Creationism/ID as Science

Watermelons and Jelly fish are both 96% water, does that mean they are biologically related?
The similarities are irrelevant, because it’s the whole picture that is important. Chimps don't have 96% of our brain capacity, they don’t have 96% of the hospitals and colleges we have.
If we have 3 billion base pairs of DNA per cell, that means that Chimps have 120 million base pairs less DNA per cell than we have. The study of "similarities" doesn't reveal, the important differences, those that cause us to think, and question our world. It focuses on the physical differences which have very little explanatory power.
Focusing on the information or the design tells us why we build hospitals and colleges. IF it could be shown that evolution took place to the extent theorized, then yeah sure.

Wow, Duane Gish revisited!Hey, Hughes, this thread is about creationism/ID's qualifications as science. There are plenty of threads for you to argue against evolution. Learn them. Love them. Use them.This is from the Forum Guidelines:

2. Please stay on topic for a thread. Open a new thread for new topics.

Or find an existing one, of course.Don't let other members draw you over to the dark side. Please stay on topic. Sorry to sound like a moderator, but I am one.--Percy

OK, hughes, if we are going to talk about ID as science, then we need to talk about predictions.What predictions has ID made about what we should find in nature?What were the results?

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"Science is like a blabbermouth who ruins a movie by telling you how it ends! Well I say there are some things we don't want to know! Important things!"
- Ned Flanders"Question with boldness even the existence of God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear." - Thomas Jefferson

Heh, I guess that applies to me.OK, I'll stop arguing with his rubbish, but I too would like to challenge him do defend one word of his gibble on another thread.I would like again to raise the question of whether this stuff might, in fact, be on topic.So far as I understand it, ID consists of creationism shorn of nearly all its testable claims. The ID crowd don't claim that the Earth is young, 'cos there's no evidence for this. They don't claim that the Earth was created in six days, 'cos there's no evidence for this. They don't claim that snakes used to be able to talk, 'cos there's no evidence for this. They don't claim that snakes eat dust, 'cos there's no evidence for this. They leave out the bit about the magic fruit, 'cos there's no evidence for this. They leave out the Noachim flood, 'cos there's no evidence for this.They abandon almost every single one of the positive claims that creationists make, 'cos there is no evidence for them, and a mountain of evidence against them.There then remains to them one positive argument, the so-called "Argument From Design": i.e. "it looks like someone designed it, so someone did".But of course we know this is rubbish, because we know many ways to produce the appearance of design: actual design; a brute force algorithm; a genetic algorithm; simulated annealing; a Monte Carlo algorithm; a Las Vegas algorithm ... many ways.So the only way to prop up the argument from design is to argue that these algorithms, and specifically the genetic algorithm, don't actually work and can't produce the results that one sees in nature. Any argument that some organism was designed has to incorporate an argument that it hasn't evolved instead.So there is no way to support Intelligent Design except to try to discredit science; and so there is nothing these people can do except throw the same ol' creationist bricks against the same ol' bulletproof glass of science.So there can be no positive defense of Intelligent Design. Its advocates must assault science. What else can they do?Hughes, or any other poster, may of course prove me wrong by making one single post in favor of Intelligent Design which does not depend on arguing or assuming that the theory of evolution is false. Don't hold your breath.

Newton's observation led to the understanding of the force of gravity. Darwin's observation has only led to the Hijacking of Science. In other words instead of verified or observable facts, Science has been turned into some sort of study based on assumptions, speculations, predictions and extrapolations.

inkorrekt: And discoveries.Like Archaeopteryx.

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

Sorry, it appears I contributed to the mess with an off-topic post. Please excuse.Dr Adequate has a point. Attacking evolution is most of the ID argument. You can head over to Dembsky's blog or the Discovery Institute web site and attacks on evolutionary theory are what you see. (That, and kvetching about the scientific establishment.)I think you'll see more of this. In the aftermath of the Kitzmiller v Dover defeat creationists are running away from the words 'intelligent design' just as they did from 'creationism' in the late 1980s.The recent changes in science education proposed in Kansas never mentioned intelligent design. They said arguments 'for and against' evolution would be presented. 'For and against evolution' is the new mutation of the creationist genome.It's already dead in Kansas. But it is interesting to note that this is a purer formulation of the very tactic Dr Adequate describes. Don't put up any evidence yourself--or, now, any theories. Just attack.Edited by Archer Opterix, : Spelling corrected.

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

So, in a thread in which you are asked to prove that creationism/ID is science, all you can do is recite the same boring old lies about real science.Thanks for proving my point.Don't you have anything to say in favor of creationism/ID? Anything at all?Go on, surprise me.And, OMG, did you just complain that real science makes extrapolations and predictions? As though this were a bad thing?You did.It's almost as though ... as though you don't know the first thing about science.What am I doing here? Isn't there one smart creationist I can debate with?Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Dr Adequate: Want me to become a creationist so you can have someone new to talk to?Give me a lot of time to think up an argument...

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

Behe disagrees. Selected quotes below refute the idea that IC has been falsified by this particular test. Demonstrating two things. One, that ID is science if it's true as claimed by the opponents here, that IC was falsified. And two, that such an experiment as was discussed above, has an outcome, as predicted from ID theory.

The sad thing is, all I need is one site to disprove Behe.Irreducible Complexity and Michael Behe on Intelligent DesignBehe's argument is extremely fallacious. He basically assumes that every gene and mutation has a single set function. That's completely insane. We know that genes rarely code for a single trait, and many traits work by combinations of genes interacting. Thus for a trait to arise out of three sequential mutations is not that implausible because these new mutations can often provide secondary advantageous traits. I have yet to see Behe or any other ID person deal with this problem. It gets ignored everytime I ask it.One of Behe's ridiculous comments is of the acid test, specifically during the Kansas-make-a-mockery-of-itsel-trial.

quote:

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A. That's correct. I think on the next slide we see that he wrote in his book Finding Darwin's God ,which was published in 1998, he said, " A true acid test used the tools of molecular genetics to wipe out an existing multipart system and then see if evolution can come to the rescue with a system to replace it."

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So here he was making the point well, here one test of this claim of irreducible complexity and the ability of Darwinian processes to make complex systems, well, is to find a complex system in a cell, destroy it, and then see if random mutation and natural selection can come back and replace it. And I have to say I agree that's an excellent test of that claim.

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The problem is that the concept of IC is joke as it assumes there is only one function for a set of genes and organs. The classic mousetrap example is a perfect analogy. Sure removing the spring doesn't make it work. But I can still use the wooden pad to stomp on the mouse. I can shave the metal and place in food to posion the mouse. I can use the wood as a paper weight, i can use the metal in hobbies. This entire assumption of a single use is contridicotry to what we see in nature. Not to mention that the argument Behe is using assumes that mutations can fill in a complex function from scratch, which is completely removed from what evolution argues.

No, of course not. Do you think I'm stupid?For your information, watermelons and jelly fish are biologically related. But their water content has nothing to do with it. If you can't see the difference between the implications of a genetic correspondence and those of other similarities, then science isn't really your thing. But that's OK, because you're an ID-ist, and ID isn't science. So you've shown that you can calculate 4% of 3 billion. But you've not shown any understanding of what it means to say that humans and chimps share 96% of their genes. You seem to think that chimps are somehow "less" than humans and that this is because they supposedly have fewer base pairs. If that were the case, then humans are "less" then Amoeba dubia, because the latter has the largest known genome, namely 6.710¹¹ base pairs. Sometimes size matters, but not in this case.Edited by Parasomnium, : No reason given.

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"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.

Hi Hughes,Thanks for helping keep the thread on-topic, but allow me to draw your attention to another tidbit from the Forum Guidelines:

6. Avoid lengthy cut-n-pastes. Introduce the point in your own words and provide a link to your source as a reference. If your source is not on-line you may contact the Site Administrator to have it made available on-line.

This rule was instituted in order to avoid people raising points they weren't competent to defend. It also removes the problem of people raising points in less than a minute with a cut-n-paste that take others hours to rebut, a sort of "debate by exhausting your opponents" approach which we like to discourage. Could you please try again? Thanks!--Percy

Hi Dr Adequate!I agree with you, and you described the IDist dilemma so well that I don't think anything more need be said, not that that will stop me. At heart, both ID and traditional creationism are efforts to persuade people of religious views without reference to their spiritual or canonical foundations. This is a very tough challenge, but you have to admit that they're doing much better at it than the US is at international basketball.--Percy

Percy, thanks. This is true, I don't have lots of time. I appreciate your thoughtful comments. Since I’m new to this board, and have only read through both threads I’ve posted in, and haven’t had time to peruse all the others, I’m unaware of what the other threads may contain. Many things interest me, so I anticipate that I’ll be getting over there.The topic is ID Scientific. And with reference to ToE, the fact that ToE is considered scientific, I feel it’s relevant to reference it (as you did in your contrasting paragraph). Because we all use the same data. There’s nothing new that ID has “discovered” that wasn’t already know. It’s simply a new model. One that I am arguing is equally scientific as ToE. What I’ve said is that ID doesn’t need relatedness, or use it as evidence. As a contrast, Evolution makes vast connections without a factual basis. For example, Ford, Chevy, Toyota, and Honda all make a car that is similar in size and shape. Yet, we don’t conclude from similarity that they are even remotely related. We do categorize them into groups, because that well, that’s what we do, we categorize things. ID concludes that it has very little explanatory power. I read that, just this morning. I couldn’t disagree more.
First is the idea that we’re not interested in understanding the world around us. I can’t speak for everyone, but I’ve not met anyone in this debate, on either side that would fit this criteria. In essence, we all share the same goal. The Truth. The truth in science, what is really happening in the world around us.
Second is how we get there. What you see as “really interested in is protecting religious faith, not advancing science” is really a different starting point, that leads to different conclusions.I start with a universe that was started by a great designer.
You start with a universe that was nothing 15 billions years ago, then was something shortly after that. A mystery, I suppose, but faith non-the less.I start with an Earth that was designed, once again, by a great designer.
You start with an Earth that was not designed, but formed somehow, by the natural forces, containing an unlimited natural ability to create life.Both contain assumptions. Neither are demonstrable, testable or falsifiable.So, am I interested in protecting my faith? Not in the least, that’s not even an issue. I do however start with different assumptions.