U.S. Lags World in Grasp of Genetics and Acceptance of Evolution

@farmerman,

Quote:

And the fact that this is donwe kind of in a sloppy sequence precludes a really "Intelligent" Intelligent Designer.

At it again I see fm. Asserting that the Intelligent Designer is "sloppy" now. Using your own definition of "sloppy" of course. Which is kind of circular in a high-speed centrifuge sort of way and conclusive proof of gunga's "academic dead-wood" contention.

How can a non-existent be "sloppy"?

The sloppiest cook I ever met produces wondrous cakes. I daresay a fair number of miraculous inventions were pretty sloppy in the making.

But the real problem is letting you lot loose on the kids. After a year's exposure to such a nightmare scenario I should think they will all end up thinking that their assertions are scientific laws. The Tower of Babel reborn. Kids have a tendency to imitate authority figures when they are too young to have learned to laugh at them.

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@gungasnake,

gungasnake wrote:

Mathematicians and evoloserism...
http://www.math.utep.edu/Faculty/sewell/articles/mathint.html

The guy who wrote that is an idiot.

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Basic reality: the biggest group of evolution deniers in the world percentage wise is probably mathematicians and not Christians. Evolution is not compatible with modern mathematics and probability theory and they know it.

That's what "String Theory(TM)" and all this blathering about multiple universes is about; they know what the odds are for evolution in the one universe which we actually have to live in.

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well I am inclined to believe evolution occurs naturally, but is teleological. This is probably as much a heresy as ID, but much more interesting, philosophically. There is a book called From Aristotle to Darwin and Back Again, in which

Quote:

the great philosopher and historian of philosophy Etienne Gilson sets out in this book to show that final causality or purposiveness is an inevitable idea for those who think hard and carefully about the world, including the world of biology. Gilson insists that a completely rational understanding of organisms and biological systems requires the philosophical notion of teleology, the idea that certain kinds of things exist and have ends or purposes the fulfillment of which is linked to their natures. In other words, final causes. His approach relies on philosophical reflection on the facts of science, not upon theology or an appeal to religious authorities such as the Church or the Bible.

on my 'to read' list.

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@jeeprs,

Quote:

well I am inclined to believe evolution occurs naturally, but is teleological.

God does not use broken tools...

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farmerman wrote:

Please try to present some of the evidence for Intelligent Design. It appears that the Discovery Institute has closed down its own web site re: "The serch for Intelligent Design of life on earth". They seem to be flat out of myths and have NEVER come up with any evidence.

If we decide that it's not necessary to stick to the topic of the thread, then I will gladly explore this with you. (I've already discussed it many times in the past, and probably will continue to.)

I do feel the need to briefly state some of the evidence, though: Existence of God (evidenced by big bang, universal fine-tuning, etc.); Complexity of Life (evidenced by every life form on the face of Earth); nonviability of various evolutionary processes (macroevolution, abiogenesis, etc.). There are others, some of which venture more into the realm of logic, but there you have it for now.

Just watch, now the thread will turn into another argument between ID and evolution.

farmerman wrote:

PS, if you see this as a"Philosophy forum" then you are mistaken. This thread has been going on a year or more before you were even hijacked by A2K.

Read my post carefully. I said "Philosophy Forum Section." No, I did not edit that in.

rosborne979 wrote:

It requires one less piece of evidence to support than does ID because ID needs to explain where the Intelligent Designer came from in the first place. Your argument above is irrational and illogical. You are "multiplying entities beyond necessity" and claiming that you are simplifying rather than complicating.

Yes, Occam's Razor, of course. But evolution doesn't do too well with the Razor, itself. You have to do alot of explaining (a few centuries of it, I believe) to show that natural processes and random chance can evolve advanced species. You have to do a whole lot more to SHOW that it can actually happen, and scientists haven't even produced a single, solitary cell under supervised conditions.

Are you really suggesting that evolution is a simpler answer than ID?

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@Klope3,

Quote:

Existence of God (evidenced by big bang, universal fine-tuning, etc.); Complexity of Life (evidenced by every life form on the face of Earth); nonviability of various evolutionary processes (macroevolution, abiogenesis, etc.).

Id like to retain this diversion to explore what youve meant by evidence.
The Big Bang, seems to me a physics experiment of evidence which merely supports the fact that such a Bang occured. How does its occurence become evidence for a Supreme Being

Same thing with complexity. I can say that complexity of form or function can be followed from one species to another. The growth and "stowage" of the picidean bird tongue is actually traceable in the fossil record (From actual connective points of the tongue onto the biirds nares and inner skull). Conversely, there are retro stages of organisms where complexity was abandoned for a more simple, but dependable life as a parasite.
Also, the complexity of life is translated and stored within stepping stones of group genomes. Its actually possible to trace evo/devo by looking at the "fossil" genes of organisms from their predecessors.The occurence of the fossils or "fossil genes" seems to nicely correlate to some curious past occurence in the environment (and we have many ways of measuring these occurence).
SO, if you plead to a belief in a causitive element that is somehow "intelligent" , you are of course required to believe that the changes in the environment (Continents adrift, closing seaways, rainfall pattern changes, vulcanism, seismic activity, ice sheets etc) are all predetermined by thei Intelligence.

The mere fact that the mystery seems gone (or that we can unravle the "mystery") gives me a clearer view of the natural worlds mechanisms.

Im aware at the use of these " complexity driven" arguments but I too have ample evidence of some basic phenomenalogical connections between environments and organisms that is not dependent on deities or "Intelligences"

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@farmerman,

If a Bang occurred, then what caused it? It can't have caused itself. And, where did it come from? Nothing? That doesn't make any sense, but at the same time, the Big Bang is supposed to explain how everything came into being. Unless an intelligent being, unbound by natural laws, created the universe out of nothing.

Next, you present the commonly seen evidence in the fossil record. The misperception here, though, is that similar design implies a common ancestor rather than a common creator. What would be implausible about an intelligent designer creating many different creatures with similar functions, especially if those functions are particularly helpful to certain categories of species in terms of survival? If you set a spoon on the table, then place increasing sizes of measuring spoons from left to right, then finally put a large pot at the end, would you expect an outside observer to postulate that the pot evolved from the spoon?

Complexity suggests and can be explained by an intelligent designer, while evolution only provides an explanation (It took Charles Darwin to come up with such a counter-intuitive idea in the first place). What's interesting is that Occam's Razor is introduced into the discussion, and then it's claimed that intelligent design is actually too "complicated" an explanation for life. On the contrary--evolution is very counter-intuitive, and Darwin may well have been the very first one to ever even conceive of it.

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@Klope3,

Quote:

What would be implausible about an intelligent designer creating many different creatures with similar functions, especially if those functions are particularly helpful to certain categories of species in terms of survival?

Wellhe , first , wouldnt be very intelligent would he? We can see the myriad of species of a single genus in te fossil record (are you denying that we can tell species or genera apart?), and then we can see the derived species of later strata (assumption is that higher starat is later in time).
We have "bird-like reptiles" followed by "reptile like birds" in the same stratigraphy. (While theres no 100% assurances, the conclusions are pretty easily made of derived forms through time)

Quote:

If a Bang occurred, then what caused it?

I dont see the evidence that it was a god, do you? I believe your trying to conflate faith with evidence

Quote:

Complexity suggests and can be explained by an intelligent designer, while evolution only provides an explanation (It took Charles Darwin to come up with such a counter-intuitive idea in the first place).

Darwin actually came up with a mechanism since evolution was already a concept that had been thought of a millenium earlier. SInce our modern definition of "evolution is a change in gene frequency" is more a connector between the phenomenon and the micro-mechanism.

I see that evolution is much more intutitive than is Creationim or its lab coated son , Intelliegent Design. Some of the natural science phenomena that contain the evidence of evolution also give us much data in the way that is occurs and when.

Quote:

If you set a spoon on the table, then place increasing sizes of measuring spoons from left to right, then finally put a large pot at the end, would you expect an outside observer to postulate that the pot evolved from the spoon?

I certainly hope not but an argument could easily bemade as to how we conclude the use and form of these tools and thus be able to arrange them in ascending historical sequence (If that was your goal). However, we know that a spoon and a pot are derived tools fashioned by an artisan. We also know that stone tools in an archeological sequence, from simple hand axes to fashionably pressure flaked Orient points are tools that help us discern the times and evolutionary sequences of the artisans.

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@farmerman,

farmerman wrote:

Wellhe , first , wouldnt be very intelligent would he? We can see the myriad of species of a single genus in te fossil record (are you denying that we can tell species or genera apart?), and then we can see the derived species of later strata (assumption is that higher starat is later in time).
We have "bird-like reptiles" followed by "reptile like birds" in the same stratigraphy. (While theres no 100% assurances, the conclusions are pretty easily made of derived forms through time)

I'm sorry--why does this make a common creator implausible? (Or why would it imply low intelligence of a designer?)

farmerman wrote:

I dont see the evidence that it was a god, do you? I believe your trying to conflate faith with evidence

At this point in time, there is NOTHING else plausible that it could be. And if you want faith, try finding evidence for the multiverse, or Hawking's "imaginary time."

farmerman wrote:

I see that evolution is much more intutitive than is Creationim or its lab coated son , Intelliegent Design.
...
I certainly hope not but an argument could easily bemade as to how we conclude the use and form of these tools and thus be able to arrange them in ascending historical sequence (If that was your goal). However, we know that a spoon and a pot are derived tools fashioned by an artisan. We also know that stone tools in an archeological sequence, from simple hand axes to fashionably pressure flaked Orient points are tools that help us discern the times and evolutionary sequences of the artisans.

The one part of your post doesn't agree with a latter part. First you say that evolution is more intuitive than ID, but then you say you wouldn't expect an outside observer to conclude evolution from the spoon-to-pot example. It's the same thing (except that the spoons and pots are a whole lot complex than life). If evolution in cookingware isn't intuitive, then how is evolution in complex life any more intuitive?

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i'm a firm supporter of devolution, the sooner we all revert back to one celled organisms, the better off we'll be

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@blloydb,

"...That's fine, but that means the assertion remains a theory..."

Another ignorant poke at evolution. (Don't any of them own a dictionary?).

Go ahead and look up 'theory'. (better look up 'ignorant' as well).

But be careful, if you don't believe in Newton's "theory" of gravitation, the dictionary just might fall up in to and out of the universe. Then again it might not. Implies a choice, doesn't it? pssst.....there isn't.

p.s. You want proof of evolution?......open your evolved eyes and your evolved brain. (stop laughing folks, blloydb actually has one, too).

Sincerely,
yle

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@farmerman,

Quote:

SInce our modern definition of "evolution is a change in gene frequency" is more a connector between the phenomenon and the micro-mechanism.

I don't see how that is a definition of evolution. It just looks like the second part means the same as the first part but uses different words. What is a "change in gene frequency"?

How can the phenomenom be separate from the mechanism which it has to be to have a connector. And what does "more a connector" mean except a connection in the mind presumably designed to allow the mind to bask in the glory of imagining it understands these things.

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If only we could send Spendiosus back to the time the Catholic church forced their priests to do their advertising ( preaching ) in Latin . Then this dummy flock of sheep on Able2know, wouldn't have to try and understand what he was saying saying to us.......... Hang on we don't !!! Okay forget what I just said.

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@dlowan,

Quote:

" And, of course, there's a strong type of religion connection:"

Of course, to admit the validity of evolution or even some doubt is tantamount to admitting there may be or is no God, which is the most fundamental precept of their faith.
No God = no reason for religious belief.

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@Robert Gentel,

Quote:

That the US would score poorly is no surprise, what surprised me the most about this study is that in the last 20 years the US has actually seen a decrease in the numbers of people who accept evolution (from 45% to 40%).

The Genesis of the Bible starts with the belief that a god created heavens and earth.

The Genesis of the theory of evolution starts -as its title implied it from its very beginning- with the belief that current species come from former inferior, worst, and simpler species.

Between these two beliefs, it appears that Americans are choosing for the biblical genesis because is more credible.

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@farmerman,

I've come to feel that complexity is proof of evolution and not of direct creation.

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@djjd62,

You have excellent imagination and observational skills.

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@gungasnake,

Just taking this opportunity to vote 'thumbs up' on this excellent post (ancient though it may be) as it was on the threshold of dissapearing into the void.

Thank you sir for the effort.

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@spendius,

I miss spendi.

1 Reply

U.S. Lags World in Grasp of Genetics and Acceptance of Evolution

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