posted
Um, Lisa, I did provide examples (and not just the beat-up set of examples from Talkorigins) of new species coming into being, thus satisfying the need to use observation and logic in my presentation. I'm fine, thank you very much.
I do notice a unique lack of logic and observation in any attempts you might have made in presenting or supporting ID. Wait...have you actually presented anything in support of ID, other than you don't think evolution is real, and something about "irreducible complexity" or one of its deviations?
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posted
starLisa, You are wrong. Modern genetics is not evolutionary theory, but modern genetics exists because of experiments designed based on evolutionary theory. DNA was discovered because of evolutionary theory. Evolutionary theory is a key factor which guides what scientists look for when they study living systems and as such I stand by my original statements.
I do life sciences research so I speak from experience when I say that evolutionary theory is a key factor for generating most of the important new hypotheses and theories being studied in molecular biology today. If you don't think evolutionary theory is useful, its because you don't do life sciences research.
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quote:Yes, it is unlikely, and that is the very reason why it takes so long! Humans have never observed evolution on a macroscopic scale because nobody had ever thought of it until less than 200 years ago. In the grand scheme of things, that is no time at all. Even if a particular animal species has a one in a million chance of acquiring a beneficial mutation in a given year (and I doubt the odds are even that good), there's only (approximately) a 1 in 5000 chance that we would see such a mutation in the entire time we've considered evolution as a possibility.
This is true only if you consider complex organisms (like mammals, insects or trees). If you consider very simple organisms like bacteria, fungi, or even viruses which reproduce very rapidly and mutate quite quickly, then our chance of observing a new species in a short period of time become very good. In fact we see this kind of evolution of bacteria, fungi and viruses regularly both in controlled laboratory settings and in the natural world (aka avian flue).
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quote:A cat giving birth to a not-cat that breeds true.
Wrong. Thank you for playing.
Isn't that "Thanks for playing"?
Pretty fine distinction, but yes, on examination, I believe you are right. Thanks.
As to the substance, I take it as a given that you acknowledge the fact that if your definition of speciation is incorrect, that your critique of an article about speciation will be inadequate, as will be virtually any other remark that you make on the subject, except by accident.
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quote:"How is evolution useful? Classifying kingdom, order, phylum, species, etc. is useful, but the assumption that it relates to actual descent is baseless and doesn't add anything to our knowledge base. It can't be used for anything. It's an extraneous and unnecessary hypothesis."
Of all the wrong things you've said in this thread, Lisa, this is the most potentially destructive.
Evolution is not just a hypothesis, like 'who broke the vase? it was the cat.' It is a description of THE underlying causes, history, process, and direction of all life, and it is taking place TODAY, everywhere, all the time.
'Physics' is what we call the underlying model for properties and interactions of matter. 'Evolution' is what we call the underlying model for properties and interactions of living things. Genetics, medicine, anatomy, veterinary medicine, botany, agriculture, paleontology, etc., and even some softer life sciences such as psychology, sociology, economics, and archaeology, are deeply informed by the accepted models of evolutionary theory, and to a greater or lesser degree influenced by advances or development in evolution.
At root, an awareness of evolution's workings
informs a deeply moral awareness of the interconnectedness of all life, genetically and environmentally
humbles mankind in the immensity of geologic time
illuminates the fact that change is constant and everpresent, and that attempts to celebrate any living state as a final static attainment are vain and misguided (thus also opening the eons of the future to the imagination)
explains how so many exquisitely adapted creatures inhabit our world -- and guides inquiries into the unknown with greater precision
I believe a basic understanding of evolution is one of a handful of essential qualifications of modern, enlightened homo sapiens; and people who lack it are crippled to the extent they make conscious decisions in their lives that affect their own environment or that of other living things.
I realize vast numbers of Americans make pitiably few such decisions in a lifetime, living out lives by default or in blind obedience to priest or boob tube. Certainly to them, the utility of evolution is a tough sell.
But if you are interested in the survival of humanity or the health of our globe, evolution is not just useful, it is critical to making good and moral decisions.
I don't expect to convince you. You seem to have gotten it into your head that evolutionary ideas are not only useless, but nonexistent. And once something is in your head, it apparently doesn't budge.
Just one last thought: you acknowledge that classifying orders, phyla, clades, etc., has utility. Even aside from the fact that today's classification schemes are deeply informed by evolutionary thought -- are, in fact, essentially efforts to encode a map of descent -- consider this: if all life on earth could be unerringly classified as of this moment in time, that map would differ markedly from equivalent classifications generated 2000 years ago, 20,000 years ago, 200,000 years, etc. And from one generated 10,000 years from now.
So if it has utility -- which classification is right (i.e., has the most utility)? And if the answer is 'the current one', wouldn't it be likewise useful to understand the dynamics that will transform the current scheme into the future scheme?
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It is as long as you continue to run wild around here, making useless and wholly inaccurate statements about anything that happens to catch your fancy, then ignoring any refutations of said statements.
Those who read your posts will continue to call you on these things until you: provide a source (beyond your own grey matter), stop making outlandish claims that defy logic and science (i.e. Polar Bears are descended from minks), or stop posting in the 'serious' threads.
I don't have high hopes for either the second or third options, but I have faith in the community.
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posted
On a happier note, Dover, PA elections on Tuesday resulted in the replacement of all 8 pro-ID school board members with 8 school board members who were vocally and openly against the introduction of ID into the science classrooms.
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posted
I still go back to my earlier argument from an earlier thread.
ID answers the question of "Why".
Evolution answers the question of "How".
These are not mutually exclusive questions.
However problems have occured in the past where over zeaulous Athiest Evangelists have tried to make Evolution answer "Why". In retaliation, over zealous religious leaders have created ID to explain "How".
To people in the scientific community, including those of strong religious persuasion, "God made it so" may be the answer to "Why" but never is an acceptable answer for "How".
I have been in debates by scientific minded people arguing how Christ turned water into wine. We didn't doubt that he did just by willing it so. We argued over did he change the molecular structure of the water to that of wine, or whether he made the water go away and in that same moment made wine appear. Scripture seems to favor the molecular transformation theory.
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quote:A new species coming into being from an old. A cat giving birth to a not-cat that breeds true. Anything even remotely similar to what is claimed to have resulted in life on Earth. A fruitfly getting so irradiated that it turns into a new species.
I'm pretty sure you meant 'has offspring belonging to a new species', for that last. But anyway, surely you can't really believe that this is what evolution claims happens? In fact, if any such thing was observed, it would be clear evidence of ID, since such an event is so unlikely that it would indeed require intelligent intervention.
Let's consider fruit flies. I trust you will concede that fruit flies and dragon flies are separate species? Anyway, I'll go with that for now. Now, let me suppose that the following chain of events takes place :
1) A biologist has a population of fruit flies; they are all interfertile.
2) He irradiates them for a higher mutation rate. After a while he find that one lineage is no longer interfertile with the rest of his population, but still capable of breeding with itself. Being a biologist, he calls that a speciation event, but since he wants to convince you, he doesn't stop there. Instead he separates out his new species.
3) Next he breeds the fruit flies for resemblance to dragonflies. I think you'll agree that there is a continuum between fruit flies and dragonflies, and that with careful breeding you can take small steps from the one to the other? Size, tubularity of the carapace - dragonflies have four wings, but that's no problem; irradiate a population of fruit flies not quite enough to kill them, and you'll see many offspring with three, four, and two-and-a-half wings. Some of them will be able to fly, if you have enough.
4) He ends up with one population of dragonflies, and one of fruit flies. They cannot interbreed; they are clearly separate species; yet they are descended from a single population.
Would you accept this as proof that evolution can happen? Just to recap, we have
A lineage where each child is able to breed with its mother, but the endpoint would not be able to breed with the beginning, assuming the latter were somehow miraculously preserved. If we could observe such a thing, would you concede evolution to have occurred?
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quote: How many atheists here support the ID theory, BTW? Any? None?
Um....*shuffles feet* While I don't think ID can be properly dignified with the term "theory" at this stage, I'm certainly willing to admit the possibility that little green aliens from Vega could have swung by, seeded our planet with the basic building blocks of life, and occasionally dropped off the odd monolith to spur our development along appropriate lines. As I understand it, this is perfectly consistent with "ID."
But, of course, "ID" in that scenario is really just a subset of evolutionary theory, and doesn't replace the theory of evolution at all.
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posted
"However problems have occured in the past where over zeaulous Athiest Evangelists have tried to make Evolution answer "Why". In retaliation, over zealous religious leaders have created ID to explain "How".
Or, alternatively, there have been cases of overly zealous christians who have been trying since the inception of evolution to discredit it by any means necessary, and in retaliation, atheist scientists have retaliated by saying that evolution makes god unnecessary.
I think, if one looks carefully at history, this is a more accurate timeline.
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posted
Well, to be fair, before Darwin, there really wasn't any naturalistic explanation for where species came from. So in that sense, evolution does make gods unnecessary.
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posted
Possibly, but the first people to say that were the people attacking evolution, not Darwin or his collegues.
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posted
Paul, I agree with your history, to a point. The Creationists had become a bit of a minor fringe group from the mid 50's to the mid 80's, only popping up in popularity when a very charismatic leader would champion their cause for a bit.
Only recently has their been a larger groundswell of support for ID. Much of that, from what I understand from talks to people here, were the result of atheistic science teachers, professors, and others making the jump that KoM made--Darwin makes God unnecessary.
However, while I highly disagree with that jump, I also disagree with the reactionary attack on Evolution that ID proposes. Since they can not attack it on good scientific principles, they attack scientific principles such as the definition of Theory etc.
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quote:To people in the scientific community, including those of strong religious persuasion, "God made it so" may be the answer to "Why" but never is an acceptable answer for "How".
The trouble is, what if that IS the correct answer? What if the "How" IS that God made it so? If such an answer were the truth, and yet simultaneously unacceptable to science, then science would be pointing away for the truth rather than towards it.
The real problem underlying all of this is something much bigger and more widespread. There are a set of assumptions that underlies common thought in our society and bias us against religion. We place more trust in scientific thinking than we should. Science is very limited in what it can accurately say and very limited in what subjects it can deal with. Yet our society takes science as a means to create a complete worldview. If something can not be scientifically proven, it is not trusted. This can be seen all the time on Hatrack, when people demand scientific evidence to answer questions that science isn't really capable of answering. We ask "Where's proof" and in America "proof" has come to mean scientific proof. This collecion of assumptions, this line of thinking, makes science into the end-all and be-all of understanding the universe - a role science does not belong in.
Once we take these assumption, it is inevitable that we will conclude God doesn't exist - not because we have evidence that God doesn't exist, but rather because science is limited in a way that would prevent science from seeing Him no matter what is really true. And thus if we look to science to give us answers, those answers will never include God, whether they should or not.
The role of religion in this belief system is second-fiddle, completely separate from the scientific beliefs which we use to guide real life. There would be a wall between them - a wall that does not belong. After all, there is one single truth, not two separate truths with two separate answers. That one truth should guide our actions, so we should be integrating scientific thought and religious thought into our decision making. This should not be confused with the separation of church and state, which is about mixing religious and government institutions, rather than integrating different types of belief.
I think conservatives have recognized this inherent bias in our collective thought, and this ID battle is only a tiny part of a much larger war to eliminate the bias against religious thought. I think they are in the right on this - religious beliefs and scientific beliefs must be interconnected if we expect to have an accurate view of truth. We cannot afford to let the biases of any single method of ascertaining truth limit the degree to which we can fully understand that truth. Over time, I think our society will change fundamentally to reflect this need. The danger is that there are two ways this problem can be dealt with - one is the integration of science and religion, while the other is war between science in religion. If it comes to the latter, science risks being run over and flat our rejected in many parts of the country or world - a result that would be horrible for the advancement of knowledge. After all, if science makes itself into something that can't be integrated with religion, then the religious will end up viewing it as something that must also be inconsistent with the Truth.
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posted
Sigh. Please can we be allowed to keep our bias against alchemical thought? That's based on religion too, you know.
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There's also natural philosophy, which does not typically require God to explain itself (though it is often used to help explain the concept of God). Philosophy works rather well to try and explain the rest of the world not necessarilly covered by science.
So, teach science in school. Teach philosophy in school. Even teach comparative religions in school. But you can't teach one religion as being the right religion in school. Not in the secular/public school system. Just as you can't teach the creation myth of one particular religion as, somehow, being more correct than the rest.
If you want to teach your kids all about Christianity, or Judaeism, or Islam, then teach it at church or temple or mosque.
Posts: 1862 | Registered: Mar 2000
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posted
And integration vs war? Screw that. For almost 200 years, the whole separation of church and state worked fairly well, until a bunch of right-wing ultra-conservative fundamentalists tried to change the status quo. Personally, I like keeping things separate. I don't need religion in the public school, no more than you need the imposition of rational thought in your church.
And StarLisa, something tells me you're not "reformed," yourself. You're pushing some pretty fundamentalist concepts there yourself.
For the most part, I think people are fine with the separation that our founding fathers gave us; and it's been working out pretty well. Heck--Jimmy Carter was a Baptist, and he didn't push his religion down the country's throat the way that Bush does!
For some reason, you guys have placed yourself at the forefront of some extreme groups that think religious war is the only way.
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posted
Naturally! The year I taught in a non-religious private school, I certainly didn't bring up some of the things I do where I teach now.
My point was simply that religion can be taught places other than houses of worship, and (religious) private schools are one of 'em.
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quote:The trouble is, what if that IS the correct answer? What if the "How" IS that God made it so? If such an answer were the truth, and yet simultaneously unacceptable to science, then science would be pointing away for the truth rather than towards it.
What you're saying amounts to little more than simple skepticism.
If we really are in the Matrix, science is likewise pointing away from the truth about our world. That doesn't mean that "We're In The Matrix" should be taught as an alternative to any scientific theory. Nor that it should ever be accepted as science. It's just not the kind of claim that could be verified scientifically, even though it is the kind of claim that could conceivably be true.
Naturally, the same goes for ID.
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You said one thing that was actually good. You pointed to the speciation web site. where in section 5.0 it shows an example of a plant which seperated into a species that could propagate among itself but not with the original parent group.
It was good for several reasons:
1. Now I have to either revise my way of thinking in one way or another
2. I will have to study what was written and understand it.
This is one of the few times when someone in an evolution vs. creation arguement actually said something that made me pause and think. By being challenged like this, I will be forced to learn and understand more. That is why I regard it as good.
For various reasons, I didn't end up agreeing with his conclusions that it proved random evolution as an ultimate mechanism. But the important thing was that it made me think. Actually, most of denbeste's writings are worth reading, particularly the article on logic.
They are both good reads. Those of you on the evolutionary-atheist side should seriously take a look at it. I doubt anyone here can match him in writing, I certainly don't hold a candle to him. But it can help.
posted
And if you want to see religion taught alongside science in schools, you will need to provide a verifiable epistemology for religion. If that's not possible, I don't see how you can call religious teachings "education." To teach such a subject would be to instill beliefs in your students without giving them good reason to adopt those beliefs.
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posted
I don't right now, really, but briefly, evolutionary theory claims not randomness, but that certain laws govern how evolution works. Randomness evolution is discredited because there is a lot of evidence that supports the concept that certain laws govern how species change over time.
Randomness means there are no laws goverorning how species change. But this isn't true. Mutations are random. But which mutations survive are not random. Harmful mutations decrease in prevalence over time, helpful ones increase.
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quote:Originally posted by ssywyk: Yeah. And public schools, based on the Constitution of the United States, are not.
Pardon me for intruding, but I have to ask where in the Constitution can I find this?
I looked through the document as it currently stands, and I couldn't find anything that said public schools are not allowed to teach Wahabiist Islam within them. I couldn't even find anything that precluded the doctrine of the Flying Spaghetti Monster from being taught.
I am sure that someone here knows where the relevent passage is, and I would regard it as a kindness if they would point it out to me. To facilitate this request, I have posted below a link to the US Constitution.
Just to make things easier, I also have a link to the Bill of Rights. But since the only thing I found there regarding religion was that Congress won't make any law regarding it's establishment, I quickly discounted it. Seeing as how Congress is not the Kansas State Legislature.
[snark] Or maybe when the framers wrote the word "Congress" they meant "The Kansas State Legislature". Which of course, makes me wonder why they didn't just say so, then again, that could be because Kansas didn't exist at the time. But who am I to argue what everyone else agrees is true? [/snark]
posted
Surely things that are binding on Congress are equally binding on state legislatures? And teaching some particular religion in school is definitely an establishment.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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quote:Originally posted by Paul Goldner: Randomness means there are no laws goverorning how species change. But this isn't true. Mutations are random. But which mutations survive are not random. Harmful mutations decrease in prevalence over time, helpful ones increase.
quote:Originally posted by King of Men: Surely things that are binding on Congress are equally binding on state legislatures? And teaching some particular religion in school is definitely an establishment.
Nowadays, that certainly seems to be the accepted view of the courts. However, my point was that at the time it was written, that wasn't the accepted view of those who wrote it.
After doing a google search (I have to be honest about my ignorance) I found an article that indicated that Madison intended it to apply across the board, but then changed it specifically because a number of states had established churches it was modified.
The Warren court however, simply decided to wave that all away and redefine it as applying also to the State Legislatures. You can find the article I'm referring to here:
It's a bit boring until you get to the good parts. The important thing to keep in mind is that the Warren court pretty much decided to wave a magic wand and say "So mote it be". Using the excuse that the writer had to rewrite the original law to exclude State Legislatures. But that because Madison would have preferred to have it over the States as well, it should therefore be considered as that.
That was not a very honest or responsible thing for the court to do.
Now maybe you are right, and maybe no State Legislature should be allowed to create any law regarding the establishment of a religion. In that case, the Constitution should have been amended to reflect that view.
I know that this is difficult to accept when a decision is made in favor of something you hold (and no sarcasm is meant here), but that does not make the decision correct, and it does not mean that the Constitution supports what you say it does.
Let me explain why even you should be concerned: When the court can simply decide to reinterpret the Constitution to say whatever they like, then sooner or later, a court which believes things that you do not like, or that you are opposed to, will simply do the same. This is why it is so important to have justices which rule strictly in accordance with the document and not in accordance with whatever fancy they may hold.
quote:Please can we be allowed to keep our bias against alchemical thought? That's based on religion too, you know.
No. If you have evidence that something is wrong, you don't need a bias against it. The trouble is, science is naturally biased against a number of beliefs not because of any evidence against those beliefs, but rather because of the rules it has set up for itself. This is not to say those rules are bad, but only that they can become problematic if science is expected to answer questions that those rules prevent it from answering without bias.
quote:For almost 200 years, the whole separation of church and state worked fairly well, until a bunch of right-wing ultra-conservative fundamentalists tried to change the status quo.
This is true, but I'm not talking about the separation of church and state, two institutions that are dangerous when mixed. I'm talking about the separation of scientific beliefs and religious beliefs into two distinct realms of truth. And while it has worked effectively in many ways since its roots began in the scientific revolution, it has also ultimately led to a number of problems - with the "tyranny of relativism" created on one side, religious fundamentalism on the other.
quote:So, teach science in school. Teach philosophy in school. Even teach comparative religions in school. But you can't teach one religion as being the right religion in school. Not in the secular/public school system. Just as you can't teach the creation myth of one particular religion as, somehow, being more correct than the rest.
I don't think anyone has proposed teaching that ID or any particular religion is correct.
And philosophy is not a subject normally taught as a class in schools. Instead, it is integrated into other classes. Normally, philosophical issues related to science are taught in science class. What folks are doing when they demand that only experimentally falsifiable claims are discussed in science class is removing all the philosophy from science class - in effect, preventing students from being taught science-related philosophical issues at all. That is why this is an unrealistic demand. You cannot expect a science class to restrict itself only to what is strictly experimentally testable. If we are to really educate our students, we must ALSO teach them the philosophical issues that are related to that which is experimentally testable, including the debate surrounding intelligent design. There is no other class where students will hear this, unless they take religion as an elective in high school, which only a few do, and which may not really compare religious beliefs with the conclusions that student is learning in science class.
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quote: The trouble is, science is naturally biased against a number of beliefs not because of any evidence against those beliefs, but rather because of the rules it has set up for itself. This is not to say those rules are bad, but only that they can become problematic if science is expected to answer questions that those rules prevent it from answering without bias.
I'm sorry, but I can't for the life of me parse this sentence. Could you clarify, or provide some examples of this supposed phenomenon?
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posted
Just wanted to back up the above statement that public schools are not established by the Constitution, but by the individual states. Inasmuch as those states receive federal funding, however, they have to follow federal guidelines.
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quote:Originally posted by ssywak: And StarLisa, something tells me you're not "reformed," yourself. You're pushing some pretty fundamentalist concepts there yourself.
Funny boy. You obviously haven't seen the fights I've gotten into on this forum defending the complete separation between government and religion. Do a search, maybe.
And I most certainly am reformed. I grew up non-observant, and during college I reformed. Now I'm observant.
"Plastic Man, Plastic Man The one, the original, elastic man He used to be a crook but he reformed and then He reformed and reformed and reformed again!"
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quote:I'm sorry, but I can't for the life of me parse this sentence. Could you clarify, or provide some examples of this supposed phenomenon?
Sorry... the "rules" of science require it to have objective, physical, experimental evidence to support any conclusion, among other things. That means that science will be blind to or at least biased against anything without that sort of evidence.
Consider souls for instance. I'm not going to assume they exist (although I do believe they do), but imagine for the sake of argument that they do exist and influence the world around us. Because souls are not physical things, science would be unable to "see" them. Science can only "see" that which it can experiment upon physically. It would not be able to create any theory with a soul in it, even if that really were how the world worked. This would not be true because science had any evidence against souls. Rather, it would be true simply because the rules of science don't allow it to make observations about souls. In this way, science would be biased against any theory that involved souls. If asked to create a complete model of the universe, science would inevitably create a model that excludes souls, no matter if souls exist or not.
The same is true for God, and a whole variety of other entities that conflict with the rules of the scientific method. Thus, science gives us a skewed view of the world - and so we must limit how we use it accordingly.
Think of it as similar to the blind spot you have when you are driving. The way a car is designed and operated creates a blind spot, where you can't see if there are any cars next to you in that certain spot. There could be a car there as far as you know, but the nature of your car's design simply makes it impossible to see that other car even if they are there. And thus, any beliefs you make about the state of the road you are driving on would fail to take into account the things in your blind spot that you can't see.
In this way your vision in a car is limited in way similar to how the vision of science is limited. The solution for the car is to remember that limitation, and to use your mirrors to get a more complete picture of the road around your car. With science, the "mirrors" are other methods of knowing about the world - including through philosophy, religion, history, or even sometimes art. These other fields help science to get a much more complete picture of the "road" around science, and thus need to be integrated into science issues insofar as they can help generate that more complete picture.
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There is one other species of north American bear, Ursus Americanus the Black Bear. In fact the Polar Bear, is more closely related to the Brown bear, than the Brown bear is related to the Black Bear. But they are all BEARS!!!
I see no reason to believe anything about evolution that is said by someone who can't even bother get minimal biological facts correct. For crying out loud. Even the creationists say they are all bears! http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v20/i4/bears.asp
But how is introducing ID into secular classrooms not breaking down the wall between government and religion?
Treso,
quote:Consider souls for instance. I'm not going to assume they exist (although I do believe they do), but imagine for the sake of argument that they do exist and influence the world around us. Because souls are not physical things, science would be unable to "see" them. Science can only "see" that which it can experiment upon physically.
You sow the seeds of your own downfall there, buddy.
"...but imagine for the sake of argument that they do exist and influence the world around us"
Well, if they actually influenced the world around us, then we could actually see or otherwise sense that influence. If you can see it or sense it, then you can measure it.
But souls (as independent entities from, allegedly, the people they inhabit) don't influence the world around us. After thousands and thousands of years, there's no real evidence of this influence. In fact, when you compare it to the evidence we have for evolution, I think it would be safe to say that there are no such thing as souls. Lisa, 'you want to take this one up?
But besides, if all a "soul" can do to influence the world around us is, let's say, give us a cold chill as it passes through us on the way to Dunkin' Donuts, then what's the point?
Posts: 1862 | Registered: Mar 2000
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quote:Well, if they actually influenced the world around us, then we could actually see or otherwise sense that influence. If you can see it or sense it, then you can measure it.
Well, that's not really true. Now I'm not trying to promote the existence of souls, because I don't really believe they exist, at least the way they are described above, but your logic for why they can't possibly exist doesn't quite work.
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