Don't you think we should at least allow for the possibility that believers will value and pursue truth?
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The validity of intelligent design
- Thread starter Nirvana
- Start date
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You sound like Deepak Chopra
That claim is reductionism, not Science. People can be reductionist about things.
I think only some people confuse reductionism with science, but there is a major difference. Science requires not assuming. Reductionism assumes that only what can be explained is real, and reductionism exists in other areas besides Science as it is a human problem not a scientific one. Science does not comment on anything but what is observable and testable and does not assume that other things are impossible.
In my experience this has not been the case but instead Scientists have been vilified in churches by visiting merchants selling creationism books. Both the ACE and Abeka scholastic systems insist that the Earth must be young because of a particular Bible interpretation that they put forward as more authoritative and relevant than actual observations. Most criticism of Science by religionists has been slight of hand in my opinion.
I do not see evidence of it being taught that way where I live. The USSR hoped to unite all of its disparate regional groups with one common way of life, and to do so it attempted to implement a state religion that merely claimed to be scientific but was more political. I have some college, and I do not see Science being taught as a religion, at least not in technical fields. Maybe it comes across that way to business majors or those in the humanities? So much technical information begins with memorization, but if you are in a technical field there is a requirement to understand the principles not some bullish requirement to believe. It comes down to Math skills and lots of Math practice. Particularly when you move towards Engineering or a Science you've got to be able to work through logical Math proofs and cannot just look them up in books. This has nothing to do with what the USSR did, attempting to form a state religion claiming science as a component.
Grandliseur
Well-Known Member
Truth!
Funny, don't you think - how truth is subjective to each individual's perspective until reality bites that person in the butt.
To me, ID is the absolute truth. To play the devil's advocate, if I am wrong, all that shall happen is that I follow moral guidelines that help society be decent. If I am right, I shall even if I die receive a resurrection if God wills it into Paradise when time comes, and the opponent of ID shall suffer loss of life, perhaps now, or in a future Paradise on earth.
The thing is, which unbelievers take no note of and disbelieve, is that I am certain God exists and has created all !
So -
- in what way is Truth benefiting the believer in either case?
- in what way is Truth benefiting the non believer in either case?
Then I guess I should not worry too much about what you think.
You should value your beliefs at least a bit more.
Seablade the Heretic
New Member
Now this debate is always exciting!
What I find so hilarious about these debates on this subject is that there are only two sides and you are either in one camp or the other and the twain shall never meet.
This subject ultimately comes down to personal belief. Whether evidence for or against Intelligent Design/Creationism or for or against Evolution/Darwinism exist, there is no evidence to the contrary that will sway those of the opposition. If you personally believe in Darwinism, you are highly unlikely to be swayed by mere inconvenient facts of the nature of our reality assuming therefore that the observations are flawed in some way when those observations do not align with said belief. On the other hand, if you are a die-hard Creationist, you too are highly unlikely to be convinced of any validity of observable evidence for Evolution in any form, even more so when it conflicts with strongly-held religious beliefs. The aforementioned statements do not preclude in anyway from individuals jumping ship and moving to the other camp, but it sure does put the kabbash on most genuine discourse.
Since opinions are entirely worthless, I therefore will give mine on this subject.
Science has become mostly a religious movement with all the accouterments of any religious order, including priests, deacons, functionaries, ministers in high places, sacraments, rigid totalitarian ideologies, churches, holy men, and belief systems stemming from observed phenomena. Instead of assuming that the observations are fluid and can/should change based on new observations, and that science should be about disproving the prevailing theories and explanations of the day, most members of the science community now just abdicate and state unequivocally that the science is settled on numerous topics. The notion of settled science is foolishness in the extreme. Settled science need not be further investigated and it helps stroke the ego of the so-called scientist because they are in-the-know and the rest of humanity are not; they are thankful and grateful that they are not part of the great unwashed masses flitting around like so much detritus. This concept of settled science is an anathema to any serious scientific exploration, debate and study and should be abandoned forthwith. However, settled science is the du jour of this day and time and I dare say it is unlikely that this type of tyranny will resolve itself any time soon. Science has become a tool in the hands of powerful corporations and those with varying agendas instead of a type of serious discourse of the nature of our reality and existence. Settled science can never be questioned; it can never be reevaluated; it can never be anything but settled. True, unfettered discourse, is not allowed; it is left in abeyance waiting for the high-priests of the religious order to make pronouncements on ever increasing settlements.
For me personally, I have wavered generously over many years between belief and non-belief in a creator, in science. I have more of an open mind than most I think. Perhaps that's too egotistical, and I have no basis on which to place that claim, but some of my beliefs or understanding would have me drawn and quartered and hung on the nearest tree tomorrow because of the religion of science and the religion of creationism. To wit, I have fallen firmly into the Creationist camp and that is where I will stay. Science is a methodology of describing observable facts and drawing conclusions; nothing more. Science is something in which anyone, anywhere can participate. The interesting part is that if a ordinary person conducts true science using the scientific method on our world as it exists, testing the sacred cows and ivory towers to see if they exist, they will come to wholly different conclusions than what the settled science purports. Evolution / Darwinism is not settled. There are aspects that are present in our world and reality, but it is neither law nor religious. Intelligent Design is exactly the same way. It is no more or less of a valid explanation of our origins than Evolution. Explanations of our origins should be explored and the path walked. Perhaps Robert Frost was wrong when he stated "I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference."
As the Buddha says, "When the student is ready, the teacher will appear." If you are not ready for the acquisition of knowledge and the apocalypse of understanding because everything that there is to know is known and the science is settled, then when the teacher appears, regardless of the form, you will lose out; and what a travesty that is.
What I find so hilarious about these debates on this subject is that there are only two sides and you are either in one camp or the other and the twain shall never meet.
This subject ultimately comes down to personal belief. Whether evidence for or against Intelligent Design/Creationism or for or against Evolution/Darwinism exist, there is no evidence to the contrary that will sway those of the opposition. If you personally believe in Darwinism, you are highly unlikely to be swayed by mere inconvenient facts of the nature of our reality assuming therefore that the observations are flawed in some way when those observations do not align with said belief. On the other hand, if you are a die-hard Creationist, you too are highly unlikely to be convinced of any validity of observable evidence for Evolution in any form, even more so when it conflicts with strongly-held religious beliefs. The aforementioned statements do not preclude in anyway from individuals jumping ship and moving to the other camp, but it sure does put the kabbash on most genuine discourse.
Since opinions are entirely worthless, I therefore will give mine on this subject.
Science has become mostly a religious movement with all the accouterments of any religious order, including priests, deacons, functionaries, ministers in high places, sacraments, rigid totalitarian ideologies, churches, holy men, and belief systems stemming from observed phenomena. Instead of assuming that the observations are fluid and can/should change based on new observations, and that science should be about disproving the prevailing theories and explanations of the day, most members of the science community now just abdicate and state unequivocally that the science is settled on numerous topics. The notion of settled science is foolishness in the extreme. Settled science need not be further investigated and it helps stroke the ego of the so-called scientist because they are in-the-know and the rest of humanity are not; they are thankful and grateful that they are not part of the great unwashed masses flitting around like so much detritus. This concept of settled science is an anathema to any serious scientific exploration, debate and study and should be abandoned forthwith. However, settled science is the du jour of this day and time and I dare say it is unlikely that this type of tyranny will resolve itself any time soon. Science has become a tool in the hands of powerful corporations and those with varying agendas instead of a type of serious discourse of the nature of our reality and existence. Settled science can never be questioned; it can never be reevaluated; it can never be anything but settled. True, unfettered discourse, is not allowed; it is left in abeyance waiting for the high-priests of the religious order to make pronouncements on ever increasing settlements.
For me personally, I have wavered generously over many years between belief and non-belief in a creator, in science. I have more of an open mind than most I think. Perhaps that's too egotistical, and I have no basis on which to place that claim, but some of my beliefs or understanding would have me drawn and quartered and hung on the nearest tree tomorrow because of the religion of science and the religion of creationism. To wit, I have fallen firmly into the Creationist camp and that is where I will stay. Science is a methodology of describing observable facts and drawing conclusions; nothing more. Science is something in which anyone, anywhere can participate. The interesting part is that if a ordinary person conducts true science using the scientific method on our world as it exists, testing the sacred cows and ivory towers to see if they exist, they will come to wholly different conclusions than what the settled science purports. Evolution / Darwinism is not settled. There are aspects that are present in our world and reality, but it is neither law nor religious. Intelligent Design is exactly the same way. It is no more or less of a valid explanation of our origins than Evolution. Explanations of our origins should be explored and the path walked. Perhaps Robert Frost was wrong when he stated "I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference."
As the Buddha says, "When the student is ready, the teacher will appear." If you are not ready for the acquisition of knowledge and the apocalypse of understanding because everything that there is to know is known and the science is settled, then when the teacher appears, regardless of the form, you will lose out; and what a travesty that is.
Unfortunately, that is what happens when there is a significant, reliable, conclusive body of research and one side is scared sick of it out of attachment to dogma.
Actually, that is not true. Many a sincere believer eventually learned of the biological facts.
Uh... that is a lie.
YmirGF
Bodhisattva in Recovery
Are those the Neolithic forerunners to cow pies? Or fossilized?
Terrywoodenpic
Oldest Heretic
Though it is not science, I wouldn't say it is exactly nonsense as it has its own purposes and associated logic. It too is product of evolution.
That needs detailing to make any sense at all.
Its ony purpose is to deny science, observation,
and reason, and replace them with makebelieve.
So as to fit within a doctrine based on mythology.
stevevw
Member
I think intelligent design suffers from negative connotations and shouldnt be reviled because of a name. There are more main stream scientists who support non adaptive origins of life which is based on biology rather than religion. There is evidence that complex forms of life similar to today were around from the start and the origins of life did not evolve through natural selection. It is not a case of religion verses evolution as even if evolution is true it does not discount a creator God starting the process which in some ways fits what we see.
This is why I said order or disorder from a human perspective. We have the evidence of a way different universe than we see today.
For example
Big Bang Conditions Created in Lab
"WASHINGTON – By smashing gold particles together at super-fast speeds, physicists have basically melted protons, creating a kind of "quark soup" of matter that is about 250,000 times hotter than the center of the sun and similar to conditions just after the birth of the universe.Scientists reported in 2005 that they suspected they had created this unique state of matter, but for the first time, they have verified that the extreme temperatures necessary have been reached.
"This is the hottest matter ever created in the laboratory," Steven Vigdor, associate laboratory director for nuclear and particle physics at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, N.Y., said Monday at a meeting of the American Physical Society in Washington, D.C. "The temperature is hot enough to melt protons and neutrons."
Big Bang Conditions Created in Lab
The universe was 7 trillion degrees and a type of plasma. Is that we as humans perceived as order?
Or the pictures we have from the early universe around 380, 000 years after the Big Bang, before or galaxies or planets existed?
In actuality, though the universe in disorder right now, from it's previous state.
Life in the Universe
Stephen Hawking
"It is a matter of common experience, that things get more disordered and chaotic with time. This observation can be elevated to the status of a law, the so-called Second Law of Thermodynamics. This says that the total amount of disorder, or entropy, in the universe, always increases with time. However, the Law refers only to the total amount of disorder. The order in one body can increase, provided that the amount of disorder in its surroundings increases by a greater amount. This is what happens in a living being. One can define Life to be an ordered system that can sustain itself against the tendency to disorder and can reproduce itself. That is, it can make similar, but independent ordered systems. To do these things, the system must convert energy in some ordered form, like food, sunlight, or electric power, into disordered energy, in the form of heat. In this way, the system can satisfy the requirement that the total amount of disorder increases, while, at the same time, increasing the order in itself and its offspring."
"At first sight, it seems remarkable that the universe is so finely tuned. Maybe this is evidence, that the universe was specially designed to produce the human race. However, one has to be careful about such arguments, because of what is known as the Anthropic Principle. This is based on the self-evident truth, that if the universe had not been suitable for life, we wouldn't be asking why it is so finely adjusted."
Life in the Universe
The universe is actually getting more disordered with time, which is why the fate of the universe looks so bleak.
THE END OF EVERYTHING
"It can be said that humans have a bit of a short-term view of things. We’re concerned about the end of summer, the next school year, and maybe even retirement. But these are just a blink of an eye in cosmic terms. Let’s really think big, stare forward in time, and think about what the future holds for the Universe. Look forward millions, trillions, and even 10100 years into the future. Let’s consider the end of everything."
The End of Everything - Universe Today
[/QUOTE]
Those who accept the BB as a fact always have to start after the fact. What is the origin of the matter that went bang, and what is the origin of the energy needed to cause it to go bang?
It seems to me that energy so strong to cause matter to go beyond what man can see, or even what man can see, that instead of forming stars and planets, it would have reduced everything to dust.
DavidFirth
Well-Known Member
Wrong. They are scientific websites. You just don't think so because of your own personal bias.
As to your link - you present Wikipedia and you actually have the nerve to say my links aren't scientific? Please.
Your link: This simply is not scientific but comes from a non-religious perspective, and a faulty one at that. Touche, dude.
The anglophone Wikipedia is actually pretty reliable for these matters. It is very well-sourced and cross-checked.
Meanwhile,your links in post #95 are, frankly, only good for dark humor. And that is before comparing them to Wikipedia, let alone the likes of talkorigins.org and evolutionfaq.com
Quality information is readily available, as are remnants of the pitiful "wedge strategy". It falls to readers to discern the value of each.
metis
aged ecumenical anthropologist
Real scientific websites actually quote and link to scientific studies and allow for cross-examination by other scientists. Your sources don't.
I used the word "links" since Wikipedia does use "links" to support the items it presents. How could you have missed that?
I won't even comment on this.
The Holy Bottom Burp
Active Member
A religious person saying Armageddon is upon us any day now?
Hmm, wonder if anything like that has happened before? List of dates predicted for apocalyptic events - Wikipedia
Jose Fly
Fisker of men
No, they are unscientific because of the framework under which they operate. For example, "Answers in Genesis" has as part of their Statement of Faith....
"By definition, no apparent, perceived or claimed evidence in any field, including history and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts the scriptural record."
The "Institute for Creation Research" has as among their Tenets:
"The Bible, consisting of the thirty-nine canonical books of the Old Testament and the twenty-seven canonical books of the New Testament, is the divinely-inspired revelation of the Creator to man. Its unique, plenary, verbal inspiration guarantees that these writings, as originally and miraculously given, are infallible and completely authoritative on all matters with which they deal, free from error of any sort, scientific and historical as well as moral and theological."
Those are the exact opposite of the scientific process. Therefore, those organizations cannot be said to be "scientific".
Creationist websites are religious apologetics, not science. The methods, values and agendas of the two are radically different, which is why they come to different conclusions, and why they present them in different manners.
There is no reason to visit a creationist website if one is interested in science. Apologetics is for believers. It's to share among yourselves to reinforce your faith based beliefs in a world of conflicting evidence.
You've seen what happens when you present apologetics to educated skeptics: Exactly what's happening here. The apologetics are rejected. The very ideas creation research and creation science are rejected. All that the apologists are doing there is assembling specious arguments - hardly research or science.
shawn001
Well-Known Member
Those who accept the BB as a fact always have to start after the fact. What is the origin of the matter that went bang, and what is the origin of the energy needed to cause it to go bang?
It seems to me that energy so strong to cause matter to go beyond what man can see, or even what man can see, that instead of forming stars and planets, it would have reduced everything to dust.[/QUOTE]
"Those who accept the BB as a fact always have to start after the fact."
The BB is a fact as we have very detailed pictures of it, look up Wmap and Planck satellites. I am busy today, but will respond more to this at another time. Matter was created from the Bang. Also remember e=mc#.
DavidFirth
Well-Known Member
Non-Creationist websites are non-religious apologetics, not science.
There is no reason to visit a non-creationist website if one is interested in science.
The very ideas non-creation research and non-creation science are rejected.
See, two can play this game. We can do this all day, trading opinions. Knock yourself out.
DavidFirth
Well-Known Member
The BB is a fact as we have very detailed pictures of it, look up Wmap and Planck satellites. I am busy today, but will respond more to this at another time. Matter was created from the Bang. Also remember e=mc#.
This isn't a joke thread. The "BB" is not a fact. If it is then prove it is. You can't.
We can make detailed pictures of teddy bears and candy, too. Proves nothing.
Prove matter was created from the BB. First, of course, you have to prove the BB happened. Good luck, you're about 20 years behind the leading scientists of our time.
This isn't a joke thread. The "BB" is not a fact. If it is then prove it is. You can't.
We can make detailed pictures of teddy bears and candy, too. Proves nothing.
Prove matter was created from the BB. First, of course, you have to prove the BB happened. Good luck, you're about 20 years behind the leading scientists of our time.