well. The first two sentences above are correct, they abound and are proven and disproven regularly.. but not all are.. many remain hypothesis for centuries. Atoms, once again, are an example.
Interesting little foray with that whole word game ya played with "truth", and your attempt to divert into moral relativism. I use that word true and truth, such as when I say science seeks to find the truth, in the context of seeking to find the factual nature of things. But then again, I think you really knew that and were just playing games. Morality issues have, in my opinion, no place in science beyond maybe studying the effects that certain moral beliefs have upon us. Who knows? To me, anything someone can ask a question about and wonder about is subject for scientific study in some form or other.
I think some, like yourself, fear ID being pursued because they think that it goes hand in hand with forcing some sort of morality into science, and fear the schools teaching kids moral issues in science class or something. I agree that moral issues should be left in philosophy and comparative religion types of classes, but do not think that simply exploring whether a intelligence was involved in the creation of the universe necessarily means you have to get involved in moral issues.
Huge numbers of people believe in some form of Creator. Whether one exists or not, the fact that so many people do believe in it is good reason to research that it, and to explore for evidence which may help prove or disprove it. It is something (at the very least a delusion) which merits study. Name me any other subject of study which science was willing to say "we cannot find out so we will not even try". Not provable? How can we know what tomorrow will bring?
When I encounter narrow minds on either side of this issue, be they believers in a creator, or atheistic types, I almost think it would be amusing if one day, somewhere on some planet, we found something which could prove irrefutably that there was once a God of some form.. but that he was now dead. Oh, how that would ruin EVERYONE'S day.
A scientific hypothesis needs no proof. That is what makes it a hypothesis. When it can be tested, predictions made, and the results repeated, it then qualifies as scientific theory. Once again, some 24 centuries or so seperated the hypothesis of the Atom, and the ability to test it in any way.
I have stated a hypothesis, and I feel quite comfortable in the assertion that DNA is so much greater complexity.. but if you do not think so.. feel free to endeavor in science pursuit and disprove my hypothesis. I do not have to PROVE a scientific hypothesis. ;)
If you don't want to make any attempt to back up your silly mathematical claims, that's fine, but you'd be acting more adult if you retracted them when called on them.
A sizable number believe that Apollo was a hoax.
A sizable number believe that Bush knocked down the towers.
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood dimm'd tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
What I mean is that, as you described, ID proponents believe that the evidence indicates that an intelligence had to have a hand in the development of certain characteristics as well as the wide diversity, among other things. As for my saying they are both Creationist and Evolutionist, it is because they generally believe in scientific principles such as evolution... but they do not believe that RANDOM evolution could have succeeded in what now exists, in the period of time that was available. Thus they believe that it is likely that a Creator was involved in helping guide things. If, where, when, and how such "help" took place are among the things that would naturally be sought to discover if such an intelligence were involved.
Nearly 200,000 people in three months, in NYC? That's only about 2,200 per day.
A Billy Graham crusade would do that in just four days.
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