[quote]futuredave wrote:
God made everything in six days six thousand years ago! Geez. Why do people have to complicate everything?
As my Sunday School teacher told me, “Dinosaur bones were put there by the Devil to confuse us.”[/quote]
Actually, the Bible mentions dinosaurs! Your Sunday school teacher was a bit off. Okay, quite a bit off!
[quote]wufwugy wrote:
because now i can use reality to judge the merits of, well, reality instead of using ideology to judge reality.[/quote]
Or…at least the theory of reality.
You can no more “prove” your theory of evolution than I can “prove” my own beliefs. See the problem?
[quote]ZEB wrote:
slimjim wrote:
ZEB wrote:
Evolution is a joke (way to many holes in the theory)…Not sure what they are trying to do with intelligent design, but I don’t like what I have heard…
Hey Zeb, I’d like to hear about the holes in the evolution theory.
No, actually you would like me to post what I feel are weak points regarding eveolution so that you can attempt to poke holes in them.
I would then refute your points one by one. After that you would attempt to point out where I’m wrong. Then I would correct you, and naturally you would disagree. Bla bla bla…
Don’t have the time or desire for Internet debates today. It’s Sunday man…family time. :)[/quote]
Damn, how’d you get all that out’ve a one-line post…but you’re right, it is Sunday and I’ve got basketball to play.
[quote]ZEB wrote:
You can no more “prove” your theory of evolution than I can “prove” my own beliefs. See the problem?
[/quote]
Sure I can. I can point to fossil records, scientific studies on visible evolution (finches in the galapagos islands for example), and research on DNA. I can actually point to physical evidence whereas a creationist can’t.
[quote]futuredave wrote:
God made everything in six days six thousand years ago! Geez. Why do people have to complicate everything?
[/quote]
That is what I believe. I also believe the school needs to quit perpetuating what I believe to be a lie. Don’t discuss it at all or throw in both sides of it. But don’t make it all one-sided “this is how it is and that’s that!” That’s foolish.
[quote]
As my Sunday School teacher told me, “Dinosaur bones were put there by the Devil to confuse us.”[/quote]
eyes bugging LOL! Wow. The devil did it, huh? I was not aware he could create things…
[quote]ZEB wrote:
futuredave wrote:
God made everything in six days six thousand years ago! Geez. Why do people have to complicate everything?
As my Sunday School teacher told me, “Dinosaur bones were put there by the Devil to confuse us.”
Actually, the Bible mentions dinosaurs! Your Sunday school teacher was a bit off. Okay, quite a bit off![/quote]
K, tell me where because I will go look it up. It references large reptiles, right? (Should this be moved to some religion forum or PM?)
I live in Utah.
I pay a lot to send my kids to non-public schools.
I support Utah public schools with some of the highest tax rates in the country and the state controlled booze industry.
So, when I drink Scotch…I am doing it for the children of Utah.
Thank you. Just another one of the public services I am willing to do for my neighbors.
[quote]ZEB wrote:
You can no more “prove” your theory of evolution than I can “prove” my own beliefs. See the problem?
[/quote]
you can say that, but you’re wrong. evolution is observable. that means it’s provable. deity and spirituality are not observable, therefore not provable.
yet, that doesn’t keep religionists from molding observation into what it’s not and using that to explain something they or their predecessors made up.
You guys, take it easy on ZEB, he ain’t ever gonna open his eyes. Some people are just like that.
Anyway, when it comes to separation of church and state, I’m never too vocal – because there are some traditional religious things found in our government rituals (swearing in, the “Under God”, etc.) which I think are pretty damn cool. As a die-very-hard atheist however, I would have to draw the line at teaching a work of fiction like the entire idea of ID in a public school like it is reality. That is retarded.
The argument that evolution holds some monopoly over science and that’s unfair: retarded. Proponents of ID complain because they want their time to get their ideas out to our young… well, what’s that church thing I hear so much about? Y’all religious folks have every dang Sunday to brainwash your kids… what’s the problem? Is it because you think that people like me don’t take you seriously? Well… how could I? You’re goofy.
ID “theory” is not science in any way. It’s like teaching knitting in gym class. Not only is knitting not a sport, the fact that you sit around all sedentary, knitting a sweater, is counterproductive to developing physical health and fitness… which is the whole point of gym class in the first place.
Science is about asking questions, and pursuing the answers to those questions using a technique called the “Scientific Method”. When you say “some supernatural being created everything with his magical powers”, that’s not even asking a question. You cannot even find data to support your hypothesis in any way which involves observable reality.
I think this is the major stumbling block for a lot of ID people… they don’t understand what it means to be scientific in the first place. What they do is find complexity in nature, and then surmise that there was an intellect behind its emergence, because complexity and patterns are somehow “unnatural” to them.
A small leap forward in their thinking, and they will realize their error: complexity and pattern-forming is very natural, and can be found almost everywhere in the universe. It’s like gravity… that’s just the way things are. Fractal images forming from chaos, spiral galaxies froming from a primary big bang, life forming and organizing itself over billions of years… this is not the supernatural magical wand waving of some mighty astral being, it is the natural way of the universe.
Or maybe the problem here is that the ID people are conceited. Maybe the thought that we are little more than bigger-brained monkeys is distasteful to them. Sorry, ID folks… reality is a bitch sometimes.
http://www.genome.gov/15515096
There it is, the strands of DNA which make us up is 99% identical to the chimpanzee. And when we seperate the DNA into functional parts versus the structural parts of the two DNA sequences, we are still 96% the same as the chimpanzee. NINETY SIX PERCENT THE SAME.
You know what that means? If God made us in his image, God is 96% monkey.
Ape!
[quote]lothario1132 wrote:
You know what that means? If God made us in his image, God is 96% monkey.[/quote]
Exactly. Supernatural theistic explanations are not scientific because you cannot make reliable observations to support them. The essence of science is reproduction of results and supernatural explanations cannot do this.
Now, if you want to say that God is the root cause of the processes that shape our observable world (speciation by evolution for example), that’s fine by me.
[quote]lothario1132 wrote:
You guys, take it easy on ZEB, he ain’t ever gonna open his eyes. Some people are just like that.
Anyway, when it comes to separation of church and state, I’m never too vocal – because there are some traditional religious things found in our government rituals (swearing in, the “Under God”, etc.) which I think are pretty damn cool. As a die-very-hard atheist however, I would have to draw the line at teaching a work of fiction like the entire idea of ID in a public school like it is reality. That is retarded.
The argument that evolution holds some monopoly over science and that’s unfair: retarded. Proponents of ID complain because they want their time to get their ideas out to our young… well, what’s that church thing I hear so much about? Y’all religious folks have every dang Sunday to brainwash your kids… what’s the problem? Is it because you think that people like me don’t take you seriously? Well… how could I? You’re goofy.
ID “theory” is not science in any way. It’s like teaching knitting in gym class. Not only is knitting not a sport, the fact that you sit around all sedentary, knitting a sweater, is counterproductive to developing physical health and fitness… which is the whole point of gym class in the first place.
Science is about asking questions, and pursuing the answers to those questions using a technique called the “Scientific Method”. When you say “some supernatural being created everything with his magical powers”, that’s not even asking a question. You cannot even find data to support your hypothesis in any way which involves observable reality.
I think this is the major stumbling block for a lot of ID people… they don’t understand what it means to be scientific in the first place. What they do is find complexity in nature, and then surmise that there was an intellect behind its emergence, because complexity and patterns are somehow “unnatural” to them.
A small leap forward in their thinking, and they will realize their error: complexity and pattern-forming is very natural, and can be found almost everywhere in the universe. It’s like gravity… that’s just the way things are. Fractal images forming from chaos, spiral galaxies froming from a primary big bang, life forming and organizing itself over billions of years… this is not the supernatural magical wand waving of some mighty astral being, it is the natural way of the universe.
Or maybe the problem here is that the ID people are conceited. Maybe the thought that we are little more than bigger-brained monkeys is distasteful to them. Sorry, ID folks… reality is a bitch sometimes.
http://www.genome.gov/15515096
There it is, the strands of DNA which make us up is 99% identical to the chimpanzee. And when we seperate the DNA into functional parts versus the structural parts of the two DNA sequences, we are still 96% the same as the chimpanzee. NINETY SIX PERCENT THE SAME.
You know what that means? If God made us in his image, God is 96% monkey.[/quote]
[quote]Gothic77 wrote:
That is what I believe. I also believe the school needs to quit perpetuating what I believe to be a lie. Don’t discuss it at all or throw in both sides of it. But don’t make it all one-sided “this is how it is and that’s that!” That’s foolish.
[/quote]
The problem is there are no “both sides” . There is one scientific theory AND there are several hundred creation myths. If you start teaching one myth you have to start teaching all the others, including the Flying Spaghetti Monster, praised are his noodly appendages. If you started to teach only ONE creation myth, your government would actively support one religion, ignoring all others.
Well then God did it to fuck with us. Buried some bones in the ground, changed a few carbon isotopes, in an attempt to fool us.
I wasn?t aware that the christian god is a trickster deity, but it would explain a lot.
Just a point guys, you can’t prove evolution because it is a theory. You can’t prove a theory you can only disprove it.
Jesus Christ are there actually any Scientists here? This is grade 9 stuff.
Wrong. Evolution is a fact – it can be observed in nature and replicated in the lab.
THEORY concerns the explanation for something, not the question of whether it exists or not. So there is also a theory of gravity, a theory of electromagnetism, etc. Does anyone question these things because they are only “theories”? I doubt it, because those theories don’t conflict with anyone’s religious dogma.
The theory of evolution BY NATURAL SELECTION is always open to question, and according to the scientific method will be replaced if a better theory for the mechanism of evolution is discovered.
No, you are talking about the differing expression of phenotypes. That is fact.
Evolution is a theory that explains the phenomenon over short and longterm scales.
At least that’s how we look at it in Australian universities. How many years have you studied genetics at ‘college’ by the way?
Evolution is fairly sound as I see it.
I’m a Biology teacher myself. I do thoroughly agree that we descended from “apes” as evolution suggests. However, there are huge holes in the the overall model of natural selection and evolution. I’m not suggesting what the alternative is. I just feel it is still a wildly imperfect theory. No time to debate now though, gotta work.
When you say “apes”, I take it you mean that it wasn’t apes, but that is an easy way of expressing it in a single sentence?
If you start teaching one myth you have to start teaching all the others, including the Flying Spaghetti Monster, praised are his noodly appendages.
“praised are his noodly appendages.” Thanks. It is nice to start the day with strong coffee and a good laugh.
[quote]RedEye wrote:
Wrong. Evolution is a fact – it can be observed in nature and replicated in the lab.
THEORY concerns the explanation for something, not the question of whether it exists or not. So there is also a theory of gravity, a theory of electromagnetism, etc. Does anyone question these things because they are only “theories”? I doubt it, because those theories don’t conflict with anyone’s religious dogma.
The theory of evolution BY NATURAL SELECTION is always open to question, and according to the scientific method will be replaced if a better theory for the mechanism of evolution is discovered. [/quote]
Yay! My hero. We should have a rule that anyone posting on any thread involving a theory first read a definition of the term. Also, the scientific method is something that is usually ignored. Right now, evolution through natural selection isw the generally accepted theory. Should it be incorrect, evidence for that will accumulate over time, and the theory will be rejected or modified according to the current state of knowledge. This does not indicate a weakness in the theory. It is the way they all work.
A good analogy is the stock market. Just as all traders “vote” with their wallets on a stock, and therefore we have an agreed upon price which (hopefully) includes all the known info on the stock, the scientific community “votes” on a theory as an explanation for some segment of nature. The difference is that scientists are usually eager to share all they know, make sure their conclusions are testable, and repeatable. It is as if all traders had acccess to everything Bill Gates does about Microsoft. Accordingly, the scientific “vote” caries overwhelming weight.
People, it is all connected. Science is a single thing, and all the individual fields inform and connect to each other.
Biology, chemistry, genetics, etc. draw from and depend on each other.
The tragic thing is that otherwise intelligent people are more than willing to accept parts of science and reject others based on supernatural beliefs. This is something I find fascinating. Recent work explains this. It seems that often people use their intelligence to defend the beliefs inculcated in them as children, instead of exposing them to the cold light of reason, as they would if the idea were brought to them as adults. (Gee, maybe it isn’t just a coincidence that we all have the same beliefs that our parents do) Thus, we have John at his Dr. solemnly promising to follow the directions and completly use up the bottle of antibiotics, lest the only the stronger invaders survive to multiply, and make him ill again, who then calls the school board to complain that they are teaching evolution in school.
IMHO, religion is a vestigial remnant of our savage and primitive past. As such, it may well be responsible for more death and sadness than any other idea ever formulated. I know this will piss of some other forum members, but honestly, I don’t care. I really can’t see any difference between a church service in a cathedral and native americans doing a rain dance. In fact, at least occasionally it would rain after a dance. This would give the indians more credibility.
[quote]hankr wrote:
IMHO, religion is a vestigial remnant of our savage and primitive past. As such, it may well be responsible for more death and sadness than any other idea ever formulated. I know this will piss of some other forum members, but honestly, I don’t care. I really can’t see any difference between a church service in a cathedral and native americans doing a rain dance. In fact, at least occasionally it would rain after a dance. This would give the indians more credibility. [/quote]
Good post, hank. I think you might be coming down a little hard on the religious folks though. Sure, they are silly to people like us, but that’s just our own perspective coloring things for us. I would hesitate a bit myself before labelling religion as “vestigial”.
Yes, it is a remnant of our past which has interfered with a great many ideas, and has sometimes stood as a dividing line between our people, bringing violence and tyranny to many. But there has been a lot of good done in religion’s name as well. We cannot just look at religion as a bad thing.
It has unified people, and stood as a social construct which although heavily reliant upon ignorance of the masses, has still given some measure of civilization to us all. People like you and me have to realize that many people are not ready to accept the truth. They need their illusions, hank.
The premise of this whole thread was how ID was rejected by the Utah School Board. This was pleasantly surprising to me after we all heard about the Kansas School Board’s decision a while back about this same issue. The fact that this issue is debated AT ALL is proof that people aren’t ready to let go of the rock.
So would you still say that religion is “vestigial”? 