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Author | Topic: a question for both sides | |||||||||||||||||||||||
shmonovan Inactive Member |
I'm doing a project for school and i was wondering if anyone could help me in understanding how creationists and evolutionists feel/argue about the following topics, based on their (your) beliefs:
FossilsDNA Natural selection
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PaulK Member Posts: 17827 Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
The best thing I can do is direct you to TalkOrigins Archive: Exploring the Creation/Evolution Controversy which has a wealth of information from the scientific side, as well as links to a large number of creationist websites you can explore.
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NosyNed Member Posts: 9003 From: Canada Joined: |
To gather an idea of both how individuals argue and feel about the topics you could just read over the topics here. There have been lots of different individuals expressing their points of view.
If you start with the Posts of the Month topic you will find those that some individuals think are better examples. Going from the ones selected there will probably take you right into the middle of some of the more interesting debates. Aside from that, longer, and possibly closed topics have often recieved the most heated debate by the most individuals. ------------------Common sense isn't
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Warren Inactive Member |
Shmonovan<< I'm doing a project for school and i was wondering if anyone could help me in understanding how creationists and evolutionists feel/argue about the following topics...>>
You might want to consider a third option. Intelligent design. ID is a teleological perspective for generating testable hypotheses about the natural world. It is not creationism. The dictionary defines teleology thusly: the use of design or purpose as an explanation of natural phenomena. Teleological processes are "goal directed" processes. The creation/evolution debate at its core is best described as teleology versus non-teleology and it's 2500 years old. The arguments for intelligent design began with people like Socrates and Aristotle. It is often said that science can't investigate the supernatural, I agree. However, the scientific method, the process of hypothesizing, predicting, and testing, can be used to investigate the possibility that life may be the product of advanced bioengineering. ID does not involve "God did it" explanations nor does it posit miraculous, empirically undetectable processes. The ID perspective looks for traces of bioengineering and nanotechnology at the origin of life billions of years ago. This approach is naturalistic intelligent design, much like we see intelligent agency today building synthetic molecular motors, bioengineered proteins, etc. In my opinion, it is wrong to think that only a non-teleological approach can run an investigation based on observations, logic, and testing. The non-teleologists do not have exclusive rights to this type of thinking nor is one obligated to abandon observation, hypothesis-making, testing, etc. because they are skeptical of non-teleological origin explanations. There is evidence that supports the suspicion that evolution itself was designed. As for neo-Darwinism, I think it will become clear as time goes on that these mechanisms play only a rather trivial role in the process of evolution. My own personal view is that life itself was designed through intelligent intervention (although I hold this view provisionally). The question, for me, is whether design extends beyond this and in what form did it express itself? My teleological views allow me four possibilities when interpreting evolution: 1. Interventions in evolution (i.e., analogous to artificial selection). 2. Key events in evolution were the unfolding of front-loaded states. 3. Evolutionary mechanisms were designed to facilitate and exploit (1) and (2) 4. The standard non-teleological account of evolutionary mechanisms apply, but may be responsible mostly for minor change. Nevertheless, I am not one who tries to explain biology, and its history, with only one basic form of explanation. In my opinion, there is an asymmetry between non-teleology and teleology that allows the latter view to be more immune from this blindness. Why? A teleological perspective does not have to be pure and absolute, as it can incorporate a non-teleological perspective. Take the automobile for example: one who accepts a teleological explanation for its origin is not obligated to accept teleological explanations for how it works (i.e. invoking spirits as the cause of the pistons going up and down). A non-teleological view, on the other hand, resists any form of teleological explanation (otherwise, it becomes teleological). I think of ID as a parallel, alternative approach and not as a wholesale replacement of current evolutionary theory. The debate about ID often revolves around either/or thinking - either ID is true and should serve as the basis of science or it is not true and should continue to be excluded. But why can't we take a both/and approach? It's not a question of the teleological view replacing the mechanistic view, it's a question of using both perspectives in parallel. That is, just as light is best understood when viewed as both wave and particle, might not the origin of biological complexity involve both teleological and non-teleological explanations? When the non-teleologist attempts to account for natural history, the explanations in his tool box amount to chance, natural selection, and notions of self-organization (the first two being primary). The teleologist can not only draw from the same set of explanations (as not everything requires a teleological origin), but can also draw from the following hypotheses: key events in evolution were the result of intelligent intervention; evolution was front-loaded at certain points; evolution was directed at certain points; and evolution was designed to evolve certain forms of complexities. A both/and approach is less likely to be blinkered than an either/or approach. Of course, another lesson to be drawn from investigating ambiguous topics such as this is the need to be tentative and provisional. Yet non-teleologists often come across as dogmatists. [This message has been edited by Warren, 12-22-2003]
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Cthulhu Member (Idle past 5878 days) Posts: 273 From: Roe Dyelin Joined: |
ID is creationism.
------------------Ia! Cthulhu fhtagn!
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NosyNed Member Posts: 9003 From: Canada Joined: |
As a plug for my What is a Creationist thread could you explain there why ID is a form of "creationism"?
I'm having to intrude on other threads since those who actually are creationists (of some or another form) seem to be quiet on the subject.
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sidelined Member (Idle past 5934 days) Posts: 3435 From: Edmonton Alberta Canada Joined: |
Warren
Oh goody goody at last someone who can give us the facts. You say
ID is a teleological perspective for generating testable hypotheses about the natural world. At last! We have someone who can give us an example of a testable hypothesis for Intelligent Design. Bring it on Warren. ------------------"I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it is much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers that might be wrong." R.P. Feynman
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Warren Inactive Member |
<< At last! We have someone who can give us an example of a testable hypothesis for Intelligent Design. Bring it on Warren.>>
I didn't say anything about a testable hypothesis for Intelligent Design. I said ID is a teleological perspective for generating testable hypotheses about the natural world. Can you tell the difference?
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sidelined Member (Idle past 5934 days) Posts: 3435 From: Edmonton Alberta Canada Joined: |
Warren
OK allow me to rephrase it to your satisfaction. At last we have someone who can generate a testable hypothesis of the natural world from the teleological perspective of Intelligent Design.Now may we please have a testable hypothesis? Thank you. ------------------"I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it is much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers that might be wrong." R.P. Feynman
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Warren Inactive Member |
Sidelined<< At last we have someone who can generate a testable hypothesis of the natural world from the teleological perspective of Intelligent Design.
Now may we please have a testable hypothesis?>> Sure. Go here: http://www.idthink.net/biot/degrad/index.html
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NosyNed Member Posts: 9003 From: Canada Joined: |
Could you put the meat of your reference in your own words? That is what most here do.
I think there may well be a "testable hypothosis" there but would like you to make that clear. (of course, it may also be that the test is failed)
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sidelined Member (Idle past 5934 days) Posts: 3435 From: Edmonton Alberta Canada Joined: |
Warren
This is taken from the website
ID allows me to take a view of the cell more as an ordered functioning whole rather than some random mess. This is because biomolecular engineering at the hands of an advanced intelligence is likely to express its intervention such that the products of design reflect an ordered functioning whole and not a random mess. The "random mess" expectation makes more sense in light of non-teleological views, which begin with the random mess of the prebiotic soup and not the watch-type reality Paley once invoked Now we have at this site a discussion in which the proponent states that he can make a prediction from the teleological viewpoint of ID.He then admits that the prediction could probably later be shown to be a result of natural processes.However the results farther down the road show I am interested in part of the above paragraph that deals with biomolecular engineering at the hands of an advanced intelligence is likely to express its intervention such that the products of design reflect an ordered functioning whole and not a random messWhat does it mean to have an advanced intelligence operating upon biological systems? Well, for one it would seem that the intelligence would have to operate upon the biological systems using observable physical forces and to say otherwise would mean that we are considering magic are we not? Regardless,the manipulation of such systems would inevitablely leave traces in order to overcome the forces of electromagnetism present in biological systems.We could document such manipulations at the level of sensitivity of instruments we use today. One other thing at the website you gave, the gentleman writing the paper took an excerpt from a previously published paper in order to offer support to his conclusion when it is not at all clear that such support was evident. Have a great chistmas! ------------------"I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it is much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers that might be wrong." R.P. Feynman
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Brad McFall Member (Idle past 5058 days) Posts: 3428 From: Ithaca,NY, USA Joined: |
It need NOT be "magic" but I would not necessarily go as far as a vital force as implied in the phlogiston based discussions of Galvani-Volta and yet the TIME in the falcuty of reason between a teleological understood realism which you questioned CAN mean a vital force THAT IS NOT magic if one was able to translate BOTH phlogiston and the arguement BEFORE utilization of vital forces into current say Wolfram NEW SCIENCE and that of TOE conservatively drawn is still open to my own intuition of even Mendel folded into WOlfram's program.
quote:. This would be observable no matter the less. Lets assume that virtual reality handles the connection. THERE MAY NOT BE 'traces' left if for instance "electrotonics" is not magic as said and not the imaginary sybolism that Maxwell made it to be but instead affords programmable functionality for velocites, displacments and forces as a whole. I said this "whole" must reread the Galvani-Volta debate in modern garb without a clothless empoorer.
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