Summations Only

Then it cannot be scientific. For the same reason why no supernaturalistic explanation can be scientific. For the same reason why "goddidit" is worse than absolutely useless as a scientific explanation. For the same reason you just gave.So glad to see that you are finally beginning to understand. Now we can place that silly "creation is scientific" claim in the grave and move on to more productive discussion.

So whoever says that? Other than creationists and those who take creationists at their word?If you think that science or evolution disproves creation, then you are an absolute idiot. Or merely an extremely delusional fool.Evolution does not disprove creation. It does disprove your idiotically false ideas about creation and about evolution. But evolution does not disprove creation. So just what is that evidence? I've been hearing that empty claim ever since 1981. Never once did any creationist ever offer that evidence. Never once!For example, in 1985 a creationist from work, Charles, and I attended a creationist debate that featured both leading creationists, Dr. Henry Morris and Dr. Duane Gish. As we were leaving, Charles was in shock. He kept mumbling, "We have mountains of evidence that will blow the evolutionists away. Why didn't they present it? We have mountains of evidence. Why didn't they present it?" When I saw him again half a decade later, he absolutely hated creationists and wanted nothing to do with them.What ... fucking ... evidence? Well, if that child thinks that man had to have built a ladder long enough to reach to the moon, then, yes, that did not happen.But if we remove the shackles of childish misunderstanding, then we can indeed see that, yes, it did happen. And how it happened.But if you keep yourself shackled by childish misunderstanding, then nothing we try to tell you will make any sense.Your choice.

Please refrain from posting non sequiturs to things that you cannot understand. You only succeed in wasting bandwidth and and revealing your god to be false and your religion injurious to one's mental health.I was making a specific point to Dredge. Once you have actually understood it, then you could reply to it.

"atheist"? Wherever do you get that idea from? I cannot recall ever seeing atheism being presented or promoted on it. What are you talking about?And "discredited" by whom and how? Certainly many creationists have maligned it, since it would routinely examine and expose creationist claims by going back to the purported sources and showing what they actually said. Certainly, creationists should find it a valuable resource for learning which of their claims are sound and which ones are not and therefore should not be used. Except creationists are not about the truth, now are they?

Dredge, you avoided answering my question by raising a second question: Why would you assume that almost all the authors at TalkOrigins are atheists? What do you base that sweeping assumption on?Another question would be: Why should somebody's religious beliefs have any bearing in the matter? Especially in matters of science. As well as in matters of factual truth.Here's something that you are probably ignorant of: Many opponents of creationism are themselves former creationists. Kind of like the reformed smokers who want to save all the other smokers from themselves. Think about it, why would anybody be so interested in "creation science"? Why would anybody devote so much time and effort into learning "creation science" and discussing it and trying to talk sense into creationists' minds? Maybe because they used to be where you are and creationism destroyed their faith or threatened to destroy it. I have seen far too much of that happening.So, Dredge, the question(s) still stand. Why do you think talkorigins.org is an atheist site? And why would you assume that so many of its authors are atheists?

In Message 483: You replied to him in Message 487: So not only are you calling that site "atheist", but "Satanic" to boot!Why is it so impossible to expect even the slightest bit of honesty from creationists? And just where did you get that "Evolution is an atheist invention" from? Show us your reasoning behind that false statement.Of course, I know that it comes straight from "creation science's" "Two Model Approach" (TMA) and its "evolution model", which is a gross misrepresentation of evolution and far, far worse.The TMA falsely splits origins into "two and only two mutually exclusive models: the creation model and the evolution model". There's the "creation model" and everything that's not part of that gets dumped into their "atheist evolution model". While creationists will only speak of their "creation model" in the vaguest of terms to the public, their private presentations identify as being nothing more than strict young-earth creationism. Therefore, most of what got dumped into the "atheist" "evolution model" turns out to be the vast majority of theist creation accounts; as Dr. Henry Morris himself told me, the "evolution model" contains "most of the world's religions, ancient and modern." And many of those religions in the "atheistic" "evolution model" are either Judaic, Christian, or Islamic.So apparently you think that most Jews, Christians, and Muslims are not only atheists, but also Satanists.Evolution is part of science, just as much as Universal Gravitation. Is gravity also an atheist invention? Do you believe that science is atheistic or even Satanic?Also, talkorigins is not dedicated to evolution, but rather to examination and discussion of creationist claims. Since so many creationist claims (such as yours) are based on misunderstanding and/or misrepresenting evolution and other sciences, then of course some of the articles would need to explain what evolution actually is and what the evidence actually is.Have you ever read their feedbacks? People writing to them with questions or damning them to eternal hell. Read through some of those. A number of those responses were written by Christians.But you still need to support your assertion that "evolution is an atheist invention."A side question would be why you seem to hate atheists so much. More groundless prejudice?

Yes, that is true. They are things that are part of the supernatural and the supernatural is outside of the realm of science, hence they are decided un-scientific.So what's your point?Science can only deal with the natural universe, which we can observe and measure and against which we can test hypotheses and build theories to explain how it works. We cannot observe the supernatural, nor can we measure it, nor can we test against it any hypotheses we might conjure up to try to explain it. We cannot even determine whether it even exists! Clearly, the supernatural is out of the reach of science and any attempt to use supernaturalistic hypotheses in science would be completely useless.Now, to express this simply, there are different kinds of questions which we can identify roughly with interrogatives. There are the "how" questions, questions of how the natural universe works. Science is extremely good at answering that kind of question, whereas religion has been very poor at it. But then there are the more interesting questions of "why" or even "who" which science is extremely poor at, but which philosophy and theology are much better suited for.The problems for philosophy and theology is the difficulty in testing their conclusion. Science is so good at answering the "how do things work" questions because you have something you can test ideas against. Not so for philosophy and theology (especially theology). They both use logic, most often rigorous and intricate logic, but they both must start with some axioms, "facts" what they take to be givens (such as that particular theology's particular set of religious dogma). Axioms are never proven, but rather assumed to be true. The problem with logic is that it can only test the validity of the logical argument. If an argument is valid and you feed it true premises (the axioms), then the conclusion is true. But if you feed it false premises, then you have no idea whether the conclusion is true or not (most likely not).Of course, any logical construct in science suffers from the same problem, but the difference is that science can test its conclusion whereas philosophy and theology cannot. I've tried to use ship's navigation pre-GPS as an analogy. You start from a known location. You use dead reckoning to predict where you should now be by taking your speed and heading and time elapsed and predicting what your current position should be. Keep in mind that the ship's superstructure acts as a sail to the wind and ocean currents are also working on the hull. So periodically you get a fix: you step outside, observe the sun and stars and planets (depending on time of day) and calculate your actual position from direct observation. Then the next leg of dead reckoning proceeds from that fix.The difference between science and philosophy/theology is that while science can get an actual fix, philosophy/theology cannot, so the latter can just keep wandering farther and farther off course.I have a quote from Carl Sagan that also describes this situation:

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The Physicist and the Metaphysicist

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In the 1920s, there was a dinner at which the physicist Robert W. Wood was asked to respond to a toast. This was a time when people stood up, made a toast, and then selected someone to respond. Nobody knew what toast they'd be asked to reply to, so it was a challenge for the quick-witted. In this case the toast was: "To physics and metaphysics." Now by metaphysics was meant something like philosophy -- truths that you could get to just by thinking about them. Wood took a second, glanced about him, and answered along these lines: The physicist has an idea, he said. The more he thinks it through, the more sense it makes to him. He goes to the scientific literature, and the more he reads, the more promising the idea seems. Thus prepared, he devises an experiment to test the idea. The experiment is painstaking. Many possibilities are eliminated or taken into account; the accuracy of the measurement is refined. At the end of all this work, the experiment is completed and ... the idea is shown to be worthless. The physicist then discards the idea, frees his mind (as I was saying a moment ago) from the clutter of error, and moves on to something else.

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The difference between physics and metaphysics, Wood concluded, is that the metaphysicist has no laboratory.

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(reportedly from an essay by Carl Sagan, http://www.positiveatheism.org/writ/saganws.htm)

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Now, we have a movement, Intelligent Design (courtesy of the Discovery Institute), whose stated goal is to change science so that it must include supernaturalistic explanations. Science could not possibly exist under those conditions, as should be plain to you by now."goddidit" cannot not possibly answer any scientific question, any "how does this work" question.

Sorry, but your own words contradict that claim; again:In Message 483: You replied to him in Message 487: So then, yes you did call it "atheist" and then upped the ante with "Satanic". That is despite the fact that CRR said it first, because you were agreeing with him and went on to elaborate further.Then in Message 532 you elaborated further: That begged the question of why you thought that. I think we both know that you got that from your creationist sources that are lying to you. However, you must have gone through some kind of reasoning it out to come to accept that. So I asked for that reasoning, but instead you beg yet another question: "atheist theology"? Evolution, which you yourself identify as being science, is not a theology. While some people may choose to use it (or even their misconceptions about it just as you appear to be doing) in their theology, that does not make evolution itself a theology. As you yourself said, it is science.Please explain what you are talking about and present your reasoning that led you to that conclusion. It may help if you recognize the difference between the science of evolution and creationists' "evolution model" -- the two couldn't be more dissimilar.I suppose that you believe that evolution and creation are in conflict. In reality, there is nothing about the science of evolution which contradicts the idea of Divine Creation. It is only when you choose to misconstrue both evolution and creation that you end up creating conflict where none should exist. Eye, meet beam.

Try this line of reasoning. What do the other members of Hominidae have that humans do not have? Such as physical characteristics.Such as that massive jaw. Our jaws are puny in comparison. Where else in Hominidae do we see puny jaws and flat faces such as our own? In the infants and young of the other members of Hominidae. As they mature, their genes for that jaw are expressed. Not so in humans. Our jaws remain puny and our faces remain flat, like an infant ape's. We have lost something there, either the genes for developing a mature ape jaw and face or the triggers to express those mature traits.So then wouldn't you say that in respect to that trait, the chimp genome is more complex than the human one? How many more traits are like that?OBTW, how intelligent are the other Hominidae? I trust that you have heard of Hanabiko, "fireworks girl" (more literally, "flower fire girl"). She's better known as Koko. Since she has learned sign language, they have been able to administer intelligence tests to her. The results vary from an IQ of 80 to an IQ of 90. The lower score is attributed to cultural bias, or rather species bias -- when given options of where to go when it starts raining, she chose the tree instead of the house.So then, really, how different are we and in what ways? I think that your approach to that question may be a little too facile.

Then why do you do it? Seriously! What was your reasoning in deciding that talkorigins.org, an outgrowth of the talkorigins newsgroup, is an atheist site?Is it somehow akin to Dredge misrepresenting evolution as "atheist theology"? Do you somehow believe that there is an inherent conflict between evolution and creation? If so, then please explain. That looks like a very pointed remark, pointed directly at me. Like you are accusing me of having characterized the Discovery Insitute as creationist. Is that what you are doing? Just come out with it and say so directly, why don't you?I searched all forums for Discovery Institute (we have that capability) and the single page of results went back to 13-Aug-2015 7:37 AM. In all that time, I only mentioned the Discovery Institute exactly one single time, which was on 19-Jun-2017 in Message 536. Is that the one you are talking about? If not, then please link me to the one you are complaining about.Here is exactly what I wrote, copy-and-pasted from Message 536: Do please point out to me precisely where I characterize the Discovery Institute as creationist. And be sure to quote me directly.Though you do raise a good question: Is the Discovery Institute a creationist organization? As much as they try to avoid that label, they do fit the pattern well enough.From their Wedge Document:

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INTRODUCTION

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The proposition that human beings are created in the image of God is one of the bedrock principles on which Western civilization was built. Its influence can be detected in most, if not all, of the West's greatest achievements, including representative democracy, human rights, free enterprise, and progress in the arts and sciences.

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Yet a little over a century ago, this cardinal idea came under wholesale attack by intellectuals drawing on the discoveries of modern science. Debunking the traditional conceptions of both God and man, thinkers such as Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, and Sigmund Freud portrayed humans not as moral and spiritual beings, but as animals or machines who inhabited a universe ruled by purely impersonal forces and whose behavior and very thoughts were dictated by the unbending forces of biology, chemistry, and environment. This materialistic conception of reality eventually infected virtually every area of our culture, from politics and economics to literature and art

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. . .

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Discovery Institute's Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture seeks nothing less than the overthrow of materialism and its cultural legacies.

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. . .

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FIVE YEAR STRATEGIC PLAN SUMMARY

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The social consequences of materialism have been devastating. As symptoms, those consequences are certainly worth treating. However, we are convinced that in order to defeat materialism, we must cut it off at its source. That source is scientific materialism. This is precisely our strategy.

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. . .

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We are building on this momentum, broadening the wedge with a positive scientific alternative to materialistic scientific theories, which has come to be called the theory of intelligent design (ID). Design theory promises to reverse the stifling dominance of the materialist worldview, and to replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions.

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GOALS

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Governing Goals

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- To defeat scientific materialism and its destructive moral, cultural and political legacies.
- To replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and hurnan beings are created by God.

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Twenty Year Goals

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- To see intelligent design theory as the dominant perspective in science.
- To see design theory application in specific fields, including molecular biology, biochemistry, paleontology, physics and cosmology in the natural sciences, psychology, ethics, politics, theology and philosophy in the humanities; to see its innuence in the fine arts.
- To see design theory permeate our religious, cultural, moral and political life.

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FIVE YEAR OBJECTIVES

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5. Spiritual & cultural renewal:

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- Mainline renewal movements begin to appropriate insights from design theory, and to repudiate theologies influenced by materialism
- Major Christian denomination(s) defend(s) traditional doctrine of creation & repudiate(s)
- Darwinism Seminaries increasingly recognize & repudiate naturalistic presuppositions
- Positive uptake in public opinion polls on issues such as sexuality, abortion and belief in God

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"Darwinism Seminaries"? What the hell are they supposed to be?That's a lot of religious references and objectives despite how much they try to downplay and hide it. So do the major creationist organizations who used to mask their religious agenda behind the smokescreens of "creation science" (claiming that their objections to evolution were "purely scientific, nothing religious about it") and their Two Model Approach with the extremely vague double-talk surrounding its "creation model" which only spoke vaguely about some "unnamed Creator" (but only to the public and the courts; to churches they named that Creator very specifically).It is obvious by "intelligent design" that the IDists mean Divine Creation by YHWH. Oh yes, they give lip service to LGMs and panspermia, etc, as part of their "we're not creationists" smokescreen. And those other creationist groups, unable to continue to use "creation science" in court since Edwards v. Aguillard (1987) exposed its purely religious nature, have switched to a new smokescreen, "intelligent design", knowing that it's just another form of creationism. A less vulnerable smokescreen, since it avoids using young earth and Noah's Flood claims, arguably the weakest parts of creationism.Operationally, creationists suffer from either not understanding science or else deliberately misrepresenting it and the evidence. The Discovery Institute also suffers from that weakness with their own bugaboo: materialism. They think that all forms of materialism are the same and are unable to distinguish between philosophical materialism (that matter is all that there is) and methodological materialism (all that we can work with is the material universe). Science uses the latter out of sheer necessity, since it is incapable of dealing with the supernatural (if you had read the rest of my message, Message 536, you would have known that already). In doing so, science is not saying that the supernatural does not exist, but rather merely that it cannot work with the supernatural. But the Discovery Institute does not understand that and falsely accuses science of practicing philosophical materialism, called "scientific materialism" in the Wedge Document. And its "solution" is to require science to use supernaturalistic explanations.We've discussed that before, such as in the topic (closed), So Just How is ID's Supernatural-based Science Supposed to Work? (SUM. MESSAGES ONLY), where I asked that proponents of ID please explain just exactly how science is supposed work if it's required to use the supernatural.My questions from that topic (started 27-Nov-2007 11:39 AM): Message 27
Message 54
Finally, in summation mode I wrote (Message 54, 05-Jun-2011 10:27 AM):

Then why do you call talkorigins.org an atheist site? Seriously! What was your reasoning in deciding that talkorigins.org, an outgrowth of the talkorigins newsgroup, is an atheist site?Is it somehow akin to Dredge misrepresenting evolution as "atheist theology"? Do you somehow believe that there is an inherent conflict between evolution and creation? If so, then please explain.

Actually, that title would go to the Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the sources of that derivative work, the Bible.

Yes, now, though earlier that was used to disprove Darwin. Much to the delight of creationist quote-miners.Darwin knew that these traits were inherited and he knew that new traits could arise, but he didn't know how. Although he had Mendel's monograph on his bookshelf, there is no indication that he had ever read it.Instead, Darwin was hampered with a paint-mixing analogy, in which new traits were some new tint being mixed in, but there was no way for such new traits in such small quantities to become expressed in the final mixture of paint.What Darwin came up with was Pangenetic theory, which Dr. Jonathan Miller, MD, characterized as Darwin accepting Lamarck's discarded idea of acquired characteristics, thus mounting the "Ladder of Life" fallacy (Darwin for Beginners.Of course, it was wrong, but it was now part of "Darwinism." So when researchers "discovered" Mendelian genetics and mutations and started experimenting with mutations, they all loudly proclaimed Darwin to be wrong! About inheritance, yes. But what about all the other stuff? Doesn't matter. Creationists have loads of quotes declaring Darwin to be wrong (about inheritance) so that's all that they need.It was later in the 1930's and 1940's that some, such as Fischer, began to realize that Mendelian genetics provided the missing piece of Darwin's ideas and thus was born neo-Darwinism.ABE:
Many creationist quotings of scientists declaring Darwin to be wrong date from the early part of the 20th Century when geneticists were pointing out quite correctly that his Pangenetic Theory was wrong. They weren't talking about his ideas about the origin of species, but rather his mistaken ideas about how inheritance works.Edited by dwise1, : ABE

So point out in his data where he is wrong.

Glenn R. Morton once taught me something very important. When I started studying "creation science" in 1981 and even when I had started discussing it on CompuServe in the late 1980's, I thought that creationists just didn't know what they were talking about and that once they learned what their mistakes were then they'd correct themselves since, well, Christians are all about truth, right? Instead, it turns out that "true Christians" absolutely hate truth, especially when it contradicts their contrary-to-fact religious beliefs.At the 1986 International Conference on Creationism, he reported how he, an ICR-trained "geologist" had gone to work for an oil exploration company and had hired other young-earth creationists trained by the ICR. That training included learning what geological facts did not exist and could not exist for Scripture to have any meaning. He reported that, as they all had to work day after day with exactly those "impossible" rock-hard geological facts, they all suffered severe crises of faith.That was the first indication I had that "creation science" posed the most risk to the faith of its followers.Just the other day I did a search on Dembski "deer in headlights" in an attempt to find Glenn R. Morton's account of Dembski versus genetic algorithms at a conference, The Nature of Nature, Waco, TX, 2000.
grmorton, 03 Jun 2005, https://www.christianforums.com/...-evolution-useful.1703143:

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JohnR7 said:
A common arguement on this board is that if you reject evolution, then you also have to reject science and computers. There is really no comparison though. Science and computers have a function and a use for me, evolution does not.

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Today I was loading a new program onto the computer. I went through the menu to figure out how to use the program and to configure it for what I intended to use it for. Just as I was finished working on this new program, my wife asked me about another program that people use on the computer. I told her I did not know anything about that program because I did not use it. IT does not have enough usefulness to me, for me to bother with it to learn how to use it. It is the same thing with evolution. I do not reject computers because there are programs I have no use for. Nor do I reject science, just because I have no use for the theory of evolution.

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Of course for someone else, the theory maybe useful for them. Or they may think it is useful enough so that they try to learn it and apply it in some way. So, if they feel they benifit from it in some way, then I suppose it is worth while to them, to study and learn the theory to try and apply it.

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Well, JohnR7, you seem ignorant of how evolution is used to better your life. THere is a thing called a genetic algorithm. In such a computer program, things are designed via an evolutionary mechanism. A trial device is mutated, then tested. If the new device is better than the old, it is kept and then mutated again and tested again. Over and over this process can be carried out eventually leading to new and novel designs for mechanical objects.

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"Randomly stringing together a handful of resistors, capacitors, and transistors seems hardly the way to design and build a radio, but a random configuration is the starting point for a group of computer-based methods known as genetic algorithms. Whereas the simulated-annealing approach was suggested by statistical mechanics, genetic algorithms are rooted in the mechanics of natural selection and evolution. They represent a sophisticated kind of search that combines blind groping with precise bookkeeping.

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"The idea is to start with several random arrangements of componenets that each prepresent a complete but unorganized system. Most of these chance designs would fare very poorly, but some are bound to be better than others. The superior designs are then 'mated' by combining parts of different arrangements to produce 'offspring' with characteristics derived from both their 'parents' From this second generation, the computer again selects the best or most efficient designs for further breeding, and rejects the rest. The process continues in this fashion until an acceptable design or solution to a specific problem emerges. Once the goal is clearly defined and the criteria for success are in hand, the computer itself picks its way in a trial-and-error fashion, recording and building on its best guesses and eventually producing a good answer.

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"Pioneered more than 25 years ago by computer scientist John Holland, genetic algorithms consititute a field of computer science inspired by biological models and strewn with biological terms. In essence, Holland links the question of how biological systems adapt to their environnments with the problem of programming computers so they can learn and solve prpoblems.

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"The genetic-algorithm approach to problem solving has developed slowly. ONly in recent years have researchers begun to appreciate and exploit the method's flexibility and versatility, especially for designing complex systems or finding near-optimal solutions to problems. Engineers are beginning to use genetic algorithms for such applications as designing integrated-circuit chips, scheduling work in a busy machine shop, operating gas-pipeline pumping stations, and recognizing patterns."Ivars Peterson, Islands of Truth, (New York: W. H. Freeman and Co., 1990), p. 209-211

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Scientists have used evolutionary processes to find chemicals which will remove dyes from your clothes. This will help keep your shirts starchy white.

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Andrew Ellington and Jack W. Szostak "used small organic dyes as the target. They screened 10 13 random-sequence RNAs and found molecules that bound tightly and specifically to each of the dyes.

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"Recently they repeated this experiment using random-sequence DNAs and arrived at an entirely different set of dye-binding molecules.

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...

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"That observation reveals an important truth about directed evolution (and indeed, about evolution in general): the forms selected are not necessarily the best answers to a problem in some ideal sense, only the best answers to arise in the evolutionary history of a particular macromolecule." Gerald F. Joyce, "Directed Evolution," Scientific America, Dec. 1992, p. 94-95.

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And this is a partial account of a talk Bill Dembski gave at the Nature of Nature Conference in Baylor in 2000. Dembski had given a talk which denigrated genetic algorithms. He said you couldn't use them to design anything. This is extracted from my web page http://home.entouch.net/dmd/wacoday3.htm {DWise1: link broken} :

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quote:

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In the Q&A I raised the issue of biomolecular companies who use genetic
algorithms to search for novel functionality. He claimed that it wasn't
important and that such programs could
never be used to design anything. Then much to my amazement, John
Baumgardner said "'Glenn's point was exactly correct.' I nearly fell on the
floor. He told Dembski that they were using genetic algorithms at Los Alamos
to design lots of things. Two or three other people said the same thing.
[One of these, a man named Eide Trotter, I later learned is a well
connected Southern Baptist who goes to First Baptist in Dallas. He sat next
to me and the next table on Thursday morning when I had breakfast with Paul
Nelson, Mark Kalthoff and Tom Judson(?). After breakfast he said that he
liked much of what I had said. Gerald Eichoefer, of Greenville College
(don't know where that is) tried to come to Dembski's defense. He said that
genetic algorithms were terrible inefficient search methods. He was shot
down by a guy in the back who said that genetic algorithms vastly outperform
a random search. and indeed a genetic algorithm isn't a random search.
Later that day in the last session, Frank turned to me and said that
Eichoefer claims to be a prophet of God. I must admit he looked like one
which may explain why I took his name down off of his name tag.--grm]Hands
were upraised all over the room. Dembski had the deer in headlights look.
He turned it over to the next speaker.

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I will add one final thing. We use mutational algorithms to perform seismic inversion, which allows us to find more oil to fuel your hummer. We mutate an acoustic impedance (AI) trace, convert it to seismic, then compare it with the real seismic. If it matches better, we keep the AI trace. If it doesn't we drop it and mutate the AI and try again.

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So, JohnR7 while you may be ignorant of what evolutionary processes are used for and how they help your life, your statement that evolution is irrelevant to your life is simply wrong and displays an ignorance of what is being done by evolutionary processes to help your lifestyle .

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