Posted on 03/22/2006 6:22:07 PM PST by Central Scrutiniser
Lets teach the fact that the earth is flat too, its in the bible. No, creationism is NOT science, its belief, untestable and bible based belief.
The key difference is that hypotheses are falsifiable. ID isn't.
If a man told you that he walked out his front door, and heard a bird, chirpping at random, a concert perfect rendition of Beethovens Fifth, which would you judge more likely? That it DID happen? Or that he was most likely a nut? I think most would view the guy as a nut, even if it IS statistically possible (though remote). Meanwhile, you expect me to believe that a DNA molecule (let alone all the further development and biodiversity) which is far more complex than any musical score... happened by pure random chance and accident. IMO, you're the nut who thought he heard the bird chirp the song by random chance.
But as for myself... I prefer not to make any judgement about which is the truth until proven, nor to discard any idea until disproven. After all... maybe the bird DID chirp the tune and you really heard it.
I am trying to figure you out, dude. What is your basic philosophy? It seems like you are all over the road. You seem very articulate, yet anti-science? Existentialist? ??? What is your position on evolution? Since this is an evo thread?
ID doesn't even qualify as philosophy. It's just a bunch of conjectures based on logical fallacies.
And don't disparage the discipline of philosophy. You couldn't have science without it.
But if God controlled or programmed evolution, then it's design is it not? I just don't see how Theistic Evolution is anything other than design. And if God had nothing to do with evolution, then it isn't theistic.
This is why this debate will always be with us. One side defines science as excluding any consideration of the supernatural, and then proposes an explanation for our existence that excludes the supernatural, while the other side believes there was supernatural involvement in our existence.
That is a fallacious argument, you are trying to anectotalize an absurd situation and apply it to millions of years and millions of years of slow evolution.
The difference is that ID’s divine intervention is incompatible with the characteristics of scientific theory , the only kind of theory currently taught in science class.
Please help teachers rip into the weaknesses of evolution in science class as best you can. And please expose my two kids to all the ID you wish, but do so in philosophy or social studies.
None of those things suggest the existence of a creator (to me) - or rather, one cannot infer God from them. They are, however, consistent with both the idea of a creator and the idea of no creator. There is absolutely no material reason to have faith in God, zero, zip, zilch. But I *do*, by faith alone. To look for evidence of God, to me, is to betray God.
I gather this from my own reading and interpretation of the bible (also taken on faith that it is inspired - ie truths planned at onset to be woven within a human mind - and has retained much truth over the years of modification and translation by both good and bad men) and, in tandem, my study of the material (as a scientist). I know I am at odds with Catholicism, which I understand posits that the existence of God can be proven by reason alone (for which obvious circular reasoning is invoked, by all accounts I have read).
It is, but not in the sense that the ID proponents mean.
ID is the belief that certain features of life could not have evolved and required direct supernatural intervention to arrise.
Flat out wrong. Many Hypothesis never get beyond the hypothesis stage. Dark matter is one example. It is niether able to be shown to exist or not exist. It may never be able to be proven or disproven. Go ask a real scientist if a hypothesis is unworthy of exploration since we are currently unable to prove it. A HUGE amount of our scientific breakthroughs came looong after the hypothesis, and were unprovable at the time the hypothesis was made. The Atom is one good example.. first theorized in Ancient Greece. In your way of thinking, since it was unprovable, it was useless exploration, and should have been discarded for all time.
"That is a fallacious argument, you are trying to anectotalize an absurd situation and apply it to millions of years and millions of years of slow evolution."
Wrong. A bird chirpping such a tune is completely within the realm of statistical possibility. Improbable, but possible. And if it were to occur, it occured after millions of years, and countless other birds, chirpped random notes and never quite got it. It has at LEAST as much probability of happening by chance as a DNA molecule, if not more.
I thought I made it pretty clear. I do not believe in pushing any idea or theory as Truth, until it can be proven true. Nor do I believe in discarding any idea or theory until it can be disproven.
Do I believe evolution is true? No.
Do I believe strict creationism is true? No.
Do I believe that the answer may be something involving both? No.
Do I believe it MIGHT be one of the above. Yes... but maybe not.
I KNOW only that I KNOW nothing, and barely that. - Socrates (See also Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle)
I personally find that those who KNOW would be rather amusing... if they did not cause so much misery in the world. If there is a god.. may he save us from the "True believers".
Correction.
when I said "Do I believe that the answer may be something involving both? No"
what I meant to say was "Do I believe that the answer IS something involving both? No"
Yes, because they're falsified.
Dark matter is one example. It is niether able to be shown to exist or not exist.
Dark matter could be shown false (no theory can ever be proven true). It has many testable empirical implications, and as far as I know, they have all been verified. Here's a site that discusses some of them:
http://www.astro.queensu.ca/~dursi/dm-tutorial/dm1.html
Here's a site that discusses some new proposed tests for dark matter, that would also give us a better idea of what it precisely is:
http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/Phys-SNAP-dark-energy.html
String theory, on the other hand, is a very good example of modern scientists engaging in non-testable speculation.
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