Expelled

[Rolling_Stone]

Silenced them?


I disagree:

Amazon.com: The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth: Books: E. O. Wilson​

Amazon.com: Creation: Remarkable Evidence of God's Design: Books: Grant R. Jeffrey​

Amazon.com: The Privileged Planet: Movies & TV: John Rhys-Davies,Lad Allen​

Amazon.com: Wonders of God's Creation, Vol. 1-6: Movies & TV​

Amazon.com: Creation As Science: A Testable Model Approach to End the Creation/evolution Wars: Books: Hugh Ross​

Amazon.com: The Case for a Creator: Movies & TV: Lee Strobel,Lad Allen​

Amazon.com: Intelligent Design (10 DVD's) Creation vs. evolution: Everything Else​

Amazon.com: Creation - the Journal of the Creation Science Movement - En: Magazines​

Amazon.com: Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between Science & Theology: Books: William A. Dembski​

Amazon.com: Intelligent Design: William A. Dembski & Michael Ruse in Dialogue: Books: Robert B. Stewart​

Amazon.com: Judgment Day - Intelligent Design on Trial: Movies & TV: Nova​

Amazon.com: Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution: Books: Michael J. Behe​

Amazon.com: The Theory of Intelligent Design: Music: Fish Karma​

Amazon.com: Intelligent Design Creationism and Its Critics: Philosophical, Theological, and Scientific Perspectives: Books: Robert T. Pennock​

Those are all well and good, but none are "peer reviewed" and won't hold up in a court for that reason (Ask Behe about that). The problem is trying to get something "peer reviewed" not because its science is questionable, but because it calls into question the orthodox view.

 

[Hope]

Actually this demonstrates a basic confusion about what science is and does. Nothing in science is ever proven, and things that are proven are not science, they are math. Science is about evidence, not proof, and the theory of evolution has as much evidence in its support as the theory of heliocentrism.

So, if science is not about proving anything, then why jump all over certain scientists who look at evidence and merely suggest the possibility (no "proving" involved) of a higher intelligence? Why the touchiness? If the theory of evolution cannot be proven, then what's the harm in putting forth the idea of higher intelligence that can likewise not be proven?

 

[Sunstone]

The problem is trying to get something "peer reviewed" not because its science is questionable, but because it calls into question the orthodox view.

Can you provide any evidence for your claim?

 

[McBell]

Those are all well and good, but none are "peer reviewed" and won't hold up in a court for that reason (Ask Behe about that). The problem is trying to get something "peer reviewed" not because its science is questionable, but because it calls into question the orthodox view.

Fair enough.
Now all you have to do is present something that fits all the criteria of science and was still rejected.

Seems to me that it is during the "peer review" that it is rejected as not science.
Of course, you may well have a point if you have a bunch of pseudoscienists reviewing
pseudoscience then technically it is peer reviewed.
However it is still not science.

 

[Hope]

For one thing, pure randomness does not allow for any complexity, but there is no pure randomness, there are physical laws which govern it. The effect of these physical laws combined allows for the formation of life.
All this is after the big bang, nobody has a clue as to what happened before it. Perhaps it was designed, perhaps it was not.

Without something or someone behind those physical laws, governing them, they are nothing more than the result of random chance. Maybe I'm just too simple-minded to understand all the evasive, confusing, and contradictory double-talk that goes on in reference to evolution. Apparently I see things a little more black and white.

 

[Sunstone]

Maybe I'm just too simple-minded to understand all the evasive, confusing, and contradictory double-talk that goes on in reference to evolution.

Can you cite some examples of "evasive, confusing, and contradictory double-talk", Hope?

 

[McBell]

Without something or someone behind those physical laws, governing them, they are nothing more than the result of random chance.

What is this based upon?

Maybe I'm just too simple-minded to understand all the evasive, confusing, and contradictory double-talk that goes on in reference to evolution.

It is confusing enough on its own.
But especially so when you have so many people intentionally mucking up the waters. I.E. Kent Hovind.

 

[Hope]

What is this based upon?

Common sense.

 

[Captain Civic]

Common sense.

I think metaphysics is a better word. But I do agree with your assertion.

 

[Sunstone]

Common sense.

No reasoning involved?

 

[PureX]

I took a biology class in my freshman year of college and, as you said, God was never ruled out as a possibility, but we spent an awful lot of time talking about the pros and cons of the theory of evolution.

I agree that evolution explains how we get a diversity of species on earth, but I disagree that it is scientific. It is always presented as scientific, but it is really only useful speculation.

You have somehow become confused about what science is, because the definition you just gave to disqualify science is pretty much exactly what science is: "useful speculation". Science is a process. It begins with a question, moves then through speculation to a theorized solution to the question, and then to a series of tests designed to either verify of nullify the theory. This produces data that then leads the scientists to modify the question, and the proposed theoretical solution to the question, and on to another set of tests. And thus the process continues on forever.

The point is that science as a process doesn't "prove" anything. It's not even trying to prove anything. Scientists speculate, and then test those speculations to produce data. A scientific theory either "works" with the resulting data or it doesn't, and so must be modified and tested further.

In the case of the theory of evolution, it has been tested in many thousands of different ways over the last several hundred years by many thousands of scientists and has been modified and tested again and again and again, with the result that it "works" with a huge amount of accumulated data. It remains a theory, because that's all any scientific proposal ever is, but this particular scientific theory has been tested in many ways, by many scientists, over many years, and it "works" (meaning that it predicts accurate outcomes when tested) with the enormous amount of resulting data.

That's about as much "proof" as any human will ever have. So if it's still not enough for a person to reasonably accept, I have to suspect that they're being willfully biased against it.

 

[McBell]

Common sense.

Whose common sense?

 

[Autodidact]

So, if science is not about proving anything, then why jump all over certain scientists who look at evidence and merely suggest the possibility (no "proving" involved) of a higher intelligence? Why the touchiness? If the theory of evolution cannot be proven, then what's the harm in putting forth the idea of higher intelligence that can likewise not be proven?

Because science is not about proof does not mean that we can't establish anything. The method for establishing things is by evidence, in particular, by making predictions and seeing whether they come true. It's not about possibility--that for hypotheses, which is basically speculation. It's about probability. Absolute certainty is never possible in science--only a high level of certainty. When there is so much evidence that we can have a high level of certainty, that qualifies as scientific knowledge.

You seem to be under the misapprehension that since science doesn't give absolute certainty, therefore anything goes and we can believe anything, with no supporting evidence. The opposite is true.

ID has not done this. The reason it hasn't is that it can't--it's not scientific. It makes no predictions, and has no evidence.

Let's say ID is a hypothesis: the universe was created by a "higher intelligence." (hint, hint, nudge nudge) [btw, Behe in particular does not assert this. He merely says that there are some microscopic structures of some unicellular creatures that are too complex to have evolved, and therefore must have been designed. Other than that, oddly enough, he accept Darwinian evolution and the rest of science. And he is probably the most sciencey ID er.] Anyway: how would you go about testing this hypothesis? What predictions does it make? How can it be theoretically falsified?

 

[Autodidact]

Those are all well and good, but none are "peer reviewed" and won't hold up in a court for that reason (Ask Behe about that). The problem is trying to get something "peer reviewed" not because its science is questionable, but because it calls into question the orthodox view.

Actually, the opposite is true. The more that research calls into question the orthodox view, the easier it is to get it published. Journals are eager to be at the front of new developments. But there has to be sound, documented replicable research. The reason that ID doesn't get published is that they don't do research. The reason they don't do research is that they can't--their thesis is not researchable, because it's not science. You can't do science about God.

 

[Autodidact]

Without something or someone behind those physical laws, governing them, they are nothing more than the result of random chance. Maybe I'm just too simple-minded to understand all the evasive, confusing, and contradictory double-talk that goes on in reference to evolution. Apparently I see things a little more black and white.

No, I think that like most people you're just not very familiar with science in general and evolution in particular.

In any case, none of this has anything to do with evolution, which is a fairly simple theory in Biology.

 

[Autodidact]

Common sense.

O.K. You should know, though, that science is basically a process of finding out that common sense is wrong.

For example, my common sense tells me that the world is flat. It isn't, and it took science to show us that. Common sense tells me that the keys are solid. They aren't they're 99.9% nothing. Weird. That's what science tells us.

 

[gnomon]

You have somehow become confused about what science is, because the definition you just gave to disqualify science is pretty much exactly what science is: "useful speculation". Science is a process. It begins with a question, moves then through speculation to a theorized solution to the question, and then to a series of tests designed to either verify of nullify the theory. This produces data that then leads the scientists to modify the question, and the proposed theoretical solution to the question, and on to another set of tests. And thus the process continues on forever.

The point is that science as a process doesn't "prove" anything. It's not even trying to prove anything. Scientists speculate, and then test those speculations to produce data. A scientific theory either "works" with the resulting data or it doesn't, and so must be modified and tested further.

In the case of the theory of evolution, it has been tested in many thousands of different ways over the last several hundred years by many thousands of scientists and has been modified and tested again and again and again, with the result that it "works" with a huge amount of accumulated data. It remains a theory, because that's all any scientific proposal ever is, but this particular scientific theory has been tested in many ways, by many scientists, over many years, and it "works" (meaning that it predicts accurate outcomes when tested) with the enormous amount of resulting data.

That's about as much "proof" as any human will ever have. So if it's still not enough for a person to reasonably accept, I have to suspect that they're being willfully biased against it.

Good response. My only quibble is that scientists do not attempt to provide "data" but rather models. Of course, we may be referring to the same concept.

 

[McBell]

O.K. You should know, though, that science is basically a process of finding out that common sense is wrong.

For example, my common sense tells me that the world is flat. It isn't, and it took science to show us that. Common sense tells me that the keys are solid. They aren't they're 99.9% nothing. Weird. That's what science tells us.

I was going to mention that it was common sense that led people to believe that rotting meat turns into maggots, that horse hairs left in a rain barrel turned into worms...

It was science that showed these beliefs are mistaken.

 

[Autodidact]

Or, to put it differently, if it's your common sense that tells you that, that demonstrates conclusively that what it is not is science. Science and common sense are opposites.

 

[Darkness]

http://www.expelledthemovie.com/movie_overview.php

The movie claims that "educators and scientists are being ridiculed, denied tenure and even fired – for the “crime” of merely believing that there might be evidence of “design” in nature, and that perhaps life is not just the result of accidental, random chance." If educators and scientists are hired to produce meaningful scientific results, and Intelligent Design is not considered science, then why shouldn't they be ridiculed, denied tenure and even fired?

You hit the nail on the head. :yes:

Any ID believers here, would you think it is reasonable for scientists to be fired if they adamantly supported a flat earth?