Ah, I just clicked on the phrase and happened to land on the last one. I'll have a look at the others.

Regardless, do you feel it would be acceptable to critique evolution as long as you do not mention that God might possibly be responsible for anything? That seems to be the response I'm getting.

You did not just do that...

How about you quit reading creationist summaries of The Origin of Species and actually read the real text?

In the second paragraph of Chapter 10 Darwin outlines the argument he intends to address.



Then, IMMEDIATELY AFTERWARDS:



He then goes on to spend the rest of the chapter explaining how the imperfection of the fossil record explains his dismissal of the problem he posed. I'm not going to paste the complete text because quite frankly it's not my place to do so, but for the record Darwin frequently played devil's advocate in order to highlight the strengths of his theory and the weakness of the opposition.

This is the danger of quoting someone without including the context.

From what I can tell Einstein had more of an awe at the natural order of things rather than faith in any deity. There are a lot of things he wrote that made him sound religious but he did write some letters clarifying his position.

I'm just trying to define the terms. ID can mean a lot of different things to different people.

No it can't. ID is the "theory" that the complexities and intricacies of the world means that it must be created. Period. Several famous scientists (Einstein being one of them) came to this same conclusion (Pantheism, kind of). These weren't scientific claims, though. They were philosophical suppositions.

There's absolutely nothing wrong at all with questioning the theory of evolution. If you don't, you won't learn anything about it.

But don't assume that every question (or supposed 'critique') you have is unanswerable, and will cause the entire field of evolutionary biology to collapse. It really is the height of arrogance.

It's sort of funny, really, all of the specific issues and questions raised by Creationists are precisely the same questions raised by scientists... 150 years ago. It's like they're frozen in time, imperveous to evidence.

It's fun quoting myself, I'll do it for the sake of UltimatePotato, who insists on ignoring the main point that has been beaten to death in this thread. You can 'question' any theory via alternate scientific theories. ID is not a scientific theory. Hence you can't use it in science class. What is not clear.

I'll fill your holes with caulk.

It's not clear because America's public schooling system sucks.

No one will ever find a 'missing link'. For every single 'missing link' you find, you just create two more holes, with their own 'missing links'.

People who want to be ignorant will be no matter how high-quality the education is. America's public schooling sucks because America's students suck.

The reason private Christian schools have a better track record for science education is because the people who attend them are typically more affluent and more willing to make an independent proactive choice about their education. In other words, people more likely to be autodidacts.

And, as mentioned, the whole reason they're trying to control or influence the curriculum is to prevent people from becoming educated. People already ignore new information that conflicts with their current bias (cognitive dissonance), so offering a token "...but it might be wrong!" is a worthless and self-destructive validation of beliefs and superstitions that are wholly irrelevant to the course material. Maybe they'll fix the unit on fractions next, so people won't be able to calculate what percentage of the offering plate ends up being used on hookers and bling.

What isn't clear to me is the line where questioning evolution becomes teaching intelligent design. Is it just the mention of God?

Take the idea of irreducible complexity, for instance. It's commonly used by the ID crowd as evidence that the core parts of cells couldn't have evolved from something else. This is a core argument of ID, but it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with God or a higher power.

For the record, in my biology and marine biology classes, we weren't able to question the mechanics of anything. Questioning any part on how evolution works was met with a response declaring your ignorance.

But the irreducible complexity argument is total bollocks.

Imagine an arch, it's a self-supporting structure which will collapse if any section of it is removed. It's quite easy to imagine how an arch could be built though. It's also quite easy to imagine how an arch could accidentally emerge from something non-archy being altered in some minor way.

Oh and before you argue that arches are man-made and therefore intelligently designed, you can find equivalent rock formations that came around naturally through geographical means.

The problem with intelligent design as an explanation for the origin of life is that it doesn't answer any questions better than evolution does AND it introduces new complexity that would need explaining. You could pose ID as a scientific theory but it would have no more merit than an infinite other number of unlikely possibilities - until there's evidence to support it there's no point discussing it in science classes.

So maybe we should let the science classes discuss the theories that have boatloads of evidence and explain processes that we've seen with our own eyes[/b.

But irreducible complexity has been proven, very clearly, to be complete bull****. That's why it isn't proposed in a classroom because it didn't "make the cut." There are other ideas that conflict natural selection that usually ARE presented within an Evolution chapter (or very much should be.) None of these alternative theories suggest a creator, because creation/ID "science" doesn't exist.

I agree; the guy couldn't provide any evidence for it when it was in court, I was just using it as an example.
I don't rightly know of any scientific conflicts with evolution since, as stated, it was not to be taught when I was in school.

What are they?

If God created everything, who created God?

I like how computer simulations with genetic algorithms kind of sort of prove evolution is possible. I mean, in that something useful can come from chaos.

You mean psuedochaos.

No I mean chaos.

What I want to kno is how ID is any differant at all to creationism. I mean, from what I have read about it, it is basicly creationism with a new name, and involving some pathetic doubletalk (though enough to get the more ignorant politicians to think it is something new) to make it seem sciency.

ID is different from Creationism in that, whereas Creationism says we popped into existence at God's will, ID says that evolution was a plan driven by God.

Not that it makes it any more suitable to teach in a science class.

I can't help but think I'm the most qualified to actually discuss the creation point of view, having devoted 3 college credits to "Creation and Science", but whatever light I could shed on the subject would be quickly darkened by ignorance, stupidity, flames, and massassi. However, in person or over MSN, I would be delighted to discuss it, and I do feel that the creation point of view has a lot going for it, and I do think evolution has a lot of serious issues that people seem to overlook.

So yes, MSN, combo_limit@hotmail.com if you care.

And no, I didn't waste my time by reading the last 3 pages of posts, and I likely won't read the posts to follow.

I did, however, read the first post, and I think it's a good idea to teach creation, but at the same time, they need to do it very carefully, lest they come across as idiots. Any time someone tries to defend something they know nothing about, they seem to end up making whatever it is they're defending look bad. (That goes for just about anything, or any side.)

Irony defined.

Fixed for... you know, truth.

Hint: Nobody is qualified to argue the creation point of view when it comes to science, because creationism is not science. Religion is not science. Theories have to begin with what you can observe, or else what you're really doing is lying because you're stretching the facts to fit your preconceptions and prejudices.

I won't doubt that you're probably the most qualified to simply discuss the creation point of view, like their motivations. For example, I hypothesize that most creation science types are highly insecure in their faith and feel threatened by that magical science mumbo-jumbo, so they emulate the scientists they see on Star Trek and make up random garbage using random words. Am I correct?

Einstein did not have a faith. People confuse this, but personally, I don't blame them. Einstein and others have used the terms "God", "Heaven", and "religious" in an abstract, poetic way to describe amazement at the size and scope of the universe. Einstein outright said he did not believe in a god and subsequentially became a pariah in the jewish community.

I realize I said that wrong. What I meant is that natural selection isn't the only means by which animals evolve. There have been several other theories to how a species evolves, some that have been shot down (and thus aren't in the textbook) and others that have become scientific theory. My point was to illustrate that there have been additions and modifications to the theory over time, and ID would have to go through the exact same tests that those additions/amendments went through.

Also Axis: How does that make you more qualified? I'm not even sure there needs to be a class on the subject. The only thing taught would be the holes in Evolution, and how creationism can make things up to fill those holes. That doesn't make you qualified, it makes you a poor decision maker for spending your money on a class about nothing.

Raymond Smullyan said in 'The Tao is Silent';

At any rate, as matters now stand, I am less tolerant of an intolerant attitude towards astrology than I am of astrology itself. Indeed, even though I do not believe in astrology, if I had my choice of believing in astrology, or in being intolerant of astrology, I would far rather believe in astrology.

Replace 'astrology' with 'intelligent design' or 'creationism' or whatever. He also said;

In my simple opinion, those who are most intolerant of irrationality are not those who are most rational, but those who repress their irrationalities while at the same time "priding themselves" on being so rational.

I'm sorry, what's the problem? I didn't know irrationalities were something to be proud of. Apparently I missed that page in the Taoism Wiki.

I wonder how daoism can be put into a wiki.

Here we go again. The line where questioning evolution becomes teaching intelligent design is when you stop relying on scientific theories and start bringing in philosophical ideas.

"Scientific" is not a fun word that sounds cool. It has a strict definition. ID does not conform to this definition. So you cannot use it to "question" evolution. Very simple. Question evolution all you like in philosophy class, religion class, "Creation and Science" class etc. But in science class stick to science.

Creation scientists (and people who claim astrology is a science) are the wiggers of the scientific world.

The closest thing to what you said that can be taken from what I quoted is to 'not be proud of being so rational', which aside from having a few words in common, isn't close to what you said at all.

Incidentally, it says an awful lot about not being proud of things; perhaps you should check the wiki again.

So to question any scientific theory is a legit thing to do, but if you so much as question evolution, you're instantly a Bible thumper? Seems like there are some irrational jumps, there...

No, if you'd bothered to read the thread, you'd see every proponent of Evolution here is encouraging people to question evolution in the same way you should question EVERYTHING. You just don't suppose the bits you can't grasp are a higher power doing it, because that needs further explanation and is lazy and NOT SCIENTIFIC.

Axis, don't post if you're not going to read the thread. You are not an intellectual superior here simply because you've dedicated your life to religion. People shooting you down with, you know, evidence is kind of part of public discourse, not "big mean atheist massassians."



You essentially said that suppressing irrationality is bad, and that being proud of being rational is bad. I didn't realize that irrationality was ever a good thing in any sense of the word ever.

Also, that wiki bit was a jab at your internet taoism.

Yes, that's right. I've forgotten that I was being lazy to read ten or so books on the subject of creation and evolution, and rather than study the subject and the controversy carefully, I simply threw up my hands and said something to the effect of "God did it." It's not like I was prepared to adopt theistic-evolution from the beginning if the data I personally examined pointed in that direction.

So yes, lazy and not scientific. Absolutely spot on.

Theistic evolution is not science. Theism is a philosophy, evolution is a process. The two don't have to be compatible, since science doesn't pretend to know anything about theology, and theology doesn't know anything about natural selection. If you want to believe in "Theistic evolution," fine. If you want to teach that in some private religious school, it's your own ignorant right. If you want to teach that in my son's public school, you're breathing too much of my air and should probably just stop now. Thanks.

This thread sucks. I was hoping Axis try and debate something and people counter-argue, but now it's just turning into a pissing contest.

Start over. Axis, post something useful.