Nature belongs to ID

Thank you Taz for the video. It is not surprising there is civility between people who agree with each other. The test is civility between opponents, irregardless of side. It is erroneous to say only ID supporters lose their cool and resort to nastiness, both sides bare their teeth all too often.I must say that scientists in general are a calm, non-confrontational lot, at least the ones I know. I've always appreciated that and aspire to that behaviour.

[Thank you Percy!]My IPad experience improves everyday! My poor husband is losing yet another of his favourite gadgets [Percy says: I understand that you believe processes were designed before they were employed, but no evidence exists if this, and things that actually happened usually leave evidence behind. The evidence that is available indicates a process of gradual change over time ...] (Oops my quoting didn't work.)Exactly! That is what I believe. I also believe the evidence to support this view is persuasive. I look forward to explaining my position in greater detail as soon as I get home to my own beloved computer with a standard keyboard and I can type at speed again. I hope to hear from you again at that time.One last thing - our fossil evidence better supports the theory of Punctuated Equilibria which states that biology was static over large periods of time (Equilibria) and then something happens (punctuation) and biology takes a great leap forward in complexity and diversity. Please refer to the Cambrian Explosion as one example.Edited by Vanessa, : No reason given.Edited by Vanessa, : No reason given.Edited by Vanessa, : No reason given.

I apologise if I have not replied to your posts. I did not expect such a response to my initial post!The title of my post 'Nature Belongs to ID' was meant to be controversial. I hoped to provoke supporters of ID to rethink labelling their opposition 'Naturalism' and so I joined a forum titled Intelligent Design thinking this is where I would find them - how wrong I was!After consideration of your arguments I formulate my point this way: The labelling of Supernaturalism vs Naturalism is false and misleading.Both sides attempt to explain Nature. One side says there is something that precedes Nature on Earth and is instructive, controlling and essential for life on Earth, hence the term 'super'. The other side says Nature formed itself, nothing external or preceeding is needed. I prefer to call this Auto-naturalism. I think this is a more accurate label and clearly denotes the two positions.

The degree to which evolution is static vs. punctuated doesn't support ID in any way. If our current understanding of evolution is modified to include some or a lot of punctuations, that only makes the theory more accurate. That should be the last thing IDers want.Also, the "Cambrian explosion" was not a rapid event. In broad terms it lasted as long as 70-80 million years.

Not only was the Cambrian Explosion not a very rapid event, as we discover more and more pre-Cambrian fossils it is looking far less like an explosion at all.Edited by jar, : appalin spallin

Not sure what you are trying to state here. Punctuated Equilibria is evolution. It uses evolutionary mechanisms. Gould and Eldredge went to great lengths explaining how evolutionary mechanisms produce the pattern of punctuated equilibria. I would agree that the fossil evidence does support evolution, but I don't think this is what you meant to say.Also, the Cambrian Explosion is given more "explosive" power due to taphonomy. The first hard body parts evolved in the Cambrian so we get an explosion of fossils since hard animals fossilize more easily than soft ones.

One side does so in terms of natural processes that we can observe, and the other does so in terms of supernatural miraculous processes that we have never seen.You are not going to change the significance of this fact by playing about with the meaning of the word "naturalism" or by playing about with the occasions on which you and your creationist pals wish to apply it.

I think you missed my point completely. My point wasn't about civility. My point was about humility.Watch the video. Throughout the whole video, both scientists admitted many times that they didn't know about this this and that. Whenever someone asked them about something outside their field, they'd say they don't know.The point is real honest to god scientists are specialists who are fully aware of where their boundaries lie.Creationists and IDists, on the other hand, seem to know everything about everything.I've attended many many debates. And it's always the same. There was a debate between a creationist and an astronomer. Throughout the whole debate, the creationist (a christian preacher no less) kept throwing biological questions at the astronomer and the astronomer kept saying he didn't know because it was outside his specialty. The sad part was the crowd became convinced the astronomer was less knowledgable than the creationist because the creationist was able to throw out whole strings of technically sounding biological verbose. I used to work in a genetics lab, so I actually knew what he was trying to say. The creationist made no sense.That's the point I was trying to make. Real honest to god scientists are very humble and they know exactly where the limits of their knowledge lie. Creationists act like they know everything.

That isn't what I said. That only goes to prove how utterly biased and unflexible your mind is. It is so hell bent in one philosophy of thinking, it is impossible for it to even comprehend the simple reasonings that go outside of its comfort zone.

Here's a tip.If you are going to accuse someone of misquoting you, you shouldn't do it on a forum where people can scroll back and are see what was written.I quoted you correctly, and I explained my position.Your lack of education makes debate difficult.As for mental inflexibility on the part of those here who support materialism, you've got us. We all insist that the real world is real and that unreal things don't exist.IF you have _evidence_ that proves that things which do not exist in fact do exist, I'd love to see it.By the way, "A jew wrote this" is not "evidence".

No, we have never seen life evolve from simple organisms to complex ones through mutation. It is a theoretical statement. This is my point. Nature develops life through systems - in which the organism transforms in it's life cycle - egg to chick, foetus to baby, caterpillar to butterfly. This is how Nature works. This is what our fossil record looks like. Edited by Vanessa, : No reason given.Edited by Vanessa, : No reason given.

You seem not to have grasped my point.Obviously, scientists do not claim to have observed the evolution of (for example) a giraffe from some more basal chordate such as (for example) Pikaia.However, they do claim that they have observed the processes by which this evolution occurred: they attribute this evolution to well-known natural processes such as reproduction, mutation, and natural selection --- natural processes that they can see happening.Meanwhile, creationists ascribe the existence of giraffes to a supernatural process that no-one has ever seen.Scientists attribute the diversity of life to natural processes that they have seen. Creationists attribute the diversity of life to a supernatural process that no-one has seen. Scientists are sticking to nature and the observable facts; creationists are appealing to the supernatural and to processes that no-one has witnessed.So if you wanted to use the ambiguous and misleading term "naturalistic" to describe one of these two views, then it would much better describe the scientists than the creationists. A less ambiguous way of putting it would be that the scientists are being scientific and the creationists are not. What exactly are you advocating, then? Front-loaded evolution, perhaps?

Hi Vanessa,Here's a little more help on quoting. It isn't text between square brackets that is placed in a quote box, but text between open and close quoting codes. It is the quoting codes that must be placed between square brackets. The code for shaded quoting is "qs". To begin a quoted region you say [qs], and to end a quoted region you say [/qs], which is just the same code with a slash in front of it. For example, this:Comes out looking like this: There's a whole bunch of codes that allow you to do things as simple as italicizing to as complex as tables: You can also place links in messages. See the Code Documentation for all the details.--Percy

I think the point Vanessa was making is that similar thinking experts in such settings generally display the same kind of humble deference seen in the video, whether the field is science or religion or economics or whatever. I recall seeing a debate between Dead Sea Scroll scholars with different areas of specialty, and it was much the same thing. I bet if you put Duane Gish (creationism) on a stage with Stephen C. Meyer (ID) that you'd get much the same kind of deferential humility.But if you put Neil de Grasse Tyson on a stage with Duane Gish I bet you'd find little humility or deference from either side. While Tyson would likely readily concede what we do not know, he would probably be brutally assertive about what he believes we do know based upon evidence.But while I do agree with Vanessa on this narrow point, I think your point is the more important one: Well said. Real scientists have a pretty good awareness of what they don't know. The problem with creationists and IDists is that they have no awareness of when they don't know what they're talking about, and as we've learned here over and over again, it can take forever to box a know-nothing into a corner.--Percy

But that is absolutely not what the P.E. people are saying.What they claim is that speciation is rapid (mere tens of thousands of years) when compared with the periods of stasis. If you told them that they were talking about "a great leap forwards in complexity and diversity" they would call you a liar and throw rocks at you.I don't know how to say this nicely, so I'll just say it. You're a sucker. Instead of reading what the advocates of P.E. actually think, in their own words, you've swallowed the lies of creationist propagandists about what the P.E. advocates think. And then you've come here to discuss that, instead. Rather than quoting what Stephen Gould says or what Niles Eldredge says, you're talking about what a bunch of creationist liars and halfwits say that they say. Dear Lord, give me the strength to carry on.OK, I'm done praying, I'll go back to sarcasm. You have such an enormous knowledge of the Cambrian Explosion that you can use your immense knowledge of this subject to prove that biologists are all wrong about biology, the subject that they know about and you don't. So please tell us, in your own words, what the C.E. actually was.