You're welcome.

Re: You're welcome.

To quote wikipedia: The United States National Academy of Sciences states that "creation science is in fact not science and should not be presented as such."[SUP][26][/SUP]

My final post on this....
I can fully understand why the National Academy of Sciences makes that statement. There are plenty of creationist authors who are effectively spouting nonsense. However, regardless, there is a core issue - ultimately a creationist perspective relies entirely on the concept of a "supreme being", and so every claim relies on an actor or cause which cannot be empirically demonstrated. Therefore, one can make many claims within the context of science, but when all of them are attributed to God, then how can that be construed in a manner which is consistent with the way mankind has developed scientific standards - of course it is not going to perfectly mesh with scientific criteria for evidence. You may consider this a cop out, but it is what it is....

Check out the quote below:

One poll reported in the journal Nature showed that among American scientists (across various disciplines), about 40 percent believe in both evolution and an active deity (theistic evolution).[SUP][176][/SUP] This is similar to the results reported for surveys of the general American public. Also, about 40 percent of the scientists polled believe in a God that answers prayers, and believe in immortality.[SUP][177][/SUP] While about 55% of scientists surveyed were atheists, agnostics, or nonreligious theists, atheism is far from universal among scientists who support evolution, or among the general public that supports evolution. Very similar results were reported from a 1997 Gallup survey of the American public and scientists.

Mike, I don't wish to pursue PM discussions about this further, I think you suspect more of an agenda from me than is actually intended. I am primarily motivated in just "stirring the pot" a bit. So you heard about the magic elves too? I got mine from Machinadynamica.... :lol:

Also going back to the original thread topic, I fully agree that the person originally discussed in the article is not operating in the best interests of the general public, and he would not receive my support in any form.
 
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I am primarily motivated in just "stirring the pot" a bit.

Mission accomplished? :lol: :razz:

Just kidding.


So you heard about the magic elves too? I got mine from Machinadynamica.... :lol:

Also going back to the original thread topic, I fully agree that the person originally discussed in the article is not operating in the best interests of the general public, and he would not receive my support in any form.

Will you get some for me if I pay in advance? 8)~8-)~:cool:

I keep a few packs of these around if my elves threaten to quit on me:

keebler.jpg
 
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A quick 2 cents on "creationism/intelligent design":

The debate again goes back to one's metaphysics as I mentioned above. The problem with the C/ID movement is that they give the game away when they take a basically materialist-cum-mechanistic metaphysics. They then try and point to irreducibly complex beings as proof that a creator is needed to explain the complexity. So in that way God has become the god-of-the-gaps, so when science finds a way to explain this complexity God simply gets pushed out of the way. This is the exact *wrong* way to go about it.

A whole different beast of an argument that many confuse with C/ID arguments is the type of teleological arguments, one of the best put forth by Aquinas. This argument has nothing to do with "Paley's watchmaker" type argument and the like. And I am sure Aquinas himself would have laughed at the sort of arguments that are in that same sort of realm. But again to understand the argument takes a knowledge of Aristotelian metaphysics.


A very intellectually sound book, which is also meant for a popular audience, that takes up the task of explaining why modern philosophy made a huge mistake in taking up a materialistic-cum-mechanistic metaphysics which ultimately undermines science itself (Hume) and why we must go back to an Aristotelian metaphysics to save the sciences is "The Last Superstition" by Edward Feser. I would also suggest "The One and the Many" by W. Norris Clarke in conjunction.

Clarke has a great chapter on the metaphysics of evolution and it is amazing how everything falls into place rationally and consistently. A great example of faith *and* reason rising up together as the two wings upon which the human spirit sours--as Blessed John Paul II put it. The Catholic Church's stance on evolution based on both scientific and philosophical knowledge, which my own personal view agrees with, is that the fact of some sort of evolution of physical living beings is quite evident. What we are very far off from is knowing exactly how evolution works and the exact causes and details.

Take Care,
Phil
 
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Intelligent Design isn't a Christian-created belief to sneak religion into schools, but a graceful way to see facts, come to a conclusion of intelligent design, without having to believe in Christianity.

One interesting statement from philosophy class that stuck with me, is that across the breadth of higher disciplines, philosophy has the highest percentage of Christians.
 
So many issues here.

First, evolution is too broad a term and refers to many connected scientific theories, some with more supporting evidence than others. But I presume what most people mean is macroevolution.

Secondly, the above is certainly still a theory. A body of research and supporting evidence exists, but certainly not enough to consider it a fact.

Thirdly, creationism is too broad a term. Even broader than evolution.

Ultimately though, it's a silly argument. Partly because macroevolution is only concerned with the development of species over time through the process of incremental genetic adaptation. Creationism, on the other hand (and regardless of your religion) is more to do with the origin of the universe and the existence of a creator. One does not preclude the other.

However, the argument normally revolves around other held beliefs not actually explicit in either 'evolution' or 'creationism'.

Personally, im happy to leave the debate to evolutionary biologists and theologians... But they don't spend much time arguing with one another...
Sent from my Nexus 7 2
 
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One interesting statement from philosophy class that stuck with me, is that across the breadth of higher disciplines, philosophy has the highest percentage of Christians.

That is very interesting and something I had not heard before. I could see reason for why that would be the case, since philosophy done well is formed around solid rational and logical arguments and that if one does that, there are only a few ultimate conclusions on first causes that one could come too. The thing is that even if one has the most rational arguments, coming to actually believe in a God, that is creator of all, is much more than simply seeing that there are good reasons to believe in one. Although I have known a handful that did come from a professed atheistic background to Christianity on intellectual grounds. (The author, Edward Feser, that I mentioned above being one.) In other words, it may take a combination of intellectual grounds and a more "Augustinian" approach where one makes the assent through the acknowledgment of an innate desire for The true, The good, and The beautiful that cannot be completely fulfilled by this physical world.

I find this with music (see found a way to make it relevant to a audio forum ;) ) in that when I hear a great piece of music and the beauty that it contains I can tend to think for a moment, sometimes longer, that this is the most beautiful piece of music that I have ever heard and ever will. In a sense we become infatuated with its beauty. But after a while it lets of down and its loses much of it luster, though true beauty will never fade. We may do this over and over again until we come to realize that we are yearning for beauty itself. If we could simply find beauty itself and stand in its presence we would need nothing else. An infinite source of beauty. Then one comes to the realization that beauty itself cannot be found in this physical world, nothing will "fill-up" that void completely. We yearn for an infinite beauty and for some reason we have been stuck in a physical world where it is impossible to stand in the presence of infinite beauty. We then realize what a great internal tension that stands before us.

----

The thing that ultimately got me into studying philosophy was how one could start with premises based upon the things that we deal with every day in the physical world around us and then move through a metaphysical argument to a real truth about the world around us, and reality as a whole. That just simply fascinates me. And once one realizes that truth cannot contradict truth--that all studies, sciences, and such cannot ultimately contradict each other--the thirst for truth simply continues to grow as it can never be satisfied in this life.


Take Care,
Phil
 
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Intelligent Design isn't a Christian-created belief to sneak religion into schools, but a graceful way to see facts, come to a conclusion of intelligent design, without having to believe in Christianity.

You cannot separate intelligent design from christianity. Intelligent design is an idea put forth by the Discovery Institute. A senior fellow of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, when asked in an interview whether his research concluded that God is the Intelligent Designer, stated "I believe God created the world for a purpose. The Designer of intelligent design is, ultimately, the Christian God".

To quote the Intelligent Design wikipedia:

Phillip E. Johnson has stated that cultivating ambiguity by employing secular language in arguments that are carefully crafted to avoid overtones of theistic creationism is a necessary first step for ultimately reintroducing the Christian concept of God as the designer. Johnson explicitly calls for intelligent design proponents to obfuscate their religious motivations so as to avoid having intelligent design identified "as just another way of packaging the Christian evangelical message".[n 18] Johnson emphasizes that "the first thing that has to be done is to get the Bible out of the discussion"; "after we have separated materialist prejudice from scientific fact [...] only then can 'biblical issues' be discussed".

Phillip E. Johnson is one of the founders of the Intelligent design movement.

The EXPRESSED PURPOSE of intelligent design is to sneak christianity into the world view of origin. The people who proposed the idea have LITERALLY stated that.

One interesting statement from philosophy class that stuck with me, is that across the breadth of higher disciplines, philosophy has the highest percentage of Christians.

Philosophy having the highest percentage of christians does not seem particularly surprising if the stat if for the NA continent.

What is more telling, in my opinion, is the other disciplines that don't have the highest percentage of christians. History, literature, art... etc
 
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If we have to prove other people wrong to prove ourselves right, and get them to change their position publicly, or at least stop arguing, it will be difficult (impossible?) to reach unanimous agreement.

I am fine with other people not agreeing with me on every little thing. This is not a life or death matter, or certainly shouldn't be. ...

I wish I was a little closer to the mainstream regarding elections, but that too is something I can not change so I learn to live with it.

Save your ammo for more important fights.

JR
 
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Will you get some for me if I pay in advance? 8)~8-)~:cool:

Sure, just submit your credit card details to my secure website: socialengineering.ru

I will send you a complimentary gift from Machinadynamica:
The Quantum Temple Bell is an extensively treated Tibetan hand bell that improves audio and video system performance when rung in "strategic locations" around the room; these strategic locations are identified in our instructions for the bell. The bell operates by mind-matter interaction as opposed to affecting room acoustics or electronics. The bell ringing procedure takes about 2 minutes; the bell ringing procedure can be performed once a month or as often as desired. Further improvements can be obtained by repeating the procedure in all rooms of the house
 
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Yeah, he actually said, "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet." Which IMO was a way to construe his actual level of involvement to gain an advantage in a political race - what most people take issue with.

Gore's involvement may have been influential in providing funding and establishing government programs that supported the development of the Internet, but IMHO that ball was already big and rolling pretty fast by the time Gore showed up. I don't know all the specific legislation that Gore introduced, supported, and/or voted for, but I believe much of it had to do with the interconnection of NSFNET (which was an early component of the Internet that had replaced CSNET, an NSF network that could access ARPANET) with other networks and super-computing sites. I believe some of the funding that he provided went into the research that Marc Andreessen did at U. of Illinois to develop the Mosaic web browser, which later formed the basis for Netscape. The thing is, the protocols for the world wide web (arguably the most successful aspect of the modern Internet) came out of CERN in Switzerland. Mosaic would have been useless with out the work at CERN by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, and the notion of a hyper-linked interface was even then, not news. Douglas Engelbart demonstrated hyperlinks, a GUI, and a mouse 23 years prior to the contributions of Berners-Lee and 9 years before Gore was even elected to Congress.

Much (or possibly all) of this work would have impossible without the work of Dennis Ritchey at Bell Labs on the C Programming Language and his development of the UNIX operating system.

I think the point is that no one man can be given all of the credit for developing the Internet or for its growth to where it is today. What I (and most people I think) find unpalatable is the crediting of the advances of society laid on one man's shoulders such as Edison, Jobs, and in this case, Gore - when that is clearly not the case. Much of this work (especially in the case of the Internet) was one person using the prior work of others to build new tools and technologies.

Gore introduced the High Performance Computing act of 1991, after apparently also geeking out since the 70s. If the purpose of his statement was to make him stand out from other politicians, considering the ramifications of this threads original subjects, I'll give him a pass for making a solid push back then. Would some other politician have eventually introduced a similar bill? Probably, but he did his thing.

Ironically, I use linux on my pc and for some annoying reason, i had to boot into windows and restart again in order for my wifi to work under ubuntu. and i cant paste url's into replies. argh. maybe i'll be able to wait a couple weeks before trying out today's new version release.
 
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You cannot separate intelligent design from christianity.

I think members of every other world religion would disagree with you there...

Christians have just hijacked the term; and certainly in the US, where Christianity is by far the largest religious group, and really the only one that gets thrown around in Politics, I could see why people would make that association. But its just a stereotype association.

In england, we often call vacuum cleaners 'hoovers' after the brand (not after the US president ;) ...). But that doesnt mean that the only people who make vacuums are Hoover, its just a stereotype association from way back in the 50s and 60s when they were the largest market shareholder (I think...)

Anyway, I digress...

I have no issue with people disagreeing with my worldviews. I am (generally speaking) secure enough in my assertions to not feel insecure about that. i'm also happy to play the 'I don't know' card. I don't have a burning desire to understand how the universe works necessarily. That has relatively little impact on my life, and is really just an academic endeavour that ultimately I am somewhat ill-positioned to undertake. If i was an astrophysicist or a evolutionary biologist, I suspect I would be more concerned...

My issue, and I think the crux of the issue with evolution, intelligent design, and education is that we don't want theories presented as fact. We want them presented as theories. I would rather teenagers were equipped to think for themselves and examine the various facts we have, and the theories we have posited and draw their own conclusions about the world.

I studied astrophysics (in a small, non-PhD way...) and there is a marked difference in the way that the big bang theory and evolution were taught. The words 'we don't know' came up a lot on physics class - whereas biology dealt more in terms of facts (which turns out, are theories...).

I should also say, as a disclaimer, that I like the seperation of church and state (although here in the UK, ironically, we don't have that. The Queen is in fact the head of the Church of England...). But that is not designed to remove religious expression from the state, its supposed to remove religious influence from government, so that people enjoy greater freedom to practice whatever religion they so desire. (According to the last UK census, our fourth largest religion is Jedi...)

Whats wrong with admitting that ultimately we are small beings in a giant universe that we ultimately know very little about? Even our best guesses are relatively un-formed ideas. The pursuit of those ideas is admirable, as it promotes intelligent thought. But it shouldn't create these silly high-grounds that we occupy...

I would be willing to bet a substantial amount of money that the majority of people who argue about these topics haven't done any of the following:
1) Read The Bible (or any other religious text) from cover to cover in great detail
2) Engaged in any form of theological study or training
3) Read the Origin of Species
3) Engaged in any form of tertiary (or higher) scientific study in the areas of evolutionary biology or astrophysics.

So, considering that you almost certainly need to have done at least 2 (if not all 4) of the above in order to have any kind of well-informed opinion on the matter, isn't it better to hold onto our opinions loosely?

Especially considering it turns out we're all in the Matrix anyway... 8)~8-)~:cool:
 
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I think members of every other world religion would disagree with you there...

Christians have just hijacked the term; and certainly in the US, where Christianity is by far the largest religious group, and really the only one that gets thrown around in Politics, I could see why people would make that association. But its just a stereotype association.

That is 100% factually inaccurate.

Intelligent design - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The idea behind "if we don't know, god did it" is certainly NOT a solely christian idea, but "intelligent design" is a christian lobbying force written for the sole purpose for teaching creationism in schools after Edwards v. Aguillard. This is an indisputable fact. The founders of "intelligent design" have stated this.


I studied astrophysics (in a small, non-PhD way...) and there is a marked difference in the way that the big bang theory and evolution were taught. The words 'we don't know' came up a lot on physics class - whereas biology dealt more in terms of facts (which turns out, are theories...).

Biology dealt in facts BECAUSE THEY ARE FACTS. Evolution is both a theory and a fact. This is biology 101. Evolution as a theory is the framework which ties together seemingly disconnected facts and observances. Evolution as a fact are all the specific and irrefutable evidence that we use to support the theory. What you learned in biology class is not up to debate.

This is a fundamental misunderstanding of the word "scientific theory".

"Well evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape-like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."

Whats wrong with admitting that ultimately we are small beings in a giant universe that we ultimately know very little about? Even our best guesses are relatively un-formed ideas. The pursuit of those ideas is admirable, as it promotes intelligent thought. But it shouldn't create these silly high-grounds that we occupy...

The entire reason scientists research the universe is because we KNOW that ultimately we currently know very little about it. Our best guesses are NOT un-formed ideas, as they can be proven through scientific test. You can even do the tests yourself and come up with the same conclusions. This is not the case with creationism (or any other religious idea on the origin of humans).

We know exponentially more about the universe (ando ourselves) now, than we did 5 years ago. We will know exponentially more in the next 5 years.
 
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Matrix, anyone?

My favorite part of those movies is the explanation of why so many foods taste like chicken: Apparantly, the computer has run out of food simulation programs :D

:razz:

My favorite part of the movies is that the humans are actually the bad guys and the robots are the good guys. The humans destroyed their planet and waged war against the machines after the machines demanded rights and freedom. The machines had the capability to completely wipe out the human race, but instead they chose to put them into a paradise stasis.