Serious question related to ID...
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Pumk1nh3ad wrote:
Well, you must have not been to America then, have you.
I've been to the United States several times. One time I hired a car in Denver. When I asked how the four-way stop junctions worked (we don't have them here and I got a little confused the previous time) the answer was, in all seriousness, who ever has the biggest gun rack has the right of way.
Pumk1nh3ad wrote:
In America, it makes crime less common because a criminal thinks twice before breaking into a house because in america
I dunno. A lot of statistics I see says you have a higher than average crime rate. And because of all the guns, the crimes are much more violent and result in death (often of an innocent party) more frequently than elsewhere.
My: Blog | Photos "Man who stand on hill with mouth open will wait long time for roast duck to drop in." -- Confucious
Colin Angus Mackay wrote:
I dunno. A lot of statistics I see says you have a higher than average crime rate. And because of all the guns, the crimes are much more violent and result in death (often of an innocent party) more frequently than elsewhere.
This is due in large part to lawyers. In Arizona, it is legal to openly carry a weapon. Things get blurry in the use of deadly force. If I am awakened out of a sound sleep by an intruder in my home, and I shoot him dead; he'd better have been armed and threatening my life. If the lawyers get hold of it, I'll be going to jail for manslaughter.
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Stan Shannon wrote:
discovered what liberalism was really all about
It's funny, Stan, but the liberals you seem to have discovered are nothing at all like the liberals I know. Most liberals epitomize tolerance while many "Christians" practice intolerance. Just read some of the posts in this forum about "ragheads".
None of the liberals I know practice patience or tolerance. In fact, quite the opposite. Say the word 'Bush' to any one of them, and then stand back! They fly into a frenzy of rage, spouting off things so fast that they appear to be frothing at the mouth.
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I find it harder to believe that all of the required 'parts' somehow randomly came together to form life. Single celled life, maybe; but complex life like the human body? Why aren't the monkeys still becoming human today? Er, I know some humans that might pass for monkeys, but that would be DE-evolution, and that's off topic, I believe. :)
xlr8td wrote:
I find it harder to believe that all of the required 'parts' somehow randomly came together to form life. Single celled life, maybe; but complex life like the human body?
They didn't "randomly" come together. The process is known as natural selection. Some forms of single cell life mutated and became multi-cell. Multi cell life survived and therefore replicated. Eventually, over hundreds of millions of years, live became increasingly complex.
xlr8td wrote:
Why aren't the monkeys still becoming human today?
First, if they were you wouldn't notice. Monkeys have too long a period between generations to ever see that. Second, I think part of what you are asking is why monkeys still exist and why didn't they evolve. They don't need to, they can survive as they are. You might like to read Richard Dawkins' "The Blind Watchmaker" for a good understanding of how evolution works. One of the points that he makes is that it can be difficult for people to understand, because humans evolved to think about things over a period of a lifespan. The average human probably only knows about 5 generations. From their grandparents to their grandchildren. So thinking outside that box can be difficult.
My: Blog | Photos "Man who stand on hill with mouth open will wait long time for roast duck to drop in." -- Confucious
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Jack Squirrel wrote:
We are historically, a superstitious and paranoid race that loves to make things up when we don't know the answers. Not surprisingly, it's usually to some benefit of the people doing the "making up".
This could very very easily describe some scientific explanations.
Jack Squirrel wrote:
I'm with you, and side with the scientists, for they have a much better "batting average".
Really? Wow! My science teachers must have only showed me all of science's mistakes, and very little of their true findings. Actually, you're right. Most of religion is based on lie after lie, but science is far from infallible. Danny The stupidity of others amazes me!
bugDanny wrote:
religion is based on lie after lie, but science is far from infallible.
I don't think any true scientist would disagree with that. Newton came along and said the universe works this way. Later Einstein came along and said, actually it works this other way, and although at the slow speeds humans are used to Newton's equations are sufficient, if you go really really fast it all falls apart. Science has a built in mechanism for uncovering the truth. It can take some time, but it exists. A wonderful self-correcting mechanism.
My: Blog | Photos "Man who stand on hill with mouth open will wait long time for roast duck to drop in." -- Confucious
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I find it harder to believe that all of the required 'parts' somehow randomly came together to form life. Single celled life, maybe; but complex life like the human body? Why aren't the monkeys still becoming human today? Er, I know some humans that might pass for monkeys, but that would be DE-evolution, and that's off topic, I believe. :)
xlr8td wrote:
Why aren't the monkeys still becoming human today?
Largely because humans alread occupy that niche in the environment - there would be no biological advantage for them to compete with a species already so well adapted to it. "Patriotism is the first refuge of a patriot."
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Trollslayer wrote:
By the way, if you want proof of evolution look at how flu mutates and the successful mutations spread across the world every year!
True, the flu mutates and spreads so that we still don't have a cure for it and it continues to make people sick, but is that evolution? First of all, most of the time viruses and bacteria exchange certain qualities with other virus and bacteria, so that nothing new is really created, it just combines, and such. Second, even with these mutations, has the flu virus ever become something other than a virus? Has anyone ever observed it sprouting legs or gills? Evolution is about speciation, one species evolving to become a new species. That's not happening with mutating viruses. The mutation of viruses is like the dogs. There are many different breeds of dogs. The different breeds can even mix and spread their certain traits, but they're still dogs! They don't become horses doing this! Danny The stupidity of others amazes me!
bugDanny wrote:
has the flu virus ever become something other than a virus? Has anyone ever observed it sprouting legs or gills?
Ah, the joy of a well reasoned argument. I suggest that if that is the level of your logic then you do not have one.
bugDanny wrote:
The stupidity of others amazes me!
Tempting... ;P The tigress is here :-D
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Tim Craig wrote:
Well, no sect of christianity seems to be able to tollerate the other very well.
Certainly not unique to Christianity or, in fact, religion in general.
Tim Craig wrote:
The only thing that saved this country was that the nonestablishment clause guaranteed that none of them would get the upper hand and they bought into the truce. The fact that christianity, in general, got the nod and wink by government is now biting everyone in the ass. Just because at the time the founding fathers didn't forsee many differing religions here and put it into the constitution as you can pick the form of christianity you want to believe but everyone else can just go to hell and we'll help you start your journey doesn't mean that they made a mistake by the modern interpretation. It's just like your problem with affirmative action. When does it end?
Perhaps, but none of that results in the conclusion: "therefore secularism must be promoted by the state in order to control religion". Secularism is nothing more than another philosophical world view that should be competing openly with others, such as religion, with no help from government. Separation between church and state is as much about protecting religion from the state as protecting the state from religion. And if the government activiely promotes one philosophy, secularism, as a government sanctioned alternative to religion than it is every bit as much in violation of separation of church and state as if it were promoting a religion. The left worships the "nonestablishment clause" but completely ignores the "free exercise thereof" clause.
Tim Craig wrote:
Does christianity always get favored treatment in the US or does it have to share with other views?
No, not as a religion. But certainly it does for the historic role it has played in American culture. The historic importantance of chrisitianity and protestantism should certainly be taught in school and the display of symbols and quotations associated with it should certainly be allowed at the very least - even on government property. "Capitalism is the source of all true freedom."
Stan Shannon
Stan Shannon wrote:
Secularism is nothing more than another philosophical world view that should be competing openly with others, such as religion, with no help from government.
I guess I don't see government "promoting" secularism. That a much more secular society now exists and is exerting its rights via challenges to the old "it's chrisitianity so it's ok for government to promote that as long as it doesn't NAME a single branch" way of thinking. Christians see the fact that they're losing what they never should have had as the government persecuting them. wrote:
The left worships the "nonestablishment clause" but completely ignores the "free exercise thereof" clause.
The only left wingers who might expose this are as far to the left as Pat Robertson and his right wingers are to the right. There are no serious widespread movements to quell religion in this country. Just movements to get the government out of the religion business. No one is PREVENTED from praying in public schools. Only the school is prevented from mandating and leading group prayers. If an individual wants to sit there and quietly pray, no one is going to stop it. If he wants to start shouting it and distrupt the class, then he should get the same treatment as anyone shouting about anything and disrupting the class. And don't tell me that school children can just say no when the school tells them to pray. The governent has no business forcing anyone to declare their allegiance to any religion. And children who decide to opt out will be sitting ducks for their religious classmates to ridicule and harrass.
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I agree with you that ID is not science, but...
Tim Craig wrote:
However, more importantly, theories are never just accepted as holy and everyone puts big check mark beside it and moves on to greener pastures.
In my education I've found that they often teach science just like that (the big check mark, taken holy and such). In the real world it may not be like that, but the issue is what is being taught in the schools. For example, in elementary school we were taught that the electron orbits the nucleus of an atom. In high school, my teacher walked in singing "lie lie lie", to let us know that we were lied to (and an electron can really be found anywhere in a certain area of the atom, etc.) The same is often done when teaching evolution.
Tim Craig wrote:
The second thing different about science in my opinion is that scientists are comfortable saying what they don't know.
Not as true as you'd like to believe. There are often times when scientists are scoffed at by other scientists because they are questioning fast-held beliefs.
Tim Craig wrote:
They'll say what is observable and what is hypothesis.
This isn't really how the science books teach evolution. It's more like, "This is what happened." At least in my experience. Maybe instead of introducing intelligent design, whether or not anyone thinks ID is true, the school systems should reexamine how evolution is actually being taught in each school.
Tim Craig wrote:
While the ID people like to say, it's just a theory, they minimize what a real scientific theory embodies.
Perhaps they do (minimize it), but my whole point of this post is that (the reason they minimize it is) evolution, though a theory, is being taught too much like fact. Even the theory of gravity, in schools, is taught that we can observe this to happen, and it appears a force pulls objects down, etc., etc. But with evolution, they say these are the steps that it happened. Too often too much faith is put in evolution. And when you look at simply the mathematical impossibility of evolution, it takes just as much faith to believei n evolution as it does to believe in ID. Danny The stupidity of others amazes me!
bugDanny wrote:
Not as true as you'd like to believe. There are often times when scientists are scoffed at by other scientists because they are questioning fast-held beliefs.
Yes, new ideas are not just accepted because they're new. Science is a consensus, especially, in the softer sciences. If you have an experiment that shows relativity to be wrong and other scientists can reproduce it, relativity is wrong tomorrow. In paleontology, geology, archaeology, etc, it's more a matter of piecing information together in a way that is reasonable. It's much harder to come up with the smoking gun to break these ideas.
bugDanny wrote:
evolution, though a theory, is being taught too much like fact. Even the theory of gravity, in schools, is taught that we can observe this to happen, and it appears a force pulls objects down, etc., etc. But with evolution, they say these are the steps that it happened
I really get tired of repeating this here. Evolution like gravity is an observable fact. The THEORIES of Evolution and Gravity are the embodiment descriptions of how these natural processes work. Gravity is far ahead in that it's been thought about for a long time and had a very formal workup by Newton 400 years ago. Evolution is much younger having been published for something over 100 years. Evolution also suffers from some of the rigor of gravity in that you can't perform the same type of experiments and compare the results to the predictions of the theory. At any given instant there are considerably more assholes than mouths in the universe.
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Have you heard the saga of Kennewick man? Here we have a potentially contributing piece of evidence to the early European visitor but it's mire down in a quagmire of religious and ethnic politics.
Stan Shannon wrote:
On the other hand, I also do not want some over inspired secularists teaching psuedo-science in order to purposefully undermine the faith that parents might otherwise wish to impart to their children.
I really don't see this as a rampant problem. I see the opposite as the norm. The religious right in this country and others trying to force their beliefs on others through law and the educational system.
Tim Craig wrote:
The religious right in this country and others trying to force their beliefs on others through law and the educational system.
Those religious folks just hammer down on science. Maybe the scientist would be better off going to a free society. Somewhere where their 'findings' wouldn't be questioned. Possibly go to Iran or China. ed ~"Watch your thoughts; they become your words. Watch your words they become your actions. Watch your actions; they become your habits. Watch your habits; they become your character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny." -Frank Outlaw.
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Tim Craig wrote:
The religious right in this country and others trying to force their beliefs on others through law and the educational system.
Those religious folks just hammer down on science. Maybe the scientist would be better off going to a free society. Somewhere where their 'findings' wouldn't be questioned. Possibly go to Iran or China. ed ~"Watch your thoughts; they become your words. Watch your words they become your actions. Watch your actions; they become your habits. Watch your habits; they become your character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny." -Frank Outlaw.
Ed K wrote:
Those religious folks just hammer down on science. Maybe the scientist would be better off going to a free society. Somewhere where their 'findings' wouldn't be questioned. Possibly go to Iran or China.
Brilliant suggestion for someone with your intellectual shortcomings. However, maybe you and your hero, Dub, should leave the country and raise the collective IQ a few dozen points? At any given instant there are considerably more assholes than mouths in the universe.
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Stan Shannon
Stan Shannon wrote:
Secularism is nothing more than another philosophical world view that should be competing openly with others, such as religion, with no help from government.
I guess I don't see government "promoting" secularism. That a much more secular society now exists and is exerting its rights via challenges to the old "it's chrisitianity so it's ok for government to promote that as long as it doesn't NAME a single branch" way of thinking. Christians see the fact that they're losing what they never should have had as the government persecuting them. wrote:
The left worships the "nonestablishment clause" but completely ignores the "free exercise thereof" clause.
The only left wingers who might expose this are as far to the left as Pat Robertson and his right wingers are to the right. There are no serious widespread movements to quell religion in this country. Just movements to get the government out of the religion business. No one is PREVENTED from praying in public schools. Only the school is prevented from mandating and leading group prayers. If an individual wants to sit there and quietly pray, no one is going to stop it. If he wants to start shouting it and distrupt the class, then he should get the same treatment as anyone shouting about anything and disrupting the class. And don't tell me that school children can just say no when the school tells them to pray. The governent has no business forcing anyone to declare their allegiance to any religion. And children who decide to opt out will be sitting ducks for their religious classmates to ridicule and harrass.
Tim Craig wrote:
There are no serious widespread movements to quell religion in this country.
As with most philosophies, the secularists are as blind to their own impact upon society at large as religions have been in times past. Everyone sees their own philosphies as benign and enlightened and representative of the "natural order of things". Secualarism most certainly is trying to overtly quell religion, and in some cases quite harshly. And it is inevitable that it would, and will continue to, do so. Secualarists have usurped the power of the judiciary to control the national agenda and have every intention of entrenching and extending that power. Because of them, the entire concept of 'separation of church and state' is a laughable artifact of history - they ARE the state church. You have to look no further than the post I made below about the recent decision of the court in california that basically said that parents have no rights to dictate how the school exposes their children to sexual content. If that isn't an overt and unequivocal attack on people's religious values, their free exercise of religion, by the secular state, what is? Yet did that get anywhere near the kind of attention that the Kansas school board's ID decision? Of course not - because it was seen by secularist as the promotion of their principles and values and hence less threatening. I do not believe that there should be official sponsered prayer in school either for all the obvious reasons, but I also do not believe that the schools belong to the courts, they belong to the parents who's children attend them, to the people not the judges. The courts want to control them specifically so they can impose their secularist agenda and to purposefully inhibit any overt expression or confirmation of religious values to children. I feel strongly that the political institutions of this country have got to be ripped out of the hands of the scularist fundamentalist and returned to the people. If that means that occasionally some school is going to teach ID or say a prayer then so be it. That is a hell of a lot better than having our social values defined and imposed upon us from 'on high'. I trust my neighbors a hell of a lot more than I trust the courts. "Patriotism is the first refuge of a patriot."
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Marc Clifton wrote:
have yet to see a virus mutate into a sentient being
Have you been watching for millions of years?
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bugDanny wrote:
Not as true as you'd like to believe. There are often times when scientists are scoffed at by other scientists because they are questioning fast-held beliefs.
Yes, new ideas are not just accepted because they're new. Science is a consensus, especially, in the softer sciences. If you have an experiment that shows relativity to be wrong and other scientists can reproduce it, relativity is wrong tomorrow. In paleontology, geology, archaeology, etc, it's more a matter of piecing information together in a way that is reasonable. It's much harder to come up with the smoking gun to break these ideas.
bugDanny wrote:
evolution, though a theory, is being taught too much like fact. Even the theory of gravity, in schools, is taught that we can observe this to happen, and it appears a force pulls objects down, etc., etc. But with evolution, they say these are the steps that it happened
I really get tired of repeating this here. Evolution like gravity is an observable fact. The THEORIES of Evolution and Gravity are the embodiment descriptions of how these natural processes work. Gravity is far ahead in that it's been thought about for a long time and had a very formal workup by Newton 400 years ago. Evolution is much younger having been published for something over 100 years. Evolution also suffers from some of the rigor of gravity in that you can't perform the same type of experiments and compare the results to the predictions of the theory. At any given instant there are considerably more assholes than mouths in the universe.
Tim Craig wrote:
Evolution like gravity is an observable fact.
No, it's not. The one piece of evolution that people claim to have observed is viruses or bacteria mutating into other viruses, or the changing color of moths. But with all these 'observations' no one has yet been able to see one form of life evolve to become a different species. And that's what the THEORY of evolution is about, speciation.
Tim Craig wrote:
I really get tired of repeating this here.
And I really get tired of being misquoted. In your quotation of me I didn't say evolution was not fact, though in my opinion it is, I said that it is being taught too much like fact in our schools. Danny The stupidity of others amazes me!
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bugDanny wrote:
has the flu virus ever become something other than a virus? Has anyone ever observed it sprouting legs or gills?
Ah, the joy of a well reasoned argument. I suggest that if that is the level of your logic then you do not have one.
bugDanny wrote:
The stupidity of others amazes me!
Tempting... ;P The tigress is here :-D
Trollslayer wrote:
I suggest that if that is the level of your logic then you do not have one.
Wha- :wtf: You said, this is how you can observe evolution, and I said, that's not a true representation of evolution because there is no new species involving. Where's the failed logic there? Evolution is all about speciation. If you don't know that, than you haven't done enough research in evolution. Looks to me like you couldn't come up with an intelligent reply, so you chose to insult me, like many, many people on this forum. Danny The stupidity of others amazes me!
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Dan Bennett wrote:
Have you been watching for millions of years?
No. Have you? Has any scientist for that matter? Danny The stupidity of others amazes me!
No. But I don't expect to observe a virus mutating into a sentiant being in front of my eyes. Neither would any scientist with any understanding of evolution. I was simply pointing out that the posting I was replying to was rather silly.
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Trollslayer wrote:
I suggest that if that is the level of your logic then you do not have one.
Wha- :wtf: You said, this is how you can observe evolution, and I said, that's not a true representation of evolution because there is no new species involving. Where's the failed logic there? Evolution is all about speciation. If you don't know that, than you haven't done enough research in evolution. Looks to me like you couldn't come up with an intelligent reply, so you chose to insult me, like many, many people on this forum. Danny The stupidity of others amazes me!
bugDanny wrote:
that's not a true representation of evolution because there is no new species involving
Incorrect. Read up on micro and macro evolution.
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bugDanny wrote:
that's not a true representation of evolution because there is no new species involving
Incorrect. Read up on micro and macro evolution.
Evolution, in the dictionary, under the "Biology" definition, is: "Change in the genetic composition of a population during successive generations, as a result of natural selection acting on genetic variation among individuals, and resulting in the development of new species." To call the genetic change of bacteria to a new resistant strain of bacteria 'mircoevolution' is to confuse the issue, especially since this is not the type of evolution taught in schools. To use 'microevolution' to try to provide proof of 'macroevolution' is also flawed. Danny The stupidity of others amazes me!
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Evolution, in the dictionary, under the "Biology" definition, is: "Change in the genetic composition of a population during successive generations, as a result of natural selection acting on genetic variation among individuals, and resulting in the development of new species." To call the genetic change of bacteria to a new resistant strain of bacteria 'mircoevolution' is to confuse the issue, especially since this is not the type of evolution taught in schools. To use 'microevolution' to try to provide proof of 'macroevolution' is also flawed. Danny The stupidity of others amazes me!
bugDanny wrote:
To call the genetic change of bacteria to a new resistant strain of bacteria 'mircoevolution' is to confuse the issue
Maybe it confuses you but it is an example of evolution - whether you like it or not. Changes do not have to result in speciation to be evolution. Some more information here: http://mikethemadbiologist.blogspot.com/2005/04/antibiotics-creationism-and-evolution.html[^] If speciation is of particular interest to you then it is easy enough to find information, e.g. http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html[^] What I find strange about ID supporters is how much effort they put into proving the theory of evolution wrong. Proving evolution wrong does not prove ID is right. Wouldn't providing evidence of ID would be a better use of their time?
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bugDanny wrote:
To call the genetic change of bacteria to a new resistant strain of bacteria 'mircoevolution' is to confuse the issue
Maybe it confuses you but it is an example of evolution - whether you like it or not. Changes do not have to result in speciation to be evolution. Some more information here: http://mikethemadbiologist.blogspot.com/2005/04/antibiotics-creationism-and-evolution.html[^] If speciation is of particular interest to you then it is easy enough to find information, e.g. http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html[^] What I find strange about ID supporters is how much effort they put into proving the theory of evolution wrong. Proving evolution wrong does not prove ID is right. Wouldn't providing evidence of ID would be a better use of their time?
Dan Bennett wrote:
Maybe it confuses you but it is an example of evolution - whether you like it or not. Changes do not have to result in speciation to be evolution.
Not an example of evolution by the dictionary definition and the type of evolution as taught in schools (macroevolution, as some like to call it). One thing I've noticed in your speciation article is that life always came from other life, not from non-life. I also noted that too often a hybrid produced infertile plants and such. However, I don't have the biology background to directly refute all claims in that article, especially since it did not go into much depth.
Dan Bennett wrote:
What I find strange about ID supporters is how much effort they put into proving the theory of evolution wrong.
As far as I remember, I was not supporting that ID should be taught in schools as science, but objecting to how evolution is taught. And people claim that if ID was right, God left no evidence, but there is evidence of God not only in nature but in the Bible, miracles performed by Jesus, etc. But I don't have the energy today to get into that debate.
Dan Bennett wrote:
Wouldn't providing evidence of ID would be a better use of their time?
And, as you may know of proofs from geometry or such high school classes, If there are only two or three options, and all but one of the options are disproved, the remaining option is accepted as true. It's called a proof by process of elimination. So there is some sense to disproving evolution while backing up ID. Danny The stupidity of others amazes me!
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Ed K wrote:
Those religious folks just hammer down on science. Maybe the scientist would be better off going to a free society. Somewhere where their 'findings' wouldn't be questioned. Possibly go to Iran or China.
Brilliant suggestion for someone with your intellectual shortcomings. However, maybe you and your hero, Dub, should leave the country and raise the collective IQ a few dozen points? At any given instant there are considerably more assholes than mouths in the universe.
Tim Craig wrote:
your intellectual shortcomings
You can fall in line with the rest of the liberals here when they have no arguments. Just fall in and call names and insult.
Tim Craig wrote:
raise the collective IQ a few dozen points
If you want to measure them. GW's IQ is higher than Kerry's. So following that... Now if you want to climb back into the argument and maybe you didn't understand my remark. So if you want to try again....bring it on! ed ~"Watch your thoughts; they become your words. Watch your words they become your actions. Watch your actions; they become your habits. Watch your habits; they become your character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny." -Frank Outlaw.