Creationism vs. Evolution

[Zeebadee]

Quote by: Kite "A theory that nature and complex biological structures were designed by intelligent beings and were not created by chance." Who exactly are these intelligent beings then? Aliens? Computers? Dolphins?

I don't know.

Quote by: Kite It is Specutlation, not science.

It may be speculation, but that doesn't make it religion.

[Rive]

ok fine, not religion

lets move on

why do you feel that id should be considered

[Kite]

Quote by: Zeebadee Quote by: Kite "A theory that nature and complex biological structures were designed by intelligent beings and were not created by chance." Who exactly are these intelligent beings then? Aliens? Computers? Dolphins? I don't know.

Thats strange. No one seems to know when you eliminate God as a possiblilty. :rolleyes:

Quote by: Kite It is Specutlation, not science. It may be speculation, but that doesn't make it religion.

It also doesn't make it science, and that is why it is not taught in science classes.

[petradog]

Evolution can be backed up better, the mere "missing links" in the fossil record may just be an absence of evidence...I love evolution. There is a somewhat merging of the two. If you believe in the golden ratio...then there's tons of evidence for an "Intelligent" being. Remember that so many things appear to us as mathematically perfect, such as the spiraling of a pine cone seuqncing in a certain # of Fibonacci #'s; like 5 and 7. Also note many other matheatical patterns...mollusk shells in a golden spiral...conch shells in a golden spiral ext... the galaxy shaping in a golden spiral upon the "macro" scale. But in the end, the spiral of these things could've just been out of evolution, such as the mollusk golden ratio being most fit for the enivronment. Or such that the symmetry of the galaxy morphed into a golden spiral. Both of these theories can be merged when you think about it...

[RedRackham]

II don't know if anyone has raised this yet... but I think the issue of how the different institutions of science and religion believe in the worth of empirical data, is very important. Let me illustrate this with an example of a discussion I had recently: I was speaking to a Jehovah's Witness I let into my house frequently to engage in theological debates (I give them tea and bisuits, they give me the latest Watchtower - hardly fair!) and we were discussing how he understood the organisation of the Kingdom of Heaven.

(Now it's important to say at this point, that as far as I know, there is less room in being a Jehovah's Witness for interpreting the Bible and other scripture on an individual basis. It's not like the Church of England, where the attitude is far more: "This is what the bible says... but what do you think about it?" or the more liberally inclined doctrines of Quakerism. Being a Jehovah's Witness, you pretty much get told how to interpret the bible from others.)

Anyway, I asked him about their belief that there are only a certain number of places left in heaven and he quoted to me from Mark, in the New Testament that there are only 152,000 places. I asked him how many he thought there were left today and he shook his hand in a "rough estimate" gesture and said - with all seriousness - "about 8,000." I asked him how he knew that for sure, considering he’d told me that it was down to God to judge those that He thought should be worthy of getting into heaven (ignoring some of the more obvious questions like "Aren't there more than 8,000 Jehovah's Witnesses left in the world?"), how did he know that the quota of places in the Kingdom of Heaven hadn't already been filled? He said that it wasn't down to whether or not we knew that, but that we should continue to live our lives as if we didn't know. The implication being, that they valued not knowing that fact and having faith in the unknown, as being an acceptable way to live your life.

Sorry, it's taken a bit longer to get to the point than I would have liked, but Christianity in particular is based on speculation of what might exist, rather than a focus on what’s in front of us. The Bible itself is a compilation of different stories hundreds of years after the events took place and many are taken by churches today to be purely allegorical in nature - but to many – especially fundamentalist branches - these are accepted as a basis to interpret the world, without questioning their Truth value. Science allows - even relies upon - the ability to question itself. Dogmatic religion doesn't.

The difference is that Science is about using the one thing that we all have in common: reasoning faculties, that we can apply to what we can see in front of us. That isn't to say that it doesn't take the odd blind leap into the unknown by making wild hypotheses. But as Thomas Kuhn argues in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, the refutability of a scientific theory is what makes science advance. The more flawed a theory is, the more that it can be tested and progressed. Creationism is not only not legitimate science, but it also doesn't have foundations in any form of day-to-day empirical understanding. It doesn't set out to make a theory that has the potential to be wrong, it sets out to dictate a hybrid theory of evolution that doesn't have any refutable statements and therefore, doesn't have any framework for testing its hypotheses. It is driven by a competitive desire to "disprove" science, using the terminology of its nemesis, which is not remotely compatible with its interpretation of the world.

God could exist and He could have designed nature to a teleological system; but it doesn't make any sense to include God into evolutionary theory because belief in God is, by definition, reliant on Faith - which is incompatible with the logical progression of Science. If Intelligent Design was taught in schools as an interesting development in public discourse, or as a purely religious idea in Religious Education classes, I wouldn't have a problem with it; but by teaching it in science classes, you're devaluing science's core principles.

[Scribbler1]

Well put, and I agree. Religion and science should never be taught as a single curriculum, nor should religion be given equal weight as science. Faith is fine, but in the end that's all it is, faith.

And in case no one has yet, welcome to Volconvo.

[RedRackham]

thank you!

[Zeebadee]

Fine, teach your "origin of species" all you want, but recognize that the origin of life is an entirely different subject. You continue to insist that ID includes religious beliefs, and "faith", yet there simply is no reason or need to do so. I don't see a conflict between evolution and ID, in spite of your insistence that ID includes a "god". If you have some concrete evidence of a connection between Darwin's theory and the origins of life, I'd like to see it. As things stand, I don't see that you have any more evidence for the origin of life than the ID people have.

[RedRackham]

Fine, teach your "origin of species" all you want, but recognize that the origin of life is an entirely different subject

Well this is it, isn't it? "Origin of life" (as you put it) is entirely different from evolutionary theory.

[RedRackham]

I don't see a conflict between evolution and ID, in spite of your insistence that ID includes a "god".

ID is largely thought of as relating to Christianity, but what I was trying to get at was that God (or any other force of intent responsible for "designing the world) is by its definition non-empirical and to try and fit into the framework of an empirical science like Biology, doesn't make sense. The natures of religion and science, simply do not allow compatability without seriously compromising the basic principles of both.

[Mr. Jaggers]

"Intelligent Design" has been ruled to be religious doctrine (viz. "Creationism") by the United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania. See Tammy Kitzmiller, et al. v. Dover Area School District, et al., Case No. 04cv2688. If it had any philosophical merit, one might be able to suffer it; but it is superstitious nonsense.

[Kite]

If it is to be taught, teach it in theology class, since that is where it belongs.

[Mr. Jaggers]

Our public schools are built and maintained at taxpayer expense to educate the people, and provide them with that knowledge necessary to be productive persons capable to fulfilling their civic responsibilities, which mandate governs the curriculum. In this regard, “Intelligent Design” is not a proper subject for public education, but rather religious instruction, which belongs in Bible school, not public school.

[Saint Vern]

Quote by: Mr. Jaggers Our public schools are built and maintained at taxpayer expense to educate the people, and provide them with that knowledge necessary to be productive persons capable to fulfilling their civic responsibilities, which mandate governs the curriculum. In this regard, “Intelligent Design” is not a proper subject for public education, but rather religious instruction, which belongs in Bible school, not public school.

Hmm. Well then if baseless neo-darwinism supposedly is the foundation of "education", you should not be troubled by the idea of bringing in the belief set that actually has some basis in reality--namely Intelligent Design or even Bible Creation--and letting the kids make an informed choice. And if you cannot bear to have all the holes that make The Religion of Evolutionism look like a slice of rotten Swiss cheese exposed and questioned, I guess there is not in fact any merit in keeping such a fiction at the center of "educating". After all, such an irresponsible set of teachings is no basis at all for "civic responsibilities" or any other kind.

[Jack]

Ooops. Sorry. Wrong thread.

[Kite]

Quote by: Saint Vern Hmm. Well then if baseless neo-darwinism supposedly is the foundation of "education", you should not be troubled by the idea of bringing in the belief set that actually has some basis in reality--namely Intelligent Design or even Bible Creation--and letting the kids make an informed choice.

Please show me where in reality ID or Creationism has ANY reasonable basis at all. The reason we have trouble with bringing in these so called theories, is because it is a SCIENCE class, not a theology class, or a religion class or a bible class, since that is where all of this pseudo-science is stemming from. Without any scientific evidence, a theory just becomes speculation, and speculation is not taught in science class. If a parent wants to teach thier own kids about ID or creationism at home, thats fine, don't push your religious agenda on to peoples kids.

And if you cannot bear to have all the holes that make The Religion of Evolutionism look like a slice of rotten Swiss cheese exposed and questioned, I guess there is not in fact any merit in keeping such a fiction at the center of "educating". After all, such an irresponsible set of teachings is no basis at all for "civic responsibilities" or any other kind.

Yes, we should teach that a passage from the oldest story book on earth is actual science. :rolleyes: I know that fundies really want their way of thinking taught in science class, but protesting and pettioning the board of education is not the way to get it in. I could get a bunch of people together to sign a pettion demanding that information from the book 'War of the Worlds' be taught in science class to educate children about extraterestrials, but it would not work. Science is a subject made up of proven facts, obersvations, theories and experiments. You can't just shove in some random theory to appease a minority sect. If you can get the majority of acreddited scientists and scientific instituions to buy the ID theory, I'd say teaching ID in class is fine, because if the world's top scientists actually put stock into it, then there must be a good reason. So, get experimenting. Please demonstrate scientifically how a Omnipresent entity created our entire universe from nothing in seven day's, even though at the beginning of time Earth did not exist yet and the period of a day was still unknown. Please prove to us that Uranium dating is completly wrong and the world really is 5000 years old or however long these 'religious scientists' claim the earth has been around. Well? Hop to it!

[Mr. Jaggers]

The game is over. In the District Court action, Professor Michael Behe appeared as an expert witness for the defendant school district, and his testimony in support of Intelligent Design based on “irreducible complexity” was found to be refuted in peer-reviewed research papers and rejected by the scientific community. Tammy Kitzmiller, et al., v. Dover Area School District (Case No. 04cv2688), Memorandum Opinion, at pp. 73-79. In fact, Professor Behe admitted that Intelligent Design was not supported by any scientific evidence; and when pressed on the point of reconciling Intelligent Design with the evidence of biological systems, he could only respond that “the inference still works in science fiction movies.” Id., at p. 81. Intelligent Design has been completely debunked, and its advocates discredited. Professor Behe is a charlatan; and his works are - by his own admission - on a par with astrology.

Let’s put this sad chapter behind us, and look forward to a new, and better, future. Evolution is a proven fact - the engine of creation has been established, and independently verified by Mendelian genetics - and we are on the verge of harnessing the genetic code. Surely, we can sustain progress without casting aspersions on the truth. It’s time that religion cease being the altar of superstition upon which knowledge and reason are sacrificed for the sake of ignorance and stupidity.

[Zeebadee]

Quote by: Mr. Jaggers Intelligent Design has been completely debunked.....

While ID may not be supported by scientific evidence, it certainly has not been proven to be false either.

Quote by: Mr. Jaggers Evolution is a proven fact - the engine of creation has been established, and independently verified by Mendelian genetics .....

So you're claiming that evolution is responsible for the origin of life? From what did the first life form evolve? Can you support that claim with scientific evidence?

[Kite]

Scientists are working on that question right now. It takes time to gather evidence and data and then process it to come to a valid conclusion. For the latest information I suggest looking it up on the internet. Its down to trying to figure out how the first single celled organisms came about.

[Avixious]

ID can't be disproven.. that's the whole slippery slope of religion and philosophy. However, those disciplines can teach us wisdom and rationality, which in turn tells us intelligent design is retarded.