Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

hell... i say let them in. i think it would be hilarious when they fail their classes because they have a completely inaccurate understanding of the world. of course, then i suppose they would just sue the school again, saying that the professors discriminated against them...

and then they can sue prospective employers for discriminating against them because they have NO idea what they're doing after they get out of school...

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farmerman wrote:

I tried finding some sample text from "Biology for Christians" , Amazon has the book but nobody's bothered to review it yet.

I suppose it could be used to kill budgies.

You cruel atheistic bastard.

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The US intellectual currency sank to new lows against Sterling overnight and is set to continue its slide when markets open in a few hours.

Commentators are concerned that if "In God we trust" is worthless so might the other ink inserts on the paper also be.

The stampede into gold shows no sign of abating and some pundits are predicting a $2 to $3 thousand range next year.

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The oath or affirmation is typically administered by the Chief Justice or sometimes by another federal judge. By convention, incoming Presidents raise their right hand and hold the other on a Bible while delivering the oath of office.

It is uncertain how many Presidents used a Bible or added the words "So help me God" at the end of the oath, as neither is required by law (unlike many other federal oaths, where the the phrase "So help me God" is included). There is currently debate as to whether or not George Washington, the first president, added this to the end of his oath. According to the Joint Congressional Committee on Presidential Inaugurations, George Washington added the words "So help me God" during his first inaugural,[1] though this has been disputed. [2][3] There are no contemporaneous sources for this fact, and no eyewitness sources to Washington's first inaugural mention the phrase at all--including those that transcribed what he said for his oath. Nonetheless, at the end of the oath, all modern presidents have added the phrase, "So help me God." The first president who is confirmed to have added these words is Chester A. Arthur, who appended the phrase when he was sworn into office on September 22, 1881. However, earlier politicians (to include Jefferson Davis in 1861) are confirmed to have used them as well. All federal judges and executive officers were required as early as 1789 by statute to include the phrase in their oaths as well.

Franklin Pierce was the first president to use the word affirm rather than swear. Theodore Roosevelt did not use a Bible when taking the oath in 1901. Dwight Eisenhower, Harry Truman, and Richard Nixon swore the oath on two Bibles. John Quincy Adams swore on a book of law.[4] Washington also kissed the Bible afterwards, as some later Presidents did, but modern Presidents have not - except for Harry Truman, who bent and kissed the Bible upon taking the oath for the first time, on April 12, 1945. Also, the President-elect's name is typically added after the "I", for example, "I, George Washington, do . . ."

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Hokie wrote-

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But maybe you were taught a completely different version of history...

I am inclined to think that you are not too wide of the mark on that one.

I very much doubt that the books I have read about the past have ever been permitted to disturb your complacencies.

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fm wrote-

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your attempted point is?... never mind, I dont think Id want to wast any time over your detours.

and then, compounding the error-

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WRiting doesnt come easy to you does it?

.

In the company of gentlemen, even one of no particular distinction as in the present case, such conceited effusions would be greeted with a range of responses comprising the acceptable and decorous expressions of impatience such as eye-rolling, discreet coughs, titters. smirks, the shuffling of feet, the reaching for the decanter, reading the menu, conspiratorial eye-contacts and the occasional explosion of impossible to repress squeals of wild and fiendish laughter upon which the others would frown ironically.

That, of course, assumes that the decanter has only been passed around the once.

After five circuits, not counting detours, the offender would be lifted bodily from his chair and removed from the immediate vicinity by the stewards, one having been given the nod, for the unpardonable offense of lowering the tone of our gentlemanly debate upon a serious issue to the level one might expect to be discovered in a gathering of goat-herders discussing the price of goat-hair gloves in big city shops or from eavsdropping on a phalanx of fish-gutters on Aberdeen quayside on Maundy Thursday holding forth upon the previous evening's episode of Coronation St, in which Jack had almost banged Vera's head against the wall, or Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, or both, or that often found in the rest-room of a cheap brothel at the bottom of The Gut and thus , by implication, that our gathering was no better than any of those and could even be on a lesser plane than that of the last named where one might at least anticipate being Abled 2 Know on certain matters about which I will forbear discoursing upon on this occasion as there may be some young biology teachers viewing here and I wouldn't wish to have their ears go all red at this time of day.

Insults from people who put no effort into their work can be confidently dismissed as one might dismiss some flakes of fag-ash from the polished console with a light puff or (toilet joke edited-Ed).

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spendius wrote:

..on certain matters about which I will forbear discoursing upon on this occasion as there may be some young biology teachers viewing here and I wouldn't wish to have their ears go all red at this time of day.

As these young biology teachers had already stated their particular aversion to erotic matters, I'm given to think that, indeed, you should prevent yourself from indulging in the elaboration of a discourse susceptible to harm again their sensible ears.
Not that I doubt your gentlemanliness in avoiding such ordeals to these young ladies, which goals are, overall, respectable...

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I can't help but note the remarkable perseverance on this thread of both Spendius and his detractors. Clearly there is some mutual reinforcement in this contest between wandering rhetorical flourishes, punctuated with occasional brilliance and poetry and the usually relatively terse and occasionally irritable expressions of scorn and disbelief they elicit from his opponents.

For me, yet another attempt at grasping the elements of quantum mechanics, wave-particle dualities, and the basic cosmological uncertainties is all I need to be repelled by the smug certainty of one who has "discovered" the superficial contradictions of the bible, or of a god who could tolerate human death and suffering. Even on an esthetic basis, faith in the Standard Model or Superstring Theory (and the ever-present singularity) pales in relation to the inscrutable creator.

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Crying like a fire in the sun.

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georgeob1 wrote:

Even on an esthetic basis, faith in the Standard Model or Superstring Theory (and the ever-present singularity) pales in relation to the inscrutable creator.

But at least there's evidence for quantum mechanics and the standard model. (And nobody really believes in string theory.)

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In relation to the basic question here, that is really of no significance at all. It is not the available evidence that is (partly) explained by the standard model that is significant - it is what remains unexplained, and, more importantly the inherent limits of the standard model itself.

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But is there any evidence, or is it even possible to get any, that whilst "quantum mechanics" indubitably exists as a discipline does it describe what is actually happening within atomic structures.

It is said that quantum changes are those that occur when an atom radiates or absorbs energy and that these changes, alteration of position of electrons, are discontinuous, which is to say that the electron moves from one place to another without any intermediate positions or time lapses. That it goes "Poof".

Is that correct in relation to what these things are actually doing or merely a mathematical sleight of hand to solve a difficulty in the equations.

When radiation passes through matterless space all we know is that it has done so and the effect it has when it reaches our senses either directly or through instruments.

Do we know how it traverses these spaces and anything of its character.

If matter, time and space melt away under the physicist's penetrating gaze isn't it simply common sense that humans, constructed as they are, will invent magical explanations which, besides satisfying an emotional imperitive, can be put in the service of unifying social groups, engendering artistic creation and guiding people along lines which are scientifically determined by those with the appropriate skills and experience and with access to vast archives of data.

And that the validity of such processes is best considered on the "suck-it-and-see" principle using the Darwinian ananysis that the strongest have it nearest to right.

As we are the strongest by far isn't Christianity confirmed by that logic?

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I think you are being deliberately provocative. The difficulty for quantum theorists isn't so much that their evidence or mathematical models are faulty, but rather that, in human terms, they aren't readily explainable in a coherent (to us) set of images and concepts - and they are, admittedly, incomplete. So far, theirs is an entirely rational and coherent position. The problem (such as it is) arises only when these admittedly incomplete and flawed conceptual frameworks are asserted to also be capable of explaining origins, which they certainly cannot. Most physicists stop short of that leap.

I did enjoy your Darwinian irony though.

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spendius wrote:

But is there any evidence, or is it even possible to get any, that whilst "quantum mechanics" indubitably exists as a discipline does it describe what is actually happening within atomic structures.

Electron microscopes, nuclear power plants, and transistors were all built on the assumption that quantum mechanics is correct. If quantum mechanics was false, all these devices would have failed. But it turned out they worked -- so that's compelling empirical evidence supporting quantum mechanics. There is no comparably strong evidence for the correctness of the God hypothesis.

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i was just thinking about the whole creation thing... and time...

it seems to me that if you buy the creation story, you must also believe in the young earth. and it seems to me that this is absolute, you either do or don't, but there is no room for interpretation.

there are people who believe we were created, but then say that the "days" in which god created the universe were not literal days. i think not. if we are to believe that the length of a genesis "day" is not necessarily the same as the standard day, then we must conclude that all references to time in the bible are incompatible with our current definitions.

for instance, the 40 days spent wandering in the desert... the 900 years live by moses...

if the bible truly is the word of god and was written by his direction then it stands to reason that the man describing the event (the one who god instructed to write) would use the same common terms to define the timescale. that is, why would he say that the earth was created in x days if it actually took years or eons? if he would describe that incorrectly, then how can we trust that every other reference to time was (or anything for that matter) is not incorrect?

the only way i see that this could not be so, is if god himself was willful in the deception of the time frame it took to create the earth.

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georgeob1 wrote:

I did enjoy your Darwinian irony though.

Glad you got it. I thought it was Spendy starting off ok then going haywire as ususal.

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Thomas wrote-

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Electron microscopes, nuclear power plants, and transistors were all built on the assumption that quantum mechanics is correct. If quantum mechanics was false, all these devices would have failed. But it turned out they worked -- so that's compelling empirical evidence supporting quantum mechanics.

I feel sure that is a circular argument but as I have just come back from the pub I don't feel confident enough to pronounce definitively on the matter.

Are there any tee-totallers on here whose brains are clear enough to offer me guidance.

Ptolemy's epicycles were supported by "compelling empirical evidence".

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spendius wrote:

Ptolemy's epicycles were supported by "compelling empirical evidence".

They were indeed. However, as Kepler later demonstrated, there were other, simpler models that worked just as well. Still later Newton put them in a new, more far-reaching, but still coherent conceptual framework, which in turn was later modified by Lorenz and Einstein.

Many (perhaps most) of the "laws" of quantum mechanics appear to be uniquely required by the available evidence (at least that is what Bohr, Pauli, Dirac, and Heisenberg so labored over) - that is the key difference.

Thomas apparently wishes to subject the "god hypothesis" to the domain of physical science. That, of course, is a fundamental error - it lies outside the domain of science, as does the singularity that bounds it. It is interesting that he hasn't yet objected to the singularity.

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spendius wrote:

But is there any evidence, or is it even possible to get any, that whilst "quantum mechanics" indubitably exists as a discipline does it describe what is actually happening within atomic structures.

If I answer your question, can I trust you with the consequences of this knowledge?

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Its not irony, its ignorance. Quantum chemsitry uses an analysis that is statistical in nature, recognizing that states of energy are variable and not discrete. Same thing with Darwinian analysis, the HArdy Weinberg expansion of populational or genetic diversity is also statistical, described in quadratic equation form.

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Spendi muttering under his alcoholic-breath (assuming he has breath): "don't you go playing dice with my universe!"

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Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

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