Only in America...

A cheap shot from --
Aisha
(one of my best friends is a creationist--but he IS hard work!)

quote:

Crazy Carlos :
"I have friends who turned quite blue living under a cellphone mast"

Anabel :
"Links and photos, perhaps?"

Here you go :


I think it's pretty impressive.
Now if that's not a definite proof of Russian experiments,
I don't know what can be...

--
ArkanGL

Aw, Grumpy and Smurfett!

How cute.

Hm. My friends were quite a lot darker blue than your guys, and no mistake. No links, the reports were mostly in community papers. But we're preparing a big presentation to the World Health Organisation on this family once they're fully cured.

BTW, there are HUGE problems with orthodox evolution, but the "intelligent design" people are unable to make this design "intelligble". Big flaw with an argument by intelligence. The main problem with Darwinism is that NOT ONE SINGLE INTERMEDIATE between species has EVER been found. Darwin would predict thousands of gradations between species. They still say (as did Darwin) ah well, the fossil record is incomplete. Species jumps are literally quantum jumps at the molecular level. Species is by definition a quantum concept.

how can anyone say for sure what happened billions of years ago?

is the idea that we are a bunch of jellyfish sea monkeys that one day crawled out more plausible than the idea we were created by buddhas or a hippie looking god or even genetically engineered by space aliens that continue to breed us for food? or even a combination of the three?

evolution is nothing more than another creation myth, & one of the less plausible...

quote:

NOT ONE SINGLE INTERMEDIATE between species has EVER been found.

Oh bother.

Detail, Colin. Details and facts. How dare ye?

had to chime in...

I myself am not a religious man but I do go to a liberal arts school that requires that philosophies, theologies and a humanities course be taken by all students. And in the course of the past three years I've learned a bit about intelligent design. I must add also that in the humanities course, one of the units was on Darwin.

Intelligent design is not necessarily a Christian view. We see unintelligent animals and other living things acting towards an end, trying to produce the best (if that word means anything) possible results. A simple example: We have the perfect level of oxygen here for carbon based life forms to breathe instead of burning up. Yes, its true that literal biblical interpretations are at odds with our scientific knowledge but there is a lot more to learn about human nature than just chemicals.

Thought like this is part of one's take on the universe and should be considered just as much as the sciences we have the ability to perceive. Our pursuit of high truth must build off of truths and never be hindered by truths. I am not bible thumping here, just remembering how much we don't know...

quote:

We see unintelligent animals and other living things acting towards an end, trying to produce the best (if that word means anything) possible results.

What I see is a rather interesting (but unfortunate) consequence of the way we use language.

It's very very difficult to discuss the fitness of a creature to live in an environment, without using language that assumes design, or purposiveness. Why? Because we design things. We have purposes. And our "fitness" language has developed over time to refer to things that we have created, generally for a purpose of our own making.

So it doesn't immediately jar when someone talks about the design of a body part. Or how a shark hasn't evolved significantly in millions of years, because it's "perfectly designed for its environment".

The part of your post that I've quoted above isn't any sort of argument in support of intelligent design, because it uses language that assumes purposiveness (ie the existence of that which you're arguing in favour of) - "acting toward an end...trying to produce the best...results".

Because you're talking about non-human animals and non-intelligent living creatures, I assume you're not attributing the "end" and the "results" to the animals/creatures themselves. Your average woodlouse doesn't decide one day to evolve in a particular direction.

But if you're using this language merely to refer to the fact that creatures tend to either evolve to fit their environment or perish, then you've fallen into the trap of using loaded language rather than phrasing things more neutrally.

I suspect you intended to use loaded language all along, so let's have a quick look at this intelligent design thing. ID is "not necessarily a Christian view". Good! And I would suggest that it's not necessarily an unscientific view either - or at least, it's not a view that should be immune from scientific scrutiny.

As I understand it (and I'm happy to be proved wrong), ID is really a watered-down version of the "pocketwatch" argument in favour of the existence of God. One discovers a watch, carefully scrutinises it, and concludes from the multiplicity of finely-meshing parts that it could not have come into existence by the blind workings of mere chance, but must have been created by someone - a watchmaker.

By extension, the universe is an infinitely more complex thing than a pocketwatch. How could any reasonable being scrutinise it and not conclude that it was designed. There must be a cosmic watchmaker!

ID proponents don't quite go so far as to suggest the name of the watchmaker. (I'll give you a hint though, kiddies - it's a 3-letter name starting with G and ending with D...). There are a couple of reasons why they don't do that. Coming right out in the open like that would work against their claims that ID isn't a religious argument, but rather is a scientific theory. Why wouldn't they want it to be a religious argument? Because then it couldn't be taught in science classes, but would be relegated to the backblocks of religious ed.

But let's say I'm wrong about ID proponents and the deity-whose-name-must-not-be-spoken. Let's assume this really is a scientific exercise. Hmmm - there must be someone/something that's put in place these purposes and ends, but that's not a matter for us to investigate now, children (this is a science class, remember). We'll stop here.

Er...what do you think the students will conclude, if they find ID at all credible? Who or what will they decide set all the wheels in motion? A bit of a no-brainer really, particularly in an ostensibly Christian country like the US. "A" leads to "B" leads to "G-O-D".
And it won't be Allah, or Yahweh, or even the Great Spaghetti Monster, will it? We all know whose God will be awarded the credit...

Finally (I can hear you all saying "about time"), will an ID supporter PLEASE deal adequately with the question raised by any 5 year-old who's told that God made the world. Yes, it's the old "but who made God?" thing.

If the ID guys look at the universe and conclude that it's all too complex and "designed" to have arisen by "chance", how can they stand up with a straight face and argue that someone or something must have made it all happen? If the universe can't have arisen by "chance" because it's too complex, then it's rather likely that a someone/something capable of bringing it into existence would be of a greater level of complexity again. Certainly, he/she/it would be sufficiently complex not to have come into existence by chance. So who created this someone/something?

We know that God has always existed, of course. But if that's logically possible, it would be equally logical for the universe always to have existed. We don't exactly need a middleman.

But I guess logic isn't really what this thing's about. What we have here is the politics of religion. Religion cloaking itself in a badly-fitting lab coat and trying to pass itself off as science. The devil quoting scripture for his own purpose, if you will.

Bah!

quote:

A simple example: We have the perfect level of oxygen here for carbon based life forms to breathe instead of burning up.

This shows what?

If we didn't have the perfect level of oxygen here we wouldn't have evolved. As we do, we did.

The statement says absolutely nothing, apart from indicate that the statement maker doesn't understand what they are talking about.

An issue frequently ignored is the fact that we really aren't designed that well. We get by, we make due, but a lot of this 'creation' is pretty flawed. I know, I know, sin nature, blahblahblah.

But if you actually deconstruct the universe from an actual engineer's point of view, you see that this isn't a valid argument. Anyone who intentionally 'designed' things this way was on the crack, smack.

For example (from an article in the NYT):

In mammals, for instance, the recurrent laryngeal nerve does not go directly from the cranium to the larynx, the way any competent engineer would have arranged it. Instead, it extends down the neck to the chest, loops around a lung ligament and then runs back up the neck to the larynx. In a giraffe, that means a 20-foot length of nerve where 1 foot would have done. If this is evidence of design, it would seem to be of the unintelligent variety.

Full text here

quote:

"I have friends who turned quite blue living under a cellphone mast..."

Really? How blue?

Hey Zero, get with the program, wouldja?

It's "jellyfish sea LEMURS"

DNA is a cut-up.
RNA and the protein well.
Splice and dice.
chaotic form.
Smooth that out with a covalent bond.
Faith, grace, patience.
God is real.

My problem with teaching intelligent design as a science is that it doesn't explain anything, which is, in my mind, the whole point of science.

quote:

My problem with teaching intelligent design as a science is that it doesn't explain anything, which is, in my mind, the whole point of science.

Yup, metaphysics is still metaphysics.

Just in a bit of defense, I did add next to the word best: (if that word means anything). This is because I did expect some of the comments that I got back.

The oxygen example, I'll admit is not a great one, but the point is that there are laws and logic in our plane of existence. I embrace being a human, maybe for the wrong reasons, but I can't just write life off as a huge chance or mistake.

I guess I'm just the type of person that looks at what we know with what we don't and decides that there is a source of order in the universe. Something from nothing, nothing from something, however you want to view the cosmos - science hasn't explained everything...yet.

Tell yourself the bedtime stories you need, man. Superstition will only get you so far.

so respectful.
I don't remember bashing your purposeless existence...

If there's a design for this bullshit, it sure as fuck ain't intelligent.