Dr. Robert T. Bakker's thoughts on ID and Atheism in schools.

Canadian Steve is jewish. I made the mistake of calling him Xian once. I think the reason jewish fundies have less of a presence is that there are simply less jews in general, and are perhaps a bit less vocal than Xians and Muslims.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

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Canadian Steve is jewish.

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Well, he's the first I've come accross.

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I made the mistake of calling him Xian once. I think the reason jewish fundies have less of a presence is that there are simply less jews in general, and are perhaps a bit less vocal than Xians and Muslims.

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I agree.I think it is also the case that culturally, Jews place a very high importance upon secular education, admire and appreciate academia, etc., so maybe there are proportionately fewer ignorant fundie Jews than ignorant fundie Christians?Also, Judaism is the opposite of a religion that actively seeks converts.

I got to know Canadian Steve on a political message board (I invited him and some others to come to EvC to post on political topics and he's the only one who was interested), and he's no fundy. He says he used to be a strong liberal, as many Jews are, but has shifted more to the conservative side in the last few years. Nevertheless he still has many liberal views. He started out pro-Palestinian and against Israel and the thread he started here on the conflicts within Islam is the fruit of much study he did that shifted his perspective on the Middle Eastern situation. Religion-wise he is Reform, which is far from fundy, and he is an evolutionist, not a creationist. I also have an Orthodox Jewish correspondent who is much more of a conservative AND a fundy than CS is, although he doesn't share my literalist view of Genesis.

I can't say percentages might favor this in general, but I think that is an untrue stereotype. There are very very ignorant Jews just as great as Xians. Remember most settlers actually believe the land is theirs because God actually gave it to them. There are also very large mystical movements inconsistent with secular "knowledge". Kabbalah is a good starting example. I think this is the key. Judaism is "introverted", compared to the other two Abrahamic religions which are "extroverted".

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

Wait a second I though I saw CS supporting creo. Are you sure about that?In any case, I think that to my and schraf's perspective he'd likely be a "fundie". He certainly argues a very conservative line.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

Here's one thing he said on that subject:
Should Administrators Be Neutral? Message 14Well, he's only argued on Islam here, and he's on the conservative side on that issue NOW, and I suppose over all he'd consider himself a Neo-Con at this point (I could be wrong), but from my perspective and that of others in our conservative internet group he's still quite liberal - well, SOMEWHAT liberal anyway.This message has been edited by Faith, 08-22-2005 10:53 AM

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Well, he's only argued on Islam here, and he's on the conservative side on that issue NOW, and I suppose over all he'd consider himself a Neo-Con at this point (I could be wrong), but from my perspective and that of others in our conservative internet group he's still quite liberal - well, SOMEWHAT liberal anyway.

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Damn, Faith, if your conservative group thinks Canadian Steve is liberal/somewhat liberal that makes the rest of you sound rather Fascist by comparison.

Actually, it's the Left that's got the Fascist qualities these days, not conservatives.I agree with CS that today's conservatives are more like yesterday's liberals, while today's liberals have gone so far Left they don't resemble the liberals of Kennedy and Humphrey and that bunch at all. My father was THAT kind of liberal. Today he'd be a conservative like me.This message has been edited by Faith, 08-22-2005 11:23 AM

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Actually, it's the Left that's got the Fascist qualities these days, not conservatives.

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How can a party not in power be Fascist, Faith?Um, I believe it was the conservatives, not the liberals, who designed and proposed the civil rights-gutting Patriot Act, was it not?And it is the conservatives who are wanting to legislate greater government control over people's private lives rather than the liberals, correct?And it is the conservatives who are advocating deficit spending and Big Government while it's the liberals who are calling for (and actually acheived with Clinton) a balanced budget and shrinking the government.

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I agree with CS that today's conservatives are more like yesterday's liberals, while today's liberals have gone so far Left they don't resemble the liberals of Kennedy and Humphrey and that bunch at all. My father was THAT kind of liberal. Today he'd be a conservative like me.

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No, actually the liberals today are like much the conservatives of yesterday like Goldwater and Nixon.

Huh? Fascism is an ideology. It can be in or out of power. Hitler and Mussolini were Fascists both in and out of power.The rest I'll leave to people more up on the political issues than I am, except to say that Fascism is an ideology like Communism, that is about engineering society, and it is the Left that is out to do that, not conservatives, who basically want us all left alone. And I'm not particularly a Bush fan by the way, though he's certainly better than the alternatives of the moment. Besides, we're WAY off topic! This message has been edited by Faith, 08-22-2005 12:33 PM

And that's more than enough. Point proven.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

Behe accepts common descent but argues for different mechanisms. Other IDers in the camp you mention hold to different positions, across the board in fact. I am unaware that they agree with evolutionist's characterization of the fossil evidence, and have heard IDers propose multiple intrusions of design or creation to account for the development of life, which is indeed more consistent with the fossil record.My own position is to actually first try to see what the data says instead of first having a theory to try to fit the data into, as evolutionists did and do, which is why they cannot offer plausible well-defined definitions of claims like the meaning of "rare" in talking about fossilization. I tried in vain to get an evo here to define "rare" but they refused.So ToE does not match up with the fossil record. That, first of all, should be obvious to any objective observer, which is why some have proposed Punctuated Equilibrium. Evos are often in the contradictory position of claiming the fossil record has always fully substantiated evolutionary models, and then PE as a model to talk about how it could have occurred, despite the fact PE is a newer model. It really doesn't matter to the evo, imo, since the fact ToE is true is a matter of faith regardless of what the facts say in the fossil record.I have tried to get into my own position to explain the data we see, and that position is not necessarily mutually exclusive with common descent, although I don't think universal common descent is really correct, but Ned particularly has threatened to ban if I try to discuss it.So I really cannot answer you. To do so would involve some physics concepts that involve a proposed ID mechanism as well as a non-static past, sort of a bleedover multi-verse concept where we not only have more than one historical time-line still possible, but we see some entangled together to a degree.I also don't think evos are properly considering the claim of convergent evolution in their models. Evos basically only say something is convergent evolution if they can rule out common ancestry. They, of course, do not realize this is evidence as well of creation and design.But more to the point here, they fail to see more and more, convergent evolution produces near exact similarity, not just in surface features, but in things like ear bones. The implication of this is that when we find some scant similarity, such as with teeth or the ear (as in whale evolutionary models), and claim a mutual ancestor for these traits, that is a completely unfounded claim since the exact same traits could arise via convergent evolution and even convergent DNA mutation patterns with or without natural selection. It could be traits arise and remain when natural selection is neutral and no selective advantage is conferred.More and more, when you break down evo analysis of the data, you see a simple-mindedness, probably the result of their faith-based approach in their ideology/theory.So imo, the first order of business is to review the assumptions going into the data, and look at this stuff, not as needing to fit into a current theory, but try to see it as it is and go from there.I don't see evolutionists doing that, and some even go as far as to claim that doing that would be wrong, that we must cling to one paradigm until another comes along, which equates with distorting the evidence and data to make it fit into one paradigm until another comes along.The paradigm or ideology is thus key and paramount, and not the facts, and this is exactly why I consider evolutionism a faith-based ideology.This message has been edited by randman, 08-22-2005 12:40 PM

There are ID theorists who knock evo fossil record interpretations. However, I have yet to see any ID model which does not use essentially the same record. Of course there is a different understanding for what is happening (a designer from outside changing something, instead of internal natural change) but the record is of simple life moving toward greater "complexity" (not exactly the complexity meant by ID), and no absolutely unique life suddenly appearing from nothing. That is of course except the very first life, and perhaps the cambrian explosion. This characterization may be true for some currently working in evolutionary theory, but I think it is errant when referring to those who built the theory, as well a characterization of most or all people that believe evo is the best scientific theory we currently have.I don't know what your "rare" issue is. What definition does a person need besides the regular definition of that word? Do you mean some sort of quantification? That's an unfair characterization which you do not need to use to make your point. It would be valid enough to point out that the record did not support original ideas regarding mechanisms for change. PE is a useful and worthy description of plausible mechanisms. Why not just point out that there could also be others?You would of course have to work out a model of other mechanisms. PE is a bit easier in that it does not require extraneous mechanisms from what we see already. Niches are stable, and life changes when environment changes. I have no knowledge of this conflict. It seems odd that he'd pan your ability to start a thread on this topic... even in the Coffee House? I agree that this could be a logical possibility. I am uncertain of the probability, and when we get to where any particular entity is found in a fossil record and what bounds that entity, the probabilities might suggest (though admittedly cannot prove) common ancestory. I am not claiming this is the case with every entity, but indicating what you would have to deal with. I have no problem with this. My main concern would be to have stringent guidelines for working out potential models. I think Occam's razor is useful and necessary. I think this is unfair for many people, and is slightly distorting what people mean when they want to "stick with" the current paradigm. In most cases it seems people are suggesting that science acknowledge the best current model, and work proceed within that model until problems arise which forces a revision, or independent work provides a more coherent model before problems arise. I see no problem with that.There are certainly evos who treat the theory and (worse than that) specific mechanical models as if they are reality, and move to defend the models rather than accept questions. They are problem individuals, or goups of individuals, but not evos as a whole.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

That's incorrect. First off, we see abrupt appearances of very complex life forms, not simplicity to complexity.Moreover, Behe and others have shown that so-called "simple" life forms are actually very, very complex.I guess you could argue there was an approximation of this, maybe, leading up to the Cambrian explosion. I certainly don't see today's life forms as more complex than life at that time. The whole premise of simple to complex is ill-defined, based on simplistic assertions, and inconsistent with life as we know it. We haven't, for example, seen anymore complexity for millions and millions of years. Those are astonishing exceptions which I would argue make the evo argument of life not appearing from nothing a moot point. Quite simply, unless quantified and defined, the term is meaningless. Something can be rare and quite common. Fossilization is supposedly rare, but some fossils are quite "common" in certain marine deposits. A diamond is a rare gem, but it's quite common to see it on a married American woman's hand!Evos have never shown that fossilization is so rare that we should not expect to see most, if not nearly all, the transitional forms in evolutionary models. Because I have never seen an evolutionist admit in a debate that the fossil record did not support the original evo contentions of gradualistic evolution, and yet some advocate PE as a solution to the problem they say never existed. I see a problem. An answer that we don't know is better than insisting on a wrong answer because you think the alternatives are more wrong. That's what people do in politics.In fact, I think the belief and need that we must have a paradigm is highly unscientific and is a real problem tainting the process. It seems there is a need to have an explanation and a fear to admit to weakenesses in the explanation because they feel the need to have a paradigm, an explanation.

You are making an error. I was suggesting a relative big picture thing, and not microscale component estimates.Whether cellular structure and basic arrangement began in the record as complex, and at that level has remained the same complexity up till now, is not the issue.The arrangement and organization of those structures has most certainly grown more varied and/or complex. This is not disputed even by ID theorists (at least none that I have read). The Cambrian explosion did not include birds, many forms of colored flowers, insects, and both large reptiles and large mammals.The Cambrian explosion was a growth in abundance and diversity of organisms within the same environment as life up till that time had existed. They were novel, but within an environment. Fossil evidence shows movement to new environments over time with growth in abundance and diversity in each new environment.We see symbiosis, and remnants of symbiosis, which is indicative of life merging within environments (creating their own subenvironments).We see, life moving from marine, to land, to air, gaining different forms of mobility and physicall traits from fish, to reptile, to bird and mammal, etc etc.One can argue one did not spring from the other naturally, but they certainly did appear in order. They aren't astonishing at all. The first fully replicating organism would be the first unique life. In reality it didn't come from nothing but it is highly unlikely we could ever find fossil evidence of the chemical precursors.In the case of the Cambrian explosion we have a growth in diversity which is inherently new and unique forms. Again, according to the ToE they don't actually spring from nothing, but in the fossil record that is how it could appear given the inability of precursors to fossilize or perhaps the wide array of life to change between generations (or even within generations) at that time. We cannot be certain how much of that life was like species today which have drastically different forms between generations and withing their own life cycle. Are you kidding me? Can't you find that out for yourself? Go to an old cemetary before they used concrete and start digging up graves. Find out how many bodies are on the way to fossilization. Man this isn't so much evo/bio theory as it is chemistry and geochemisty.Replacing organic material with minerals has to be body and environment specific."Rare" comes in because as hard as that is get that to happen, it would be harder to have entities existing within a very small time frame to fall into those exact same conditions, and harder still to have exactly the right individuals changing within the changing environment to fall into those same conditions.If you have an entity with is likely to fossilize and in an environment conducive to that process, then you are likely to find a lot of them there, especially if many lived and dies over a long period of time. You must be kidding. Start reading Gould and Eldridge. They are the evos that came up with PE. They say exactly what you just said no evo has admitted. That was their life's work.If you mean to say that the fossil record had always been in conflict, then you are simply wrong. It had not been in conflict until (ironically enough) evos studying the record found fossil based conflicts with gradual mechanisms. Until that time, no one was aware of the conflicts and so gradualism was acceptable. Anyone saying that they know evo theory actually happened, particularly with all the currently ascribed mechanisms, would be way off. The actual answer I have ever been taught in science is that we don't actually know what happened, but evo theory is the best working model we have to date.I am unsure where you have seen a different position stated, but I will back you up that they would be wrong.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)