Timewaster's Guide Archive
General => Everything Else => Topic started by: Entsuropi on November 08, 2005, 09:18:18 PM
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http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,17162341-13762,00.html
I didn't see this coming...
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First the Catholic Church in England rejects the Bible as accurate, now the Vatican says Evolution is right.
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well, Catholic bishops and arch-bishops have been saying that for quite a while.
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Hallelujah! :D
(No, not sarcasm. I'm actually very, very happy that a religious organization with a lot of clout finally came out in support of evolution.)
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Hopefully this move by the Catholic church will help difuse the notion that science and religion are opposed to each other.
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Or it will give more ammo to those who believe that the Catholic Church is of the devil.
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boo on the vatican
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I guess there are positive things to come of this, but I view it as a secularization of the religious body seeking to become more normative with the society. At least it's not a corruption of their standards.
Having said that, I know several devoted Catholics, and I'm sure they will disagree with me vehemently. It's just my opinion, and an fairly uninformed one at that. I hope no one takes is personally.
It's not that I necessarily disbelieve in evolution as an origin of life, it's just that I'm far, far, far from convinced, even after listening and reading several works by pro-evolutionists trying to explain it or convince me. I also don't see how one can reconcile belief in this theory and belief that Adam was the literal first man and an actual person (as is stated fairly explicitly in the Bible, Book of Mormon, and Pearl of Great Price). I've heard several attempts and made a few myself at this reconcilliation, but all of them miss important details or are extremely unconvincing.
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I'm with you, E. I feel that Evolution is Scientifically untenable, as well.
See www.trueorigins.org for more on the scientific side of things.
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Jade, I thought we just agreed the other day that there is nothing in scriptures preventing evolution...
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I just said that I disagree with evolution on Scientific grounds.
You can argue that the Bible doesn't expressly counteract evolution if you take the Creation of Adam and Eve rather metaphorically. And seeing as the Bible is full of both literal truths and metaphors, I'm not going to begin to enter into that discussion.
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The world hasn't been around long enough for evolution to happen, and there was no birth or death before the fall of Adam. Other than that, evolution is a very logical theory, and it seems to me it would work given time. But I don't see any point in trying to disprove it, because religious things and scientific things rely on entirely different methods of proof.
But I heard on the radio someone saying that evolution as a theory is being unfairly targeted by the Intelligent Design people, and that "No one would sit down in class and say 'let's discuss the strengths and weaknesses of atomic theory!'" Uh...why not? Isn't the way the advancement of science happens, when people work to fill in the gaps in the current models? And if you never discuss the gaps, you'll never fill them in...
Nevertheless it doesn't seem like the Intelligent Design people are interested in filling in the gaps; they just want to point at the gaps and say "God is here." Which is fine, but why do it in the science classrooms?
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Because, unlike Finland, religion is not standard curriculum in America. In fact, I think a great many Americans would have a holy fit if it were.
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The world hasn't been around long enough for evolution to happen
Various forms of dating proves both the age of the earth at 4.5 billion years old, and the very first life coming into being at 3.75 billion years ago (surprisingly fast - the earths crust only solidified 3.9 billion years ago). And we have the (very sparse, admittedly) fossil record that shows apes evolving along distinct paths. I hear the biggest problem is that only one in every thousand species ever leave a fossil. It's unlikely there would be a single fossil of us Homo Sapiens left if we were to just all die tomorrow. :'(
Also, adam and eve do not fit with the world as we know it; the Flying Noodle Monster first created a mountain, a tree, and a dwarf.
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Okay, let me just say a few things here:
First, let us please make sure we prevent this from turning into a flame war. This is a topic likely to get people riled up (usually when people bring up Pastafarianism, it has been my experience that they're already somewhat upset, or at least severely irritated), and so I'd like to remind us to remain civil and understanding of people's POV's that do not coincide with our own.
That said, I would like to state that I disagree with Macroevolution on a Scientific basis. I don't feel that the theory holds up well under scrutiny, and I've studied it extensively. While I do believe that the Scriptures imply that God made man in a different fashion, I do not believe that the Bible absolutely eliminates the possibility of it. However, I do not feel that Macroevolution is a sound theory.
[It may also be noted that no one here is disagreeing with Microevolution (a.k.a. genetic variation). It's Macroevolution we disagree with. Microevolution is observed every day in one sense, and is a normal part of life]
Entropy, you will find that every single one of your arguments is addressed at www.trueorigins.org (the best resource I have found to date on the subject), on scientific grounds (no appeals to the Bible. Just cold, hard, science. In some cases, the authors even go out of their way to exclusively use works published by well-known evolutionists at accredited universities to make their cases).
I will not simply go pasting what is there here to address your arguments because:
a) you bring up several different issues which would each need to be addressed.
b) I would simply be pasting much of what is there rather than adding "new" information, and you would simply be pasting what you have read here, or would be regurgitating what you've been taught and have kept in memory.
c) the discussion would get extremely technical and convoluted, and, judging from arguments elsewhere, would really not get anyone anywhere.
Just know that you'll find all of your issues addressed at that site. And if you feel that any issue isn't addressed, I will be glad to look and see if I can find an answer. If not, we can always email Timothy Wallace - he's always ready to answer questions (though it sometimes takes him weeks to respond; I can only imagine how much email he gets), and if there's a big hole that's unaddressed at TrueOrigins, he may just write an article about it.
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You got evolution in my creation!
You got creation in my evolution!
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v97/maddrjeffe/reeses.jpg)
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You're not the real Gemm!
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Jeffe: It's on.
(http://www.omnistar.org/images/random/dog.jpg)
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I'm confused.
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Various forms of dating proves both the age of the earth at 4.5 billion years old [etc]
If God says something different from what science says, I believe God. Generalizing what I said, I think scientists generally do a good job finding explanations to things to the limits of human reasoning and understanding.
Also, adam and eve do not fit with the world as we know it; the Flying Noodle Monster first created a mountain, a tree, and a dwarf.
The Flying Noodle Monster is a somewhat amusing straw man. I wonder if anyone actually believes in him, or just profess belief. Poor guy (deity?).
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God does NOT say anything that science doesn't say. There is a significant difference between Science and what "scientists" say.
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Sorry, I was using it to mean "the scientific community," but I should have been more specific.
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I think most of us understand that, but it is a misleading term.
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I can foresee a certain Dr. Kent Hovind very angry about this. Tehee! :D
After all, He himself said that any God that relied on evolution to create Earth was a retarded God. Tehee! :D
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I was just thinking about this issue last night when it struck me to wonder whether the ID people aren't going about it from entirely the wrong angle. In examining the wonders of creation, is it the intelligence of the creator which is most remarkable, or is it the creativity of the creator which is most evident?
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I'm sure you know this but I'm going to say it anyway, for completeness.
The word "Intelligent" in Intelligent Design simply denotes that life had to be designed on purpose rather than happen randomly.
To put my two cents in... I think the irreducible complexity problem with the theory of evolution "from nothing to us" has gone completely unanswered.
I've looked. There is not even a hypothetical situation that has ever been proposed (at any meaningful level of detail) for even the simplest evolutionary process.
You get scientists blithely saying that, over time, bacteria developed cilia so they could move around better to find food, and eyespots so they could find it more easily.
What I have been totally unable to find, anywhere, is a proposed mechanism for this happening on a chemical/cellular level. Not only has the process not been observed, nobody has ever been able to come up with a viable hypothetical process.
Now, before you say it, I'm not talking about fruitflies expressing different genes in response to changing environment. Those genes after all already existed in the fruitfly, the expression happening is similar to an on off switch. I'm talking about things like developing a working cilia that actually provided an evolutionary advantage to the organism involved.
The problem has been reduced to a good example:
Disassemble a hundred radios into their respective parts. Put those parts into a cement mixer. How long until a complete working radio is assembled? Entropy (the physics phenomenon not the individual who posts here under that handle) directly opposes evolutionary theory.
A single cell bacteria, with or without flagella, with or without an eyespot is a million more times more complicated than any radio and the cement mixer only contained relevant parts, unlike the primordial soup that supposedly spawned our beginnings.
I think the Intelligent Design folks are being falsely polarized by the media's search for sensationalism. ID does not imply or presuppose God. It just points out that evolution doesn't fly. Therefore life was probably designed. The who/what that did the designing is an entirely different issue.
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Now that's theres what I been talkin' bout.
But seriously, yes. The cillia is the best example I've heard for the perception I have.
The problem is compounded by evolutionists who take evolution as a given. They give statements like "it's evident all around us," or "it doesn't need to be proven" when trying to win converters. Well, how is that argument any different from any religious expression they're so vehemently against.
There are gaps in the fossil record. This neither proves nor disproves anything. BUt the record we do have is so incomplete as to leave out confidence in trusting that as a major evidence. And it is THE major evidence. Evolution is one possible explanation for some of the phenomena we see about us. Maybe it's right, maybe it isn't, but it's hardly a given and there are problems with it that are very unconvincing.
And there is no way to demonstrate it, conveniently. You need, at best, an experiment thousands of years long to demonstrate it. Then you get to repeat the experiment with various controls? This isn't likely. Theories that are much more demonstrable (such as Newtonian physics and Einsteinian physics) are bearing out as only special cases, or even possibly inaccurate due to quantum studies. Yet they are both repeatable and very precise. So I should roll over and believe a theory that has many, many, many gaps, can't be demonstrated, and is not experimented? That sounds quite unscientific to me.
Interestingly, the whole approach presents an interesting case for Kuhnian history of science theory. Basically, he says you don't win converts in scientific debate. You only can win new members from the younger generation, then you have to wait for the old school to die off. However, it doesn't seem to be given that evolution will win this round. The counter-position still has a lot of influence, particularly over the youth. I think it will continue to be a partisan issue for a long time. Frankly, I have no problem with it being left to whatever you believe, I just have problems with people telling me that not accepting evolution is unscientific. Whichever side you fall on, you've made a pre-rational decision on which authorities to believe and you have to accept major gaps in your explanation, gaps that could destroy your explanation when filled.
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I think the reason Evolution is so universally accepted and embraced at science is simple:
For Atheists and Agnostics, there is no other acceptable alternative. None at all. They have to believe in Evolution (a priori), because the alternative requires taking a pro-diety assumption. They can't accept that.
Personally, I think the theory is unsound science, on a great many levels.
EDIT: What a post to gain this title on!
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Skar, don't they claim random mutation via things like cosmic rays causes things like cilia and stuff to happen?
I'm not convinced that the entropy argument has much weight, because the Earth is not a closed system--the Sun is constantly bombarding the Earth with energy, which can cause the net organization of the Earth to go up rather than down, so I've heard.
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This addresses the argument of entropy in more detail:
http://trueorigins.org/steiger.asp
The short of it: Yes, evolution still violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics.
"...there are no known violations of the second law of thermodynamics. Ordinarily the second law is stated for isolated [closed] systems, but the second law applies equally well to open systems ... there is somehow associated with the field of far-from equilibrium phenomena the notion that the second law of thermodynamics fails for such systems. It is important to make sure that this error does not perpetuate itself."
[Dr. John Ross, Harvard scientist (evolutionist), Chemical and Engineering News, vol. 58, July 7, 1980, p. 40]
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That quote doesn't convince me of anything. You are an open system. When you eat food, your entropy decreases. When you cook an open system of pancake batter, its entropy decreases since it goes to a more ordered state. Entropy decreases in open systems all the time all around us.
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That quote doesn't convince me of anything. You are an open system. When you eat food, your entropy decreases. When you cook an open system of pancake batter, its entropy decreases since it goes to a more ordered state. Entropy decreases in open systems all the time all around us.
We should stop talking about Entropy. He's getting arrogant.
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If he's decreasing, how can he get arrogant? ;D
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Maybe his volume is decreasing but his density is increasing, then he could become super dense like a diamond. Then he would be able to do lots of...stuff. That would be cause for arrogance. Change two letters in dense and it becomes an insult, which ones are they?
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[size=8]ARROGANCE :)[/size]
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Change two letters in dense and it becomes an insult, which ones are they?
Or you could just change 0 letters...
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Yes, but the point wasn't to insult, it was simply an observation that I made after writing dense so many times (I had to edit a lot).
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That quote doesn't convince me of anything. You are an open system. When you eat food, your entropy decreases. When you cook an open system of pancake batter, its entropy decreases since it goes to a more ordered state. Entropy decreases in open systems all the time all around us.
Let me guess - you didn't read the article I linked to which the quote was excerpted from?
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Jade, your unlikely to ever convince someone if all you do is thrust URLs around. Try presenting the arguements yourself.
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Like mine about Entropy's arrogance.
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Let me guess - you didn't read the article I linked to which the quote was excerpted from?
When your summary appeared to be a summary of something that was totally inadequate to present your arguments, why should you expect me to look at the orginal?
In any case, I don't find it completely convincing. I'm more willing to accept the life origin part of the article, but less so the post-origin development part. It does not even mention mutation, which is something shown to exist in our current world (mutations which are NOT expressions of genes that were there before, but spontaneous new things due to radiation or faults in the DNA replication process, etc.). Anyway, some scientists like Crick believe that conditions on Earth were not suitable for life to arise, but that life arose somewhere else that WAS more suitable, and then traveled here via comets and whatnot.
Anyway, as I said before, I don't believe evolution happened (on Earth) simply because Adam fell only 7,000 years ago or so, not giving enough time for it to occur. But I've got no problem with the idea that God ran some kind of evolution-based (heavenly computer or other) simulation during the spiritual creation phase to handle speciation and stuff like that; that seems much easier than consciously piecing together each T C A G base...
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The reason I don't rehash the same arguments here is because they've all been hashed out elsewhere. In addition, I expect that part of the reason is that I'm apathetic - I don't care enough to convince you in which regards evolution is scientifically untenable when it doesn't affect your belief to begin with. And specifically entering into and addressing scientific arguments in excruciating detail here just wouldn't be worth it, especially considering that.
And the quote wasn't intended as a summary, but rather as an excerpt showing one facet of the argument, and why it might be helpful to read.
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We should stop talking about Entropy. He's getting arrogant.
"Getting?"
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That quote doesn't convince me of anything. You are an open system. When you eat food, your entropy decreases. When you cook an open system of pancake batter, its entropy decreases since it goes to a more ordered state. Entropy decreases in open systems all the time all around us.
Exactly. And both those activities require some form of intelligence to perform them. Pancakes don't cook themselves and nutrients don't spontaneously organize themselves into bones muscle or leaves. Some sort of higher being, whether it's a plant sucking stuff up from the soil or Ookla flipping a pancake, is required to put matter into a more organized state. Thus we arrive at the idea that in order for our organized selves to exist there must be a higher "intelligence" to have done the organizing.
It does not even mention mutation, which is something shown to exist in our current world (mutations which are NOT expressions of genes that were there before, but spontaneous new things due to radiation or faults in the DNA replication process, etc.)
Given that this is not germaine to the life origin portion of the argument... I'd very much like to see an example of random mutations that provided evolutionary advantage to the organism involved. Like I said, I've looked and haven't found any so... Where did I miss?
Anyway, some scientists like Crick believe that conditions on Earth were not suitable for life to arise, but that life arose somewhere else that WAS more suitable, and then traveled here via comets and whatnot.
So "I admit that evolution could not have happened here but somewhere it might have therefore believe." Is a viable argument? I don't buy it.
But I've got no problem with the idea that God ran some kind of evolution-based (heavenly computer or other) simulation during the spiritual creation phase to handle speciation and stuff like that; that seems much easier than consciously piecing together each T C A G base...
Thus we see that you do believe in Intelligent Design after all.
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Um...I will thank you to not put words into my mouth. I have already plainly said that I believe God created the universe. Did you read this thread? But I do not claim any belief in "Intelligent Design Theory," so don't tell me I believe something I haven't said I believe.
Plus why would the idea of mine that you quoted, about God making use of simulated evolution to do speciation, when Intelligent Designists specifically do not believe speciation can arise from evolution, lend any support for your claim that I believe as Intelligent Design advocates do? Quite the opposite!
I think I take an entirely different tack on the issue than Intelligent Designists. They specifically avoid mentioning God, but attempt to reason out the need for an Intelligent Designer. On the contrary, I accept God from the start and have no interest in trying to prove a need for his existence due to gaps, real or imagined, in any current human theories. Now, I am all in favor of discussing the weaknesses of any theory when that theory is taught in the science classroom--a huge proportion of scientific advancement in the recent centuries comes from exploring the weaknesses in the prevailing theories, so ceasing to do so would quite hinder advancement. However, I don't see that any scientific advancement has ever come from saying "we can't explain this, so God must have done it." Anyway, the whole issue wouldn't have come up if religion and science were allowed to be taught side by side--neither one in place of the other, but coexisting. But Supreme Court decisions have hampered that; thus this contrived ID debate.
Back to your post--I must say I think the origin of life issue is muddying this up far too much. Darwinian evolution does not attempt to explain the origin of life from nonlife. How life got to this planet in the first place is a related area of inquiry for the scientists involved, but it is not the same area of inquiry. So the 2nd law of thermodynamics arguments against the spontaneous origin of life are not arguments against evolution.
...also, I don't want to put words into your mouth, but it seems like you just said that plants are a form of intelligent life...
Before this instant I had no idea that there were people out there attempting to prove that no mutations are ever beneficial and that they are always harmful. But a google search reveals plenty such people.
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I don't believe that mutations are never "beneficial" - they can be adaptive and help one group eek out ahead of another (an example, perhaps, would be Darwin's case study of birds).
However, I consider that sort of mutation to fall under microevolution. I believe mutations on a microevolution level are self-evident, and looking at my parents verifies this.
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Um...I will thank you to not put words into my mouth.
Sorry, I assumed a level of good will that could withstand goodnatured joshing. I withdraw all such.
I have already plainly said that I believe God created the universe. Did you read this thread? But I do not claim any belief in "Intelligent Design Theory," so don't tell me I believe something I haven't said I believe. Plus why would the idea of mine that you quoted, about God making use of simulated evolution to do speciation, when Intelligent Designists specifically do not believe speciation can arise from evolution, lend any support for your claim that I believe as Intelligent Design advocates do? Quite the opposite!
IDists believe that speciation could not arise from random evoution. The distinction is an important one. My point was that the idea that God (ergo a higher intelligence of some sort) designed the universe at some point, whether by simulation to establish the correct starting parameters to induce speciation, or some more intrusive method IS intelligent design theory in its pure form. Simply the idea that life and it's many variations did not/could not arise randomly.
I think I take an entirely different tack on the issue than Intelligent Designists. They specifically avoid mentioning God, but attempt to reason out the need for an Intelligent Designer. On the contrary, I accept God from the start and have no interest in trying to prove a need for his existence due to gaps, real or imagined, in any current human theories.
This paragraph is internally contradictory. On the one hand you claim that IDists specifically avoid mentioning God, then on the other you say they try to prove his existence by pointing out gaps. ?
...also, I don't want to put words into your mouth, but it seems like you just said that plants are a form of intelligent life...
I can see how it might look like that. Not my intention. My idea was simply that they are more organized/intelligent than the "food" they are organizing. The idea being that they defy entropy. If that means they have some sort of limited intelligence, so be it. I'm not arguing that or attempting to define a sliding scale of intelligence. I was just pointing out that they defy entropy. And that when WE similarly defy entropy it's through an act of will/intelligence.
Before this instant I had no idea that there were people out there attempting to prove that no mutations are ever beneficial and that they are always harmful. But a google search reveals plenty such people.
It's impossible to prove a negative so they're out on a limb there. But look back at the radio parts in a cement mixer analogy for an example of why people think random mutations turning useful is so totally farfetched.
I don't pretend that the radio parts analogy is scientifically rigorous by any means but I think it's telling that I've never, not once, found even a hypothetical pathway describing how random cosmic rays or anything else deemed to "cause evolution" could produce something useful. You talked like you knew of such an example, which is why I asked to see it.
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I don't believe that mutations are never "beneficial" - they can be adaptive and help one group eek out ahead of another (an example, perhaps, would be Darwin's case study of birds).
Of course, the difference in beak size that Darwin found in those birds was neither mutation nor observed adaptation. It wasn't mutation because the genes for the beak already existed and the differences in environment would have merely caused the prevalence of pre-existing traits.
It's not an observed adaptation simply because Darwin didn't observe the change in beak size. Because he did not observe the change occurring in bird-family lines the differences could very simply have been selection rather than mutative evolution. As an assumption it's simply not conclusive.
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Sorry, I assumed a level of good will that could withstand goodnatured joshing.
I couldn't tell it was a joke. Perhaps if you'd added a ;D it would have helped, but then again, perhaps not. It'd difficult to distinguish jokes online.
IDists believe that speciation could not arise from random evoution.
I haven't heard that. Interesting.
This paragraph is internally contradictory. On the one hand you claim that IDists specifically avoid mentioning God, then on the other you say they try to prove his existence by pointing out gaps. ?
Exactly. It seems to me that IDists are inherently internally contradictory. (Are there any atheist IDists? I have not heard of any, but if they existed, it would help their cause--their desire to appear to the scientific community to be nonreligious.) It seems to me that IDists are people who believe God created the universe and would like to offer proof for such, but because they feel the scientific community turns their ears off as soon as the word "God" is said, the IDists came up with a way to talk about it without mentioning God at all, even though it seems pretty plain to me that God is exactly what they're talking about. I've heard IDists on the radio say things like "we're just showing that the evidence points toward the need for an intelligent designer...religion doesn't enter into it at all" when it seems pretty clear that in their minds that intelligent designer was God. I find the whole thing a bit disingenuous.
It's kind of like how (it seems to me) Bush with the Harriet Miers nomination appeared to be trying to sneak one past the Democrats by nominating someone he knew the abortion etc. opinions of but whose opinions he meant to keep in the dark in order to avoid a conflict. In one way the Right with their objections to her were shooting themselves in the foot, but in another way they were saying "Let's be open and honest about what our agenda is and there's no need to be sneaking around behind people's backs."
I believe God created us; I believe in stopping abortion, etc, but when someone starts using sneaky means to accomplish good goals, the whole process becomes morally suspect.
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I can follow that. I guess I just don't see what you're describing (on the part of the IDists) as sneaky. As far as I can tell the core issue is that random evolution has never been observed, cannot be shown to work either in any kind of fossil record or even hypothetically, and flies in the face of known science like the 2nd law of thermodynamics. For me the debate ends right there. Once you start talking about what then could have caused life and its variations, what is/was the designer I think you've crossed into an entirely different debate.
It is essentially a binary argument, either evolution happened randomly or it didn't. If it didn't happen randomly, it was, by definition, not random ergo designed. To what degree and by whom/what is a new subject entirely.
I think the false debate you're talking about is real but it's because the evolutionists always imply that the IDists are inherently taking that next step when they're not.
I believe in God too. I don't know by what means he designed life but I know he designed it. The fact that evolution doesn't fly doesn't bolster my faith in God it just means evolution doesn't fly. At this point in the argument we can't say anything else. The scientists will never advance our secular knowledge of how life came to be and what changes it has seen and why until they start dealing with reality. A blind faith in "EVOLUTION" blinds you to observable truth.
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The fact that evolution doesn't fly doesn't bolster my faith in God it just means evolution doesn't fly.
I agree with this and your last statement.
I see evolution as a pseudoscience that stems out of Atheist assumptions, not Atheism as the result of evolution, etc.
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The problem is that the IDists are talking about an Intelligent Designer. If they were ONLY saying "evolution doesn't work because of" the problems you mentioned, then that would just be good science. It's when they propose an alternative with just as much lack of evidence that they get into problems. You say that they're not taking the next step, but if they're saying "it must have been designed," then they are taking the next step.
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Indian kid with 12 fingers and 13 toes claims advantage over normal kids! http://www.nbc4.tv/irresistible/5040254/detail.html
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How, exactly, do extra toes help you work faster? I can *kinda* see how extra fingers *might* help, if they were opposable, but if they weren't opposable I'd think the benefit would be negligible at best.
ok, yeah, that's a totally different subject, but it's what I'm scratching my head about.
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The problem is that the IDists are talking about an Intelligent Designer. If they were ONLY saying "evolution doesn't work because of" the problems you mentioned, then that would just be good science. It's when they propose an alternative with just as much lack of evidence that they get into problems. You say that they're not taking the next step, but if they're saying "it must have been designed," then they are taking the next step.
I see what you're saying and I agree that taking that next step to God and claiming that it's science is wrong. While some IDers undoubtedly do take the next step (and the press always takes it for whoever they're interviewing, whether the interviewee does or not, in the name of sensationalism) the concept itself doesn't necessitate it. But that aside, the choice really is a binary one. If it's not random then it has to have been designed. There has to have been some organizing force that we don't know about yet, or at least can't prove exists. Whether that force is God or some sort of Universe spanning lichen of which we are a part or a corrollary to the 2nd law of thermodynamics that provides for its own reversal in some cases is immaterial.
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Comets, I tell you! Comets! No wonder the ancients cowered in fear when comets blazed in the night!
That kid's 13th toe definitely looks annoying, but his hands looks pretty normal, especially the shot with the keyboard.
Eric: Maybe he can swim faster?!?!? Some website somewhere says he can type faster. No word on whether he plays the piano.
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For Atheists and Agnostics, there is no other acceptable alternative. None at all. They have to believe in Evolution (a priori), because the alternative requires taking a pro-diety assumption. They can't accept that.
That is quite a leap in reasoning Jadeknight. First of all, you haven't defined your terms. What do you mean by acceptable? Second of all, this is entirely contradictory to the basic principle of agnosticism.
From Merriam-Webster: agnostic - a person who holds the view that any ultimate reality (as God) is unknown and probably unknowable.
From Dictionary.com: agnosticism - The doctrine that certainty about first principles or absolute truth is unattainable and that only perceptual phenomena are objects of exact knowledge.
Agnosticism is firmly based in the concept of uncertainty. Agnostics do not believe in a supreme god, but they also do not rule out the idea that a god may exist. Therefore, I do not think that it is right to say that agnostics are required to accept evolution as a theory.
In the case of atheists, you would be right, if, in fact, no other possibilities existed. However, this is not the case. Perhaps there are no scientifically feasible theories as of now. This is no reason to believe that there never will be.
Even assuming that there were no possiblity of further scientific discovery, who is to say that that makes intelligent creation correct? Just because the spiritual world has traditionally centered around gods, that does not mean that those who don't believe in scientific theories have to believe in a god or gods. Just because the majority of the world is made up of people who believe in Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, or other theisms, it does not mean that intelligent design is the only plausible explanation for life.
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Even assuming that there were no possiblity of further scientific discovery, who is to say that that makes intelligent creation correct? Just because the spiritual world has traditionally centered around gods, that does not mean that those who don't believe in scientific theories have to believe in a god or gods. Just because the majority of the world is made up of people who believe in Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, or other theisms, it does not mean that intelligent design is the only plausible explanation for life.
But that's exactly what Skar is saying, that belief in intelligent design does not mean belief in God, that it could be some intelligent universal fungus or some intelligent anti-2nd law of thermodynamics, or whatever--but that if it's not random, it must be designed.
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Sorry Skar, I have to admit that I didn't read the last page, because I didn't think that the point you were addressing was the same as mine. It seemed that nobody reacted to JK's post in particular, so I thought I should address it.
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Archon:
To define my terms (and be more specific):
By Agnostic, I meant "Strong Agnostic", ie, someone who is not only unsure, but someone who believes that it is impossible to determine whether or not any sort of "supernaturalism" exists.
Now, I did not mean to imply, at all that Agnostics must imply Evolution. However, I think it is critically important to the Strong Agnostic position that Evolution be an acceptable theory; without it, there is no remotely feasible alternative to supernaturalism (what Lewis would have called "Pantheism", though one could be "agnostic" about accepting which "supernaturalism" - however, that doesn't work as well for Strong Agnosticism).
I was also speaking of the current state. I thought that would be obvious that I was not referring to some obscure possibility, but things as they are.
You seem to have responded to my comments without needing a definition for "acceptable"; you seem to have no difficulty understanding what I meant, from your responses, even if you take issue with the fact that I included Agnostics.
But, again, be it "god' in any other form by any other name (a universal fungus isn't so far from concepts of Brahman, is it? ;D), discounting Evolution means accepting some sort of ID. And for most Strong Agnostics, that's unacceptable.
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However, I think it is critically important to the Strong Agnostic position that Evolution be an acceptable theory; without it, there is no remotely feasible alternative to supernaturalism (what Lewis would have called "Pantheism", though one could be "agnostic" about accepting which "supernaturalism" - however, that doesn't work as well for Strong Agnosticism).
However, you do not address the fact that to be an agnostic does not require any theory whatsoever. Even if you were to assume that a theory was necessary however, who is to say that a theory is feasible or not. An interesting (non-scientific) alternative could be that time is not linear, but cyclical, and that life has always been a part of the circle. This would mean that there was no cause for life, it has always been. The theory is simple, it solves the problem, and it can not be proven nor disproven. It does not imply any supernatural occurrences, just an altered perception of time. Again, this is just an example, to show that alternate, feasible theories are not impossibilities.
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Indeed...before the Big Bang theory was developed, Steady State was the prevailing theory. (And many scientists thought the Big Bang smacked of a Big Banger (i.e. God). Or was that mentioned in this thread already?)