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Author | Topic: Creationists: Why is Evolution Bad Science? | |||||||||||||||||||||||
AdminJar Inactive Member |
In your last to replies to ReverendDG you include quotes. However in reading the posts you linked to I do not see where he made such statements.
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2ice_baked_taters Member (Idle past 5851 days) Posts: 566 From: Boulder Junction WI. Joined: |
This is just a general comment.
I don't see any ground breaking work coming from anyone on this sight. I do not recall coming across posts from any member here since I have joined who has ever published a theory of thier own concerning a topic I have engaged in. I have not run across any member citing thier own material or research in response to the topics I have engadged in. What I have seen seen is people sharing others hard work and discussing it. This includes me. I have never dismissed any theory. I simply feel that there are many more questions that need answeres before I will hang my hat on the idea of evo as many have. I am currious how others of you truly feel about it. Are you seeing it as an idea that is likely true in part or in whole, obviously true, still in the works, open to interpretation. My personal take on it is that it apears to be generally true, it is still in the works and many ongoing portions of it are open to interpretation. There are some that dismiss it all together. I do not fall into that catagory.
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RickJB Member (Idle past 4990 days) Posts: 917 From: London, UK Joined: |
quote: You probably have, as there are more than a few PhDs floating around here and all of them WILL have been published. It's more than likely, however, that their work is either not relevant to this topic or too specialized for you to easily understand.
quote: What's wrong with this? Are people only allowed to talk about their own work? How would anyone ever learn anything if that were the case? This message has been edited by rjb, 04-21-2006 02:01 PM
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ReverendDG Member (Idle past 4110 days) Posts: 1119 From: Topeka,kansas Joined: |
You are just not happy that I am not gleefully willing to wholeheartedly accept the "moral majorities" View of the interpretation of observable information. Where is there the rule that I have to give you or anyone else some other explanation to cling to..so that it somehow will make you comfortable that I do not agree?
No, i see only a person who disagrees to disagree, at least the creos have reasons, even crazy ones, you have nothing. Your basis is pointless and useless if you have nothing to replace it with.
There are many fundamental questions that we have not come close to answering. In thier place we theorise and fill the gaps. Though this is hypothetically interesting it is still fiction.
how about you go read about the subjects instead of making basless claims, saying this junk makes you intellectually dishonest
One thing I am good at is observing how people work. That is the source of all the material that requires my hip boots. I will always start with the assumption that we are wrong or inclined to see things our way. With us it is a good place to start. We are arrogant and egotistical. We are prone to many behavioural pitfalls. A scientist is a human first. For anyone to suggest that science is "above" or apart from our shortcomings I cannot and will not take seriously. Incorrect assumptions based on interpretations of "facts" have been touted by a majority many times throughout history. It is a simple fact of being human. I do not believe there will ever come a time when we cease to prove ourselves wrong and learn. That is how I approach a theory first. Given the source I happen to think it wise.
the arrogance you show, shows only your misunderstanding of science and how it works, and you misunderstand what i say.
My real beef is when we begin to treat a theory as something more than it is. We place emotions and passions into upholding it..... become upset when someone reminds us what a theory is.
do you bother reading my posts or are you just ranting? My beef is your distorting science and how it works, to make it look like a joke.
We can have a theoretical interpretation that fits the facts as they are at the time of the thoery. Then we learn something that requires us to rethink the theory.
good to see you know more than you have shown you do, this is how it works
I do not "believe" we yet know near enough about the process of life coming to be on earth to make the many assumptions we have.
abiogenesis is not really explored yet, this has nothing to do with evolution
But then there is the question of DNA itself and how it came to be.
ask the biochemists
This leads to the question...what came first? the instructions or the working model? lol
there is a working framwork for this its abiogenesis, go read about it i think your beef has little to do with science but your lack of knowlege about it, if these are your questions they are answered enough for a start
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tsig Member (Idle past 2909 days) Posts: 738 From: USA Joined: |
In your last to replies to ReverendDG you include quotes. However in reading the posts you linked to I do not see where he made such statements. yes i saw they were wrong. what happened is that i read the replies in my email but when i try to repy i am asked for my login, not having it memorized i log on again to EvC then chaos happens.
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2ice_baked_taters Member (Idle past 5851 days) Posts: 566 From: Boulder Junction WI. Joined: |
No, i see only a person who disagrees to disagree, at least the creos have reasons, even crazy ones, you have nothing. Your basis is pointless and useless if you have nothing to replace it with. Here I have a little problem. You have introduced the idea of ceationism to relate some kind of lack of purpose on my part or to claim I engadge in aimless rantings. Now that would indicate to me that you have some notion of purpose as a person I understand to be an advocate of evolution. What exactly is it that makes you so willing to fight for this idea? I can understand the creationist point of view. Thier purpose is not "scientific" it is human or reflecting the spiritual aspect of being human. That does not take a genious to see. So now I would ask you....what do you see as being the point of the theory of evolution?
how about you go read about the subjects instead of making basless claims, saying this junk makes you intellectually dishonest I have and as I have stated earlier the basic concept of evolution apears to fit but when there is a "gap" in the preconcieved answer to the riddle it would seem one theory leads to another. When you have answered my previous inquiry we shall see how baseless my claims are.
the arrogance you show, shows only your misunderstanding of science and how it works, and you misunderstand what i say. So you believe I am arrogant and ignorant in acurately depicting factual aspects of being human? This just further intensifies my understanding of you as someone who believes that "science" is somehow imune to the human condition. That delusion is my point. That is exactly why I view theories as I do. Intersting ways of explaining observations. You appear hold the whole idea of science with some kind of reverance. I do not.
do you bother reading my posts or are you just ranting? My beef is your distorting science and how it works, to make it look like a joke. Again...the difference between you and I. Science does not work...people do. I know how people work. In that light I take theories for what they are. Interesting human ideas concerning things we humans are interested in. The theory of evolution is just an interesting idea to me. Weather or not it proves accurate in whole or in part or not at all for that matter, does not matter.
abiogenesis is not really explored yet, this has nothing to do with evolution We only have a very miniscule and narrow human and earthly idea of what "life" is. I will take the view that we are vastly ignorant first and tend to only be willing or able to learn on our terms....limited by the tools we posess. Abiogenesis is our term. In terms of where life begins and ends we are hardly the authorities of the universe. That would be rather arrogant.
there is a working framwork for this its abiogenesis, go read about it i think your beef has little to do with science but your lack of knowlege about it, if these are your questions they are answered enough for a start Yes the primordial soup and the building of amino acids from basic chemicals through the aplication of various energy sources. I have been aware of this for probably 25 of my 41 years.You are mistaken. My beef is not with the concept of science. As I stated earlier it is when people attempt to elevate the idea beyond its human capacity. Science is nothing special. It's just a tool we use.
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2ice_baked_taters Member (Idle past 5851 days) Posts: 566 From: Boulder Junction WI. Joined: |
You probably have, as there are more than a few PhDs floating around here and all of them WILL have been published. It's more than likely, however, that their work is either not relevant to this topic or too specialized for you to easily understand. Yes this is only one topic. That is not what I said. I said it applies to all topics I have taken part in or read since I have joined. I have never seen anyone sight thier own work. This may have occured at some time but not in my short experience here.
What's wrong with this? Are people only allowed to talk about their own work? How would anyone ever learn anything if that were the case? Nothing is wrong with it. You need to go back to my post and look at the context of the exchange to understand my point.
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Admin Director Posts: 12998 From: EvC Forum Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
As is always the case, getting personal makes it more difficult for a thread to stay on topic. Please, everyone, just stick to the topic.
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2ice_baked_taters Member (Idle past 5851 days) Posts: 566 From: Boulder Junction WI. Joined: |
I did rise to the bait. I appologise.
This just shows me that no matter what the subject and supposed level of reason, maturity, or education, we are all very human first.
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kuresu Member (Idle past 2513 days) Posts: 2544 From: boulder, colorado Joined: |
Sorry. I just have to take the bait.
Okay, to paraphrase what you say (and correct me if i'm wrong in my understanding of you), you will not accept any "theory" until many questions are answered, and yuo do not trust anything human because of our fallible nature. You have a beef with putting science above human thought. I agree to a point. Man is an emotional beast, often provoked into passionate dispositions and has cloudy judgement most of the time due to subjectivity and irrationality. Science is the objective and rational. It starts with a question--how? why?. It removes itself from the human framework and works in a dispassionate, rational, logical, objective pattern. Look at the scientific method. Nothing irrational or subjective about it. In fact, I've heard it described as the ultimate weapon of logic. Theory has two definitions. One is the way we use it in every day communication. "It is my theory that Joe is going to cut his grass today". Nothing more than a guess.In science, it is a model used to make predictions, and is based off of observed facts. let's just take gravity. In this theory, objects that are more dense will attract less dense objects. A prediction would be that something with a density of 1 is drawn to something with a density of 3. We see this happen in our solar system. The sun is the most dense thing in the system. ANd guess what--the earth is pulled towards the sun. If it wasn't, then Newton's laws of motion say that we should hurtle off into space. When someone brought up the creationists and said that they at least have a reason, he is right. The creationists actually have a valid reason--they feel threatened by science and want to protect their way of life. They tend to be somewhat rational about it. You, on the other hand, have done nothing but show yourself to be the black sheep. You refuse to accept or believe just to refuse. You aren't rational, or even non-rational. You would probably reject that the sky is blue just because everyone agrees that it is blue, and oh no, we can't follow the crowd.
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ReverendDG Member (Idle past 4110 days) Posts: 1119 From: Topeka,kansas Joined: |
It was me, i gave up on this when i realized i was saying the samething over and over again without any really response.
Jesus saves.. and only takes half damage
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Phat Member Posts: 18262 From: Denver,Colorado USA Joined: Member Rating: 1.1 |
Loudmouth writes: I never really paid much heed to the I.D. proponents until I read this snippet from a book that explained why I.D. would "win". It was intriguing enough that I will repost it here for commentary: I have heard many times that the Theory of Evolution is "bad science". It has never been made clear to me what makes evolution bad, but other theories that rely on inference, such as inner earth geology, are considered good science. HumanEventsOnline writes: ...For starters, the affirmation of design is good for science. Like all knowledge, science is a pattern-seeking project. The human mind inherently seeks intelligible order. Thus the conviction that such an order exists to be found is a crucial assumption. No scientists are going to find their work diminished because they ground it in the search for an inbuilt design in nature. Indeed, as sociologist Rodney Stark argues in To the Glory of God, modern science could have arisen only in a culture convinced that the universe is the creation of a rational mind--and is thus intelligible to our rational minds. This explains why science arose historically in medieval Europe, a period when western civilization was saturated with Christianity. Steve Fuller, a sociologist of science, offers this as one reason he testified for ID in the recent court case in Dover, Pa. "The idea that religion provided intellectual sustenance for science," he explained on a recent blog, is "obviously borne out by history." By contrast, Darwinist theory claims that the design in nature is not real but only apparent, a product of blind, mechanical forces. As arch-Darwinian Richard Dawkins said in a recent Salon interview, evolution produces "the illusion of design." The implication for science, as Richard Rorty elaborates so clearly, is that truth is not "out there" to be discovered but is merely a social construction. Such postmodernist notions threaten to undercut the scientific enterprise. The second reason ID will win is that, contrary to the way it is often portrayed, it does not thrive on "gaps" in science but rather on the growth of science. The argument from design first became popular during the scientific revolution, which revealed that nature is more intelligible than anyone had hitherto imagined. And the current resurgence of ID was spawned by the revolution in biochemistry, which revealed the complex engineering and information processing that goes on within the cell. We now know that the cell bristles with molecular machinery far more complicated than anything devised by mere humans. Each cell is akin to a miniature factory town, humming with power plants and automated factories, connected by criss-crossing transport rails and directed by a headquarters (the nucleus) housing a library of coded blueprints. The more we learn about life, the less plausible is any evolutionary theory that relies on blind, undirected, piece-by-piece change. Third, ID will win because it incorporates the insights of the high-tech world of information theory. The revolution in biochemistry revealed that the core of living things is a code, language, information (DNA). The origin of life has now been recast as the origin of complex biological information. This explains why laboratory experiments to create life have failed”because they work from the bottom up, by assembling the right materials. But life is not fundamentally about matter; it’s about information. In today's preferred analogy, the DNA molecule is the hardware, while the information stored and transmitted is the software. "Trying to make life by mixing chemicals in a test tube," writes astrophysicist Paul Davies, "is like soldering switches and wires in an attempt to produce Windows 98. It won't work because it addresses the problem at the wrong conceptual level.” The paramount role of information strongly suggests that mind preceded matter. Fourth, ID will win because it recovers the unity of truth. Edward Purcell in The Crisis of Democratic Theory: Scientific Naturalism and the Problem of Value explains how Darwinism led to a naturalistic worldview--one in which the natural sciences were elevated to the only form of objective knowledge while "theological dogmas and philosophical absolutes were at worst totally fraudulent and at best merely symbolic of deep human aspirations." In other words, Darwinism lent scientific support to the fact/value dichotomy, where religion and morality are dismissed as merely subjective and private, or even outright false. As a result, ID appeals to a broad range of people concerned about overcoming the fact/value split--especially relevant during the Christmas season, when the ACLU and assorted secularists try to impose their gospel of privatized religion onto the rest of the country. As Richard John Neuhaus wrote recently in First Things, not just conservative Protestants but also "Catholics and everyone else have an enormous stake in defending the unity of truth." BBC's Washington correspondent Justin Webb recently asked why American social conservatives "are spending more energy fighting Charles Darwin than cutting taxes," but the reason is clear: At stake is not just a scientific theory but a divided concept of truth that reduces religion and morality to the level of myth. As though to prove the point, at Kansas University the chairman of the religious studies department, Paul Mirecki, announced a new course subtitled "Intelligent Design, Creationisms, and other Religious Mythologies." Mirecki posted a note on a student atheists website bragging that he was "doing my part to [tick] off the religious right," giving them a "slap in their big fat face by teaching [ID] . . . under the category 'mythology.'" (Mirecki has since apologized.) Which suggests the final reason ID will win--because it accords with the ideals of a free and open society. In our pluralistic age, schools should train students in critical thinking to prepare them to engage respectfully and intelligently with a wide range of worldviews, both religious and secular. Yet under current rules, public schools may present evidence for scientific theories that imply a strictly materialistic or secular worldview, while they are not allowed to present evidence for scientific theories that imply a non-materialistic or religious worldview (though the latter may be mocked and ridiculed, as the KU course proves). The public cannot help but notice that many ID proponents are well educated and credentialed. Yet, as attorney Doug Kern writes in Tech Central Station, "the pro-Darwin crowd insists on the same phooey-to-the-booboisie shtick that was tiresome in Mencken's day." It has grown even more tiresome in our own day. I have heard many opponents assert that I.D. is not science, and I wondered what some of you thought about this ladies assertions.
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nwr Member Posts: 6408 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.1 |
..., and I wondered what some of you thought about this ladies assertions.
It is high on rhetoric, low on content.
Indeed, as sociologist Rodney Stark argues in To the Glory of God, modern science could have arisen only in a culture convinced that the universe is the creation of a rational mind--and is thus intelligible to our rational minds.
The Chinese seem to have come with a lot of science, but the philosophical assumptions were very different from those Stark suggests.
Third, ID will win because it incorporates the insights of the high-tech world of information theory.
ID has utterly failed in its attempt to incorporate information theory. About all that the ID folk have demonstrated, is their profound ignorance on the subject.
The public cannot help but notice that many ID proponents are well educated and credentialed.
Indeed. They are well educated and credentialed in areas such as law, philosophy, theology, rhetoric. But most are seriously ignorant in the sciences. They are expert in the art of bullshitting.
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Parasomnium Member Posts: 2224 Joined: |
Nancy Pearcey writes: For starters, the affirmation of design is good for science. How can beginning with the conclusion be good for science? Suppose scientists want find out about the nature of gravity. How is it going to help them if they start by asserting that gravity is the result of invisible pixies pulling and pushing things toward the centre of the earth? Why would anyone want to do research if the result was already 'known'? And what if your research points to a different solution? Would you publish? After all, the scientific world has already decided that pixies cause gravity, so maybe it would not be a very good career move to publish something that goes against the grain. I think the affirmation of design is a very bad thing for science.
The human mind inherently seeks intelligible order. Thus the conviction that such an order exists to be found is a crucial assumption. Suppose the human mind seeks to find a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. According to Nancy Pearcey's logic, the conviction that such a pot of gold exists to be found is a crucial assumption. Well, crucial or not, it is also a false assumption. Wanting something doesn't make it so.
No scientists are going to find their work diminished because they ground it in the search for an inbuilt design in nature. They are if they are going about it the wrong way around. Good scientists end with a conclusion, which must be testable by other scientists. ID-ers start with their conclusion and mold every finding in such a way as to fit their preconceived notions. That's not how science should be done.
[...] modern science could have arisen only in a culture convinced that the universe is the creation of a rational mind--and is thus intelligible to our rational minds. This explains why science arose historically in medieval Europe, a period when western civilization was saturated with Christianity. This is patently false. The Middle Ages were a period of stagnation, in which science was stymied, probably because western civilization was saturated with Christianity. Western science historically arose in ancient Greece, was preserved during the Middle Ages in the Arab world and only revived in Europe during the Renaissance and the subsequent Enlightenment. If anything, Christianity has brought science almost to a standstill.
Steve Fuller, a sociologist of science, offers this as one reason he testified for ID in the recent court case in Dover, Pa. "The idea that religion provided intellectual sustenance for science," he explained on a recent blog, is "obviously borne out by history." I think Giordano Bruno, Nicolaus Copernicus, and Galileo Galilei, to name a few, would beg to differ. They had ideas about the cosmos, and man's place in it, that went against Christian dogma. Today however, we know that their ideas, although not entirely accurate, were at least a step in the right direction. The church, on the other hand, did not move at all. We'd still be in the Dark Ages if the church had had its way. This message has been edited by Parasomnium, 04-May-2006 12:07 AM "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin. Did you know that most of the time your computer is doing nothing? What if you could make it do something really useful? Like helping scientists understand diseases? Your computer could even be instrumental in finding a cure for HIV/AIDS. Wouldn't that be something? If you agree, then join World Community Grid now and download a simple, free tool that lets you and your computer do your share in helping humanity. After all, you are part of it, so why not take part in it?
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Whirlwind Inactive Member |
but I feel obliged to point out this almost idiotic item:
quote: No one is suggesting that one day a fish gave birth to a thing with legs. It is possible that over a period of millions of years, a fish would give birth to another fish that had little structures that would have had the slightest resemblence to legs, and if these 'legs' give that organism an advantage it will pass down those genes to the next generation. I don't like dwelling ona specific example, but isn't there a species which looks a lot like a fish with legs in the Amazon rainforest? Also, most multicellular organisms undergo mitosis and meiosis. In humans, all cells divide mitotically except the cells that divide to give eggs and sperm. In fact, in Bryophyta (moss), its the other way around! Most cells are haploid (one set of chromosomes) while the reproductive ones are diploid! Nature provides almost any genetic variation you can think of. Edited by Whirlwind, : No reason given.
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