Liberal Hypocrisy about Intelligent Design

What, momma?

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Momma Angel wrote:

I am not an idiot, C.I. The truth is YOU CANNOT prove the creation theory is not correct. You CANNOT prove the theory of evolution is correct. Facts are facts. Do you understand that logic?

I think I understand that logic. It's kind of like...I can't prove that you aren't a complete wackjob, and I can't prove that you are sane. Therefore you should be straight-jacketed and locked up in a rubber room immediately.

Am I understanding your logic correctly?

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I highly doubt that you would accept it as evidence if you are one that gives science high regard. I do not mean that disrespectfully, username. I have been asked this question before and have offered my proof and have been everything from laughed at to having been called an idiot. So, understand my reluctance?

I cannot give you scientific proof. I can give you what I consider proof.

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Kickycan,

All I am saying is that I don't feel neither side can 100% prove their case. I will admit that. Just don't understand why the other side can't.

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Momma

I think it may help (me, at least) to know some of your ideas on "creation".
What does it mean to you? Maybe that is where a lot of this conflict is rooted.

I am of two minds on this:
Materialistically, I do not think anything is created. Everything that is here, has always been, and always will be (in some form or another).

In another sense, I know that each moment is completely new. Each thought, each feeling is different than any I've ever had or ever will have.
This, to me, is a deeper reality (and I think that science would agree) since it is the observer that is central to all of science.

I think it is important to remember that science is rooted in philosophy. Science can't prove anything, but with our ability to reason we can use science to help advance our understanding of what we experience.

I don't claim to know what "creation" is, but whatever it is I attribute it to God.

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Ok, at least we agree with attributing it to God. I do not believe we were always here. I believe God has always been here. I don't know if He created us with a wink of an eye, a wave of a wand, etc.

When I look around me and see life, to me that is proof of God. When I think about the ability to see, hear, and smell, to me, that is proof of God. The miracle of birth is the strongest proof of all to me of God.

I can understand scientifically how I might be able to see, but if you go deeper into that it's mind-boggling to me.

All these things and so much more makes it extremely evident to me there is God and He created everything.

I appreciate your honesty, echi.

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Momma, I can accept what you are saying about not being able to prove the theory of evolution, but really, evolution is not "just" a theory. This excerpt from an article in National Geographic sums it up pretty well, I think.

Quote:

And if you are interested, here's the rest of the article.

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kickycan,

Thanx for providing that article. I will sit down tomorrow and read the whole thing. I just glanced through it briefly right now. Getting kind of sleepy and ready for bed.

I am not totally discounting evolution. My only problem with it (and other theories) is that man is fallible and therefore; anything man comes up with has the potential of also being fallible.

And, I believe the word of God is infallible, so of course, I am going to choose the Word of God over science.

I still cannot and will not say that God did not create life through evolution. I don't know how He did it. I just know He did. I cannot say and will not say He didn't use the Big Bang Theory to create the heavens and the earth. I only know He did create them, but I have no idea how He did it.

I just think maybe in this case I might be a bit more open minded them some because I am at least admitting the possibility of evolution, while there are some that do not like to even say there may be a possibility of God. Not all, mind you, just some seem to feel that way.

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I think it is possible that there is a God, just so you know. A very slim possibility, in my opinion, but yeah, it is possible. Okay, I'm going to bed now. Goodnight.

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Thank you for telling me that kickycan. I appreciate it. Have a good night's sleep.

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rosborne979 wrote:

[

When's the last time you saw an engine mate with another engine and have a baby engine. And when's the last time a bunch of engines had to fight for survival to see which would reproduce more engines.
.

Those kinds of abilities are amongst the things which make living systems more complex than the engine. Think real hard about what you wrote.

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username wrote:

You call an engine with carburetors intelligent design? Horrible misbegotten kludge-upon-kludge-upon-kludge for the best part of a century.

When intelligent design was propounded they cited examples which they said "obviously" were too irreducibly complex to have been the product of evolution and must have been "designed" all at once. Those examples were, most notably, birds and eyes. Evolutionary biologists and others promptly shot them down, demonstrating precursor stages for them...

That's BS. There's no precursor state for an eye or a flying bird either one.

Again:

Take flying birds for example; suppose you aren't one, and you want to become one. You'll need a baker's dozen highly specialized systems, including wings, flight feathers, a specialized light bone structure, specialized flow-through design heart and lungs, specialized tail, specialized general balance parameters etc.

For starters, every one of these things would be antifunctional until the day on which the whole thing came together, so that the chances of evolving any of these things by any process resembling evolution (mutations plus selection) would amount to an infinitessimal, i.e. one divided by some gigantic number.

In probability theory, to compute the probability of two things happening at once, you multiply the probabilities together. That says that the likelihood of all these things ever happening, best case, is ten or twelve such infinitessimals multiplied together, i.e. a tenth or twelth-order infinitessimal. The whole history of the universe isn't long enough for that to happen once.

All of that was the best case. In real life, it's even worse than that. In real life, natural selection could not plausibly select for hoped-for functionality, which is what would be required in order to evolve flight feathers on something which could not fly apriori. In real life, all you'd ever get would some sort of a random walk around some starting point, rather than the unidircetional march towards a future requirement which evolution requires.

And the real killer, i.e. the thing which simply kills evolutionism dead, is the following consideration: In real life, assuming you were to somehow miraculously evolve the first feature you'd need to become a flying bird, then by the time another 10,000 generations rolled around and you evolved the second such reature, the first, having been disfunctional/antifunctional all the while, would have DE-EVOLVED and either disappeared altogether or become vestigial.

In real life, you can see what happens to a creature trying to evolve into a flying bird by observing what happens to a bird with an injured wing which can't fly. He hops around for an hour or two and then some cat or dog snacks him.

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username wrote:

You call an engine with carburetors intelligent design?

Call it what you want, it beats the hell out of walking. Particularly those business trips back and forth between D.C. and NY or Boston; those are just murder on feet.

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Momma Angel wrote:

Kickycan,

All I am saying is that I don't feel neither side can 100% prove their case. I will admit that. Just don't understand why the other side can't.

Nobody can prove anything %100. But in science we accept as fact, things which are proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

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gungasnake wrote:

rosborne979 wrote:

When's the last time you saw an engine mate with another engine and have a baby engine. And when's the last time a bunch of engines had to fight for survival to see which would reproduce more engines.
.

Those kinds of abilities are amongst the things which make living systems more complex than the engine. Think real hard about what you wrote.

Those are also the abilities which allow living organisms to take advantage of (and to be caught up in) the mechanisms which drive evolution. Pretty obvious actually. But as we all know, your agenda has nothing to do with *underrstanding* evolution and everything to do with selling your snakeoil.

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gungasnake wrote:

In probability theory, to compute the probability of two things happening at once, you multiply the probabilities together. That says that the likelihood of all these things ever happening, best case, is ten or twelve such infinitessimals multiplied together, i.e. a tenth or twelth-order infinitessimal. The whole history of the universe isn't long enough for that to happen once.

.

It looks like your understanding of probability is about as good as your understanding of evolution..

If you only use the time then you can't get to the numbers needed. One small problem with only using the time is it ignores the number of REAL possibilities for evolution. it is estimated that there are 30-50 million species on the earth today. There are 6 billion people, many times that for smaller organisms, fewer for some complex organisms.

For the sake of argument lets assume each species has 1 billion new members each year and 30 million species and the earth has had life for 3 billion years.

So.. lets look at that from a probability standpoint using just those numbers. You have had 90,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (9x10 to the 32nd)

Then lets use the simple bacteria found in a single person.
A person has 390,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (3.9x10 to the 23rd, again larger than your claim of what is needed)single celled bacteria in them. There are 6 billion people on the earth. A single bacterium can replicate itself 1 million times in 12 hours. That means that in humans alone there are probably.
234,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 opportunities every 12 hours just in bacteria found in humans for there to be evolution. (if we use your 12 infintesimals to achieve an evolutionary change that means there are 20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 evolutions of bacterium every 12 hours in humans alone.)
now multiply that times the number of 12 hour periods in 3 billion years. Then multiply it times the number of other complex creatures that would contain bacteria. Then add in the number found outside complex creatures. In no time at all you are talking about 10 to the millions. A number well beyond your 12 infintesimals to the 12 infintesimal.

Based on the numbers Gunga, it is not only likely that evolution would occur in that number of new organisms, it is highly unlikely that it would not have occurred. Your simplistic use of only the time frame completely disregards the astronomical numbers available in evolution.

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Gunga. I suggest you try to learn a little about biology. I repeat the systems preexisted birds. Do a little research.

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Same thing with eyes, every stage in development, from sensitive patches on skin on has a functional, useful role in survival.

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Momma Angel wrote:

Our argument then, as is still my argument now, is why lower the standards? That is exactly what we would have been doing. Lowering the English standards to accommodate those that do not have the same standards (for whatever reason).

I am not saying that teaching ID is wrong. I think it should be taught. I understand the need for it. I understand those that would want it taught as something other than science. In that respect, I am assuming those that don't want it called science would feel it is lowering standards?

The problem I see is just like the one we had at work, if any standards are lowered from what they used to be, then you open up one huge can of worms.

I think Momma Angel just got, agreed with and repeated in her own words Ebrown's point exactly.

Perhaps I don't look around the Politics threads enough anymore, but I would never have thought Ebrown and MA would ever agree with each other on such a matter, and as eloquently as this even. I think it's kind of beautiful.

For the record, I have no problem in anyone studying or using ebonics, but I think it's important that, in English class, everyone gets to learn the grammar of standard English. I can see the interest in organising a class about Ebonics as an interesting phenomenon, but students need to learn that standard English is standard English; it wouldn't be a question of equal systems, as standard English is what they will need to be able to command in the rest of their life.

Likewise, I have no problem with public schools organising classes on religion, philosophy and religious and philosophical theories, in which ID would be a subject (as would be other religious beliefs). (I would be bothered if only ID/Christianity was taught in such a class, unless it were an optional class, since that would imply a prescription by the school of that as the one true belief, which would be discriminatory to secular and other-religious students.) But in science class, students need to learn science: the scientific method of fact-finding and the findings yielded by such fact-finding so far. Because its those standards and practices of science that they will need to be able to comprehend and command in the rest of their life. ID can not be a fit, equal part of that, since it's not based on any scientific fact-finding but on a belief (that something must have happened, even if there is no physical evidence of it whatsoever).

Momma Angel wrote:

Well, as far as I'm concerned then, argument's over! I have no problem with teaching it in other than a class labeled science. No problem whatsoever and I really don't see why anyone else should consider that a problem.

Ok, next issue.......

Problem is that those who are pushing for the introduction of ID in teaching quite specifically demand it to be taught as part of science: see the Kansas School Board decision.

Their opponents might be divided on whether it should be taught only as a religious theory as part of religion or philosophy class, or should not be taught at all in the school - but for now, that difference of opinion has been irrelevant, as it is quite specifically science education that the ID'ers are trying to breach. If they'd go for merely including ID as part of some religion/philosophy class, this would most likely not have been much of an issue at all; but then that would have been besides the point for them.

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Momma Angel wrote:

I am not an idiot, C.I. The truth is YOU CANNOT prove the creation theory is not correct. You CANNOT prove the theory of evolution is correct. Facts are facts. Do you understand that logic?

One cannot prove anything 100% certain. But scientists can point to an immense body of data that support the assumption of evolution. ID'ers on the other hand do not seem to be able to point to any data that supports the assumption that the world was created in a process of intelligent design. They are able to point out possible remaining discrepancies in the theory of evolution - but in their turn, they don't have any evidence to show at all that supports their alternative theory. Thats the difference.

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Liberal Hypocrisy about Intelligent Design

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