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You aren't making any sense. There is nothing scientific about Intelligent Design, so complaining about somebody dismissing something that has nothing do to with science doesn't make any sense.
you live in a fantasy world where you think anything is possible out of convenience.
You aren't making any sense. There is nothing scientific about Intelligent Design, so complaining about somebody dismissing something that has nothing do to with science doesn't make any sense.
Only if you think the writer of the "original story" was somehow privy to events of the future and of the past beyond his years. That requires a deity, or time travel, or a creator or all three. It requires an unnecessary leap of faith to get there, since there are more plausible solutions. Do not needlessly multiply en ies.
So the two are mutually exclusive.So?
There's no reason to think it may be wrong. It is what it is, and thousands of years of interpretations by men who've dedicated their lives to even building the books themselves understood this. For you to say it might mean something else indicates you possibly think the Torah was written by aliens and is misunderstood since.It doesn't exclusively mean that. That is the general interpretation, but is may be wrong.
Intelligent design (or aided, as you've regressed to) conflicts with random mutation and natural selection. There's simply no reason to consider it any more than I would consider that a pink invisible dinosaur is living in my garage. Sure I can find ways to make it not conflict with your perception of reality by conjuring up excuses to every objection you raise, but what's the point?You need to start thinking outside the box. Why can't natural evolution be aided with intelligent guidance? Aren't we doing that in small ways today?
You only need to think outside of the box if the box doesn't contain the answer. It's usually reserved to inventors or someone seeking a method that's been overlooked for misunderstood reasons. When your gas tank is low, do you begin to think outside of the box and look for alternative means of travel, of fuel, ways to not need to travel, or do you just fill your tank? This is a simple issue. The Bible was put together long before men had any real understanding of the world around them. Everything back then was magical, mystical and such. Idols were worshiped even by the pharaohs because no one could explain things we now understand, such as the travel of the Sun across the sky, the disappearance of the moon, eclipses, natural disasters, illnesses and such. Man saw what he saw and did his best to explain it and similar to what you are now doing, he created answers where non existed, devoid of fact or research, just ad hoc answers.
Sciences have grown over the millennium, humans built understanding and scientific method on the shoulders of others who pioneered certain researches. Darwin didn't invent science, he was using a scientific line of thought to conclude what he did.
Anyone could just sit at home and speculate about some magical race or intelligent super creator that exists on a paradoxical plane, one need not even leave home, just accept it. Thinking outside the box means finding answers and using reason and logic to do so. It doesn't mean doing what millions of other people have done over thousands of years by postulating divine creation and lacking the ability and mental wherewithal to face the fact that humans are no more special than any other living organism.
So, you might want to consider understanding the contents of the box before you venture to thinking outside of it.
No evidence is required to refute an assertion that's made without evidence. I can casually dismiss it as gibberish until such evidence surfaces to cause me to raise an eyebrow and feel compelled to give it more merit.What evidence do you have that some alien race didn't terraform this world, then manipulate the genetics to suit their desires? There is old Sumarian text that can be interpreted to say that about 60,000 years ago, the slaves of this world that the Gods used to gather resources for them were altered. Made smarter.
Argument by age of text means nothing. What if someone wrote that same claim today, how much merit would you give it?
There is a reason. That reason has nothing to do with aliens or the hocus pocus you are proposing, regardless how exciting that might be. The reason is that all people were ignorant, and being ignorant means they misinterpreted nature in a very limited number of ways.Have you ever considered how many diverse religions have similar creation stories, similar stories of the flood, etc? Maybe there is a reason for it outside of mans necessity to explain things.
I am saying creationism is not compatible with evolution. If you accept that evolution is happening, you cannot also rationally allow that intelligent purpose is driving it. You can pander to both sides and refuse to commit, but that doesn't change the fact.Granted, evolution is more likely, but you are saying that ID is impossible. How can you say that? At our progress in science, we are manipulating DNA and have hypothesis on how to terraform.
If the dice game has random and unplanned outcomes, then by definition it must still be unplanned and random or the dice game you described no longer exists in it's previous form. Your analogy fails because Darwinian Evolution states that evolution is a series of random events. It doesn't state that Evolution was a series of random events. Ergo evolution and creationism are incompatible and regardless how you try and how hard you swing that plastic hammer, that square creationism peg will not fit into that round evolutionary hole.LOL...
Planned and unplanned...
If playing a dice game that has random and unplanned outcomes, while you are looking, someone changed one of the die, is it still unplanned and random?
I'm sure Tesla was told the same thing when tried to introduce wireless in the 1800s
And Steve Jobs was told by IBM "you live in a fantasy world where you think anything is possible" right before they refused to support him in making Personal computers.
Little brains run rampant in this forum.
So when Science creates a new fruit it's not Intelligent and has no design?
Who cares if he worships Satan himself. the man knows his music.
Besides Romney is a Mormon I don't see that getting in the way of you voting for him.
No, you are not understanding. I don't believe something is possible out of convenience. I just know that we don't understand science well enough to say it's impossible.
I see you know nothing about science.
Don't forget Bill gates saying nobody would ever need more than 64 kbytes.
I misspoke. It was 640 k he referred to in the early 80's.
Remember when being able to connect at 28k and 56k was the coolest thing ever?
But you're using that to rescue myths that have been debunked and dragging them around as some sort of symbolic, beyond science lurkers.
We will never know everything, but we have no reason to consider the absurd as possible answers.
For example: If you placed on your doorstep a saucer of milk, and you have a cat outside, and twenty minutes later you return to the saucer to find the milk is gone, would you assume the cat drank it? Wouldn't that be the most plausible answer? Or would you allow the possibility that an alien landed while you weren't looking and took the milk, or that an invisible being took the milk, or that the milk itself got up and walked away?
It's normally the uneducated that use the "we don't know everything" excuse when trying to get their dogma a free ride on the bandwagon of science, and we don't know everything but we do know how to determine plausible from silly.
Nah, I know more than you, apparently, since you still think Intelligen Design should be taken seriously.
ID isn't science. You're a ing idiot.
Nothing is faster than light, nothing is unbreakable, and the higgs boson was found. These are boundaries we've found in the current model. We understand science enough to know that an omnipotent presence oversteps the boundaries by which nothing has yet to do. Making hypotheses that state otherwise doesn't seem counterintuitive to you?
I want a genie to grant me immortality, time travel, and the powers of the Silver Surfer.
I've said my peace. I no longer care if you wish not to understand it.
See... this is such a blatant misuse of the word “proven”... and you all don’t even realize it.
Why not? Well, there is that vehement predisposition on your part to reject all things which may point to a Creator or gasp…! the possibility that “design and purpose” is explicitly woven into the very fabric of nature. Your own prejudice and confirmation bias latches on to fragmented evidence and foolishly props it up to dismiss arguments that the evidence itself is not equipped to counter. In fact, many times the evidence you all choose in these exercises does not support the conclusions that you all wish to draw from it. Your quote above is a prime example of this argumentative style. Aside from being a poorly worded argument, your phrasing is such that you actually provide the counter-argument that contradicts the primary point you are trying to make.
The Theory of Gravity is only qualified as a theory when trying to understand the “why” of gravitation’s behavior (due to interactions at an infinitesimally small scale / i.e. considered a theorem in reference to quantum gravity). For all intents and purposes though, the LAW of Gravity has been mathematically expressed in fairly simple terms by Newtonian physics (since the late 1600s) and by a series of field equations as first postulated by Albert Einstein under general relativity (in the early 1900s). Those field equations predicted the existence of black holes well before they were ever discovered, and could quantify the curvature of light on account of gravity before experiments could even confirm it. In any case, the mathematical laws describing the behavior of gravity, and the phenomena associated with it fall well within the scientific method’s toolset. Gravity can be subjected to any number of observable, repeatable and measurable tests that yield predictive mathematical expressions. As stated above, gravity becomes a postulated theorem when dealing with the super small scale of the quantum universe or with singularities containing high mass and energy. Classical physics however, adequately describes the observed effects of gravity over a range of 50 orders of magnitude of mass, i.e., for masses of objects from about 10^−23 to 10^30 kg - from Wiki lest you all accuse me of plagiarism too - as I am fully capable of typing my own arguments. In other words, the math behind gravity as it applies to most everything we deal with is fundamentally sound. I can take two objects with masses m1 and m2 and calculate the interaction between the two... such an experiment would be repeatable yielding identical results, and the expressions governing its behavior would apply to any other set of objects just the same.
The underlying principle behind the Theory of Evolution, on the other hand, cannot be proven on these terms or to this degree of confirmation (specifically Macroevolution). True, we can observe the mechanisms by which genes can be altered to produce different genetic expressions. But this alone does not confirm Macroevolution. Far from it – especially because we’re coming to terms with the reality that many of the physiological / phenotypical changes that we observe in nature have been pre-programmed in the DNA, further confirming the immense complexity encoded within DNA, and the vast reaches of its adaptive and expressive capacity (both evidence of design). Gene segments are used in as many as 50 different translation processes instead of the single, direct, translation process we once believed was responsible for the creation of every enzyme and protein in an organism (i.e. one gene segment / codon per enzyme). Mutations, hence, would be highly deleterious to an organism because the ‘mutated’ gene segment would corrupt the translation of not one, but as many as 50 different proteins. It isn’t surprising that the grand majority of the organisms that have been subjected to experimentation with indiscriminate mutagens (in the hopes of producing random mutations to confirm evolution) have been genetically weakened by the changes incurred, often proving fatal. In other words, many of the genetic adaptations we observe in nature (those that have largely been passed off as evidence for microevolutionary change) are hard-wired into the DNA’s programming and not the result of the environment acting on a gene pool, selecting individuals which have “evolved” / mutated because they were somehow more genetically fit to survive (i.e. Natural Selection). In short, organisms have genetic code that can be rearranged from within in response to a change in their habitat enabling them to adapt. This observation directly counters the macro-evolutionary premise and renders it null.
On top of that, genetically speaking there is very little in the way of proof that confirms the change from one species to an entirely different one... The flagship experiment that attempts to prove just that (Richard Lenksi’s E.coli) falls short on many fronts when people try to extrapolate its findings beyond the scope of the genetic change that was observed. In other words, the DNA era in microbiology demands a higher standard of evidence in order to “prove” the theory of Evolution. Lining up similar looking fossils and suggesting that “x” fossil was the progenitor of “y” fossil simply doesn’t cut it as evidence anymore (only those with aggressive confirmation bias are quick to accept such evidence as proof). What’s laughable is that most of the “fossil column” is assembled in this speculative manner; many times with as few as 2-3 bones cons uting a different species. But no, that doesn’t stop illustrators from drawing out entire organisms to sway the masses. If that is what you accept as proof simply because your world view dictates that it is the only correct option for you, fine; just don’t expect the rest of us to follow suit in the wake of such blatantly misleading arguments.
Furthermore, the premise that Macroevolution is “a proven fact” is invalidated at the point of origin based on the inherent limitations of the scientific method when applied to events that occurred in the distant past... again reference an older post of mine below.
Like coming to the conclusion that life (specifically, genetically viable DNA) sprang forth from non-life? All by random chance? That process doesn’t satisfy Ockham’s Razor either... Naturalism alone cannot account for the inception of life. Only those prejudiced against the possibility of design reject this as truth...
The gargantuan disconnect here is that "origins" science has nothing to do with modern technology, or solving technological problems... "we need engineers that can build stuff, solve problems" Nye says... Well I'm an engineer, I solve all sorts of real world problems and can troubleshoot with the best of the them (having to employ calculus, physics, thermodynamics, chemistry among other disciplines)... I need not believe that I share genetic ancestry with apes to do so... My belief in a Creator doesn't impact in any way, form or fashion how I go about solving said problems, nor does it limit my proficiencies... I work with observable, repeatable (let me repeat that one for emphasis), and measurable scientific data (you know, the three immutable pillars that the scientific method is built upon). The origins event cannot be repeated without incurring interference bias from those attempting such experiments. Any "best guess" experiment is merely that... a "guess", because no one can verifiably say that "x" or "y" process was the defacto process by which life began... No human! I repeat, no human was there to observe said event, much less to measure or quantify it.
If people were really honest about it, they would acknowledge that the concept of "origins" falls outside of the realm of the true scientific method... As such, the origin of life is not quantifiable by our science, falling within the realm of speculation (no matter how fancy or complex that speculative "theory" has become)... Of course, Nye's accusation could be redirected at those with his line of thinking considering he's not being consistent with the criteria required by the scientific process. Not that they'd ever accept that either. They're so busy trying to convince others that belief in a higher power is holding humankind back... of course as they do this they want folks to ignore the history of the scientific movement, to ignore that the Enlightenment was sparked by men of faith (reference older posts of mine below)... Geez... this topic has been discussed ad infinitum...
Well then go on... don't stop there.
Nicolaus Copernicus - just because he was persecuted by the Vatican does not mean he wasn't a believer. He was a devout man of faith.
Johannes Kepler - One of the Fathers of Modern Astronomy
Louis Pasteur - Father of Microbiology
Gregor Mendel - Father of Modern Genetics
Michael Faraday - Distinguished Physicist
Blaise Pascal - Distinguished Mathematician
Sir Isaac Newton - Father of Calculus and Physics (without him the modern scientific era doesn't unfold)
Carolus Linnaeus - Father of Taxonomy
Leonhard Euler - Distinguished Mathematician and Physicist
Niels Bohr – The Atom, need I say more...
John Dalton – Distinguished Chemist
James Clerk Maxwell - Father of Electromagnetism
William Thomson "Lord" Kelvin - Father of Thermodynamics - Distinguished Physicist
Linus Pauling – Revolutionized the World of Chemistry
Werner Heisenberg – Father of Quantum Theory
Max Planck - Distinguished Physicist – Co-father of Quantum Theory
Enrico Fermi - Distinguished Physicist
John Ambrose Fleming - Distinguished Mathematician and Physicist
J. Robert Oppenheimer – Distinguished Physicist
Alexander Fleming – Discovery of Penicillin
Sir Robert Boyd - Distinguished Astrophysicist
Albert Einstein - Einstein is probably the best known and most highly revered scientist of the twentieth century, and is associated with major revolutions in our thinking about time, gravity, and the conversion of matter to energy (E=mc2). Although never coming to belief in a personal God, he recognized the impossibility of a non-created universe. The Encyclopedia Britannica says of him: "Firmly denying atheism, Einstein expressed a belief in "Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the harmony of what exists." Much like Isaac Newton (more on him below), this belief actually motivated his interest in science, as he once remarked to a young physicist: "I want to know how God created this world, I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know His thoughts, the rest are details." Einstein's famous epithet on the "uncertainty principle" was "God does not play dice" - and to him this was a real statement about a God in whom he believed… My favorite quote of his was "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."
I think that what really bothers many of you is having to admit that ‘science’ and what we now know as the ‘scientific process’ were largely invented by ‘religious’ people (and especially Christians)… Most branches of science were developed by Christians, even if schoolbooks abstain from mentioning such details… Furthermore, you all seem to strongly gravitate away from the idea that scientists can in fact be believers (this thread wreaks of it). But you all wouldn’t have such a hard time reconciling the two positions if you would only accept the fact that numerous professors and scientific leaders worldwide today are Christians... Either way, these facts make the statements that claim that "science and Christianity are enemies" as being absolutely false and extremely unfair distortions of history and of the present.
It is also a fact that Christian scientists often publish in respected journals, but if they write about ‘creation’ or something ‘religious,’ even if it’s rigorously testable scientifically, it’s almost always censored and banned from publication just like those who think of alternative theories to the Big Bang (even if not Christian) are censored and usually not allowed much freedom to publish. We never think of our free press being censored, but it is in several areas and especially in reference to the relationship between science and faith...
Unfortunately, some Christians have reacted to this ridicule with ridicule of their own. This has just hardened each camp in its position and greatly hindered progress and true scientific knowledge. I am trying hard to avoid this because I know and have met many very sincere atheists and evolutionists who want to understand what is true and accurate and follow it. There are many atheists and evolutionists who have contributed important things to science and they are dedicated and want to do good things for human beings. But, they have serious philosophical questions that make belief in God difficult for them and this should be respected and everyone should be allowed the freedom to theorize and try to prove their theories. So, I have much respect for those who search for truth and really try to be objective even if that means giving up a worldview or theory that they have held for a long time. This deserves much respect.
That said, it cannot help the truth to intentionally distort history and posit the idea that Christians are intellectually inferior, simply because of their Christian beliefs...
He most definitely was not... FAIL. Or are you trying to make a Bill Maher-like argument here? Maher recently suggested that Stalin established a “state religion” while building his case against ‘religion’ only to conveniently lambast Christians for it? Talk about blinders… and revisionism… Stalin pushed one of the most devastating atheistic movements in the history of mankind. And as I stated in another thread, more than 40 million people lost their lives in opposition.
Except that you are conveniently minimizing who Newton was and what he represented… Isaac Newton is arguably one of the 10 most influential people of all time.
As an aside, in today’s age, scientists who openly embrace faith are blackballed by academic publishers… For that reason alone, I will always doubt the validity of such surveys/studies… if you can even call them that… these surveys do nothing more than propagate the notion that belief in GOD is tantamount to idiocy. Ironically these ‘studies’ do a great disservice to the virtues of scientific process they are trying to endorse…
So then you are saying he wasn’t a believer? Either he was or he wasn’t… clearly his writings show that he was. He just happened to take the position that many other great Deists, including Einstein, chose to follow. They believed in GOD regardless.
And using this as an argument against the supposed lack of intelligence in believers is a reach… and you know it.
It's a 'fair' take... but, I think you among others here missed the point.Look, all the people arguing that some smart people believe in God... so what? What does that have to do with the OP? I don't think the point was that NO smart person believes. Just that, on average, non-believers have higher IQs than believers.
No one's saying it's a hard line and there are no outliers.
Such studies are biased from the get-go - a complete slap-in-the-face to the scientific process they are supposedly trying to uphold (have you seen their methods, their sample pools? laughable really). Its assertions are without merit. Yet, you all have gleefully taken them to heart as if they helped justify the lack of belief amongst those here.
The scientific movement was largely born out of people who wished to understand the world around them... because they inherently understood that we were gifted the capacity to reason and comprehend the 'workings' of our world and our place in it (unlike the other creatures around us)... more specifically, they understood their unique place among 'creation'. Hasn't anyone here ever questioned the philosophical implications of being situated in the one zone in the galaxy that allows us to 'safely' study the universe to begin with? Most other zones in our galaxy are a haven for biodestructive cosmic forces, and aren't as conducive to providing the stability required for life to flourish, much less for that life to 'develop' the cognitive ability to question their place in the universe and the means to understand it.
Anyways, it's disingenous to continually distort history to the point where you all fail to admit that Believers, by and large, propelled the scientific movement. All those people I listed (out of a much larger list) revolutionized their fields and helped usher in the modern technological era. It's also rather disingenous to presume that they would be athiests in today's world...
Ask yourself this question... Why wasn't the scientific movement born out of other world philosophies (Islam, Shintoism, Buddhism, Hinduism, or even Atheism since you all tout its virtues so much)??? NOW, I'm not saying that their adherents lacked the intellectual capacity to do so... simply that they weren't gifted with the perspective to put it together, or to seek out Truth. Nowadays everyone shares in the benefit of all past contributions, and embraces the scientific process... but many (as exemplified in this thread) believe it to be a product of secularism, and the pre-requisite rejection of faith. Nothing can be further from the truth...
If some of the brightest minds ever have come to the realization that our universe was created, how is it you all can nonchalantly ignore the significance of their realization? Sure, go ahead and think for yourselves... ultimately matters of faith are entirely up to you all... but don't for a second believe you completely grasp the nuances of the physical laws that govern our universe, or the implications of the subatomic world which has unfolded before us... If you all think that being 'smart' is to accept only that which can be seen and measured then IMO you all aren't very smart at all. As I've said many times before... Science isn't the catch-all, be-all, end-all tool you all wish it to be... it's only a tool, it alone cannot dictate the terms of our world views.
As an aside, Atheism these days is becoming rather religious... except that many of its adherents can't even see, much less admit this irony...
Last edited by Phenomanul; 09-05-2012 at 07:18 PM.
creationist so indoctrinated by his religion that he will write essays to scientific theories
lol arrogant, hypocritical ass hole.
Occam's razor logic would be that since we cannot visibly see a creator, a creator does not exist.Like coming to the conclusion that life (specifically, genetically viable DNA) sprang forth from non-life? All by random chance? That process doesn’t satisfy Ockham’s Razor either... Naturalism alone cannot account for the inception of life. Only those prejudiced against the possibility of design reject this as truth...
Your wordiness doesn't hide the evidence of you being an idiot
Your petty insults were expected... you exemplify all that is hateful with our species. Why so bitter?
Many people have seen GOD. You just conveniently choose not to believe their written accounts in order to validate your premise that the Creator cannot be seen. Don't be so selective with the facts. Of course, I understand that you'd rather label them all as liars... typical.
Later Blake... I'm off to church to go get indoctrinated some more...
Because religious quack s like you have historically kept our species from moving forwardYour petty insults were expected... you exemplify all that is hateful with our species. Why so bitter?
occams razor is still cutting up your premise.Many people have seen GOD. You just conveniently choose not to believe their written accounts in order to validate your premise that the Creator cannot be seen. Don't be so selective with the facts. Of course, I understand that you'd rather label them all as liars... typical.
Ask your preacher why God endorses slavery.Later Blake... I'm off to church to go get indoctrinated some more...
Laters.
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