President Bush Endorses Intelligent Design?

[pajarito 0]

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In my opinion, President Bush isn't qualified to endorse a candy bar...let alone a religious or scientific theory.

More voters than not seem to think that he is.

[tso-d_chris 0]

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Which is the problem when you confuse science (which can be proved or disproved) and faith (which can't be.)

Where does that leave String Theory, which (AFIK) takes place on a scale so small that it is not observable or testable?

[rasmack 0]

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Where does that leave String Theory, which (AFIK) takes place on a scale so small that it is not observable or testable?

String theory is better at explaining the varieties of elementary particles and their interactions than the Bible. Not much better though

HF #682, Team Dirty Sanchez #227
“I simply hate, detest, loathe, despise, and abhor redundancy.”
- Not quite Oscar Wilde...

[pajarito 0]

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Where does that leave String Theory, which (AFIK) takes place on a scale so small that it is not observable or testable?

String theory is better at explaining the varieties of elementary particles and their interactions than the Bible. Not much better though

The purpose of the Bible is not to "explain the varieties of elementary particles and their interactions." Explaining things of that nature was never its intent. The comparison makes no sense.

[billvon 3,112]

>Where does that leave String Theory, which (AFIK) takes place
>on a scale so small that it is not observable or testable?

It leaves it right where you describe it - as a theory that's currently untestable or observable. That will not always be true, at which time it will be either discounted or taken more seriously.

[rasmack 0]

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The purpose of the Bible is not to "explain the varieties of elementary particles and their interactions." Explaining things of that nature was never its intent. The comparison makes no sense.

Which is why the question posed was not really relevant.

HF #682, Team Dirty Sanchez #227
“I simply hate, detest, loathe, despise, and abhor redundancy.”
- Not quite Oscar Wilde...

[GTAVercetti 0]

Here is an interesting page (contains actual science and technical explanations) about radiometric dating(not exactly intelligent design per se but along the same vein of argument) ...by a Christian -- AND he is a proponent of it.

http://www.asa3.org/ASA/resources/Wiens.html#page%204

It is one long page, but here, from "page 19" and "page 20":

Can We Really Believe the Dating Systems?

We have covered a lot of convincing evidence that the Earth was created a very long time ago. The agreement of many different dating methods, both radiometric and non-radiometric, over hundreds of thousands of samples, is very convincing. Yet, some Christians question whether we can believe something so far back in the past. My answer is that it is similar to believing in other things of the past. It only differs in degree. Why do you believe Abraham Lincoln ever lived? Because it would take an extremely elaborate scheme to make up his existence, including forgeries, fake photos, and many other things, and besides, there is no good reason to simply have made him up. Well, the situation is very similar for the dating of rocks, only we have rock records rather than historical records. Consider the following:

* There are well over forty different radiometric dating methods, and scores of other methods such as tree rings and ice cores.
* All of the different dating methods agree--they agree a great majority of the time over millions of years of time. Some Christians make it sound like there is a lot of disagreement, but this is not the case. The disagreement in values needed to support the position of young-Earth proponents would require differences in age measured by orders of magnitude (e.g., factors of 10,000, 100,000, a million, or more). The differences actually found in the scientific literature are usually close to the margin of error, usually a few percent, not orders of magnitude!
* Vast amounts of data overwhelmingly favor an old Earth. Several hundred laboratories around the world are active in radiometric dating. Their results consistently agree with an old Earth. Over a thousand papers on radiometric dating were published in scientifically recognized journals in the last year, and hundreds of thousands of dates have been published in the last 50 years. Essentially all of these strongly favor an old Earth.
* Radioactive decay rates have been measured for over sixty years now for many of the decay clocks without any observed changes. And it has been close to a hundred years since the uranium-238 decay rate was first determined.
* Both long-range and short-range dating methods have been successfully verified by dating lavas of historically known ages over a range of several thousand years.
* The mathematics for determining the ages from the observations is relatively simple.

The last three points deserve more attention. Some Christians have argued that something may be slowly changing with time so all the ages look older than they really are. The only two quantities in the exponent of a decay rate equation are the half-life and the time. So for ages to appear longer than actual, all the half-lives would have to be changing in sync with each other. One could consider that time itself was changing if that happened (remember that our clocks are now standardized to atomic clocks!). And such a thing would have to have occurred without our detection in the last hundred years, which is already 5% of the way back to the time

page 20

of Christ.

Beyond this, scientists have now used a "time machine" to prove that the half-lives of radioactive species were the same millions of years ago. This time machine does not allow people to actually go back in time, but it does allow scientists to observe ancient events from a long way away. The time machine is called the telescope. Because God's universe is so large, images from distant events take a long time to get to us. Telescopes allow us to see supernovae (exploding stars) at distances so vast that the pictures take hundreds of thousands to millions of years to arrive at the Earth. So the events we see today actually occurred hundreds of thousands to millions of years ago. And what do we see when we look back in time? Much of the light following a supernova blast is powered by newly created radioactive parents. So we observe radiometric decay in the supernova light. The half-lives of decays occurring hundreds of thousands of years ago are thus carefully recorded! These half-lives completely agree with the half-lives measured from decays occurring today. We must conclude that all evidence points towards unchanging radioactive half-lives.

Some individuals have suggested that the speed of light must have been different in the past, and that the starlight has not really taken so long to reach us. However, the astronomical evidence mentioned above also suggests that the speed of light has not changed, or else we would see a significant apparent change in the half-lives of these ancient radioactive decays.

Doubters Still Try

Some doubters have tried to dismiss geologic dating with a sleight of hand by saying that no rocks are completely closed systems (that is, that no rocks are so isolated from their surroundings that they have not lost or gained some of the isotopes used for dating). Speaking from an extreme technical viewpoint this might be true--perhaps 1 atom out of 1,000,000,000,000 of a certain isotope has leaked out of nearly all rocks, but such a change would make an immeasurably small change in the result. The real question to ask is, "is the rock sufficiently close to a closed system that the results will be same as a really closed system?" Since the early 1960s many books have been written on this subject. These books detail experiments showing, for a given dating system, which minerals work all of the time, which minerals work under some certain conditions, and which minerals are likely to lose atoms and give incorrect results. Understanding these conditions is part of the science of geology. Geologists are careful to use the most reliable methods whenever possible, and as discussed above, to test for agreement between different methods.

Some people have tried to defend a young Earth position by saying that the half-lives of radionuclides can in fact be changed, and that this can be done by certain little-understood particles such as neutrinos, muons, or cosmic rays. This is stretching it. While certain particles can cause nuclear changes, they do not change the half-lives. The nuclear changes are well understood and are nearly always very minor in rocks. In fact the main nuclear changes in rocks are the very radioactive decays we are talking about.

Why yes, my license number is a palindrome. Thank you for noticing.

[EricTheRed 0]

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In my opinion, President Bush isn't qualified to endorse a candy bar...let alone a religious or scientific theory.

More voters than not seem to think that he is.

Though most agree now that he can't run a country...

http://www.pollingreport.com/BushJob.htm

illegible usually

[JackC 0]

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The original science book, as quoted in one of Dawkins' books, described the Malay, Negro, Mongolian etc races and then conlcuded that the superior Caucasian race was the end result of evolution.

Is there a working definition of superior in modern evolutionary biolology or is this just a quote from an old book, complete with archaic language? and whats your point? If it's that science makes moral claims (and surely there must be better examples than some dubious natural selection implys racism link), then your poor example just supports my argument that NOMA is flawed.

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Are you claiming that if you can find an example that contradicts something, it is not generally true?

Depends on what example contradicts what rule, how usefull the rule is and how hard the example is to find. If you claim that "all apples are green", I only have to find one that isn't, then you have to reduce it to "well, most apples are green". If I find more non-green apples you have to change it to "OK, some apples are green". How many contradictions do you tollerate before you review your rule?

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Are white christian veterans terrorists because Timothy McVeigh built a car bomb and killed 168 people a decade ago?

Huh? Are apples green because I'm sure I've seen red ones.

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Science and religion should not overlap, and usually do not. There are, of course, exceptions, generally from people who have a desperate need to believe something and will take support from any source. That does not make it right.

NOMA only works because applying science to the religious claims that can be tested leads to quesions that people prefer to avoid. If someone claims that a force/energy/thing exists, why would we not use whatever tools are available to investigate the claim? Laziness? Apathy perhaps?

[billvon 3,112]

>If you claim that "all apples are green", I only have to find one that
> isn't, then you have to reduce it to "well, most apples are green". If
> I find more non-green apples you have to change it to "OK, some
> apples are green". How many contradictions do you tollerate before
> you review your rule?

I did not claim that science never attempts to define morals, nor do I claim that religion never attempts to define science. I did not propose a 'rule.' I do believe, as Gould does, that the two are not overlapping, despite some people who believe they are.

I am sure you use a similar approach to what you think is true. For example, you may believe that women have the same rights as men. The fact that the Saudis do not believe this does not mean your "rule" is invalid, it just means that they don't follow your way of thinking. And even if someone can prove that 2 million men disagree with you, I suspect you will not suddenly agree that women might be inferior to men.

>NOMA only works because applying science to the religious claims
> that can be tested leads to quesions that people prefer to avoid. If
> someone claims that a force/energy/thing exists, why would we not
> use whatever tools are available to investigate the claim? Laziness?
> Apathy perhaps?

?? They have been used. We have searched the skies without knowing what to expect, and have not found a celestial throne yet. We have looked for evidence that lightning is not just atmospheric electrical discharges, but they seem to be just that rather than the hand of God.

Science doesn't define what you can study and what you can't. People have proposed the existence of ether, tested for it, and found no evidence that it exists - despite the fact that we no longer need ether to explain EM propagation. If you want to look for scientific evidence of God's existence, go for it. Science does, however, require your theory to pass the same tests any other theory does.

[iwasinkheson68 0]

i think intelligent design may have had the day off when w arrived.

[JackC 0]

OK Bill, I give up. Despite examples that you have given proving that science and religion do overlap, despite the once almighty god being scientifically proven to be impotent in so many different areas that he is now refered to as "the god of the gaps", despite the flat earth theory, earth being the centre of the universe, despite ID, genesis and all the other examples of science and religion overlapping, NOMa is still a valid principle. Now that this is all cleared up, I'm off to Safety and Training to spout the 45 degree rule. After all it works some of the time and we shouldn't throw out a theory just because it fails a few times.

[rasmack 0]

I am now a convert. I truly believe that we should teach alternative theories of creation. My current favourite is that of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. How long will it be before the Kansas School Board adopts this in the curriculum alongside Genesis and the Thoroughly Unproven Just-A-Theory Of Evolution-That-Would-Have-Us-Descend-From-Apes?

Whoops. Did I forget to put in the -tags there?

HF #682, Team Dirty Sanchez #227
“I simply hate, detest, loathe, despise, and abhor redundancy.”
- Not quite Oscar Wilde...

[wmw999 2,587]

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Just-A-Theory Of Evolution-That-Would-Have-Us-Descend-From-Apes?

My two favorite quotes about why it's just illogical to believe in evolution:
1. Do you really think we came from rats?
2. Are you saying that monkeys can have human children?

Wendy W.

There is nothing more dangerous than breaking a basic safety rule and getting away with it. It removes fear of the consequences and builds false confidence. (tbrown)

[rasmack 0]

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1. Do you really think we came from rats?

Lawyers?

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2. Are you saying that monkeys can have human children?

Politicians?

HF #682, Team Dirty Sanchez #227
“I simply hate, detest, loathe, despise, and abhor redundancy.”
- Not quite Oscar Wilde...

[AlexCrowley 0]

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> Are white christian veterans terrorists because Timothy McVeigh built a car bomb and killed 168 people a decade ago?

Tim McVeigh wasn't a devout Christian according to the public record. However I know what you mean, you could use The Olympic Bomber as he was a extremist and a member of Christian Identity, he'd also bombed several abortion clinics.

TV's got them images, TV's got them all, nothing's shocking.

[mr2mk1g 10]

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2. Are you saying that monkeys can have human children?

Politicians?

Surely the current example would be a human having a monkey child?

BTW I am now a devout FSMist... with a pirate/temperature graph t-shirt on the way.

[GTAVercetti 0]

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OK Bill, I give up. Despite examples that you have given proving that science and religion do overlap, despite the once almighty god being scientifically proven to be impotent in so many different areas that he is now refered to as "the god of the gaps", it fails a few times.

Did you just say that God needs viagra?

rasmack - OH NO!! I was hoping that would help make people believe in carbon dating! OH FOR SHAME!!! FOR SHAME!!!

What I find funny is that the majority of scientists, geologists, etc, believe in at least an Old Earth. it is the detractors (ie, creationists) who are the loudest though and so their incorrect message gets heard far too often.

Its always the wrongs ones who have to yell so loudly that they are right. That if, perhaps they say it at a high enough volume and enough times, it will be true. Or maybe it is to drown out the voice in the back of their heads telling them they are mistaken.

Why yes, my license number is a palindrome. Thank you for noticing.

[AlexCrowley 0]

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OK Bill, I give up. Despite examples that you have given proving that science and religion do overlap, despite the once almighty god being scientifically proven to be impotent in so many different areas that he is now refered to as "the god of the gaps", it fails a few times.

Did you just say that God needs viagra?

Hardly a god of gaps then.

TV's got them images, TV's got them all, nothing's shocking.

[jakee 1,594]

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My two favorite quotes about why it's just illogical to believe in evolution:
1. Do you really think we came from rats?
2. Are you saying that monkeys can have human children?

Hey, take giraffes "evolving" long necks to reach the top of the trees. Now, if I decided that I needed a longer neck it wouldn't happen would it? So how did the giraffes do it!?!

Do you want to have an ideagasm?

[GTAVercetti 0]

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My two favorite quotes about why it's just illogical to believe in evolution:
1. Do you really think we came from rats?
2. Are you saying that monkeys can have human children?

Hey, take giraffes "evolving" long necks to reach the top of the trees. Now, if I decided that I needed a longer neck it wouldn't happen would it? So how did the giraffes do it!?!

Yes, because that is EXACTLY how evolution works. You wish for it and it happens, in one generation.

Why yes, my license number is a palindrome. Thank you for noticing.

[billvon 3,112]

>Yes, because that is EXACTLY how evolution works. You wish for
>it and it happens, in one generation.

I thought you had to be exposed to interstellar radiation; then you evolve to the 'next level' within a few minutes. Clearly the only reason it's taken so long to get from prokaryotic organisms to man is the pitiful lack of cosmic rays here on Earth.

[Vallerina 2]

I'm sorry, Bill, but you have completely ignored some facts about the beginning of the world and humans.

http://www.venganza.org/

There's a thin line between Saturday night and Sunday morning

[GTAVercetti 0]

temperature vs pirates.

CLASSIC.

Why yes, my license number is a palindrome. Thank you for noticing.

[tso-d_chris 0]

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Hardly a god of gaps then

LOL