Why must intelligent design be stopped

[Cyclotron]

Originally posted by Patroklos
As I said ealier, I am not discussing science classes. My participation in this thead was inspired by gerneal attacks on ID by intself.

Understood.

Excellent, so now you have blind faith.

No. Please reread my post, re: caveman vs. present day educated person.

No matter what, you were told something you do not know by someone else and believe it. And you believe it becasue you have faith in the scientific method. I am not saying you have faith in radar, but in science (and its heart, the method),

I accept the scientific method as the only good way of discovering truth about the world around us. I have accepted it because I have used it in experiments, and I understand the logic that makes it superior to other ways of discovering truth objectively. I would not call that blind faith.

[Patroklos]

The blind faith comment was not describing you, but the example. I think you have just normal faith in the SM.

We have moved into semantics here I think. your...

and I understand the logic that makes it superior to other ways of discovering truth objectively.

Is my faith.

No one said faith had to be/not be unfounded.

[Cyclotron]

Mad X-post action!

Originally posted by Patroklos
Well of course since it is not "science," it is open to interpretation . However, as a general rule God is respondisble for not just the gaps, but for what we know as well. Science in this regard is simply understanding the world he made. Its like cracking a code. And it is not to assume that God is in that gap, so its okay to leave it there forever. Feel free to fill in all the gaps you want, but be definition there will always be gaps.

Yes, science will always have gaps, because science is never "done." We never get to the end point - or, if we do, we can never be certain that we've reached the end point. I would say that "cracking a code" may not be the best analogy, simply because when you've cracked it, you know you're done - you win. Science can't be like that - as you said, it will always have gaps, and the job of scientists is to continually fill those gaps, and have the scientific theory come closer and closer to how things actually are.

It is certainly possible to say that God is responsible for everything, and in that case of course he would be present in the gaps of things as well. I think when most people (that I know) use "God in the Gaps," they mean the idea that, because there is no current explanation for something, it must be that God is directly responsible. A scientist would argue that we simply haven't filled in the gap yet, even if he accepts that God is behind it all in the end.

[Patroklos]

I would say that "cracking a code" may not be the best analogy

You are right. I will change it to translating an encyclopedia from a dead unknown language.

A scientist would argue that we simply haven't filled in the gap yet, even if he accepts that God is behind it all in the end.

See this is how I think most people do see it (you just hit the nail on the head as far as describing me). Yeah there are the fundies, but despite Oerdin's rantings they are not even close to the majority of religions people, let alone people in general.

And honestly thats were I would like both sides to align, becasue we are so wonderfully out of each others way when that is the case.

[Ben Kenobi]

Vocab lesson for Ben:

Hypothesis: an explaination for an observed natural process.

Theory: an hypothesis backed up by numerous experiements and/or observations.

Scientific Fact: a theory that has no legetimate rival theories and has never been contradicted by observation or experiment.

Okay, you miss a few things here, a hypothesis also makes certain predictions about the natural world. What predictions does Darwinian evolution make that have been confirmed through observation, and not through inference.

A scientific fact is not a hypothesis. It is saying, that if you do so and so, something happens. It does not make predictions, but arises as a result of experimentation.

[Cyclotron]

This may be the first debate I've had on this forum that has come to an amiable close.

I was raised a Christian, and though I'm not sure that's how I describe myself now, I don't dismiss the idea of God - or something like God - out of hand. I have sympathy for the view that something else may be behind everything in a larger sense. This issue simply raises my ire because of the school issue, which I believe to be dangerously subversive of our children and scientific progress as a whole.

[GePap]

Belief in the efficacy of gaining knowledge based on empirical observation and experimentation is in no way the same as belief in the correctness of revealed truth, and the entire arguement about teaching ID revolves around the fact that individuals who believe in revealed truth are trying to undermine the teaching of empircally attained information by equating the two.

To base an arguement of what "most people think" is irrelevant in a discussion on education policy, wsince the point is not on what people already know, by what they need to learn and how it should be taught to them.

If there is ignorance amongst the general populace about the workings of science, that is not a problem with science, but with the ignorant public. Increasing this ignorance by equating reveled truth to empirically attained knowledge is pure idiocy.

[Ben Kenobi]

The first assertion is BS. The second assertion is also BS because you are assuming the existance of a spiritual world a priori just because the bible said so.

A rather erudite response to either critique. If we are all determined by natural selection, then what choices do people have? How can they exercise free will?

As for the assertion that there is a spiritual world, I have to laugh when you say that it is only because the bible asserts it that I believe in one.

I never read the bible until I was 19, and in university. Yet the bible opened things that had already been there, that I had already known about. That is what I mean by a spiritual world, in that there are things that do not have a material presence, yet can influence us.

Even before I had read one, I knew that there was something out there, I just couldn't be sure what it was. Call it whatever you want, it couldn't be expressed in a physical manner.

[GePap]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi


Okay, you miss a few things here, a hypothesis also makes certain predictions about the natural world. What predictions does Darwinian evolution make that have been confirmed through observation, and not through inference.

That if you take a population of organism and subject them to a series of environmental pressures then certain individuals will be more successful under these new pressures, breed more successfuly, and pass on the traits that made them more successful onward. I think Boris has already given a large number of links to experiements that have shown this.

A scientific fact is not a hypothesis. It is saying, that if you do so and so, something happens. It does not make predictions, but arises as a result of experimentation.

Again, why don't you actually look at the list of experiments and obsevartions Boris has provided?

[Patroklos]

This may be the first debate I've had on this forum that has come to an amiable close.

Tis a rarity, to be sure

[Cyclotron]

...and it looks like we finished just in time!

[Patroklos]

heh

[GePap]

I think people have to take into account a few pieces of knowledge that I believe did influence Darwin's thinking.

1. He knew a lot about animal husbandry. Its not hard to see just how radical a change can be brought about in the physiology of an animal, even in its behavior, through selective breeding. While Chihuahuas and Great Danes remain biologically the same species, that is simple the result of a few millenia of pressure.

2. It was around the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century that people began to realize that the world was no static, and probably much older than they thought. Its easy to believe in an unchanging creation when you assume that the plot of land you are sitting on has never radically changed. Then people start diggin shells out of the top of mountains, and you get the idea that at some point that mountain top was actually a sea bed. The notion of an unchanging earth begins to crumble quite rapidly.

So UI can see why Darwin began to think that perhaps the kind of radical changes selective breeding can bring about might be reproduced by nature given a longer time scale, and given that the world around animals is dynamic and changing.

[Dinner]

Unless you're an astronomer you can't say the Earth obits the sn! Unless you're an automotive engineer you can't say how a car engine works! Unless you're a historian you can't say Rome ever existed! Unless you're a geologist you can't tell one rock from another! Unless you're an biologist you can't possibly understand of the principles of evolutionary biology!

[Ben Kenobi]

I'm working through the thread, gepap. Apologies.

That if you take a population of organism and subject them to a series of environmental pressures then certain individuals will be more successful under these new pressures, breed more successfuly, and pass on the traits that made them more successful onward. I think Boris has already given a large number of links to experiements that have shown this.

Very good. Is this the extent of the claims that Darwin makes though? Does he just see people gradually improving over time to be better adapted to their conditions, though retaining their form of a 'person'?