Utterly Meaningless

Please allow me to repeat (because it bears repeating) that the various postulates about the origin of life don’t have anything to do with whether or not a God exists.

People who get upset about the scientific account are upset simply because the scientific account does not accord with their favorite creation myth. (I think it’s very amusing how we haven’t seen a coalition of non-Judeo-Christian religions bitching about their creation stories not being taught as truth in biology class.)

I find it humorous that he uses an experiment with intelligently designed digital organisms as a “proof” against intelligent design.

“This is in contrast to Darwinism, which could easily be falsified if it were shown that some creature just appeared out of thin air”

Still waiting for that “missing link”. Since I can’t prove it doesn’t exist, you must be right. Hey….

This is the first time I have ever seen someone call a falacy by name, and then argue it anyway…

A statistical argument where the chance of either option happening is unity kinda confirms my statement that the evidence doesn’t preponderate either way…

This is the first time I have ever seen someone call a falacy by name, and then argue it anyway…

A statistical argument where the chance of either option happening is unity kinda confirms my statement that the evidence doesn’t preponderate either way…

This is all besides the point – ID is not ready for prime time in the same regard that Newtonian mechanics is taught. The ID researchers (who have really stuck out there necks, BTW) all say that as well. So lets move on and agree that ID does not need to be taught alongside evolution in the public schools. Lets move on and stop picking the easy targets so that we can feel smug in our superiority. History is replete with examples of scientists such as today’s evolutionists that would not listen to alternatives. Read Thomas Kuhn for more inf0 on this.

OTOH – Evolution is a “theory in crisis.” And many of its proponents are motivated by their own religious/philosophical beliefs, its just that most of them are not quite so honest about it. Just review all the threads on this BLOG on the topic. Very rarely do we hear exactly what verifiable predictions evolutionary theory makes or the confidence level scientists have in any of its predictions actually happening. Yes, I know, evolution is a fact and a theory. The fact is that life is all related, therefore evolution must have happened. The theory is how evolution occurs which is constantly being revised as science learns more and more. Feh… read the text books that are being used in the P schools and you’ll see its being presented in a very religious, dogmatic way.

So, isn’t that the issue? A bunch of religiously motivated zealots (humanistic naturalists) are doing all they can to censor and discredit people that are promoting a legitimate alternative hypothesis. That ain’t science folks, no matter how you slice it.

I’ve read Dawkins and Mayr, as well as a few of the more popular college level biology text books. I even read quite a bit of what is on the (non peer reviewed pages) of talkorigins.

I’ll take Behe, Meyer, Morris, Johnson and Denton (and a few others) over those folks in a heartbeat if I had to choose. Unfortunatly, p-schooled kids don’t get to choose and hear what those fellows have to say about the weaknesses in Darwin’s theory. They get to hear about the successes in the 1950’s of Miller-Urey, even though both many years later said they ultimatley failed and that science has no answer in regard to biogenesis. Now that’s something worth blogging.

Hamlet gives us both sides of the arguement, quite beautifully, I might add.

there is this:

“To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”

and there’s this:

“There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophies.”

Its just too bad that a religious movement disquised as science has already taken over science classrooms.

What is the science behind the major claims of the evolutionists regarding origin of species and of life anyway?

Government schools do not teach science. They teach the history of scientific discovery, they teach the facts and theories of scientists that have current favor. But they do not teach science, and they cannot. To truly teach science is to teach the art of asking questions, and then determining how to find answers, how to evaluate evidence and draw conclusions.

There are two reasons that g-schools can never do this: First, g-school teachers don’t understand it, and are wholly unqualified — nay, clueless — on the subject. Second, the g-schools are designed to teach from an authoritarian point of view. If they start teaching kids how to ask questions and then to find the answers on their own, they would start actually educating instead of indoctrinating. The whole social control angle would simply implode.

Evolution is a model of the origin and development of life that fits observed facts. Like Newtonian physics, it doesn’t perfectly answer all of the questions that come up. There are some basic postulates (assumptions) involved that make it work. ID rejects some of those assumptions, and has a different model. It is the height of falacious reasoning to reject an argument simply because the folks presenting it have an agenda or because they have a particular set of beliefs that are different.

The purpose of using a model, whether evolution or ID, is to make decisions about how to live our lives. Each model produces differnt decisions. Just as a geocentric model produces different decisions than the heliocentric. The questions are now philosophic rather than scientific, but to properly educate a child, we must teach them to ask these questions. That is the question of life, the universe and everything.

If the purpose of school is to provide the student with the skills and knowledge necessary to function in society, then the student needs to ask these questions, and to find his or her own answers, rather than have any particular dogma, including dogmatic science, foisted on them as ‘truth.’

“That is the question of life, the universe and everything.”

But we already know this answer. It’s 42 🙂

Tad – Great comments!

I’d be interested in seeing the postulates of the theory of evolution. The ones that I am aware of are essentially tautologies, based on (in many cases) circular reasoning. E.g., we know evolution happened, therefore its just a matter of modifying the theory to fit the data. Neo-Darwinism vs Darwinism is a good example of that. But yes, if the model is useful and allows us to predict or better understand things, then thats really all that matters even if the underlying truth is completely different. The problem I see w theory of evolution is that it doesn’t appear to be useful or of value from a scientific standpoint because it doesn’t really explain anything. Its primary purpose appears to be to drive a particular world-view. If I’m mistaken, help me understand some aspect of evolutionary science that people are using to do real valuable work. (e.g., like the application of newtonian mechanics)

Also, please enumerate the facts that you indicated at the start of your post. I think you’d see that many are facts, only because of the way you define science. Better might be to call them assumptions.

Good Catch Chris. It’s just too bad the Vogons destroy the computer before we get to know what the question really is…

‘Facts & Theories’ should have been in quotes, Dave. You are correct. Evolution or ID has little relevence to day to day life, except in the philosophical decisions we make.

The human existence is composed of four elements: Physical, Intellectual, Emotional and Spiritual. The ideas of evolution exist solely in the realms of physical and intellectual, and ignores the emotional and spiritual. When I look at a tetrahedron (4 sided geometric solid) I can only see two sides at a time. If two of those sides are blue, I cannot say that the entire figure is blue, only that the two sides are. To understand– grok, in the words of Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land — we have to look at the other two sides. We cannot answer the questions of “why am I here?” or “where did we come from?” solely on the basis of the physical and intellectual. We have to examine the spiritual and emotional as well.

The real myth is not evolution or ID or Creationism, it is the idea that there is such a thing as objectivity. Some people just put their faith in what they percieve with their five physical senses, and distrust their spiritual senses.