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Evolution vs Intelligent Design
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As a note about the Texas Board of Education, they're currently entertaining a motion that McCarthy was actually an American hero, fighting communism.
Yes, they're going to say that the Red Scare was actually getting rid of communists. I believe that next, they're going to have us Texans praying to God in thanks for the Salem witch trials getting rid of the witches.
As a Texan, and an Austinite in particular I'm insulted by the Red Scare thing. I live three houses over from where John Henry Faulk lived, and he was a family friend.
Yes, they're going to say that the Red Scare was actually getting rid of communists. I believe that next, they're going to have us Texans praying to God in thanks for the Salem witch trials getting rid of the witches.
As a Texan, and an Austinite in particular I'm insulted by the Red Scare thing. I live three houses over from where John Henry Faulk lived, and he was a family friend.
Well in terms of historical origin, the leap is the other way around. "Intelligent design" was created as a supposedly* scientific theory by those whose religious dogma contradicted existing science.
* I do not know whether the original creators of 'intelligent design' honestly thought their theory was science, or were setting out to deceive people when saying it was.
You're making those of us who know what we're talking about look bad.
For one thing, evolution makes no comment whatsoever on the creation of the common ancestor. Not a word.
Secondly, even abiotic genesis doesn't say that an organism came from "nothing". It claims that atoms and molecules were fused together during the creation of the earth to form an organic protein.
tl;dr - I don't give a damn what you made in 8th grade biology, you're retarded.
Well basically the Big Bang Theory states that there was energy and an explosion and all this stuff comes about. How does something come from nothing if there was no Creator? I never said anything about a common ancestor, the only common ancestor in my book is Adam and Eve.
How were molecules made to fuse together? They just did it on their own?
First, those things that define evolution could easily be caused by a creator. Evolution states that, randomly these things, like heredity and reporduction, just occured. How would no intelligence organisms know how or what to do without some kind of design?
Second, how do you get a "load of energy from nothing? Can you ellaborate?
Third,it's not that i don't know the theory that well, it's the simple matter of lack of conviction. I dont like or agree with the theory so why would i discuss every aspect.
Fourth, holes. If evolution were real the fossil record would show the beginning of new structures in living things. For instance, there should be fish fins changing into amphibin legs and toes, and gills changing into lungs.
Even Darwin himself said: "To suppose that the eye... could have been formed by evolution, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree." If the originator can say that about his own theory, then how can that theory be valid?
All these evolution buffs do is state facts, how about interpretation? Thats how a real theory is formed, stating facts is just to back up your conclusions, how about doing that?
Classic mistake. The Big Bang wasn't big, and it didn't bang. It was not a large cosmic explosion. Again, you should research theories before criticizing them.
I don't think you know how rare fossilization is. It would be nearly impossible to get a perfect record showing the steps you just described. The fossil record is not complete, but it does show instances of speciation.
As for the Darwin quote: Darwin said that it would be a challenge to explain how the eye evolved. And indeed it was. But scientists now have a good idea as to how an eye could be formed through natural selection and random mutation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEKyqIJkuDQ
As for how something can come from nothing: Perhaps it is possible for something to come from nothing without the need for a creator. Just because you cannot wrap your head around it does not mean that it is impossible. Also if something can't come from nothing than what about your god? Why can he come from nothing? Can you demonstrate that he came from nothing? If you cannot then you are simply committing the logical fallacy of special pleading.
Oh and stop goalpost shifting. You went from evolution, to abiogenesis, to big bang theory. The theories have some relation, but evolution /=/ abiogenesis /=/ big bang. If you wish to criticize a separate scientific theory then make a separate thread.
Because they don't think about it. How does a rock know how to roll down a hill?
That's science; and you're showing your ignorance. You're saying "I don't like it, therefore it can't be right." This is, as described before, an appeal to incredulity which is not a valid formal argument.
The person who laid down the theory's personal convictions are IRRELEVANT. Einstein spent most of his life failing to disprove quantum mechanics, but we know quantum mechanics works because it makes predictions that classical physics does not.
Furthermore, we have LIVING specimens that show both of what you describe: Mudskippers use modified fins to walk on land. Axolotl are fish, rather than amphibians, since they have gills, but they also have legs. There are species that have both gills and lungs. We don't even need the fossil records for those things; and a fossil record isn't perfect anyway because fossils are never perfectly formed nor preserved. Do you think that 95% of Trilobites had no head just because 95% of the fossils have the head missing? But wait! Fossils don't have preserved skin! That must mean that the dinosaurs were all walking skeletons!
What are you even talking about? Facts are facts; they are the observations that have been made of life as we know it. The interpretation is what natural selection and the theory of evolution ARE. I don't even know what this criticism is supposed to mean except "I DON'T CARE ABOUT FACTS BECAUSE THEY DON'T SUPPORT MY RELIGION".
Nice quote mining. Let's look at it in context:
To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of Spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree. When it was first said that the sun stood still and the world turned round, the common sense of mankind declared the doctrine false; but the old saying of Vox populi, vox Dei, as every philosopher knows, cannot be trusted in science. Yet reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a perfect and complex eye to one very imperfect and simple, each grade being useful to its possessor, can be shown to exist; if further, the eye does vary ever so slightly, and the variations be inherited, which is certainly the case; and if any variation or modification in the organ be ever useful to an animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, can hardly be considered real. How a nerve comes to be sensitive to light, hardly concerns us more than how life itself first originated; but I may remark that several facts make me suspect that any sensitive nerve may be rendered sensitive to light, and likewise to those coarser vibrations of the air which produce sound.
He then goes on for three pages giving plausible intermediate steps in the evolution of the eye.
See also this article by Kenneth Miller: http://www.millerandlevine.com/km/evol/lgd/index.html
The planck units were set the way they were to make math easier. There are several options for the planck units. It was a way to normalize certain values to 1. It does not suggest that space or time are quantized, and that theory has not been proven.
You have it backward. Saying the Universe is fine-tuned so life can exist is like saying our legs are fine-tuned to fit in our pants. Life evolves to fit its surroundings; the surroundings don't evolve to fit life (unless life alters its environment, of course).
You don't seem to understand the purpose of forums. There isn't a single thread that I couldn't post your argument in and have it be just as (in)valid. You seem to be opposed to discussion in general.
This is actually irrelevant to the theory of evolution. Evolution as a scientific theory has the following assumptions: life exists, the universe exists. It doesn't matter how this happens. It has absolutely no influence on the accuracy of evolution to say that life came about through some scientific theory of abiogenesis, God created it, or the first life sprang fully formed from a rock. It also has no influence on the accuracy of evolution to talk about the origins of the Universe. It doesn't matter if the big bang theory is true, or if God created the Universe, or if it was all some Dutch kid.
However, to answer your question, vacuum fluctuations.
Following this logic, you must either like the Holocaust or deny it. There are things that are true, even if you don't like or agree with them.
We don't expect there to be no holes in the fossil record because fossilization isn't a perfect process. That being said, it's a good thing such things exist, in a sense. We actually don't have evidence of gills turning into lungs because that is not the predicted change. We do, however, have evidence of gills and lungs coexisting, and then gills being lost in favor of lungs. We don't even need to look at the fossil record for this one: lungfish currently exist. We have evidence of creatures getting lungs in favor of fins, and creatures getting fins in favor of lungs (dolphins, whales, and other mammals that live in water).
Even if we pretend that this quote is an accurate depiction of Darwin's views (and Luduan's post debunks that), this is irrelevant. Science does not rest on the authority of any person, but rather, on the validity of ideas. If Galileo were to later recant and claim that the Earth is the center of the Universe, that doesn't make it any more true.
That, sir, is not a quote by Darwin. That quote is, however, similar to statements made by Thomas Hooke.
It would depend on how you defined "Big." If you are looking at it relative to the size of the universe at the time, then it would be big after all, it would be the entire universe at the time, just not big relative to now. Also, it would be big in terms of mass.
And the Bang comes from God shouting "Bang" when it happened. :P
Well we don't actually know that something came from nothing. We don't know what, if anything, logically caused the Big Bang. (I use 'logically caused' as opposed to 'temporally caused', since the Big Bang may mark the beginning of time). There are many hypothesis that suggest Once we have a theory that unites general relativity and quantum mechanics, it may be able to answer the issue. Our existing laws of physics break down in the very earliest period of the Universe, the first 10^-40 or so seconds.
Also, how does a Creator come about?
Anything "could" have been caused by a creator. As such, hypothesising a creator has no predictive value.
No, evolution assumes them. Hypotheses of abiogenesis explain how reproduction and heredity first occured.
'Knowing what to do' just means responding to the environment in a way that helps one survive and reproduce. Those organisms whose response to the environment does NOT help them survive go extinct. For (a manufactured) example, a sulphur-eating bacteria that moves in the direction of increasing sulphur concentration will do better than one that moves in the direction of decreasing concentration.
This isn't explained. (As I said, we don't even know if it actually happened) But to leap to the conclusion that God exists just because there are things we don't understand is folly.
And we do find transitional forms. But of course, what happens when a transitional fossil is found to fill a gap? You just get two smaller gaps! There will always be gaps in the fossil record, because fossilisation is a fairly rare event. In normal conditions, bodies decompose; even bone is chemically broken down, and shell smashed to pieces.
And as mentioned, lungs didn't evolve from gills. If I remember right, in vertebrates they evolved from the digestive system. The first partially air 'breathing' vertebrates essentially swallowed air, which was then able to exchange gases with the bloodstream through the gut walls.
To continue to use this out of context quote is to demonstrate that you are either wilfully ignorant or deliberately deceitful. And it did seem absurd at the time the theory was proposed. So did Galileo's claim that a moving object would tend to keep moving, in contradiction to Aristotle's centuries-old philosophy. So did Copernicus' theory that the Earth moved around the Sun. So did Einstein's theory of relativity. So did, and still DOES, quantum mechanics. So did Alfred Wegner's hypothesis of continental drift. So did Marshall & Warren's claim that stomach ulcers were caused by bacteria. Most revolutionary scientific theories seem absurd to the audience when they are first proposed.
What do you wish me to interpret? Any fossils, or any present day organisms, that you can't account for the characteristics of?
To add to what has already been said, I will use my earlier analogy: Just because you don't have a picture (fossil) of every second(new allele/mutation/etc.) of your life does not mean that you did not grow(evolve) in between those pictures. And to expand on that:
1. We can clearly see that you look basically the same (same old DNA/bone structure) yet you clearly change and grow older (new mutation/etc.) during your life time(the earth's life time).
2. We would expect certain pictures (fossils) under certain conditions, like during a birthday or vacation (tar pits/other places ideal for fossil formation), but not during others, like when your sleeping or walking to school (conditions unfavorable for fossil formation) and so we are not surprised when we don't find those that we would not expect to find.
Not that I disagree with your overall argument, but Axolotl's aren't fish, they are amphibians. They're a kind of salamander that sexually matures without going through metamorphosis, staying in their tadpole like state for their entire life under normal circumstances. As far as I am aware, most amphibians have gills and lungs at some point during their lifespan. ie tadpoles have gills, adult frogs have lungs
I agree with OP. There are a few problems with intelligent design as a theory, one being that it's not falsifiable. Two being that we cannot use it to make predictions. The most dangerous thing about intelligent design, especially ID theory not directly motivated my faith, is that it's faith masquerading as science. If we reach a scientific snag (like how the hell did the mammalian eye develop) the only conclusion that we should draw is that our current way of looking at the problem (the theory) may be incomplete. We should not take a lack of understanding as data in itself, and at that point we should not use this negative "data" to come up with a new theory (a wizard did it.)
Now to get subjective, I've always felt that a person can be both faithful and rational. The two terms are not necessarily mutually exclusive in one person, although it might be tough to be actively faithful and rational at the same time. What I'm trying to say is that just because I reject ID as a valid theory on a scientific basis, I think it's still OK to believe it through faith. Faith by definition doesn't really care what science has to say.
Now to get subjective, I've always felt that a person can be both faithful and rational. The two terms are not necessarily mutually exclusive in one person, although it might be tough to be actively faithful and rational at the same time. What I'm trying to say is that just because I reject ID as a valid theory on a scientific basis, I think it's still OK to believe it through faith. Faith by definition doesn't really care what science has to say.
Oh, really? That's interesting, I wasn't aware. I just knew they breathe through gills their entire life and thus assumed that they were fish (I was under the impression that the metamorphosis to lung-breathing was a requisite criterion for amphibianness, and their alternate name is Mexican Walking Fish, but there you go). Regardless, the point still stands that it is evidence of a possible deviation from common ancestry.
It does, but it doesn't account for life evolving, just for the existence of amino acids in the Precambrian oceans. Self-assembly is only all too common, and exists everywhere, even in non-biological chemical processes.
I believe at some point there were experiments on them where they injected with a growth hormone and they did metamorphosis, although that did drastically shorten their lifespan. The land surrounding the water in which they are native to in Mexico was/is polluted and they eventually evolved to not go on land iirc. Common names are never a good way to classify a species though :P
But about the actual topic, Does ID allow the existence of evolution in its 'theory'? Also people keep arguing about the creating of life and how difficult and unlikely that would be without a creator, but the theory of evolution has nothing to do with that. We don't know how life began, thats why there is no scientific theory on it. ID seems to cover all of it and people use that to debunk evolution on a subject evolution doesn't even attempt to explain. But I could be wrong in this as I don't fully understand ID because it seems illogical.
Basically, no, ID discredits evolution as a whole and rejects the idea of speciation/macroevolution altogether. However, I can't be 100% sure of that because there seems to be some variation in what proponents of intelligent design believe. Some say "microevolution is possible and obvious as in different breeds of dogs, but macroevolution is impossible."
The forefront of intelligent design is/was people like Michael Behe, whose main arguement was that irreducible complexity in many species could not have arisen by natural means. Don't remember if it was clearly defined earlier in the thread, but irreducible complexity means that two systems or parts of systems are so interdependent that removing or reducing the function of one of them would cause the entire system or organism to be unable to function properly.
Other main people in the ID movement are those like Kent Hovind and Ken Ham, who if I remember right are pastors that preach on the subject of biology and the like.
Michael Behe was successfully argued against by Ken Miller several times, and his points were found to be invalid (the same Ken Miller in the Kitzmiller vs. Dover case). Irreducible complexity is a statement of the codependence of systems presently, not how they were in the past, and they may easily have had unrelated functions and then grew to work together. In fact, in I think 1918 irreducible complexity was predicted as a RESULT of evolution.
And Ken Ham and Kent Hovind are, in my opinion, Bible-toting crackpots calling themselves scientists. Ham has said that he believes a Great Flood as described in the Bible happened due to a layer of melting ice floating above the Earth's atmosphere. It's really nonsense. And Hovind is known for teaching kids that science is inferior to the Bible. A slide on one of his slideshows for the kids read something like, "The Bible said it, I believe it, that settles it." Talk about brainwashing.
To answer your question, Headache, ID says that evolution never occurred at least not on a large scale, and instead believes all species were created in their present form and have not changed drastically or speciated much, if at all, since. In my opinion (and the opinion of the judge in the Kitzmiller vs Dover trial), it's creationism with a false mustache pretending to be science.
EDIT: mixed up Kent Hovind and Ken Ham. Ham brainwashes kids and Hovind has the ice theory
The forefront of intelligent design is/was people like Michael Behe, whose main arguement was that irreducible complexity in many species could not have arisen by natural means. Don't remember if it was clearly defined earlier in the thread, but irreducible complexity means that two systems or parts of systems are so interdependent that removing or reducing the function of one of them would cause the entire system or organism to be unable to function properly.
Other main people in the ID movement are those like Kent Hovind and Ken Ham, who if I remember right are pastors that preach on the subject of biology and the like.
Michael Behe was successfully argued against by Ken Miller several times, and his points were found to be invalid (the same Ken Miller in the Kitzmiller vs. Dover case). Irreducible complexity is a statement of the codependence of systems presently, not how they were in the past, and they may easily have had unrelated functions and then grew to work together. In fact, in I think 1918 irreducible complexity was predicted as a RESULT of evolution.
And Ken Ham and Kent Hovind are, in my opinion, Bible-toting crackpots calling themselves scientists. Ham has said that he believes a Great Flood as described in the Bible happened due to a layer of melting ice floating above the Earth's atmosphere. It's really nonsense. And Hovind is known for teaching kids that science is inferior to the Bible. A slide on one of his slideshows for the kids read something like, "The Bible said it, I believe it, that settles it." Talk about brainwashing.
To answer your question, Headache, ID says that evolution never occurred at least not on a large scale, and instead believes all species were created in their present form and have not changed drastically or speciated much, if at all, since. In my opinion (and the opinion of the judge in the Kitzmiller vs Dover trial), it's creationism with a false mustache pretending to be science.
EDIT: mixed up Kent Hovind and Ken Ham. Ham brainwashes kids and Hovind has the ice theory
So do they even attempt to incorporate logic into their argument? How do they explain fossils and such? Just God attempting to confuse us? How do they expect to be taken serious if they believe in floating icebergs. It is hard to reason with someone if they won't take note of evidence and reasonability.
I think that's just it, Headache. I don't think they incorporate much of the fossil record and other evidence into their ideas. There is an attempt at logic; I saw a video where Kent Hovind stated that evolutionists commit some fallacy (don't remember which). However, he neglects logic when he commits it himself. Mostly I think they just deny the credibility of the fossil record with attacks on the system of radiometric dating. They make unproven assertions such as a Great Flood that wiped out dinosaurs. Actually, they do incorporate fossils- they say everything existed in the Garden of Eden and they all died when the flood hit. Then when told they have no proof, they cite freedom of speech and mistakenly equate it to freedom of credibility. They say that they cannot believe the existence of macroevolution and therefore say it is false, but when told that scientists are incredulous at such extravagant claims, they say that the scientists simply need more faith. It's utterly ridiculous in my opinion.
I don't know what's with the icebergs. I think they may have been referring to a ring of ice like those around Saturn but I have no idea. It's just science fiction with clever explanations that do not exist. Here's a link to the video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvprBLhJx_o
On a side note, I think I mixed up Ken Ham and Kent Hovind. Ham brainwashes children, while Hovind has the "ice layer" theory thing. Give me a break, their names are really similar. :P
But all in all, what we learn from Kent Hovind is that monkey-men are impossible while floating icebergs are an act of God. This is the guy who can't tell the difference between atoms, base pairs, DNA, genes, chromosomes, and genomes (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lw80oduQckM). He also claims to have taught high school biology for 15 years. I would hate his class, to say the least. This is in the textboks of every damn 8th grader in the US and he can't keep his facts straight. While I don't like the "theory" at all, I really hope there are more ID proponents with actual credibility like Michael Behe who studied biology and KNOWS WHAT THE HELL THEY ARE TALKING ABOUT.
I don't know what's with the icebergs. I think they may have been referring to a ring of ice like those around Saturn but I have no idea. It's just science fiction with clever explanations that do not exist. Here's a link to the video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvprBLhJx_o
On a side note, I think I mixed up Ken Ham and Kent Hovind. Ham brainwashes children, while Hovind has the "ice layer" theory thing. Give me a break, their names are really similar. :P
But all in all, what we learn from Kent Hovind is that monkey-men are impossible while floating icebergs are an act of God. This is the guy who can't tell the difference between atoms, base pairs, DNA, genes, chromosomes, and genomes (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lw80oduQckM). He also claims to have taught high school biology for 15 years. I would hate his class, to say the least. This is in the textboks of every damn 8th grader in the US and he can't keep his facts straight. While I don't like the "theory" at all, I really hope there are more ID proponents with actual credibility like Michael Behe who studied biology and KNOWS WHAT THE HELL THEY ARE TALKING ABOUT.
Slightly off-topic - an orbiting ice ring was been seriously proposed by someone. But an orbiting ice ring about 700 MILLION years ago! It was supposed to have blocked sunlight and thus caused the 'snowball Earth' (that we know did happen). I don't think any geologists currently consider the theory correct. And as for orbiting ice leading to a flood - well it would either melt on re-entry or slam into the Earth like a comet. The Bible doesn't speak of giant flaming snowballs falling from the sky.
Has it? I'm thinking we're too close to the sun for an ice ring in SPACE to exist for very long. And can a terrestrial planet form a ring system? 0_o
I believe the video I linked to indicates that flaming snowballs would probably cause a freaking apocalypse where we all burn up. You'd think if there was a layer of ice people would have noticed it. :P
I believe the video I linked to indicates that flaming snowballs would probably cause a freaking apocalypse where we all burn up. You'd think if there was a layer of ice people would have noticed it. :P