That there is no proof yet for ID is not a factor, science has a very active SETI program even though there is no proof of ETs.

While the SETI program doesn’t claim to have evidence of intelligent life it does have a working hypothesis and a method for testing that hypothesis, unlike ID. It also doesn’t claim to have evidence it doesn’t have or that the lack of evidence in some other theory is proof of its hypothesis.

Many of the major scientific discoveries were made outside and over the opposition of the main stream scientists.

The difference here is the same as the one I pointed in the case of Plate Tectonics. “Main stream scientists” as you call them, question any new idea. They question it very closely. Scientific knowledge requires a very high standard of evidence and reasoning, and one way to ensure that is to be very rigorous in challenging new ideas.

The way to get a new idea accepted is have answers to those questions, and the way to get those answers is through hard, rigorous work. Which is what we see from the Plate Tectonics advocates and from the SETI searchers. What we don’t see from them are political campaigns organized and supported by religious groups to get untested ideas taught as science in high school classrooms. But that’s all we see from the ID people.

So in the creation of original life forms from which biogenesis process eminates, the consideration of intelligent design has some merit however controversial or unproven.

Sure, but consideration on what level? As a philosophical idea, sure; as a matter of religious faith, sure; as part of a high school Biology curriculum…I don’t think so. It’s not science, we shouldn’t allow anyone to force it into a science class for political purposes, which is what the ID “movement” is really all about.

Con, you seem to have a lot of knowledge in micro-biology. Is that your profession?

No, I’m a layman. But I’m a widely-read layman with a lifelong interest in science, and friends who are working scientists in a number of different disciplines (Carl Sagan was an acquaintance of mine from 1975 until he died). I’ve also worked as a technical writer dealing with medical testing equipment, and I spent four years as a science reporter for the BBC. The show’s focus was on computer sciences, but since we covered the ways that computers were used, we did stories about people who worked in many different fields, including the biological sciences.

I also have a profound personal connection to various things on the metaphysical side of the aisle. But I know better than to confuse untestable individual belief, no matter how deeply held, with matters of science and observation.

I don’t mean to belabor the point but it seems to me that the history of RNA/DNA is crucial to any serious study of creation and evolution. In addition, being a orthodox scientist/engineer (education is EE) I believe that any principle is theory until it can be duplicated in the laboratory or other suitable place.

Technically speaking, all principles are theories. Indeed, in science there are no “facts” per se, but only theories with varying levels of accumulated evidence, all of them awaiting modification or even complete overturn upon the arrival of a repeatable observation that contradicts the former model. That’s the terrific thing about science: sooner or later it always yields to repeatable observation.

That said, there are many things we can observe and accurately analyze that we can’t “duplicate in the laboratory,” as you request, simply because they happen in environments or on a scale that won’t fit inside a lab. And sometimes, of course, the lab is the real world itself. An excellent example would be the observation of gravitational lensing effects. Predicted by Einstein using only thought experiments and scribbled mathematics, and unverifiable for decades because we lacked observational equipment accurate enough to prove or disprove his predictions. But good golly, now we can look…and there they are!

In that light, has any portion of RNA/DNA been scientically created?

We’re getting very good at manipulating DNA and RNA: knocking out sections, adding sections, transferring bits from one form of DNA or RNA to another, etc. We are quite good at synthesizing the raw nucleotide components. And there are, indeed, scientists working today on the task of assembling entirely original DNA strands, attempting to determine what the transition point is between what is obviously alive and self-replicating and what is obviously not, by assembling ever-more complex molecules from the ground up. Fascinating stuff.

We also know more and more about how RNA and DNA probably came into existence in the first place, but it doesn’t make for a quick summary and it isn’t easy to understand the data without a reasonable grounding in both organic and inorganic chemistry. (You could get an overview by looking through various articles that have been published in SCientific American over the last 15 years.)

A potential weakness in evolutionary theory is the limited population problem. Can one assume that when a new specie emerges, that the initial populations are quite small? If so then shouldn’t the usual degenerative problems seen with interbreeding of small populations arise? How is that avoid with new species?

The only reason this seems like a problem is because you hold a mistaken belief about how speciation occurs. It isn’t a sharp, sudden snap. It isn’t that there is a single magical mutation, and whammo, member of species A gives birth to a new creature that is a member of separate species B, entirely unable to breed with its progenitor group. What happens is that small changes accumulate and propagate through large groups within a population, and this genetic drift eventually increases to a point where one group can no longer breed with another. But plenty of concurrent genetic fellow-travelers exist to breed with.

I’ll give you an example from the real world. You certainly think of lions and tigers as being different species, yes? But they come from common ancestry, and not that long ago, because they can still interbreed. We call the offspring of a male lion and a female tiger a liger, and the offspring of a female lion and a male tiger a tigon. And while all known male ligers and tigons have been sterile, females are often fertile and can be mated successfully with either lions or tigers.

Can I assume that the ‘hot particles’ are some form of energy plasmas?

Technically…no. There isn’t any such thing as an “energy plasma,” because plasmas are just another state of matter, with recognizable atomic nuclei and electrons. The early “particle soup” consisted of just that: free particles still too energetic to settle down and combine with one another. No nuclei at all.

Any clue on how atoms (electrons, protons, nuetrons, etc.) were formed?

The basics of this process are well understood and I alluded to them earlier without going into great detail. For a great explanation of the process, read http://www.milky-way.com/gb/sevol.htm. Meanwhile, to summarize wildly:

As the initial particle soup cooled, and three of the four known basic forces (electromagnetism and the strong and weak nuclear forces) began to have an effect, previously free particles combined to form various isotopes of hydrogen and helium. (Mainly hydrogen.)

The influence of the fourth basic force, gravity, gradually caused some of these hydrogen/helium clouds to condense. As the clouds condensed and grew more massive, they grew hotter and denser until conditions became sufficient to trigger hydrogen-to-helium fusion. Bingo: stars.

A star can be seen as in a state of balance between two opposing forces: gravity, which is trying to collapse the star inward, and fusion, which is blasting energy outward. As hydrogen-to-helium fusion starts to run out of steam because the available hydrogen at the core of the star is getting used up, power output goes down…which lets gravity pull everything in tighter…which heats the core of the star…until whammo, now the increased heat is sufficient to cause the helium to start to fuse into heavier elements.

The cycle continues up to various points on the periodic table depending on the size of the star — the larger the star, the farther up the table it gets before exploding. Even the largest stars can’t get past iron, however, because the process of two iron atoms fusing does not release excess energy: it absorbs energy. This is why everything heavier than iron (as the period table defines heavy: number of protons, electrons, and neutrons) comes not from long-burning star fusion processes, but from the huge energies involved in the moments of stellar explosion.

Has the atom creation process been duplicated by the scientific community?

Unfortunately, yes: you might have heard of the hydrogen bomb? That’s man-made atomic fusion, creating heavier elements out of lighter ones and releasing a whole heck of a lot of energy in the process.

Less spectacularly, using linear accelerators scientists have been able to create heavier elements by slamming together the nuclei of lighter ones with sufficient force.

Carrick, I’m not sure where I am going either except to say say that I think our scientific (actually our entire) knowledge base is on shaky ground which can be disturb by any new discovery (like chaos theory disturbed classical physics). For instance, one of sciences hallowed constants, the speed of light, has been recently been challenged. At one time speed of light was considered to be an absolute maximum for transmissions but in recent times the transmission speed has increase several fold. From New Scientist:

Electric signals can be transmitted at least four times faster than the speed of light using only basic equipment that would be found in virtually any college science department.

Another new idea that has unknown future ramifications is teleportation which was once strictly a sci-fi novelty. At least for electrons teleportation has become a reality

I am not condemning empirical science for the scientific method is the way we test amd evaluate theories and hypothesus. I am saying that I think the results of empirical science should not be treated as absolutes but intermediates waiting for the next big discovery. There’s a whole universe of information to be discovered and we have barely scratched the surface.

If there were no free will, we couldn’t make mistakes, evolution would be unnecessary, and God could take the rest of Eternity off.

I don’t like the term intelligent design because it has become too politicized.

It is a political term.

Here’s what I believe: we are particles and waves of energy that vibrate across an infinity of axes of time and space. This energy is in perpetual motion, with no beginning and no end. The boundaries between atoms are permeable, meaning that all matter is part of the same fabric. I believe that the shorthand for this concept is “existence.”

Now, there may be some scientific measures or concepts that can test some of my theories of existence (at least the physical manifestations), but when I finally reach a point of determining how it came into being, I can only rely on my own instict and faith.

Robert108:

. And it is tautological to state that science is testable by the scientific method.

No. It’s a definition.

Connorfc: Are you saying that a person must have a PhD inorder to make conclusions about the theory of evolution? What is your PhD in?

I googled image searches for oort cloud and oort cloud photo. There were a lot of picture images, but all of them that I looked at were artist’s renderings. Could you give me a link to a good photograph? Or at least what study/satellite took the photo so that I can research it through the mission (was it a Hubble photo?). So if I were a scientist, why would I find 1-8 of Humphrey’s article hysterically funny? Why are you not interested in 10, 11, and 12? Why should any of us not question the lack of skeletons, artwork, and the development of the stoneage man? Was leaving out number 9 a typo? Or in your eyes is the only non-laughable point that there isn’t enough helium in our atmosphere from decay to suggest that the earth is billions (or even millions) of years old?

Thank you for the website. (The thank you is slightly sarcastic. Instead of putting forth effort, you link me to an entire website instead of specific parts of the website that prove your points. However, the only point that you tried to state is that micro and macro evolution are the same.)

In microevolution, changes occur within the species. Macroevolution creates a new specie. In your undocumented quote, the author of said quote says that there are a number of ways for a new species to come into being. When said evolutionary change supposedly creates a new species, how does that animal mate? If it is a new species, then it cannot produce offspring that has the ability to create more offspring.

The portion of the website that I read is a big hand wave.

Hundreds of thousands of fossil organisms, found in well-dated rock sequences, represent successions of forms through time and manifest many evolutionary transitions…
So many intermediate forms have been discovered between fish and amphibians, between amphibians and reptiles, between reptiles and mammals, and along the primate lines of descent that it often is difficult to identify categorically when the transition occurs from one to another particular species. Actually, nearly all fossils can be regarded as intermediates in some sense; they are life forms that come between the forms that preceded them and those that followed.
The fossil record thus provides consistent evidence of systematic change through time–of descent with modification. From this huge body of evidence, it can be predicted that no reversals will be found in future paleontological studies… This prediction has been upheld by the evidence that has accumulated until now: no reversals have been found.

Well dated? No, it’s a presupposition. You are presupposing that rock layers are millions and billions of years old. How do you know that those rock layers are millions and billions of years old? I also like the statement that there are so many intermediate fossil records, and then they explain it away by saying that every fossil they find is an intermediate. That statement is presupposing that evolution is true, and this is not proof of the theory of evolution.

The geological column is not as linear as your website suggests. (May I also add that your website not only does not provide anything but a regurgitation of theory and presuppositions, but also has no works cited.) Woodmorappe, the author of this paper, finds the evidence that your website ignores. (To include an essay entitled Illogical Geology written in 1859 by Herbert Spencer.) He includes Dasycladalean algae, Pipiscids, Agnathan (jawless) fishes, Lystrosaurus, the sponge Neoguadalupia, the bivalve Camptochlamys, and the gastropod Parafusus as examples of how the geological column (and may I add is a column only because people put organic organisms into said column) is filled with organisms which previously thought weren’t contemporary, were contemporary.

Connorfc:

And all of the evidence says you are wrong.

What evidence? Where are the “so many” intermediate fossils? If there are truly that many, then why wasn’t I shown them when I was taught evolution in high school? Why can no one show me where to find them now? Where are the transitional fossils from mice to humans? (as your website states, mice and humans are related)

I do have faith in God. And you have faith in evolution.

In parting:

So how common are stratigraphic-range extensions? Two recent comprehensive databases of the stratigraphic occurrence of fossils give a clear answer to this question. Maxwell and Benton18 have compared the stratigraphic ranges of all of the fossil vertebrate families (excluding Aves, which have a spotty fossil record) as perceived in 1966–1967, and again in 1987. For 96 families, there was no change in stratigraphic range. Another 87 fossil families went through a decrease in their accepted stratigraphic range. Yet considerably more families (150) underwent an increase in the amount of strata which they overlap. This trend is even more evident in fossil marine families. In just ten years (1982–1992), Sepkoski19 reports that 513 fossil families underwent a decline in their stratigraphic range. A decline in range may mean that the first and/or last occurrence had been misidentified. But whatever the cause, the number of fossil-range declines is dwarfed by the 1026 families that enjoyed an increase in either their first occurrence, or their last occurrence, or both.

Clearly, then, extension of stratigraphic ranges is the rule and not the exception. This is even more remarkable when we remember that there is the ever-present evolutionary bias which tends to cause overemphasis of minute differences in fossils located in different horizons of strata, and hence the proliferation of questionable taxonomic names for essentially the same organism found at different stratigraphic horizons.

The link on noosphere.cc seems broken, but the article is also at http://www.theosophy-nw.org/theosnw/science/prat-…

link here if this works for me

For instance, the idea that the original creation of a life form as a random occurrence from inert or simple organic forms flies in the face of the principle of entropy which states in part that order without intelligent intervention will ultimately decay into chaos or disorder.

Unfortunately this shows a fundamental misunderstanding of Entropy and the Second Law of Thermodynamics which is rather common in the Intelligent Design community. The Second Law of Thermodynamics does state that Entropy always increases; however, the Second Law of Thermodynamics uses a narrowly defined mathematical expression for Thermodynamic Entropy. Essentially Entropy is not the macroscopic organization of a system (such as the complexity of a lifeform, the complexity of a storm-front, or how clean your bedroom is), but it's the amount of thermodynamic energy (measured in Joules/Kelvin) in a system which is available for work. There is a much better discussion than I could ever give for Entropy at Wikipedia.org.

Because the entire Earth is bathed in virtually unlimited energy from the Sun, there is a constant source of energy by which work can potentially be done. We are bathed in a constant energy gradient, which allows self-organizing systems such as hurricanes to arise.

That life is a self-organizing system doesn't mean it's presence on the Earth is a violation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, any more than the presence of a Hurricane or a Tornado (both self-organizing systems) are violations of the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

Let me also note your "out" in the above statement, that "without intelligent intervention" order "will ultimately decay into chaos or disorder"–that allows you to cateogorize life as something that requires a God, while hurricanes do not–makes no scientific sense, as the only difference between life and hurricanes is how long they will be around. As soon as the Sun burns itself out and there is no more sources of energy to draw upon, life upon the Earth will ultimately snuff out–even if humans become nearly God-like in our ability to manipulate technology.

Self-organizing systems which arise with nothing more than a source of energy to power the system is properly the study of Chaos Theory; again, Wikipedia.org has a great writeup on the subject.

Correct me if I am wrong here but I thought intelligent design was kind of like a middle ground between creationism and evolution.

In fact it always kind of struck me as the compromise that christians were happy with because it kept there foot in the school house and they knew evolution wasn't going away.

Ooooo, that's easy!

Fiction…just like all religions!

If you wanna believe in some big-bearded-white-man-who-lives-in-the-sky, be my guest.

But you'll teach that crap in SCIENCE class over my dead body.

So many excellent comments: I'll try to answer them all.

John, thanks for the correction of the Bohm article link. I've asked Rob to correct it.

William & Shannon: perhaps my use of entropy as a destructive force was inappropriate. What I was trying to show was that randomness is more likely to be destructive than constructive. e.g. the random motion of air and water will decomposet metal objects into its metal components but will not create the metal object from metal components.

As far as an increase in entropy is concerned, the conservation of energy principle implies that no new energy can be created in the universe after the big bang. If this is true, than all entropy can do is redistribute the energy. Now a question for you: what is the source of the energy of the universe?

Anyway the principle support for my article comes from Bohms implicate order thesis. Shannon, I can't see that Bohms implicate order is based on orthogenisis as his research is not so much associated with evolution as with his speciality, quantum physics. You can accuse me of orthogenisis I suppose since it is I who is trying to make the connection between creation and Bohms implicate order.

Now I'm no physicist, and I won't even dear to touch upon the whole entropy debate. But, I do have plenty of practical knowledge in Biology. And so as a Biologist I will put this into the debate.

Evolution as a biologist will explain it to you is this. That through the random mutation of the genome of a species a variation occurs that will grant to the effected individual a higher likelihood of surviving and therefore reproduction and so passing on its genetic information. As mutations add up, a new species can emerge. A new species is distinct from its ancestor and in many cases unable to successfully mate with them (ie produce offspring that are fertile and viable). Though very close species can mate (look at dogs, and wolves). Using this notion Biologist can trace species back to common ancestors, and thus create a tree of life. Something like a family tree but for species.

What I just mentioned above is the extent of Darwinian theory. And in the frame work of an already existing cell, evolution can be traced genetically from bacteria to humans. What it can not do and I see no way of doing is trace the genesis of the bacteria from simple compounds.

The fact is, the deriving force behind Evolution (the energy that is) is the increased survivability of the individual. The fact is there are no individuals before life. One benzene molecule is just like the next. One bacteria is never the same as the next. Even the most similar have slight genetic variability that grants one a higher chance of survival (that is the essence of Evolutionary theory after all). With no distinction, there is no drive to make more of itself. And that is what drives life reproducing itself. Hurricanes, rocks, gases, and all sorts of other compounds have none of this drive. Therefore what ever gave birth to life it was not evolution. Evolution is what happens once you already have life.

So then we should not debate what made life God or Evolution? We should ask what made life God or Chance? And, from where we stand (humanity) the two may very well be one in the same.

I was struck by the complexity of structures of atoms and the nature of the universe. To me these could not have happened merely by chance.

The "I can't envisage it, therefore it could not have happened" argument rears its head again.

Evolution deals mainly with life's path after it was created. ID deals mainly with how life got here in the first place. They don't contridict each other

That's because ID was dreamt up exactly for the purpose of intertwining creationism and evolution.

"The theory of evolution does not actually concern itself with the origin of life, but rather with the diversity of life on Earth."

True to an extent, however, the theory of Evolution and a common projenitor for all life existing on the Earth is very commonly presented together. I doubt if anyone who seriously advocates the idea of ID (as opposed to presenting ID as a creationism substitite) would argue against the reality of evolution on a micro scale given the observed adaptation of virus and bacteria, but it hardly requires that one buy into the idea that humans, zebra, bacteria, dinosars, oak trees and grass all have a common origin in a single progenitor that somehow mutated along several distinct, yet equally viable, paths. Similarities between species definitely shows commonality in life forms and mechanisms, but does not require that these species definitely be linked evolutionarilly. If Vlad the Biologist has an example of an observed new species that is reproductively incompatible with its ancestors but can be mated with another new species (or the same new species somehow created from identical mutations?) I'd greatly appreciate it.

Evolution was dreamt up to explain away God

It's kinda funny how some people knee-jerk assume that if someone wants to talk about Intelligent Design, they must automatically be anti-evolution. The two can work in perfect harmony, even if I personally don't beleive this.

Evolution deals mainly with life's path after it was created. ID deals mainly with how life got here in the first place. They don't contridict each other

MI:

Once you begin to try to find an answer to a question that cannot be proven, you've entered the realm of faith, not science. That's not to say that the exercise can't be interesting, but it belongs in a philosophy class, not science.

Well said!

Bada-bing:

Realy I don't think we will ever have that answer as there is little chance of finding any proof of it one way or another.

Bada-boom:

Evolution starts with the fact of the existence of life, then attempts to ascribe the diversity of species to natural forces (i.e., changes in weather patterns, existence of natural resources and so forth). It says nothing about how life originated.

Once you begin to try to find an answer to a question that cannot be proven, you've entered the realm of faith, not science. That's not to say that the exercise can't be interesting, but it belongs in a philosophy class, not science.

Carrick: I guess I figure forces that originate from within the local environment(viruses, for instance) to be a part of straight line evolution, and forces that come from outside the local environment(comets) to be cataclysmic. I guess it's a matter of definitions, to some extent. The difference, IMO, is that internal forces allow time for adaptation, in most cases, but cataclysms do not.

A very simple explanation is that Bohm believes that intelligence (order) is interwoven in everything large or small in the universe. To me that sounds like some form of intelligent design.

Bohm takes the position that what we recognize as intelligent consciousness/awareness is an "emergent property" rooted in the physical nature of the universe. He does NOT leap from that thesis to assume, as you do, that there is an Intelligent Designer calling the shots. Indeed, his argument is quite the opposite. He claims that intelligent awareness arise OUT OF ever-increasing levels of self-organization, not that intelligence is CAUSING or DIRECTING the process.

Your statements show a clear misunderstanding of Bohm's work.

Regardless, Bohm has demonstrated that intelligent design is a concept that has scientific value and as such should be pursued by the science community and not relegated to the machinations of a school board or courtroom.

Bohm has demonstrated nothing. He has proposed a testable thesis which really has nothing whatsoever to do with ID. His thesis, its testing, and the results of that testing are all within the realm and methodology of science and would be worthy of discussion in a sufficiently-advanced Physics classroom. They would not be appropriate in a biology or development of species program because there is, at this time, no link between Bohm's work and basic biology. No matter what it "sounds like" to you.

Hm. The mechanism by which species evolve is through mutations. The reason some mutations are more preferable than others is due to environmental stresses.

So. The environment on Earth is a constantly changing thing. It changes gradually through mechanisms like erosion, and plate tectonics. Or it can change very rapidly, like a gian meteor smashing into the earth. Either way these natural changes provide stresses for a particular creature. These are not the only stresses provided but they are ones that have nothing to do with any other living thing. Stresses can also be caused by one species effecting another. For example lions hunting gazelle provide a stress for the gazelle, and vice verse. Any way because all individuals of a species are slightly different from one another one of them is most adapted to its environment, and has the greatest chance of survival, and so evolution favors that individuals genetic material and given time the species compounds on what evdr trait was most profitable to it.

That is what happens in a stable gradual environment. But sometimes nature isn't very stable or gradual. A natural disaster can wipe out an entier habitat or force members of a spicies into a new one. When this happens the process of adaptation occurs again. If you take one spicies and spread it over many habitats evolution tells you that you will over time get at least one new spicies per habitat.

New Spicies can arise simply because of lack of genetic diversity. if you trap a small number of one spicies in a location that is the same as their old one but which lacks other mebers of their spicies what will happen is that in that location the most prevelant traits will become very dominant in the ofspring and again given time a new spicies will evolve.

Thus as animals move across the globe, and as the world changes, new species evolve.

The intresting thing to note is that the number of spicies today is far smaller now than it was early on in the history of the earth. The earth has gone through several phases of Mass extinction. the last great one was of course the Dinasours where some 70% of all spiceis died off. But there where other before that. The largest it is estimated killed off 90% of the spicies at that time.

The reason biologist think life came from one common ancestor is that our genetic information. has alot of homology to it. Now its also very important to note that the aquisition of trates lateraly (ie. between spicies that exist, not from ancestors) is far greater than ever believed. So even among spicies that can not mate with each other there can be transmission of genetic material through other mechanism aside from mateing. So we are not only tied with other species verticaly but also horizontaly. Really this is something that is still being studied.

Of course there is nothing to say that there must be only one common ancestor, but if there is to be more than one the equation of evolution gets very nice and triky. It may be that multiple ancesotr cells existed, and later merged into one type of organism, which then difersified into the spicies we see today.

Realy I don't think we will ever have that answer as there is little chance of finding any proof of it one way or another.

Vlad: Actually, the mutations that are successful are the ones that confer greater reproductive success. The other ones die out. Absent any cataclysmic events, evolution proceeds in a more or less straight line, leading to perfection of adaptation to the prevailing conditions. When those conditions change abruptly, evolution becomes a crapshoot, with some successful adaptations wiped out entirely. The remaining ones follow straight line evolution until the next cataclysm. By definition, any process that increases the incidence of genetic mutation increases the chance of successful mutations, and thus "speeds up" straight line evolution.

Robert108:

I guess it's a matter of definitions, to some extent.

Entirely a matter of definitions, actually. Orthogenic or "straightline" evolution is a well defined biological term. It is the continuous and monotonic evolution from an undifferentiated species, towards species increasing differentiation with associated increasingly complex cognitive abilities.

The problem is that even in the absence of cataclysmic events, nonorthogenic evolution occurs all of the time. (One example is the evolution of the horse.)

Now if you want to use "straight-line" evolution to refer to evolution not driven by cataclysmic events, if you want to. It'd just be pretty non-standard usage, and would be at odds with the root-wise meaning of the term.

&heellip; There’s probably little good that can come from picking apart a blog post in support of intelligent design like this one on Say Anything. But sometimes it’s hard to resist. As a long time practicing engineer with a engineering and science background and eduction, I have found myself drawn into the argument as an objective researcher even though I am a Christian with respect for the Bible. &heellip;

Carrick: How about "steady state" as opposed to "punctuated" then? It's about describing the limits of evolution to explain origin, as opposed to development, IMO.

carrick: There are two reasons that an intelligent observer is invoked. One is to try and explain away the natural phenomenon of evolution, but it explains nothing that cannot be naturally explained. The second is the origins of life (not species). Evolution starts with the fact of the existence of life, then attempts to ascribe the diversity of species to natural forces (i.e., changes in weather patterns, existence of natural resources and so forth). It says nothing about how life originated.

If then intelligent design is solely about how life originated, why does ID come into conflict with evolution in the academic circles and in the courtroom? Could it be that there are different interpetations of evolution and one of these includes creation? Another question is if Darwins original work did not specify the origin of life forms why was it entitled The Origin of Species? Is specie used in a different context by Darwin?

DocDave:

If then intelligent design is solely about how life originated, why does ID come into conflict with evolution in the academic circles and in the courtroom?

Well I did say it had both meanings.

Traditionally, ID was used to explain the origin of the universe and the order that was observed in the universe. Note the phrase is "intelligent design" not "intelligent meddling". Take Aristotle's Prime Mover as an example of this.

More recently, biblical literalists have invoked intelligent design as a "push back" against evolution, and are using ID to attack the concept that humans and higher mammals are related. Then there those who are trying to argue against the scientifically accepted fact that the Earth and the Universe are much older than 10,000 years (best estimate for the Universe's age is about 14 billion years).

Another question is if Darwins original work did not specify the origin of life forms why was it entitled The Origin of Species? Is specie used in a different context by Darwin?

The title is "The Origin of Species" not "The Origin of Life". Darwin does not try and explain how life came to be from inorganic matter. Rather he is addressing the issue of species diversification, how new, more specialized species arise from older, less-specialized species.

I will mention that I only have a minor in Chemistry, and thus do not even attempt to consider myself a scientist.

A question: if you do not consider yourself na scientist, on what basis do you conclude that the scientific evidence for evolution is wrong?

I find this article on the age of the Earth rather interesting. D. Russell Humphreys, Ph.D. (don't know the man) talks about twelve different scenarios and the maximum age of the earth for each. Not being a scientist, I find numbers 10, 11, and 12 the easiest to understand.

If you were a scientist, you would find Humphrey's 1-8 hysterically funny. (Among other things, he says the Oort Cloud doesn't exist despite the fact that it has actually been photographed.) His 10-12 are equally silly in their less scientific fashions, and show that he simply doesn't understand what he is talking about.

I asked for scientific proof of evolution (macro, not micro) on a previous thread (around the time when I first started reading this site), and I didn't get any.

Didn't get any, or didn't get any that you could understand, not being a scientist?

The fact that you try and claim a distinction between "micro" and "macro" evolution indicates that you probably wouldn't understand scientific evidence on this matter anyway, but here's a relevant quote to help you along:

There is no difference between MICROevolution and MACROevolution. The underlying process IS IDENTICAL. It is merely predicated upon the particular mutation type in a particular location within a particular gene. The mutation can be a point mutation, a transposition event leading to a fusion, a gene duplication (which REALLY allows new, novel functions to develop without harming the host in many cases), and so forth. A point mutation may not do squat or it might so alter the resulting protein's conformation or function that it has drastic phenotypic effects. Same with ALL the other mutation types.

The ONLY thing required to initiate the formation of a new species of whatever is a minor change in an isolated population's mating biology: for animals that experience estrous, this can mean a VERY minor alteration in fertile cycles such that they can no longer mate with other related creatures. It can mean an alteration in egg receptors such that only a specific variant of sperm ligand can productively bind. There are ANY number of simple means by which a new species can come into being and once one does, it can go in a direction morphologically and behaviorally independent from its precursor species.

You then say:

I believe in a creator God. I believe that man was made in His image. I believe that men have souls, and no other creatures do.

You are correct to use the word "believe." All of your positions are a matter of faith: you have no testable evidence for any of them, nor can you offer any.

I do not believe in evolution.

This one, however, is testable. And all of the evidence says you are wrong. I strongly recommend that you read the National Academy of Sciences report on the topic, which can be found here: http://books.nap.edu/html/creationism/

Would you care to illucidate on that? All species are defined by their genetic structure, their DNA. Are you suggesting that minor changes in a species DNA can result in a totally different specie e.g. turn a rabbit into a carrot

You misunderstand the statement. A minor change in DNA is all that is necessary for the process of speciation to begin. Over time, and with accumulated changes, visible differences accrue and the fact of speciation becomes obvious to plain sight. But it can and does occur long before it is detectable through anything other than the test of reproductive viability.

And no, a rabbit could not be turned into a carrot (or more properly, give birth to one) through minor genetic variation. The genetic differences between carrots and rabbits are extreme, not minor. But minor genetic variation can create major visible change in the physical structure of an animal or vegetable. Whenever such changes make interbreeding impossible, speciation has occured.

Another interesting and probably more basic question is what was the origin of the first DNA in the universe?

There's a lot of work going on in this field, but the evidence we have suggests that DNA evolved from the less complex self-replicating molecule RNA, which had developed in turn from earlier, less-complex self-replicating molecular structures.

The amino acids which are the components of these bigger molecular structures are incredibly easy to generate. We've synthesized 17 out of 20 in the lab using just water, methane, ammonia, hydrogen, and electric sparks. Indeed, you don't even need the apark — any sufficient input of energy to this "primordial soup" results in some amino acid formation. You can do it just by shaking the test tube.

Did the Big Bang spawn DNA or at least the elements necessary for the formation of DNA?

Actually, all the Big Bang spawned was a soup of extremely hot particles. No atoms at all. The first atoms didn't start to appear until 1-3 minutes after the Big bang itself. These were basically all various isotopes of hydrogen and helium, and for a very long time that's all there was — possibly as long as a billion years. It was only as the first generation of stars collapsed in on themselves as they aged and died that the star's changing internal fusion process started generating heavier elements, moving upward through the periodic table to iron, at which point the process breaks down and novas and supernovas happen (nova-level bursts of energy are necessary to create elements heavier than iron, so every atom of every element heavier than iron is the product of a stellar explosion).

DNA came along a heck of a lot later still than that, at least the DNA on our planet — roughly 13-14 billion years after the Big Bang, by current estimates.

PaulieB:

Are you saying that a person must have a PhD inorder to make conclusions about the theory of evolution?

You don't have have a Ph.D., but you do have to have an open mind. You obviously have a closed mind, so you are shutting out the concordant facts and grasping at shards which fit your preconceptions.

However, one can believe in God & evolution simultaneously. Indeed, I think it is a fact most Christians have no problems with this.

The sticker is that you start with a particular literalist interpretation of the Bible, then you have to ignore the gigantic volume of data which are at odds with that interpretation. My conclusion would be that there is a problem with your interpretation, and not with the overwhelming evidence that surrounds us.

&heellip; http://sayanythingblog.com/2006/01/05/intelligent… &heellip;

My basis for started this article was to see if there was any scientific basis for Intelligent Design, whether some universal intelligence was responsible for the creation of life rather than random actions of the universe.

There is no scientific basis for Intelligent Design, by basic definition of both "science" and "ID."

As for whether some universal intelligence is responsible for the creation of life, that's not currently a testable hypothesis. And science, again by definition, deals strictly in testable hypotheses.

Indeed, my feeling is that there was room for both evolution and intelligent design theories.

The problem is that there is only one ID theory, which when removed of religious overtones can be summarized as "This ____________ I'm pointing at could have happened only through outside intervention, not naturally." There's just no evidence to even indicate that, let alone support it. And it's also a dead-end. Under this theory, the abswer to every unknown is to accept that it is unknowable, not to try and find out what's actually going on. It is anti-thought at its core.

Does the belief in evolution have to the atheistic? Can one believe in intelligent involvement in the creation process without being a non-scientist?

The answers are obvious and hardly worth discussion. To the first question: No, it isn't, because many people who believe in evolution (even many scientists) are deeply religious. To the second question: Of course it is, because among the most ardent creationists and ID'ers there are a few people with credible scientific training and professional experience (though ususally not in the field they are talking about).

Mind you, the latter number is a LOT smaller than the former. 99%+ of scientists in the relevant disciplines do not believe that ID is science.

So, what part does God play in the creation of life versus the part played by ‘natural' evolution?

The plain answer is there is no scientific way to know whether or not God even exists. To move beyond that stumbling block is pure faith and complete speculation. It's all personal opinion, and nothing more.

than there would seem to be some universal intelligence involved not only in creation but in all things in the universe. What do you think?

Again, you misunderstand what Bohm was referring to. His implicate universal quality of intelligence — in which self-aware intelligence is a naturally emergent state of sufficiently-complex physical structure — is emphatically not the same thing as a self-aware, conscious "universal intelligence."

What Bohm describes is far more in keeping with the tenets and beliefs of Zen Buddhism than they are with any theistic religion.

DocDave,

My basis for started this article was to see if there was any scientific basis for Intelligent Design, whether some universal intelligence was responsible for the creation of life rather than random actions of the universe. I had no intention to try to discredit evolution theory but only to point out what I thought were weaknesses.

Well, what is your "scientific basis for Intelligent Design"? That the currently dominant theory has some "gaps/holes/weaknesses" does not automatically convey legitimacy on competing theories. Logically, this kind of reasoning is suspect (i.e., it suffers from the either/or thoery).

Further, every theory in the world has weaknesses. Are you going to argue for a divine cause for these things as well? We don't know what causes X (right now) so (for right now) we'll just say it is angels (or whatever supernatural agent)? This is where you run right into problems with the courts.

Indeed, my feeling is that there was room for both evolution and intelligent design theories.

There are only two real options for the "Designer".

1. Aliens
2. A supernatural entity (God for short).

If it is aliens, fine, you could have a possible scientific theory going here. Of course, there is, aside from some real Woo-Woos, nobody who believes this nor is there any evidence supporting it.

If it is God, then game over. Science is no longer necessary. Scientific–i.e. natural–explanations can never beat a supernatural explanation. God can do anything, hence he can do everything, and it explains all observed phenomenon. Here is the problem. In philosophy of science, the way to judge a theory that is predominantly favored is Bayes theorem. That is we we want to know what the following probability is:

(1) Prob(Theory A|Evidence)

We evaluate this via,

(2) [Prob(Evidence|Theory A) * Prob(Theory A)]/Prob(Evidence).

The second line follows from Bayes Theorem. It says, that probability of a given Theory (A in this case) given the evidence is equal to the probability of observing the evidence we have given Theory A is true times our prior probability that Theory A is true, all of this divided by the unconditional probability of observing the evidence.

Now we compare this to

Prob(God Did It|Evidence)

The problem should be apparent immediately now. This probability should be 1 (unless you are willing to admit that God can't do some things). Further, unless you are dogmatic the probability for Theory A given the evidence should be less than 1. Hence God always wins.

"one can believe in God & evolution simultaneously".

Of course, however the former is not verifiable via evidence while the latter is. Refusal to agree with this is going to lead to some rather difficult issues.

So, what part does God play in the creation of life versus the part played by ‘natural' evolution?

I would suggest that this is purely a religious question and not a scientific one. At all. Brining God or anyother supernatural entity into science stops science cold.

Any easy and possible correct answer is that all things come from God so if life is created by the evolutionary process it's because God made it so. Maybe that is sufficient. In that case the question I maybe should have asked "Is there a scientific way of proving there is a God or if you don't like that term, is there a scientific way of proving that some form of intelligence is involve in the creation process?".

And the answer is clearly no. The "God Hypothesis" is consistent with any and all evidence, unless of course you are willing to put limitations on God. That is he is not all wise, all knowing, and all powerful. That perhaps he really is nothing more than an alien.

Hi, Carrick:

Thanks for the kind words.

First of all, there is properly speaking a "scientific fact" and it is a different entity than a "scientific theory" or a "scientific prinicple".

I find it easier, when talking to non-scientists, to stay away from the whole idea of a "scientific fact" — a lot of people hear the word "fact," but don't know enough to understand the subtleties and significance of the modifier "scientific," and it inevitably leads to confusion.

It's always been more useful to stress that in science, no "fact" is ever free from possible question, given sufficient and actual evidence. (Or a sufficient change in context, as so brilliantly illustrated in the way science handled the shift from a Newtonian to an Einsteinian worldview.)

DOing so makes the same point, is functionally accurate, gets them thinking, and helps disarm the whole idiotic "you're just dealing in faith too" response that comes from some creationists.

The Comments Are Like a Carnival Game …called Smack the Creationist . Bonus points and such to docdave, though, for invoking the Second Law of Thermodynamics and "I can't believe it happened, so it must not have" in his arguments against evolution. Looks like somebody

Again, you misunderstand what Bohm was referring to. His implicate universal quality of intelligence — in which self-aware intelligence is a naturally emergent state of sufficiently-complex physical structure — is emphatically not the same thing as a self-aware, conscious "universal intelligence

No, Connorfc, you misunderstand me probably because I have not articulated myself sufficiently. My intention was not to tie Bohm Implicate Order to God-like creativity directly but to show that there was some element of intelligence (non-randomness) in the creative process. In support of this, Bohm is described as being as odds with Heisenbergs uncertainty principle.

He had difficulty accepting that subatomic particles had no objective existence and took on definite properties only when physicists tried to observe and measure them. He also had difficulty believing that the quantum world was characterized by absolute indeterminism and chance, and that things just happened for no reason whatsoever. He began to suspect that there might be deeper causes behind the apparently random and crazy nature of the subatomic world.

Furthermore, in Bohms view

subatomic particles such as electrons are not simple, structureless particles, but highly complex, dynamic entities. He rejects the view that their motion is fundamentally uncertain or ambiguous; they follow a precise path, but one which is determined not only by conventional physical forces but also by a more subtle force which he calls the quantum potential. The quantum potential guides the motion of particles by providing "active information" about the whole environment.

The quotes came from David Bohm and the Implicate Order.

So what is this 'guiding force' but some form of embedded intelligence and if so, where did it come from? Does the entire universe have latent intelligence? Any physicists out there that would like to weigh in on this?

Connorfc: BTW, the sun doesn't rise, either in the West or the East; the Earth rotates, creating the illusion that the sun rises, from any particular point on the Earth, except at either of the poles. Now that's science.

Connorfc: Sorry I made you uncomfortable by revealing the Emperor has no clothes; your response to me is an illustration of what I said. You attempt to completely invalidat someone who harpoons your sacred cow. I never said that "science" is invalid, or that it doesn't work. It obviously does, so don't try to put those words in my mouth. It is simply that the people who are emotionally attached to the supremacy of "science" behave exactly like those who are emotionally attached to the supremacy of any particular religion. Sorry if that makes you uncomfortable, but that's how I see it. When Galileo came out with his stuff, he was accused of heresy, and was silenced for a time; when Darwin came out with his stuff, he was accused of heresy as well. The scientific community is reacting the same way to ID. That doesn't make it true, it only points up the similarity of reaction. The established order always tries to suppress anything that doesn't agree with it. Just watching the world go by. All of science and religion is based on premises that can't be proven. It's always a matter of belief, when you get right down to it.

Robert108:

Sorry I made you uncomfortable by revealing the Emperor has no clothes.

You didn't make me uncomfortable in the slightest. And you didn't reveal that the emperor had no clothes, however much you believe that you did.

Assertion is not proof. Your claim that science is equivalent/analagous to religion on a functional and structural basis is easy to dismiss as factually challenged (i.e., dead wrong). All it takes is a brief glimpse at the respective histories of the two fields.

You attempt to completely invalidat someone who harpoons your sacred cow.

You invalidated yourself by making factually inaccurate statements. I just pointed them out.

I never said that "science" is invalid, or that it doesn't work. It obviously does, so don't try to put those words in my mouth.

You made a claim as to how science deals with challengers. But if your claim were true, science would not work. I was simply pointing out the fallacy of your initial statement by exploring its logical implication.

It is simply that the people who are emotionally attached to the supremacy of "science" behave exactly like those who are emotionally attached to the supremacy of any particular religion. Sorry if that makes you uncomfortable, but that's how I see it.

There's no issue of emotional attachment here. That's ludicrous. You said it yourself, just above: Science Works. Religion can't make the same claim.

As for behavior, I'll believe your claim of equivalence when I read about scientists slashing the tires of ID proponents, or sending them anonymous death threats in the mail. Not before.

When Galileo came out with his stuff, he was accused of heresy, and was silenced for a time; when Darwin came out with his stuff, he was accused of heresy as well.

Galileo and Darwin were accused of heresy by the Church and faithful religious believers, not by scientists. Please go read a little history!

The scientific community is reacting the same way to ID. That doesn't make it true, it only points up the similarity of reaction.

The reactions aren't similar at all.

Religion says to heretics "We are right and you are wrong and if you disagree we will hurt and/or destroy you."

Science says to ID proponents "Your positions are undocumented and you provide no proof. Unless you can offer proof, we will dismiss your positions as unscientific."

If you can't see how vast the difference is, you have blinders on.

The established order always tries to suppress anything that doesn't agree with it.

Once again, that statement does not square with the very well-documented history of science. Go. Read. Study. Learn something. Science does not work the way you think it does, and there's plenty of proof.

But hey, if you want to stay ignorant, that's up to you.

All of science and religion is based on premises that can't be proven. It's always a matter of belief, when you get right down to it.

You are simply wrong here on both counts, and it is kind of sad that you don't realize it.

But a last try: (1) Please name even a single basic scientific premise that can't be proven. (2) Please name even a single basic religious premise which can be proven.

BTW, the sun doesn't rise, either in the West or the East; the Earth rotates, creating the illusion that the sun rises, from any particular point on the Earth, except at either of the poles. Now that's science.

I was shorthanding for rhetorical convenience, which you know perfectly well. But thanks for the chuckle.

Connorfc, I couldn't access the provided link however I did find this wikipedia link to Implicate and Explicate Order according to David Bohm

I agree that this seems to be a more accurate description of Bohms work although even this version is subject to interpretation. Of specific interest is this statement

In the enfolded [or Implicate] order, space and time are no longer the dominant factors determining the relationships of dependence or independence of different elements. Rather, an entirely different sort of basic connection of elements is possible, from which our ordinary notions of space and time, along with those of separately existent material particles, are abstracted as forms derived from the deeper order

which implies that everything in the universe is somehow related. This gives support to the philosophical notion that everything in the universe is somehow affected by someones death. One has to wonder what that 'deeper order' that connects everything in the universe is if it is not intelligence of some kind.

That there is religious significance to Bohms works is indicated thusly.

Many, along with Bohm himself, have seen strong connections between his ideas and ideas from the East. There are particularly strong connections to Buddhism, for which Einstein also shared sympathy. Some proponents of alternative religions (such as shamanism) claim a connection with their belief systems as well.

This would indicate that there isn't and never was a clean break between science and religion.

robert, you will be happy to know that Bohms work is not universally accepted in the scientific community because it does not conform to the standard. See Criticisms under
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohm_interpretation

Robert108:

You don't know what you are talking about; you make fallacious statements; when your mistakes are pointed out you hide behind insults; you accuse others of the pathologies that you yourself display; and you make wild and unsupported assumptions without any evidentiary basis.

It's amusing on some levels, but not enlightening.

Feel free to just ignore me from here on out.

Here is a link to an interview with Bohm by his friend David Peat in 1987.

In the introduction is this statement

Bucking this tide of modern physics for more than 30 years, Bohm has been more than a gadfly. His objections to the foundations of quantum mechanics have gradually coalesced into an extension of the theory so sweeping that it amounts to a new view of reality. Believing that the nature of things is not reducible to fragments or particles, he argues for a holistic view of the universe. He demands that we learn to regard matter and life as a whole, coherent domain, which he calls the implicate order.

Most other physicists discard Bohm's logic without bothering to scrutinize it. Part of the difficulty is that his implicate order is rife with paradox. Another problem is the sheer range of his ideas, which encompass such hitherto nonphysical subjects as consciousness, society, truth, language, and the process of scientific theory making itself.

The statement "most other physicists discard Bohm's logic without bothering to scrutinize it" implies that Bohm may not have been getting a just and fair review from his peers on his theories.

It may be of some interest to note that Bohm was inspired by his Jewish religion as he said

When I was a boy a certain prayer we said every day in Hebrew contained the words to love God with all your heart all your soul, and all your mind. My understanding of these words, that is, this notion of wholeness–

If as Bohm says everything is bound by implicative order than the whole thing seems to turn on the definition of Bohms 'order'. However, Bohm states that "order itself is impossible to define" but can be demonstrated with photographs, holographs and other experiments. So perhaps like QED we are left with puzzlements about the nature of the universe.

You don't know what you are talking about; you make fallacious statements; when your mistakes are pointed out you hide behind insults; you accuse others of the pathologies that you yourself display; and you make wild and unsupported assumptions without any evidentiary basis.

He is kind to children and dogs though.

Robert108:

Make that "Thou shall not commit the sin of being willfully blind and obtuse," and you've got it.

Color me laughing, here in my office, at the fact that actually think you harpooned something. What an extraordinary disconnect from reality. (And by the way, I'm still waiting for you actually step up to the plate and make your case by answering my simple questions, instead of resorting to content-free rhetoric…but I suspect I'll be waiting a long, long time.)

docdave…it is certainly a long thread. It's been interesting.

Connorfc…you have been r108ed. It hurts the first time but you'll find it easier next time. I've been pain free for months.

Right. Lets step back a minute here.

When I see the ID vs Evolution debate. they always degenerate into a science v. God debate. Because ultimitly they are founded in very different fields, that at one point were one in the same so they have great over lap, which creates confussion for people.

Evolution is based in Science, and ID is realy far more reliant on Philosophy. The problem is that while science and philospohy are very similar they seek and answer very different questions. And, what happens alot is that people will confuse the two and seek to turn a philosophy into a science and a science into a philosophy.

We can not live our lives based on the principles of Thermodinamics. Imagine constructing a society based on that. Or proveing scientificaly that we have the right to free speech or any rights at all. Nor can be we make experiments and machines based on the philosophical theories of Kant. But, we can look at science and look at philosophy and then use both to understand the world. Religion, is a type of philosophy, at its most basic explanation. And from that we can derive an understanding of the world that is logical, and even practical. With science we can also get an understanding of the world that is both logical and practical. Now every once in awhile science and philosophy colide, and there arises a nice gray area between the two and we find it hard to draw a line where one ends and the other begins. The origins of life happen to be one such question.

So what do we do when we hit gray? The answer is keep looking into it. But, the catch is there are things that we will probably never be able to look into, and might never get the answers too. Personaly I'm of the opinion that life will be one of those things that might elude our full understnading. In fact really all things elude our full understanding so far. So we might as well accept that we won't know everything and that there could both be ID and evolution. And that we have free will but are also a sack of chemical reactions and so on…

Frankly I even if there is no God and man can truely one day understand the inns and out of all things, I hope some one has the wisdom to prevent that.

Damn and here this whole time I thought religion was the oldest lie told at the mothers knee.

Glad I got that cleared up.

Damn and here this whole time I thought religion was the oldest lie told at the mothers knee.

You were right.

Ah, my mum never taught me about religion. So I'm sure she won't mind.

hey don't go talking about my mama you don't know shit about that old ass bitch

Have you ever considered the notion that every human individual carries the exact age of this planet in their own person and that the format for this determines one's thinking and behaviour patterns? Three systems are now under development which use this date as its basis. Together they explain a lot of things happening on this planet, including the weather. One does not need a degree in mathematics, physics, engineering or even general science to understand, discover or develop it. Behind these systems is a new form of energy of which the physical sciences appear to know nothing. It manifests in low and high phase formats, works in both binary format and prime factors of the total number of days for any particular date.

docdave: Exactly. The smaller set cannot understand or encompass the larger set. Human consciousness=the smaller set God=the larger set

Some where in this blog it was asserted by several commentators that one could believe in evolution and God at the same time, that the beliefs were not incompatible. However, some also said that God did not have anything to do with evolution and there was no direct scientific link between God and creation. I think that if I were God I might find that a bit insulting. Understanding that one cannot began to understand the power of a God-like being I'm certain that if there is a God, all things would eminate from Him and He would not be passive.

Perfect…..

Buy God here……

Hermit, good clarifications to a maybe too complex subject (we humans do tend toward complexity, don't we).

You wrote: Any student of design will tell you that one of the hallmarks of good design is simplicity, not complexity. Don't know if you read any of the Bohms stuff but that was Bohms feelings about quantum physics and what lead him to his implicate order of enfoldment.

As far as religious faith is concerned there are many things in science that require some faith as well. Examples are gravity and QED (light) whose properties can be demonstrated but whose nature is not fully understood.

Any student of design will tell you that one of the hallmarks of good design is simplicity, not complexity. A more reasonable arument, it seems to me, is that life is so unneccessarily complex that it could not possibly be the result of an intentional design.

Simplicity is great as long as it doesn't reduce the quality of the product. We are as complex as we are simply because we are ALIVE. Life cannot be acheived "simply". Like computers, they are not simple in that they bave billions of circuits and pulses and wires, etc. You wouldn't look at a computer and say it is "SOOO bloody complex that it must have happened on accident because no one would design something so complex". It's a rather ridiculous statement to make IMHO

A Hermit said

This is precisely where ID falls down; it insists on the acceptance of faith as data.It's not. In fact, I would think it's that kind of reduction of divine mystery to just another data point that a deity would find insulting.

Excellent point although I'm sure she's getting a good chuckle from it all.

Wayne:

Thanks, guys, for opening my mind to the notion of Darwin's ‘philosophy' on evolution. I had always thought it was a theory. It appears to be based purely upon circumstantial evidence, often imagined, and attempts to explain (hence philosophy) how things developed over time.

If this is all you got out of it, I encourage you to reread it.

The air bubbles in Antarctic ice core samples just 100 metres above land are spherical, indicating the initial ice was formed in the ocean. That allegedly occurred one million years ago. Greenland ice is allegedly only 600,000 years old. So at some stage in the not-so-distant past vast land areas on this planet under that scenario were covered in salt water

Air bubbles in any kind of water are approximately spherical. Why would anybody expect anything other?

All you can conclude about wherever the ice core you are talking about was taken from, there was liquid water than later solidified. Indeed, there still is liquid water in Antarctica tapped under the ice fields, the largest of these being Lake Vostok. It doesn't even suggest that the "deep freeze" started one-million years ago. There could have been a geothermal event in the region of the core sample that generated meltwater that later refroze.

butterflies fluttering around 32,000,000 year ago.

Never heard of amber, I presume?

Two things: Modern Instances, Jesus' Magical Spaceship can do things which no stealth bomber can do.From it droughts are easy to cause using its highly advanced technologies. There are currently two set and forget systems in place at the moment on the planet and I believe the area around Utah may be affected by one of them soon, if not already. Remember the storm at the start of the Iraqi invasion? That was caused by Jesus' Magical Spaceship. The s&f eventually caused the death of 19,000 people in Europe during the following summer.

Second, if one seeks to challenge Darwinian philosophy, then probably the best way to do this is to undermine its presuppositions and assumptions.

The first assumption is that planet Earth and the solar system were physical at the start as empirical science understands now it. However, God tends not to create physical objects first. He is Spirit. Rather they have a metaphysical form which can then be made physical. Such is what happened at the fall some sixty years and nearly three months after the creation of Adam and Eve. The world that then was became physical. As St. Paul says in Romans 8, the "creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will, but because of Him who subjected it in hope that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God" (8:20-21 – NASB). Only in the physical domain does decay occur naturally.

Evidence of an energy field encompassing the solar system was provided by the Voyager spacecraft in July-August 1992. According to the NASA press release of May 26, 1993: [Quote] "In May and June 1992, the sun experienced a period of intense solar activity which emitted a cloud of rapidly moving charged particles. When this cloud of plasma arrived at the heliopause, the particles interacted violently with the interstellar plasma and produced the radio emissions, according to Gurnett.

"We've seen the frequency of these radio emissions rise over time. Our assumption that this is the heliopause is based on the fact that there is no other known structure out there that could be causing these signals," Gurnett continued. [End Quote].

Was it really the heliopause out there or indeed the very light transparent blue structure which was installed as a result of the fall and is still visible from Heaven, so allowing that event to be accurately dated? What science has yet to discover!

The second assumption in the Darwinian philosophy is that evolution occurred on this planet over a period of 4.6 billion years. That places all the eggs into one basket. My colleague who studied geomorphology at university says that 4.3 billion years is more likely. Since the age of the earth can be proven down to the day, and that equates to just under 4.4 billion minutes, then logically a Darwinian year is equivalent to one UTC minute. In Darwinian time I joined this blog some 6,000 years ago, although in real time that was between four and five days ago. My how time passes!

Then, of course, there is all the other evidence, for example, the extraordinary thin layer of space dust on the moon which some astronauts reported.

Wayne, I wonder if physicist David Bohms implicate order lends any credence to your observations. In the an interview, Bohm stated that

Classical physics says that reality is actually little particles that separate the world into its independent elements. Now I'm proposing the reverse, that the fundamental reality is the enfoldment and unfoldment, these particles are abstractions from that

and that

the recent past is enfolded more strongly. At any given moment we feel the presence of all the past and also the anticipated future. It's all present and active.

Read the whole thing.

Dave, thank you, but Wayne does not vote in US elections as he is not registered to vote there. Let's say that he is one who can be swayed by the most convincing arguments, even if they later turn out to be false. So he does not vote for that person again. In politics one rarely gets the person whom one seeks to hold office for the good of the country. So one must make a judgement. Is such-and-such a person going to bring about sufficient security and certainty during his or her term in office? From a Causal Energy perspective politicians whose binary strings begin with the 011 cluster (R-L) tend or try to bring about prosperity and security. Ariel Sharon in Israel, Tony Blair in Britain, George W. Bush in the US and John Howard in Australia all appear to have done this. This is why they are often re-elected to second and third terms. This, by the way, is another useful application for Causal Energy based upon the exact age of the earth this time around. You can get to play with the calculators at http://www.hieronomy.com by pressing the Try It Out button and selecting the appropriate browser. Please download the PDF where you can view a mathematical model of history.

As something you might also find topical, on January 13th, 2006, a new fourth cluster commenced [1,011,101,000,010,000,000,000-3048448 (13/Jan/2006)]. See page 7 of managedtime.PDF. On that or the previous day Britain, France and Germany met in Bonn to discuss Iran's nuclear ambitions. This issue may dominate the next 512 days. With US influence strong in Iraq to the west and Afghanistan to the east Iran now finds itself as the piggy in the middle (010). The State of Israel, declared on May 14th, 1948 at 4:00 p.m. local time (therefore after the changeover to the next 24-hour period), is also a 010 entity, caught between Gaza and the West Bank. Last birthday it entered the '3/4' annual module which is aligned with the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ in April 30 CE. Iran's presidential threat to wipe Israel of the map is in keeping with the language of '3/4'. The Hebrew noun 'Charan', from which 'Charim' (Harim in 1 Chron. 24) comes means "set apart for sacred use or devoted to destruction". Understandably people are concerned about his comments.

Docdave, David Bohms' is a very impressive observation. From a Causal Energy perspective I would have to agree with him, since all clusters remain active. However, the classical physics interpretation is an attractive proposition too. Duality permeates all reality. One system emphasizes one aspect, another others. He must have had good reason to say what he did. The seventh 011 cluster running since 1554 CE (page 5) is still a powerful driver in world affairs. Confidence oozes out of each self-fortified entity with community membership supposedly the road to prosperity. The religious wars were between Catholic and Protestant nations in Europe. The US states banded together and declared their independence in 1776. The British empire where the sun never set on it developed during this period. Only by joining together did the free world defeat Germany in WW I and Japan and Germany during WW II. Then there was the Cold War with Soviet communism arrayed against western capitalism. In recent years many nations have engaged jointly in military actions in the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq and are currently working to bring an end to international terrorism. This is why so many successful world leaders have that 011 signature.

Sphagnum, I surprised myself. But I cheat a little. There is a place where archival footage of the past can be retrieved and examined. All I did was look at the solar system and moving backwards and forwards in time sought for the moment when that special energy field came into view. It looks a little like the bladder inside a football, but blown up outside the casing. Outside it is a different environment to the physical solar system within. It is just there and has been since that date. Those archives are linked to time. Get the right date and one sees the right footage. The temptation occurred during 000, implying that Adam and Eve's sense of security was taken away and after the changeover 001 means they were removed and kept at a distance. The language of that ancient text appears to confirm my dating of the event. Noah's Flood has been dated that way too, as has been the Exodus and a host of other ancient events. Since the systems I have discovered use the present to understand the past and gain insight into the future, the distant past becomes the recent past. Here David Bohm's insight is worthy of further consideration.

It must be confusing for men of learning to hear that perhaps the equivalent of a swimming pool of water in the vast Pacific Ocean is all that exists as physical matter as empirical science understands it. The systems which control time and life itself are not physical, yet they are solid state.
Furthermore, on a slightly different subject, those space particles returned yesterday from space will say absolutely nothing about the creation of the solar system.
Finally, if twenty-five UTC hours are equivalent to about 1500 Darwinian years then butterflies must have been around for more than sixty-one years (32000000 /1440 / 365.242).

Your logic is impeccable!

Also Dave, the majority can be wrong! You should know that from your own observations of democracy at work.

docdave, you may be onto something. I find that experiment interesting. As to your question

So can one say that the space-time of the universe is likened to the glycerin enfolded in the cylinder with visualized events depending on the state of the unfoldment of the glycerin?

time appears to move forward. As it does past perceptions becomes diffuse or clouded. This causes one of the great failures for oral traditions.
Wind back the tape, so to speak, and one can review it over and over again. People do this with their memories. The original events are energised by emotions and physical encounters. Over time, often quickly depending upon how intensely painful or joyful the experience was, the energy is released and the memory is stored as uncharged residual energy, like files on a computer HDD. Later something triggers those memories and they come alive again, making one feel accordingly sad, embarrassed or happy.
The Causal Energy binary strings perform a similar function. Select a date in history, recent or distant past, and interpret the clusters, then what happened in the distant past becomes enlightened knowledge. The more structured systems there are to help out, the clearer the picture becomes. In Hieronomy the '6/7' mind sees the end picture first, then works backwards one step at a time to the beginning and then moves forward to bring about the result. On the other hand, the '9/10' mind sees a possibility and has to rub away at the veneer covering the picture to eventually discover its appearance. With the former the person has tapped into the time-space continuum at some point in the future (so it already exists conceptually) and brought that information back into the present to work upon it. Prophets of old did this too and no doubt some would say that psychics and clairvoyants do the same. During REM dreams future information is also given out.
These two sayings may reflect this as well: "the world is a stage and we are just actors playing our parts" and "the world runs by its own rules and we are just there for the ride." Life is far more complex that living just one moment at a time.

Spaghnum: Welcome to the side of the hill. In Luke 2 the shepherds were out in the fields (a warm evening) in the region of Bethlehem (2:8). The angel told them the good news: "for today in the city of David there has been born for you a Savior who is Christ the Lord" (2:11). Since then some have become confused and said "Tonight in the region of Bethlehem there has been born for you…"
One of the eye-witnesses to the star event had a son who later became the bishop of Jerusalem. His name was Clopas, the brother of Joseph. The son's name was Symeon. This Symeon was good friends with St Ignatius of Antioch who wrote in his Epistle to the Ephesians, xix:2.

How then was he manifested to the world? A star shone in heaven beyond all the stars, and its light was unspeakable, and its newness caused astonishment, and all the other stars, with the sun and moon gathered in chorus round this star, and it far exceeded them all in its light; and there was perplexity, whence came this new thing, so unlike them

(Kirsopp Lake's translation, Apostolic Fathers I, Loeb Classical Library, p. 193).
While it may be extra-canonical it is nonetheless the earliest record from a reliable source of a day time birth of Christ and reflects the account in the Gospel narrative. Astronomy programs can demonstrate the clustering of the sun, moon and stars around this much brighter light with 73 degrees between the sun and moon (September 7th, 6 BC – 11:30 a.m.).
Remember the funeral for the late Pope John Paul II? Rome was packed to overflowing. No room to stay except on the streets for the late comers. That happened during a '22/23' week as did the original gathering of the house of David in Bethlehem in 6 BC. The present can be helpful in dating the past.
As it was the Magi paid their visit to Bethlehem over a year later when Jesus was a Child. Mary and Joseph's flight to Egypt occurred on Friday, October 13th, 5 BC. The side of the hill lets one see some fascinating things.

docdave, g'day. As many cells and neurons as the human brain has, it does not store memories. It acts more like a CPU with I/O capabilities drawing information into memory (hippocampus etc.) and acting upon them. The subconscious mind, in particular the soul (Gen. 2:7), stores the memories as residual energy in considerable detail, similar to the MP3 format compared to the original .rmj sound file. By necessity a lot of data is deleted in the compression, but still sufficient for vivid memories. These can be activated at any time through sensory stimuli and recalled into consciousness.
Just as the world accumulates its own memories while continuing to age, so does the human psyche. Upon and after death this residue is assessed for its quality and a decision made to either reward or send it away for recycling. In the recycle bin what energy remains is slowly extracted, purified and returned to its Source. That is a very long and uncomfortable process, but over time the individual gets used to it until he or she becomes a shade. There is no escaping and apparently each person is given one chance to get it right (Heb. 10:27). Those philosophies which advocate a succession of lives have little concept of reality.
The data strings act as triggers. All material in the subconscious mind is stored in binary format anyway. Modern computers form just part of the ongoing process to create physical working models of the underlying metaphysical world. Indigenous peoples have a far better appreciation of this and would probably concur with the notion of an outward manifestation of the mind and soul's inner world. Years ago I knew a gentleman who could travel over a thousand kilometers on foot in a single afternoon. For me to do that I would need to buy a plane ticket like nearly all other people. However, among some indigenous peoples this is not an unusual skill, but it is highly irregular to western thinking.
Holograms are interesting. Many of the scenes described by the apostle John in his scroll of Revelations (August 70 CE) were, in actual fact, holograms. Heaven's technologies are so advanced and man's discoveries so primitive. I tend to believe that while homo sapiens is clever and can do incredible things, he (she) is not very bright. The light is just not on. He can send a space probe out into space for seven years and get it to successfully return with material collected from a distant comet (awesome to say the least), but it will say nothing of the origin of our solar system 4.6 billion years ago. At that time it was empty space. However, he will spend the next ten years or so analyzing it and come to some sort of conclusion which can be expected to conform to what he already thinks he knows. It is a pity that science cannot be kept pure. Yet it does keep people in work, helps the economy along and gives not so bright people something to do with their otherwise insignificant lives.
I certainly believe that the pursuit of science is worthwhile. It is just the garbage declared in the name of science which I find disappointing. I heard this morning that the weather in the United States is warming up. That trend overall can be expected to continue. But it has nothing to do with global warming.

Yes, that is me at hieronomy.com. The only photo of me I thought was up there is on the Articles and Essays page. Thanks for visiting.

A Hermit: A Few Errors: The appendix is part of the immune system. We just didn't know about the immune system until recently, but the purpose of the appendix was always there. Therefore, the judgment about what complexity is or is not necessary says more about our knowledge than anything else. IMO, it is evolution, as a process of manifesting the original kernal of the cosmic intelligence, that produces the specialization that usually results in extinction, which makes room for more "projects". It's not so simple as you would like to make it. First, clear up the ignorance, then make judgments.
BTW, humans use sex for pleasure and pair bonding, not just reproduction, so meditate on the size of the "birth canal" taking that fact into consideration.

richard: Homo Sapiens is around 200,000 years old. We have known about the immune system for 20-30 years. You do the math. Removing the appendix removes a bacterial trap at a very important part of the intestinal tract. The long term effects are unknown because of our ignorance, not because the appendix is unnecessary. The appendix is lymphoid tissue, only recently discovered.

Did you catch it that time? Life is unnecessarily complex.

There's really no need to be a jerk, hermit. I know what you said and it doesn't change MY point at all.

The entire point of ID is that life can be simplified, but only to a point. The eyeball can be simplified to a degree where some organisms only see light and dark… but even that that stage of simpliciy, the actual organ that allows this "sight" is incredibly complex and cannot be simplified any more without taking away the function of the organ. ID doesn't explain away evolution, it explains away evolution as the origins of life! That is what most people don't understand when it comes to ID.

To your point about our bodies having extra organs and such, this becomes a theological discussion for me at this point. Simply put, Adam's body was created in the image of God. When Man fell (apple, tree, snake, etc), the entire world was struck with the effects of sin and evil. Our very bodies today are not what they were originally created to be. When Jesus was rose from the dead, he was able to walk through walls, he could eat but didn't have to… his body was much different than the "normal" human body. That is what we were intended to be, that is what we will be again someday. So in other words, weird quirks in our body are not signs that the process that made us is flawed but rather is an indication of what our bodies are capable of.

Did you know that His appearance after being raised from the dead was very different to how He had previously looked to the disciples? No wonder they did not recognize Him. His face now consisted of seven eyes with seven horns around His head with His skin like white wool. He had reverted back to being the Eternal Lamb of God.

Well yes, obviously he was different. But 7 eyes and 7 horns? How is that possible considering that he walked and talked with the disciples (before they knew who he was). They would have been freaked and probably tried to kill him had he had that physical appearance… The 7 horns and all is how Christ is depicted in John's Revelation, but I don't believe he had that physical appearance before his ascension.

I've never assumed Jesus looked the same after crucifixion, I've just never heard that he took on that apperance while still on thie earth. I'll most definently read your article. Thanks

There's really no need to be a jerk, hermit. I know what you said and it doesn't change MY point at all.

I'm sorry, Sphagnum, I certainly wasn't trying to be a jerk, just trying to emphasize what I actually said, because in my opinion it does make a big difference to the whole argument.

The entire point of ID is that life can be simplified, but only to a point. The eyeball can be simplified to a degree where some organisms only see light and dark… but even that that stage of simpliciy, the actual organ that allows this "sight" is incredibly complex and cannot be simplified any more without taking away the function of the organ.

Sorry, but that's just not true. The eye started out as a cell or two that reacts to light. in early forms of life that was enough to give an organism a slight advantage, increasing survivability and reproductive rates and the evolutionary process begins. Yes, if you "simplify" the eye it doesn't fuction wel enought for us humans, but that's jsut more evidence of gradual evolution from simpler organisms. See <a href="http://www.google.com/custom?q=evolution+of+the+eye&amp;sa=Search&amp;sitesearch =www.talkorigins.org" rel="nofollow">Talkorigins again.

You're just restating Behe's irreduciblity argument, which is graphically rebutted here: <a href="http://udel.edu/~mcdonald/mousetrap.html&quot; rel="nofollow">Reducible Mousetrap.

ID doesn't explain away evolution, it explains away evolution as the origins of life! That is what most people don't understand when it comes to ID.

To be precise (not a jerk, just precise), the theory of evolution doesn't attempt to explain the origin of life; that's biogenesis; a whole other kettle of fish.

But in any case ID doesn't actually explain, or explain away, anything. ID's proponents present no evidence, they fudge their definitions and they misrepresent what science really has to say on the subject of evolution and the diversity of life on Earth. ID is, at best, a guess; a hunch; a bit of wishful thinking. And there's nothing wrong with a little of that, really, but it is not science and shouldn't be taught as such.

There is so much that we don't know about life, life forms, the earth, our solar system and the entire universe. Yes, hermit, it does seem overly complex, but very often what we don't understand the purpose of something, when we finally discover its purpose we remark ‘Oh that's what it's for'.

Docdave, pointing to gaps in scientific knowledg is NOT proof of anything other than the fact that there are gaps in our knowledge. Period. To make the case for Intelligent Design someone has to present actual evidence of an intelligent designer. Unnecessary complexity in the form of redundant or inefficient biological structures (and the appendix, which certainly qualifies at least as the latter if not the former, is far from the only example of such) weighs against, not for, such a designer. Doesn't categorically rule one out, either, but it certainly doesn't support the ID hypothesis.

A: Maybe as a hermit, you don't relate to the size of the "birth canal", which is your prerogative, but the appendix as "dangerously inefficient"? Read up on it. It's also your designer.

Read up on it.

Way ahead of ya Robert… Start here if you want to catch up:

<a href="http://www.google.ca/search?q=%22The+vestigiality+of+the+human+vermiform+appendix%22&amp;start=0&amp;ie=utf-8&amp;oe=utf-8&amp;client=firefox-a&amp;rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&quot; rel="nofollow">The vestigiality of the human vermiform appendix

It's at least a debateable point, not the closed case you seem to think it is, but even if (a big if) I were to give you that one you haven't addressed any of the other examples I cited (by no means a comprehensive list). My main point, ie that to the extent that complexity has any any bearing on the ID/Evolution issue unneccessary complexity argues against, not for, the existence of an intelligent designer.

n diss one 2
Despite our natural reluctance to assume that our senses are not sensitive to the majority of the reality around us, there is a very strong arguement from basic principles that the universe (even in our immediate surroundings) could be far more complex than we can imagine. One has only to compare the amount of man's knowledge obtained (or which could have been obtained) by his unaided senses with the enormous increase provided by the development of such devices as telescopes, microscopes, radio receivers and X-ray machines, to realize how very limited we are. Note that the purpose of each of these is to receive energy which is too weak or of the wrong form to be detected by any of the senses, and to amplify or convert the information in that energy to a form or level which is within the capacity of one of them. Study of a list of such artificial aids shows that they can be separated into two distict categories. Telescopes, microscopes and similar "magnifying" techniques form a continuous and open-ended chain of development. The urge to see farther and smaller has always existed, and is fundamental to the extent of being instinctive. No matter how powerful an instrument is built, there will always be some object of interest which is barely visible, and so an awareness of things still beyond its range and an incentive to improve it. This has encouraged the development of the necessary technology (lenses, etc.).

On the other hand, such developments as radio communication and X-ray examination required the positive discovery of radio waves and X-rays before they could even be contemplated. Only then could the requisite technology be developed so that they could be used to gain further knowledge. One would expect any "extra" dimensions to come into this category, and there could well be other equally fundamental "unknowns." Until an initiating discovery is made, it is extremely difficult to conceive of their existence, speculate on their characteristics or imagine the consequences.

The particular case of radio waves and X-rays are also excellent examples of the limitations of our senses in other ways, since they are two examples of electromagnetic radiation. Such waves have been used or studied with wavelengths extending over a range of 1016 (10,000,000,000,000,000) although our senses respond only to visible light, which covers a range of barely 2:1 in wavelength, and outside this range we must rely entirely on aids. On a dark night, it is possible to see the light from a small torch bulb (radiating about a fiftieth of a watt of energy of visible light) at a range of about half a mile. On the other hand, you could stand within a few feet of an aerial radiating over a million watts of radio-frequency energy and be unaware that the transmitter is switched on.
Tu Madre

It certainly is an interesting thread. Had about everything in it. I thought of throwing my 2 dimes a few times, so what the heck, here they are.

Grecian symbology: horns=wisdom, eyes=knowledge (as in seeing), seven = "complete or total", hence seven horns = "all wise", seven eyes = all knowing. A lamb used to be something you gave to atone for a wrong, or sacrificed to the deities. So a "Lamb &heellip; having seven horns and seven eyes" has an obvious translation into our cultural references that have nothing to do with external appearance.

The writer of Revelations wrote it in Greek, so it's not surprising he would have used a form of symbolism that was extant at that time. He even said as much:

The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches: and the seven candlesticks which thou sawest are the seven churches.

Get it? It's symbolic language &amp; even John of Patmos is trying to tell you "Hey! Not everything that I'm saying is literal." (This was wise because much of the text in fact refers to Caesar and the Roman Empire, and had he gone straight out and said as much, he likely would have been hunted down and crucified.)

Anyway, not everything in the Bible has to be literal, even for a person of faith. The same goes for Genesis, regardless of the desire of roughly 15% or so of those of Christian faith, who continue to insist that their God is not big enough to create a universe 14 billion years old, and a much vaster mysterious &amp; incredibly wonderful cosmos than the writers of the Bible could ever have conceived of.

That's my take on it. It is quite reasonable based upon the preponderance of facts that the Earth is around 4.3 billion years old, that life evolved from simpler forms to more complex. It is also no mystery to me that most or all of the people who actively fight the concept of evolution do so for religious reasons.

Clearly, for these people, their minds have been made up, and they're not going to get confused by the facts.

Robert108:

The facts as we now know them. Just think what would have happened if we had frozen science at the factual level of a century ago.

As opposed to freezing it to what was known 3500 years ago, right?

It's not arrogant to be right, or shall I say, more right. It's not arrogant to have informed oneself of the facts and to tell people who are obviously ignorant of them, and who are consistently misrepresenting them, that they are ignorant of and misrepresenting the facts.

As I said before, evolution isn't going away, any more than the idea that the Earth is round, or that water runs down hill. At some point, enough evidence builds up that the idea becomes irrefutable.

What we know scientifically undergoes constant change, analysis, reanalysis, testing etc. Because it changes doesn't mean that the old ideas were all totally wrong, just incomplete. Even when we have revolutions, the old doesn't get thrown away, just looked at differently (e.g., special relativity–low velocity world still looks Newtonian).

Science is to ideas like the free market is to economics. It is a nearly optimal solution to the problem of "how to know what is true". It is a logical system, not a social institution. At a conference, a researcher from a small midwestern college is treated wit the same respect as a researcher from an east coast private university.

If you don't think that evolution as a fact is established, you're simply either mis- or uninformed, but that doesn't make me dogmatic. Dogmatic is adherence to a belief in the absence of facts. I know the facts, I believe in evolution. That's not dogmatic. Dogmatic is clinging to 3500 year oral traditions as if they were contemporaneous scientific observations.

Things change. A few hundred years from now, it will no doubt be some other group claiming the high ground.

Things change. Systems improve. Knowledge improves. Science has no groups, "high priests", the facts are owned by no one and therefore available to all. It's a democratic, free-market-place for ideas. The best ideas win, not the most clung to ones. You're wrong about evolution, not because the Gatekeepers of Truth[tm] tells you so, but because the body of natural observations lines up against you. "The facts are not on your side". It is the facts that are the gatekeepers of truth, not any single individual.

A few hundred years from now, unless our society collapses, we will still be using the scientific method, and people will be sorting truth from untruth using this incredibly powerful method. Hopefully, then as now, there will be no Gatekeepers of Truth. We replaced the High Priests of Canonical Knowledge, with knowledge itself.

Robert108:

Knowledge is knowing what you know; wisdom is knowing what you don't know.

Hopefully, you realize that this applies to yourself as well as others, and not strictly in an abstract fashion. In the daily execution of my work, I am constantly aware it applies to me.

Carrick: I absolutely know it applies to me, and I endeavor to apply it to myself first.
Evolution is the best explanation we have at the moment for the diversity of life on Earth. It holds that life proceeds from the simple to the complex, which appeals to our common sense. Yet, it has a glaring weakness: It is an effect with no known cause. If we can't explain the origin of life itself, then the rest is speculation. It is probably pretty accurate, but it is still a matter of faith, IMO. I disagree with you about the High Priests; they are now scientists and academicians. They're not too bad in the realms of math, chemistry and physics, but they are actually harmful in the area of the "social sciences", IMO. This is proven by the heat of their need to censor what they consider to be heresy: Intelligent Design. I'm not a particular fan of it, but the reaction against it is telling. I'm a relatively unattached observer here, with a long-range view. Human beings are not machines, and so can't be reduced to equations. We rule machines, because we created them, but who rules us? Random collisions of molecules? Not bloody likely. We really don't know, and I think it's arrogant to think we have all the answers, whether we be "scientists" or "religionists".

Before we discovered the purpose of lymphoid tissue, the adenoids, the uvula, the tonsils and the vermiform(wormlike) appendix were absolutely thought to be vestigial. Now, with more knowledge, we understand that they have some purpose. That was my point, and thanks for verifying it.

I didn't verify anything of the kind; the appendix is still generally regarded in the medical community as vestigial; that it still retains some function does not make it any less so. It is unneccessary, redundant, inneficient and does not have the same function in human anatomy that it does in another animal having an appendix. Cutting it out doesn't seem to have any serious long-term effect, and any function it does serve is better performed in other ways. (That's a definition of innefficient…and innefficiency is bad design. Or the product of a natural, unguided evolurtionary process. Take your pick…)

Now, how about the inadequacy of the human spine in terms of bipedalism, the birth canal issue (amusing as your responses have been on the subject you haven't really addressed that one), the frankly bizzarre structure of the human eye, the design purpose of hips in whales or any of the other many examples of poor, innefficient, redundant or just plain unneccessary structures in nature? They make sense as products of a gradual, natural, unguided evolutionary process but as designed elements? Not so much…

I really enjoy reading your comments, Carrick

Ditto…:)

Thanks for the kind words Carrick. Anatomy isn't exactly my strong point either, but I've been learning a lot since I started getting interested in this whole subject.

I'm not sure why you think the eye is overly complex.

Mammalian eyes invert the image on the back of the retina, and have a blind spot where the nerves block the photoreceptors. Our brains have to compensate for all this.

Squids and other cephalopods have similar visual acuity to mammals, but without the same complications.

Talkorigins again…a wonderful resource….

you feel you must smash the idea of ID, or any other "competing" idea, just like the priesthood used to feel it necessary to smash science as heresy

I think that's a terribly unfair characterization of Carrick's (and my) position in this discussion. I think we've both been pretty clear that we welcome the introduction of the idea in the right context; it's just the teaching of it as science, when it clearly isn't science, that we object to.

And even Michael Behe, one of ID's biggest proponents, said under oath at the Dover trial recently that ID only fits the definition of science if we completely redefine science to the point where ideas like astrology fit the definition.

see here http://www.ydr.com/doverbiology/ci_3219285

and here: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/dover/day11pm.htm…

Q And using your definition, intelligent design is a scientific theory, correct?

A Yes.

Q Under that same definition astrology is a scientific theory under your definition, correct?

A Under my definition, a scientific theory is a proposed explanation which focuses or points to physical, observable data and logical inferences. There are many things throughout the history of science which we now think to be incorrect which nonetheless would fit that — which would fit that definition. Yes, astrology is in fact one, and so is the ether theory of the propagation of light, and many other — many other theories as well.

At that point, it just isn't science anymore. Might as well teach Tarot reading and psychic surgery if we're going to take that loose a definition of what constitutes a scientific theory.

I never asserted that ID was "science",

Then would you agree that it shouldn't be taught as science in a high school science class?

If so than we really aren't disagreeing here, are we?

If it is not, as Robert now says he agrees, science why would you teach it as if it were?

But it IS science, it is a theory that evolution does not explain the origins of life because evolution, as a theory, breaks down at that point. What exactly is philosophical or religious about that?

Sphagnum: I think your point is very well taken. I agree with Carrick that the theory of evolution doesn't address the creation of life, only how it proceeds from there. That doesn't deal with your question, it just defines the limits of the theory of evolution. I also think the origin of life is a primary issue, but scientists just seem to ignore it, and/or want to classify it as a philosophical or religious matter. They don't explain how it graduates from that to science after life has been created, but seem very satisfied to leave God out of the whole thing, which was the original point. It was a turf war between the theologists and the scientists, and right now, the scientists "own" the turf, the top of the mountain. If science really thinks it is the sole owner of the truth, they really need to address the question of the origin of life, IMO.

Carrick/Hermit: I have no objection to evolution being taught in science class, as long as it is clearly taught as a theory. I only know that ID is a differing idea, and it should be respected as such. If you must defend your turf by prohibiting any mention of it in science class, even as a hypothesis, then you have the power to do that. It doesn't make it right. I have never written anything that could be construed as teaching ID as a science. I don't even think that evolution is science. It's the best explanation we have at this stage of our knowledge, that's all. You think you are absolutely right, and so have the right to prohibit anything which disagrees with you. I find that amusing, as amusing as the Christian Fundamentalists who take Genesis literally. Both camps are superstitious, IMO, with the science camp a bit less so. I don't think the world is a mechanical place, and so I don't hold with a mechanistic explanation, nor do I hold with a completely mystical one.

"Testable by the scientific method." Isn't that just a bit tautological?

Carrick: Science is that body of knowledge which is testable by the scientific method. If you can't test it, it's not science.
.

Okay, what aspects of evolution are testable?

Science is that body of knowledge which is testable by the scientific method. If you can't test it, it's not science.

How does one "test" the Big Bang Theory? At least in my case, this was included in my biology class as a posible explanation to the orgins of the universe and life. So how exactly does one test this theory and possibly disprove it?

Robert108:

"Testable by the scientific method." Isn't that just a bit tautological?

No. It's not.

Counter example:

Testable by conformance to religious dogma. An assertion like Moses was a disciple of Jesus is testable by examining the canonical texts. Falsifiable statement.

Historical assertions are testable by comparison with historical documents: Abraham Lincoln assassinated George Washington. Falsifiable. Testable.

Need more examples?

Demonstrating that the eyeball occurred through evolution does not falsify ID, just one of the claims. There are an infinite such examples that you could apply ID to. To disprove ID, you would have to prove there was no intelligent designer.

Not true. You would simply need to retrace a simple organsim, such as an earth worm, backwards through the evolutionary trail. If you could show that an earthworm, with all of it's organs and "pieces", could have started out as a single-celled organism and developed into what it is today, you could extrapolate that our to other organisms in this world and prove that evolution explains all life on earth from a single-celled organism onward.

But that can't be done because so much of life around us IS irreducibly complex. You say that ID is not falsifiable and this is true. Not because it can't be done in theory, but because it IS true.

Carrick: Now we are getting somewhere! Your attempted insult fell flat with me because I have no idea who it is to which you refer, but no matter.
BTW, a tautology is defining something in terms of itself.
I'm glad you mentioned free markets, because my own acceptance for the theory of evolution/natural selection is based on my acceptance of The Invisible Hand Doctrine in economics. However, I am not under the illusion that it is some sort of absolute truth; it works better than any other explanation we have at the moment, and it produces superior results.
The truth is that any system of proof is based on one or more premises, which cannot be proven. If they could be, they would be based on earlier premises, and so on. The quality of any system of proof, then, is dependent on the quality of its premises. Current scientific thought, IMO, is based on some pretty good premises, even if they are limited. They are unable to explain, or even deal with, as in your example, the fact of the origin of life. One can always be right by limiting the field of inquiry enough.

Carrick: BTW, the first recorded exposition of Point Source Origin(The Big Bang, for instance) is in the Hindu Veda, written down about 5000 years ago. I'm working on getting a link for you. You might find it interesting. Of course, it brings up that pesky question of where the "Point" came from.

And….?

Carrick: The proper qualifier makes all the difference.

It still describes the same phenomenon, with the same outcome. It's not technical or mechanistic enough for you, and it was written down about 5000 years ago. The terminology is different as well. You might just be a bit overfocused, btw. Your high-tech approach is unavailable to the understanding of the majority of humanity. Maybe you don't care about that, though.

Wayne:

Carrick, that is typical left-brain hemisphere talk. Faith is right-brain based which the left brain defines with words resulting in beliefs.

I feel wonder when I discover new things. Wonder is a left-brained thing? Who knew.

Grecian symbolism is irrelevant. It is a product of the left-brain hemisphere

At this point, I dismiss you as having no clue. Symbolism is left brained? You're clueless.

You need to quit taking everything so literally, which is definitely a left-brained thing.

Robert108:

If they both describe the same truth, regardless of method, isn't that of at least some significance?

They don't describe the same truth. The Big Bang Theory is much more than just a "big bang". They have some interesting aspects in common, I agree. But the point I'm pounding on is that a scientific theory is a very specific thing, it is much more than just a description of events.

For example, in the Hindu religion, they also have oscillations of the entire universe where it gets periodically created and destroyed. There is an oscillating universe cosmology where the Universe will someday collapse to a point, then reform with a new big bang. (Except in the cosmological model, the universe gets more massive with each bounce).

I don't know if you mean Enlightenment, as a certain cultural and historical period in Western Civilization, or enlightenment, which is a transcendental state of consciousness.

I was referring to the former, while jokingly referring to the latter. It's called a "play on words".

Robert, I've had classical training at a good liberal arts college, and this included a course on far-eastern religion. I hope you will stop assuming that I'm ignorant of things outside of physics now.

Carrick: I make no such assumption about you: In fact, I'm glad you have had at least an introduction to "far-eastern religion". The similarity to which I referred is the emergence of the universe from a singularity, specifically an infinitely small, infinitely dense "particle".
In regards to Enlightenment/enlightenment, if they really had anything in common, the world would be vastly different today. If only! I guess that subject isn't funny for me, but I appreciate your effort to lighten things up a little. We can get serious on SA. Of course, you are very serious when it comes to scientific exactitude.

Carrick: True that.

DocDave:

Carrick, your reliance on falsification may work for you but may not be the best approach for others.

You need not rely on falsification, but it's a requirement for practicing empirical science. With the mathematical sciences, for example, there are other types of proof available.

One can as easily draw conclusions from the absence of something as from direct observation.

That's true in mathematics. It's not as easy to do in the physical sciences. Take my last comment to Sphagnum about an Intelligent Designer.

Suppose we could eventually show that every molecular reaction from the original origin of life until now had been accounted for, all the i's dotted, t's crossed for evolutionary theory? Would this disprove the existence of an intelligent designer? Well, no. He could simply have created the laws that govern evolution, and everything else results from that. Ultimately, the existence of God cannot be disproved.

Normally, when people are discussing the ID, they are quite actively thinking of the God that conforms to their religious doctrines and dogmas. This is definitely true in Sphagnum's case, whose certainly is driven by his complete faith in his interpretation of Scriptures, rather than by any set of persuasive empirical observations (which frankly mostly don't exist). God, if he exists, is not something you can describe with physics equations or empirical science in general. Hence, His invocation is necessarily not a scientific one, but a religious one.

Any such Deity, who would of course also be the Creator, necessarily would live outside the laws of our universe, and would not experience time the way we see it. This is because we now understand our time sense to be associated with the Second Law of Thermodynamics (actions and thoughts can only affect the future, under the second law, and not the past).

For such a Being, not being governed by the Second Law, all time and space would be like a four-dimenstional tapestry that could all be beheld at once. For such a Being, there is hardly a difference between creating a set of laws that produce the result we see now, and one for which he would have to actively participate at individual space-time points to effect the evolutionary result that He desired.

Personally, assuming His existence, I think the Universe that he has presented for our eyes to see, and our brains to understand, is the real Universe. The farthest objects really are more than 10 billion light years away. Animals really evolve by the laws governing evolution. And so forth.

I just happen to find that Universe that science reveals to us a much more wondrous place that the much more limited universe perceived by the early Jewish people.

Carrick: You are wrong. Taking things literally is a right-brain hemisphere characteristic. In this mode the brain is aware of things but there is a minimal connection with words (non-verbal). It puts things together to form wholes (synthetic), relates to things as they are (concrete), sees likenesses between things and understands metaphoric relationships (analogic), is not concerned with time (nontemporal), does not require a basis of reason or facts and so is willing to suspend judgment (nonrational), sees things where they are in relation to other things and how parts go together to form a whole (spatial), makes leaps of insight, often based on incomplete patterns, hunches, feelings or visual images (intuitive) and sees whole things all at once, perceiving the overall patterns and structures, often leading to divergent conclusions (holistic). This is almost word for word what Betty Edwards has written in her book 'Drawing on the right side of the Brain, p. 40, and summarizes the research findings of Roger W. Sperry and his students at Cal Tech.

You need to understand how the evolved-over-many-biospheres brain works and get more balance in your thinking. Reading your comments you are also taking too literally what the long age earth theorists say and using the right brain mode to support your arguments. This Cal Tech research is important to this discussion. Here is what is said about the left brain hemisphere mode:
It uses words to name, describe and define (verbal). It figures things out step-by-step and part-by-part (analytic) and uses a symbol to stand for something (symbolic). The brain takes a small bit of information and uses it to represent the whole thing (abstract). It keeps track of time, sequencing one thing after another by doing first things first, second things second, etc. (temporal). It draws conclusions based upon reason and facts (rational) and uses numbers as in counting (digital). Furthermore it draws conclusions based upon logic where one thing follows another in logical order (logical) and thinks in terms of linked ideas, one thought directly following another, often leading to a convergent conclusion (linear).

"The brain takes a small bit of information and uses it to represent the whole thing (abstract)." This is typical of the claims of the long age theorists and supports my argument yesterday about circular reasoning. An estimate of 4.3 billion years for this planet is not reasonable. It is actually just over 4.389 billion minutes and provably so.

On the other hand I keep track of time (left-brain) with my calculators based upon the exact age of this earth since installation by studying causal energies and prime numbers linked to human development models. These are now being used in family counselling and self understanding without reference to religion although they can be adapted to any relgion and culture. So my unwitting, right-brain thinking, literalist friend, how do you explain away three logical systems, one language-based and two numerical, which give this planet an exact starting point? So much long age thinking fails simple logic tests.

Sphagnum:

You need not dispove the exsistence of God in order to disprove that the world was created. You need only show sufficent evidence that evolution can indeed explain the origins of life.

First evolution does not explain the origins of life, just the modern order of life as present today. Demonstrating the veracity of evolution may disprove your particular model of creation, age of the Earth and so forth, but proving evolution or even confirming a natural theory for the origin of life (biogenesis) would not disprove the existence of an Intelligent Designer. It would displace your religious dogmas [*], were you to accept the veracity of those scientific conclusions, but that is a separate thing.

ID only attempts to provide an answer for the ORIGINS of life, not the diversity of life as evolutions attemps to explain.

I'm not confused (about this at least!). If you take ID to explain what you regard as irreducible complexity, then you are explaining the diversity of species by the invocation of an Intelligent Designer. In the Garden of Eden, scenario, all species that ever existed were created about 10,000 +/- 2000 years ago (depending on who's doing the analysis), and no new naturally created species exist since that point. This is a very difficult theory to fit the vast majority of empirical observations with. Since I don't ascribe to a literalist viewpoint on the Bible, it isn't any sweat off my brow, however.

If you can successfully label ID as religion, you win, but it's not true.

To be fair, I'm not labeling ID as a religion, but a philosophical position that (in some sense) may well be right. However, I have no doubt that the push by people of faith to adopt ID as an alternative to evolution arises from evolution's conflicts with their dogmas. I'd have to have a hole in my head to think otherwise.

[*] I keep using that word "dogma". I do not use the term perjoratively. Here is what I mean: dogma (n): a principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true.

Carrick, your mention of DNA in a recent post triggered me to resurrect an earlier argument I put forth on how the 'creation' of DNA was perhaps the root of all life forms and whether DNA could possible been created without intelligent purpose. RNA/DNA by itself does not create life and as you stated in your mouse-fly example, different part of the DNA have to be triggered (mutated) to create a specific specie. Where I'm leading with this is there has to be some external signal or stimulus to kickstart the DNA process. For example, take any plant seed, the life that the seed can produce lies dormant until it gets the necessary stimulus to began growing. This stimulus is external to the seed and has been associated with the sun, the angle and length of day. How does a dormant seed which appears totally lifeless respond to these stimula?

Sphagnum:

OR, one could hold the view that life did start as small, single-celled-type organisms, and that a god was the one responsible for "mutations" that lead to new species. In other words, a god could use evolutionary steps but it would not be random and by chance, it would be by design.

Which is my point. If you don't base your definition of the Intelligent Designer off of one particular set of religious dogmas, then there is no way to discount the presence of the Designer. And it doesn't necessarily minimize His role as you assign more of what has happened to natural law, because if he designed the natural laws, doesn't this just make the Design even more elegant?

Indeed, the laws of nature conspire to produce higher lifeforms from more primitive ones. Why is this not the fingerprint of a Maker rather than an accident of a soulless universe?

There was an excellent article in Scientific American, January 2005 on the fiction put forth by evolutionists. I really enjoyed the glueing of the moth to the tree. I remember seeing that lie in my "science" book back in high school and later freshman biology class. The "facts" were dismissed as farce and theory then, now thoroughly debunked in their own publications.

Scientific theories (like evolution) are built by the participation of thousands of researchers, working independantly, examining empirical evidence and testing possible explanation of that evidence. They are constantly questioning and re-examining that evidence and those explanations, improving their understanding of the subject.

That is only marginally true as radically new and different ideas have shown to have a difficult time penetrating the shell of conventional research especially if these ideas are contrary to the aleady established concepts. Getting peer review should be automatic but is often not easily forthcoming because scientist like other people have agendas. Too often acknowledged scientific principles become like tenets that are religiously adhered to. In that sense, to some, science is just another dogmatic religion.

As far as ID is concerned, it's not likely to get a fair scientific review as it has been rejected out of hand by the scientific community as being a religious nutcase assertion. This same community will agree that they don't know how life is created and that the universe is ordered but they don't know how or what put it in its order, but they will reject an idea (ID) that might explain life and order.

How can you scientifically test or observe ID?

You can't, which is why this issue is so simple.

My belief is that God didn't leave fingerprints. It's up to us (not science) to decide whether or not He exists.

That's almost as an important revelation as my "God doesn't ask trick questions" observation that has been known to impress observers.

As far as ID is concerned, it's not likely to get a fair scientific review as it has been rejected out of hand by the scientific community as being a religious nutcase assertion. This same community will agree that they don't know how life is created and that the universe is ordered but they don't know how or what put it in its order, but they will reject an idea (ID) that might explain life and order.

I have a question that I hope someone can answer: How can you scientifically test or observe ID? I think if there was a way to, the scientific community would be more open to it.

If there are no articles on ID, why did I just get over 11 million hits when I did a google on ‘intelligent design, scientific evidence'?

Google has long been a paragon for scientific achievement. Why, I believe Einstein published Relativity through Google.

Hermit: The fact is ID proponents do not do any actual research, and don't submit articles for review
If there are no articles on ID, why did I just get over 11 million hits when I did a google on 'intelligent design, scientific evidence'? There are serious scientists searching for evidence. In fact there is a site called IntelligenceDesignNetwork trying to put

Objectivity results from the use of the scientific method without philosophic or religious assumptions in seeking answers to the question: Where do we come from?

That there is no proof yet for ID is not a factor, science has a very active SETI program even though there is no proof of ETs.

The theory of intelligent design (ID) holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause rather than an undirected process such as natural selection. ID is thus a scientific disagreement with the core claim of evolutionary theory that the apparent design of living systems is an illusion.
In a broader sense, Intelligent Design is simply the science of design detection — how to recognize patterns arranged by an intelligent cause for a purpose. Design detection is used in a number of scientific fields, including anthropology, forensic sciences that seek to explain the cause of events such as a death or fire, cryptanalysis and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). An inference that certain biological information may be the product of an intelligent cause can be tested or evaluated in the same manner as scientists daily test for design in other sciences.

ID is controversial because of the implications of its evidence, rather than the significant weight of its evidence. ID proponents believe science should be conducted objectively, without regard to the implications of its findings. This is particularly necessary in origins science because of its historical (and thus very subjective) nature, and because it is a science that unavoidably impacts religion.

That the core scientific community has debunk ID in no way discredit the theory. Many of the major scientific discoveries were made outside and over the opposition of the main stream scientists. The current absence of direct evidence (there is plenty of indirect evidence) of ID is no more prohibitive than the absence of direct evidence for SETI.

Einstein: Instrumental in the process of building the atomic bomb.
Gore: Single-handedly built the entire Internet overnight.

No, I'll go with Gore on this one.

Which is my point. If you don't base your definition of the Intelligent Designer off of one particular set of religious dogmas, then there is no way to discount the presence of the Designer.

Which is completely beside the point. You need not prove or disprove the designer to show that ID is true or false. ID stands on its own without having to show who or what the "designer" is, whether that be God or aliens who planted life on earth…

Well he said he did.

http://www.mrc.org/rm/cyber/1999/gore0312/segment…

DocDave:

That the core scientific community has debunk ID in no way discredit the theory.

I think this is called circular reasoning.

The problem with ID as a scientific theory, as I have tried to patiently explain, is that it's simply not a credible theory. I suppose I should give up, because if you haven't gotten it yet, you're not going to. I have asked over and over again for a real example of where you can negate intelligent design, and you haven't been able to come up with a single test of intelligent design. At the best you've managed to come up with tests of evolution. Disproving evolution is not the same thing as proving intelligent design.

It isn't a matter of a group of people deciding that "this is how we are going to do things", it's a matter of reality dictating to us "this is the best way to discover the truth of things". The scientific method is an empirically discovered method for discovering the truth. As such it is nearly optimal, and one key element for empirical science is the ability to disprove a proposition. So you can talk all you want about "well that's how you view science", to which I must simply reply, "no, that's just what empirical science is. Period".

I've spent my life in research, and unlike most of you guys, can speak from experience how other people respond to new ideas, even ideas that can be pretty confrontational to the "old guard" (can you say "inverse square law" and "equivalence of free fall"? It doesn't get any more fundamental than that). I believe that Robert108 may have different experiences in the social sciences, but I'm talking about physical sciences here, and I've worked in a number of different areas and I know how it goes.

The problem with the original proposal of plate tectonics was that it failed to meet all of the criteria for a successful theory. Namely, it wasn't falsifiable. When it could be tested, it was, and immediately adopted as a viable scientific theory. If somebody could come up with a testable version of ID, people would be more than happy to test if, if only so they could watch it go down in flames. (But another principle of science is reproducibility. Thousands of college students measure the ratio of the electron's charge to its mass every year, for example. Thousands measure Newton's constant of gravitation, and as many observe the exponential decay law of radiation.)

Finally, I made mention of General Relativity and how everybody views it as a purely academic idea, yet even for this theory, there are places where people on a day-to-day basis have to use it (GPS satellite, computing the trajectories of spacecraft). The same is true 10,000 fold for evolutionary science. There are so many places that evolutionary principles get successfully used in day-to-day biological studies, that there is simply no way it will ever be supplanted by a totally different theory.

As with Newton's mechanics and law of gravitation getting supplanted by Einstein's special and general theory of evolution, but still having a domain of validity, the same is true for evolution. On the other hand,there is simply no way that the age of the Earth is ever going to get revised down to 10,000 years.

If a 10,000 year old Earth is part of your "intelligent design" model, however, your model is in a world of hurt. The scientific body of data (over thirty different lines of research) converge to an age of the Earth around 4.3 billion years old. There is no way, short of a religious inquisition, of returning this back to a "young Earth" model.

Hermit: If your idealistic portrayal of "science" is true, how did the recent scandal in Korea with the phony cloning happen? It seems as if the scientist was so caught up in trying to be someone he wasn't that he faked his results. This has happened from time to time for as long as I can remember. How about Piltdown Man? That was real science.

I have finally configured the weather in my local area to have no more hot days of summer. In Melbourne they will soon be asking where summer has gone. Considering this is traditionally the hottest month of the year, for me this is an excellent outcome.
No Darwinian nor Intelligence Design enthusiast is able to explain how this is done nor can they do anything to counteract it. No scientific instrument nor prayers to whatever God one worships will change the outcome. This is a set and forget system with divine approval.
So if it is possible for me to do this using the same Creation Vehicle and BAMMIES technology as the Intelligent Designer has done over billions of years in myriads of separate creations, then may I suggest that you Darwinists do not have a case.
This system, by the way, is showing the early signs of an El Nino phenomenon developing with tropical cyclones heading east and high pressure cells in the Great Australian Bight failing to establish. In time this will become established and there will be the usual droughts and flooding rains across the world. It may even affect where you live.
When I am taken seriously, then we will have a more serious discussion. Darwinism should be banned from all universities and public schools as it is a baseless philosophy with little if any connection to what really happened in the past.

Carrick: Hermit characterized "scientists" as being hard-working, sincere, and accurate in their scientific conclusions. My point is that it isn't universally true. Nothing you said changes that. Policing their own is to be expected, not applauded. The bogus findings were accepted for some time before his deception was found out. In the case of Piltdown Man, the findings were accepted for a very long time, and even taught in classrooms and included in textbooks before they were exposed. I just don't have such an idealistic view as Hermit does of "science". The big problem with the scientific establishment is that findings in agreement with their agenda, and with the agenda of those who fund the research tend to be accepted first and refuted later, if at all, where really revolutionary ideas are frozen out at first and only accepted later after much effort. I think that might be the case with ID, because it has been tarred with the brush of religious fundamentalism.

Carrick: Of course, I recognize the story of Albert Einstein. My comment was directed at Hermit's overly idealistic portrayal of scientists in general, and I still maintain that it is just that.
Piltdown Man is a perfect example of what I'm referring to, including the nationalism involved. I'm saying that the scientific establishment is vulnerable to outside influence, nationalism being only one of them. You agree that scientists are not perfect, and that is what I'm saying all along here. Even scientific proof is not infallible, unless you think it has attained "Papal" status now. You give examples of the good side of science, and I have referred to some examples of the bad side. That is called a balanced view. Any objection to that? Am I a heretic, in your eyes?
For my last example of what has come to be called "junk science", I give you "human-caused global warming"; and one other: silicone breast implants causing disease.

Robert108, you have to admit that Einstein's ascendancy through those three remarkable papers is a pretty amazing story.

His special theory of relativity (quickly displaced the theory of the ether.

His paper on the photoelectric effect is the first place where particle-wave duality showed up, and this paper was one of the sparks that led to the development of quantum mechanics. QM of course displaced the concept of determinism. There could have been no bigger entrenched concept in mechanics than this.

His theory of brownian motion was a spark for the modern mechanistic approach to thermodynamics.

As for the study of human-generated global warming being junk science, I'd have to say that you need to reconsider this one. There's nothing wrong with the science. the problem is with advocates misrepresenting the science, a completely different thing.

When I debate with environmentalists on human-generated global warming, the first place I go is the scientific literature, which for the most part contradicts the human-generated global warming myth. Not exactly junk science.

Look, I'm not going to idealize science. It's made up of humans, just as the free market is made up of humans. Like the free market, the empirical scientific system is tolerant of the biases and foibles of individual humans. One of the point I've made many times, is we recognize the absolute fallibility of the individual, and the existence of stated and unstated biases. Our methodology is designed to overcome those in the search for truth. And it mostly works better than anybody could have expected.

I don't have any particular opinion on the dangers of silicon breast implants, however, the ban was a policy decision, again not the same as science. Perhaps we could find common ground on agreeing that there are often problems with how science gets translated into policy and into popular literature?

Carrick, robert, ID is very much in its infancy as a scientific question so one would not expect much in the form of scientific review. In my original article, I described Dave Bohm's work in implicate order which if taken seriously by the scientific community might lead to a better understanding how intelligence in involved in the universe of things, large and small.

Another idea that has the potential for dramatic change in the way we view the universe is 'free energy' which dates back to Tesla. Interestingly, because free energy is thought to occupy all space including vacuum, it renews the ether concept. Carrick, what is the official science stand on 'free energy'?

Robert108:

This is my entire point. It is the responsibility of "science" to police itself before it gets to the policy level.

I'm afraid that this is an impossibility. Scientists cannot stop people from misusing science to justify political agendas. Secondly, any individual scientist has his or her own political agenda as well, so if you approach an individual, you will necessarily get a slant on the facts. Thirdly, resolving a scientific debate often takes time (I'm speaking decades in many cases), and you can't stop lay people from misrepresenting the debate.

.As an economist, I am suspicious that taxpayer money seems to be required to "get it off the ground". If it is really that good, why aren't private investors falling all over themselves to invest in it?

Because private investment simply doesn't work that way. I know that as a fact. People privately invest in getting concrete pharmaceutical products to the market, and not in long-term speculative research. The rare exception to this is somebody like Bill Gates, who has enough money to blow to expend a portion of it on pure philanthropic endeavors.

How are you going to get private investment in any fundamental research? Even if the research is successful, it can't be patented or otherwise intellectually protected. You can't patent ideas, only processes and products. You also can't expect to fund an individual or a group and get meaningful results. Science works best when the entire community is involved in the research with open lines of communication between groups, especially in complex topics like this where so much is still unknown at a fundamental level.

There is a reason that humans invented governments: You need somebody to represent society's long-term interests, whether it be for providing transportation infrastructure, or scientific &amp; technological infrastructure.

What I think is that some scientists see 3000 dead babies a day turning into money in their pockets, and want the taxpayers to make them rich

This is so not the typical viewpoint of people who work in stem cell research. Most people in stem cell research acknowledge it may be a decade before medical technologies are developed from this area of research. Indeed, most stem cell research does not even involve embryonic stem cells. Nor as I've observed previously, due to the totipotent nature of embryonic stem cells, it is likely that the great medical treatments will come from harvesting stem cells from the individual being treated. Finally, most of the interest in stem cell research (on the part of the researchers) is understanding how stem cells work (i.e., desire for knowledge), a much different motivation than painted by your comment.

I am skeptical, which means I don't believe and I don't disbelieve. I want to see some results that matter to me. Until then, I'm willing to accept both evolution and intelligent design as possibly true.

One of the foundations of empiricism is skepticism. Therefore, like you, I am a skeptic.

However, just because two ideas exist, doesn't mean they have the same level of scientific validity. Part of skepticism is the recognition that not all ideas are equal. At the moment, even though the idea has been around for nearly 2000 years, ID still has not produced a single falsifiable hypothesis. That makes it philosophy, not science.

Note just because an idea is philosophical doesn't make it untrue, just not scientific. The idea that "all men are created equal" is a philosophical position, yet most of us hold this to be self-evident.

DocDave:

Interestingly, because free energy is thought to occupy all space including vacuum, it renews the ether concept. Carrick, what is the official science stand on ‘free energy'?

Free energy is a thermodynamic quantity. Qualitatively, it's the capacity of a system to do work. Quantitatively, it's a mathematical definition, which I

That's separate from the concept of quantum vacuum fluctuations, which is a mathematical prediction from quantum field theory. It turns out that quantum vacuum fluctuations can be related to Einstein's cosmological constant. In quantum chromodynamics, this is called the "cosmological constant" problem, because QCD predicts too-large a value for the cosmological constant. Here is a readable link if you're interested and willing skip over the mathematics, depending on your background.

The quantum vacuum field does not play the same role as the ether, because it is relativistically invariant. Interestingly, the cosmic ray background (generated by the big bang) does provide an absolute frame of reference. We can measure the dipole moment of the cosmic ray background, hence giving us a measure of the relative speed of the Earth with respect to the Universe.

docdave: Yet another example of the short term nature of scientific truth. In the case of Piltdown Man, though, carbon dating proved that the jawbone and skull were of vastly different age, even though they were carefully buried in the same geological formation. The skull was human and the jawbone was from an ape, I believe. It took carbon dating to expose the hoax.

Hermit: I'm not a proponent of ID; I'm an opponent of scientific arrogance. The point of the Piltdown hoax is not that it was eventually exposed, which I would expect, but that it was ever accepted. How many undiscovered hoaxes are out there? It's a matter of trust, as far as the public is concerned. We depend on scientists to tell us the truth, and when they don't, it tends to damage the trust relationship. So, when you trash something like ID on religious grounds, there might just be a little suspicion that you guys are defending your turf out of ego. Clear now?

Carrick: Sorry you felt personally insulted by my words. I was referring to the science establishment, not to an obviously honest and sincere individual like you. If the shoe doesn't fit, don't wear it. The public is deluged with what purports to be scientific info every day, and we don't generally know whether or not to trust it. That is why we depend on scientists to tell us the truth. I trust that you do, but that Korean guy let me down. Should I just ignore the charlatans? I have to know who they are, first. It's not personal; it's a real concern.
Was my stuff about Einstein out of line? You don't reply to it.

It's a matter of trust, as far as the public is concerned. We depend on scientists to tell us the truth

We shouldn't.

You make it sound as though scientists possess some special powers that allow them to ascertain truths about the world. They don't. They just received an education.

If you want to stop depending on scientists to tell you the truth, robert, go to college.

Robert108: You did get a bit heavy into the venting there. I was assuming that I had provoked it, was the target of the venting and just backed off. Not that I would argue that scientists aren't somewhat arrogant. We have to be, or we wouldn't be any good at our jobs!

There is a certain amount that a theorist can accomplish with personal or private funding. It's pretty cheap when all you need is time to think and pencil and a paper.

Most experimental research, however, requires much more than that. We are developing a new class of networkable infrasound microphones. This requires lots of outdoor tests, which in turn involve lots of personnel and high-end equipment, as well as engineers for electronic and mechanical design, a machine shop for fabrication, etc.

Why are we doing this? Because industry isn't interested in providing such a tool. If we could buy what we need, we would. Industry's had 40-50 years to do so, and it hasn't been done, so it's not like they're waiting for us to do it for them. And what use would it be? Monitoring the strength of hurricanes, monitoring air releases of ash (for which there is no seismic signature) from volcanos, environmental monitoring of noise, etc.

These are low profile projects. Industry just isn't interested in funding work that would net them so little. Keep in mind that at a University, $50/hour is a upper-end salary. In industry, that is a just starting salary. Universities can do basic research much more cheaply than industry, but industry is much better at leveraging off the basic research and moving it to the market place.

The development of the transistor is a perfect example of this. After all of the basic research was performed at the universities, Bell Labs essentially stole the work by a Purdue group on the semiconductor germanium (including using germanium samples provided by Purdue to construct the first transistor) [ref: Ralph Bray, "A Case Study in Serendipity", The Electrochemical Society, Interface, Spring 1997].

Science is replete with examples of the basic research, funded by federal dollars, being performed at universities and academic research centers, followed by an industrial exploitation of this research. The way I see it, the government provides funding for basic and applied research. These dollars are generally spent at a much more cost-effective manner than can be done by industry on projects that are too "long-shot" for industry to speculate on.

To me, universities are part of the "national infrastructure" that government should be playing a role in maintaining. Part of why our economy is so vibrant is the fact that per capita we spend far more dollars on research than Europe does. Even though the EU's GDP is roughly equal to our own, their national R&amp;D expenditures are about 10% of our own. [**]

We see technology transfer all of the time at my research center (however, we are tasked with that as part of our mission). We recently developed an improved seismic coupler that can be used to detect termite infestations in and under trees. Especially useful for the deep south (think formosa termites) &amp; even New Orleans (still).

Our guys put long hours into these projects, trudging around through mud up to their ankles in abysmal heat while being attacked by biting insects, paddling canoes through the snake-infested bayous of southern Louisiana [*] and for what?

To learn, to add to the body of knowledge and to make a difference. Most scientists, while having a strong belief in their own abilities, are interested in leaving a mark on history. We have to be arrogant to believe we are capable of that!

[By the way, industry people grok the importance of government-funded R&amp;D. I think that's why we've seen such a huge increase in R&amp;D (in constant dollars) since Bush took office.]

[*] What I said is technically true, but these sickos seem to enjoy that sort of activity.

[**] I think it even gets worse when you include private investment.

Dave: Been there, done that. Started out at Berkeley as a math major, switched to Econ with a minor in Anthro. What did you study? I trust myself with math, econ and anthro, but would like to trust those with the training in other fields. Just to clear that up for you. Theoretical math, btw. Taught me how to think analytically. Econ and anthro taught me how to synthesize. Take it apart, then put it back together.

Dave: I'm a grownup now, but thanks for the advice. If you want something done right, do it yourself, I guess. I just don't cotton to self-appointed authorities.

robert, I think that the accuracy of carbon dating has recently come under scrutiny.

Like all science it's always being reviewed

Carbon dating assumes that the deposits of carbon 14 are constant, something not really provable or falsable since one cannot go back thousands of years to measure the carbon precipitates. Many of other scientific ‘truths' depend on assumptions.

That's the creationist line, but like so much of what they say, it just aint true:

1. The constancy of radioactive decay is not an assumption, but is supported by evidence:

Supernovae are known to produce a large quantity of radioactive isotopes (Nomoto et al. 1997a, 1997b; Thielemann et al. 1998). These isotopes produce gamma rays with frequencies and fading rates that are predictable according to present decay rates. These predictions hold for supernova SN1987A, which is 169,000 light-years away (Knödlseder 2000). Therefore, radioactive decay rates were not significantly different 169,000 years ago. Present decay rates are likewise consistent with observations of the gamma rays and fading rates of supernova SN1991T, which is sixty million light-years away (Prantzos 1999), and with fading rate observations of supernovae billions of light-years away (Perlmutter et al. 1998).

Lots more evidence cited at the link above. Decay rates are believed to be constant because all the evidence, all the observations say they are constant. That's not an assumption, it's the only reasonable conclusion.

wojo: The reason I wanted to make it clear that I am not a proponent of ID is that you keep framing the debate as the all knowing scientists against the right wing kook fundamentalist Christian creationists who want to take over science classes at school. I didn't use quotes because I am stating my perception of what you have written in your posts; I'm purposely not quoting you there. As I understand it, what the ID people wanted to do was to have a brief mention of ID at the beginning of the school year, in the spirit of showing that there are other ideas out there. I find it hard to fault that, and would think that proponents of diversity would welcome a diversity of thought, but no! What we have here is scientific orthodoxy, and that is the arrogance to which I refer. There is a lot of federal(taxpayer) money in the education business, and I believe that is the real agenda of those who would censor any mention of ID in schools.
Since I am not a scientist(I am an economist by education), I must trust the scientific establishment to tell me the truth about more involved scientific matters, just like a scientist must trust economists to give the straight poop on things economic. Doing some good doesn't wash away the bad. If you were unfaithful to your wife only once in say, twenty years of marriage, do you think she might have some trust issues with you? I think so.
I'm also suspicious when one group controls the definitions of the argument, then invalidates anyone on the basis of those definitions.

Carrick: Thanks for the reply. I realize that "exploit" also technically means simply to use something, but the general understanding is pejorative; you might not have meant it that way, but most people do.

What does the age of rocks have to do with whether or not life evolved or was designed, anyway? Unless you're arguing for a "Young Earth" creationist point of view this shouldn't even be an issue, should it?

As I understand it, what the ID people wanted to do was to have a brief mention of ID at the beginning of the school year, in the spirit of showing that there are other ideas out there.

Actually, teh situation in Dover was that they wanted to force science teachers to tell their students something that those teachers considered to be false (ie that ID was a valid alternative scientific theory) and direct them to a creationist text which had been re-written to hide its origins. The school board members behind the plan made it very clear in public meetings that their purpose was to bring their particular brand of Christian religion into the science classroom.

Parents as well as the teachers objected to having their children lied to, and that's where the suit came from.

Like I said, if you're concerned about things like honesty you're not getting it from the ID crowd.

Carrick, Hermit, thanks for the links which I will access and scrutinize as time permits. My many questions about evolution and its associated sciences result from my natural curiosity and because the discussion areas are outside my immediate expertise which deals primarily with computer hardware, systems and software where rests most of my experience. As I have stated before, my undergraduate education was in electrical engineering where a got the rare BEE, a rare 5 year degree from the University of Minnesota in 1961. The 5th year of that degree includes many graduate level subjects. I also have an MBA and have done graduate study in computer sciences. One of my specialties is problem solving in which I excelled during my professional career oftening resolving problems abandoned by 'experts'. I suspect that most of my success can be attributed to my penchant for always looking for the root causes (many merely chase symptoms) and for my natural intuition that can see probable results without working laboriously through all steps or sequences. I give you this only so you can understand how my mind works.

That being said and understanding that I have just begun to gather information concerning the discussed subjects, within the limitations of current knowledge, I feel somewhat confident of the following:
1. The serious proponents of evolution and its associated technologies are avidly anti-creativists and may be aethists as well. The merits of evolution are largely weighed on how well they measure against the criticism of the ID proponents. For instance a major part of the web site talk-origins seems dedicated to answering and debunking ID theorists. Of course, the same might be said for some of the proponents of ID. However, it seems automatic to classify anything posted on a Christian site as junk science.
2. Evolution is not a hard science like physics and chemistry but whereas hard science principles can be freely challenge, evolution has attained an orthodoxy and purity that cannot be questioned. Something wrong here. It's almost like evolution has attained the status of idol worship.
3. Christian sites (as the one Hermit referenced) that support evolution and/or their supportive technologies are acceptable. Those that don't are merely the ravings of creativist fanatics.
4. The achilles heal of evolution is radioactive dating (or other long period dating schemes) which is probably why it is so controversial and why evolutionists are so eager to debunk any criticism. I believe that one of the potential weaknesses of long period dating is the assumption of steady date conditions that cannot be first hand verified without a time machine.
5. ID need not disprove evolution to be valid and evolution need not disprove ID to be valid but the battle lines seem to be drawn on the basis of either evolution or ID. This approach if true is blatantly unscientific because true and honest science investigation permit any and all hypothesus.

This subject has picked my interest and like the slueth that I am, I will not be able to let go before I have sufficient information to draw some additional conclusions which I may do in another blog.

The serious proponents of evolution and its associated technologies are avidly anti-creativists and may be aethists as well.

That's just a smear tactic, and irrelevant even if it were true. The validity of the evidence does not depend on the religious beliefs of the people doing the work. Go back to the talkorigins site again and read through some of the feedback questions. Many of the contributers to the site are in fact Christians (or Buddhists, or Hindus or followers of other faiths). It is insulting to those people of faith to dismiss them as anti-religious. I'd say it's also insulting to dismiss atheists as somehow being incapable of holding a valid point of view.

The only religious viewpoint seriously challenged by evolution is the literalist reading of Genesis and the belief ina 6,000 year old Earth, a belief with about as much validity as geocentrism or a flat Earth. Galileo did the work on that subject a long time ago… If you accept that the Earth is as old as all the geological evidence says it is you've already rejected that point of view without even getting near evolution.

Evolution is not a hard science like physics and chemistry but whereas hard science principles can be freely challenge, evolution has attained an orthodoxy and purity that cannot be questioned. Something wrong here. It's almost like evolution has attained the status of idol worship.

On the contrary, DocDave, evolution is hard science. Theodosius Dobzhansky (no atheist, by the way) wrote a famous article entitled Nothing in Biology Makes Sense
Except in the Light of Evolution You should read it.

Nonsense like ID gets the same response from biologists that flat-earthism gets from geologists, geocentrism from astrophysicists and Holocaust denial from historians. Not because of dogmatism but because those ideas have no evidential merit. I don;t want them taught in my children's school either, and for the same reasons I don't want ID sneaking in there.

. The achilles heal of evolution is radioactive dating (or other long period dating schemes) which is probably why it is so controversial and why evolutionists are so eager to debunk any criticism.

Radiometric dating is not at all controversial, and nor is it the only, or the most important evidence for evolution. Genetics relationships, for example, are far more important to revealing biological descent than the age of rocks is…

This subject has picked my interest and like the slueth that I am, I will not be able to let go before I have sufficient information to draw some additional conclusions which I may do in another blog.

I look forward to seeing what you discover. I can't recommend the talkorigins site enough, I think if you read it with an open mind you'll find your opinions changing.

Just for the record, in my younger days I was every inch the Bible quoting evolution doubting true believer. Changing your beliefs about something like this easy, but certainly is liberating.

Carrick, Hermit, both of you couldn't be more wrong in your characterization of my current mindset and intent. I have no desire to discredit anything. Apparently you skipped the introductory paragraph in my last post when I tried to explain all that (or I did a louse job) and went to my conclusions which to my discredit I should have labeled preliminary. I only based those on what I learned so far which from a knowledge base that I admitted was very meager.

Carrick, my comment on evironmentalists being anti-creativist largely stemmed from your posted comment why are you quoting from creationist web. That came across like a accusation of some sort. I didn't know or care who created the site. I merely thought that the answers to questions the site offered would be interesting. So guys, please get off the this Don't confuse me with the facts, my mind is already made up"schtick because it ain't true.

If you want to help me get a better understanding of all this, just flood me with links. Carrick, in one of your posts you referenced a book that I would have to purchase. Surely there has to be something on the web with the same or similar info.

If you want to help me get a better understanding of all this, just flood me with links.

I don't want to sound like a broken record, but seriously talkorigins.org is about the best resource on the internet when it comes to this subject. If you want more links (to both pro and anti-evolution websites) you won't find a better list than theirs: http://talkorigins.org/origins/other-links.html

Fiction. This is not intelligent design. Fragile life stuck on a small rock in an incredibly dangerous universe. Risk of incredible pain and death for every living thing is certain. Most all animals have only billion beats per lifetime. Humans have eeked out three billion. This is not intelligent design at the micro level.

Humanity has the ability to last millions of years if we'd put our minds to it. Space has everything we could ever want. Maybe we would find it to be intelligent design then.

Then again, science might discover Intelligent Design. Don't discount the possibility.

I would have to agree