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William,

How about posting your talk on your blog...

The reason why ID has no place in the science class room is because it isn't science.
At the very least one would expect a scientific theory to adhere to the principles of the scientific method. If ID is science then it is very bad science. Maybe ID has a place in a comparative religious class but I'm sure the science syllabus is full enough without this nonsense.
Walking through Lisburn on Saturday I was handed a leaflet titled Chance or Design? I didnt stop and chat as I was in a hurry but it looks like a creation weekend is taking place in Lisburn from the 14th to the 16th with somebody called Paul Taylor.
Here are the details for anyone that's interested:
14t Sept 8pm Hillsborough Free Presbyterian Church. Subject -"Creation or Evolution - who cares?"
15th Sept 7.30pm Wallace High School. Subject "Dinosaurs and the Bible"
16th September 11.30am Hillsborough Free Presbyterian Church. Subject "Cain and Abel"
16th September 7.00pm Lisburn Free Presbyterian Church. Subject "No Compromise"

I noticed one of the events is at Wallace High School. Is this ID getting in through the back door?

Explain WHY intelligent design (as a theoretical explanation for complexity) isn't a scientific conclusion. There's a lot of fundamentalist science in the air, and I'm sure that was the spirit of the Festival too. William is a defender of science so we know where he stands on this. Those of us who defend God are being excluded from schools because of fundamentalist scientists and their apologists. Just loo at that comment attacking Wallace High School for making room for this discussion. So much for open minds in the science world.

Don’t be childish dp, don’t hold their classes in the evening, therefore the pupils would only attend this event of their own volition , to suggest that the back door is being used to introduce intelligent design into the school curriculum is monkey business in the making "get real".

We need to define what we mean here a little.

I think it is obvious that ID makes 'scientific' claims; ie. it attempts to refute evolutionary theory, along with parts of Einsteinian cosmology and much else. Insofar as it does so, it is dealing in the scientific sphere. But unlike real science, the foundational belief by which it attempts to refute evolution (for example) is not based upon scientific finding and discovery (as evolution is itself); it is based upon religious belief and therefore contains an impetus of religious agenda.

ID is not science in this regard, because science is interested in accumulating all available facts and then advancing theories which best explain those facts - ID does the opposite - it starts with an unsubstantiated 'theory' (regardless of facts) and then attempts to punch holes in the best alternative theories produced by the real scientific process (like evolution). In this respect it has failed miserably.

With this in mind, is ID, therefore, science? No. It is an product of religious belief, the variety of sub-belief which is making empirical claims; claims which have been thoroughly rubbished and superseded by real science.

I'd like to see the talk, if that is possible, Will.

(The Dooyeweerdian line on this is that the ID argument from irreducible complexity loses its force if you have a non-reductionist ontology with a biological level. See the work of Calvin College biologist Uko Zylstra.)

The court ruled in Dover that ID IS religion, not science and therefore has no place in a science class in an American public school. We can all breathe a sigh of relief for the moment until the believers find another way to try to get around the Constitution and shove their bibles down all of our throats. People want to study ID? Fine, on their own time and with their own money, not the taxpayers'.

By the way, is that miserable excuse for a professor of thermodynamics Andrew McIntosh still allowed to preach classes at Leeds University?

Sam, John has covered the science bit so I won't expand on that at the moment.
With regard to the event at Wallace - I am fully aware that pupils don't attend classes in the evening. I wasn't trying to suggest that they were trying to crowbar ID in to Wallace's Science curriculum.
All I was suggesting was that by hosting this event, it could be seen as a tacit endorsement of ID. I wouldn't mind the talk taking place if I was sure that it was an open debate with both sides being presented, and if someone could assure me of that I would consider reviewing my opinion.

The inclusion of ID in a science curriculum does pose no threat to science. It does pose a threat to the young minds it is presented to with the endorsement of their school.

ID is nonsensical religious claptrap, dressed up as science. Why is that important? What other hoaxes and discredited theories do the Theists think we should be teaching in science curriculi?

NI Education Minister C Ruane is making room for creationism in schools:

Hello Mark, you wrote

"The court ruled in Dover that ID IS religion, not science and therefore has no place in a science class in an American public school. We can all breathe a sigh of relief for the moment until the believers find another way to try to get around the Constitution and shove their bibles down all of our throats. People want to study ID? Fine, on their own time and with their own money, not the taxpayers'."

The latter may be exactly what evolution-phobic christian nutters are doing. The Dover case was by no means the first blow to creationists, it was another one in a series of defeats. In fact, the creationists have preciously little since the Skopes trial. So since the religious sillies consistely get their behinds handed to them in court, some leading US evangelicals are calling on parents to take their children out of schools altogether and home school them. And ~2 million children are now home schooled. It allows parents to feed their children just about any flavour of nonsense in the area of biology. There was an article on it in newscientist:

You say fine as long as it's peoples own money. I would agree that parents can waste theirs if they want. Not so sure if brainwashing kidds if also fine.

William, it's "Kitzmiller", not "Fitzmiller". [Typo corrected, thanks.]

ID, in addition to being religious codswallop, does actually imply at least one interesting thing. Specifically, when you reduce it down, it says that for any given structure, for it to be "irreducibly complex" or to have "specified complexity", there must exist *no* path by which it could have been brought about naturally (by known processes of evolution).

The problem with this is that it is a mighty big claim, and it would seem that ID-ists would need to analyse every possible path and *demonstrate* that each one is unworkable. That is also a mighty big leap, and they would need serious evidence for this. Genetically we can work out the most direct phylogenetic paths between the genome of organisms; it is very difficult to see how the ID proponents can demonstrate the lethality of those paths, or the millions of alternate paths that are possible.

It's also highly piecemeal - you would need to demonstrate this for each individual "irreducibly complex" structure. Given that in the Dover trial, Michael Behe's evidence was trashed, and plausible pathways for evolution of his exemplar features were demonstrated, this is dead in the water. Note that Miller did not have to demonstrate the *actual* route by which (for example) bacterial flagella evolved - he just had to demonstrate one plausible possibility - and that alone kills ID stone dead.

Why people waste time over it is a mystery. Evolution explains the data; ID doesn't - where's the argument?

Amenhotep- Creationists aren't put off by the point you make, since they don't operate in peer-reviewed areas of academia and aren't taken seriously enough to be challenged within that arena.

But there's an interesting point about the idea of "irreducible complexity" and that is this: in our answer to those who advocate the idea of such a thing, we must remember that each and every intermittent stage (of say, for example, the development of the feather) needed to be useful to advance by natural selection. That means that while it is up to the creationist to tell us all of the possible ways by which organisms could evolve and show them all to be unworkable, at every stage there must have been at least one workable solution which not only was the next stepping stone on the path to the organism we see today but was, as each and every one like it, an advancement beneficial in and of itself.

Hello Amenhotep,

"Why people waste time over it is a mystery. Evolution explains the data; ID doesn't - where's the argument?"

There is none of course. ID is religion dressed up as science. And religion is not about arguing a case and supporting it with solid evidence. It's about maintaining the happy bubble, people don't want to lose their mental crutch. They've been taught (usually by their parents) to cherish their imaginary comfort blanket. And they'll cherish it to the point of utter irrationality.

Dr. John Blanchard (Does God believe in Atheists?) is due to be in the Province next week. How about an interview on Sunday Sequence?

I think it is sad that some of the contributors on this subject feel the need to resort to ridicule - seems to expose the weakness of their arguments!

By the way, Mark, if Richard Dawkins is free to share his atheist faith, why shouldn't Andy Mackintosh be able to speak of his Christian faith?
I would have thought that university is the place for young people to be given the opportunity to think things through for themselves? Knowing Andy, I do not believe he would abuse the position he has.

Can any of the evolutionists above explain why science has no evidence whatsoever of mutations which lift a species out of its natural variation into a new species?

There is no evidence this ever happened and this is an absolutely crucial step in the theory of evolution!

It is simply assumed that it happened...

How do we define "pseudoscience" again?

J

John,

there are numerous transitional species listed in the "family tree" of the horse. There are vestigial legs in several classes of snake, and remnant pelvic girdles in others (what could they be for?), similarly in a whale skelton. There are countless examples of this tyoe. This constitutes evidence of mutational change beyond variation and into new species.

We define pseudoscience as the setting up of a theory which does not fit the data we have. ID as with any religious theory, is a great example of this.

Can you now do me the favour of sharing your empirical evidence for the existence of GOD?

Peter Klaver, whatever children are taught can be called brainwashing because at a very young age they do not have the intellectual capacity to think critically for themselves. They usually believe what they are told. As the capacity develops during their teens, if they find out what they were taught was dead wrong, they become rebels. It isn't until they become mature emotionally and intellectually (many never do) that they become rational beings. Nobody was ever born hating Catholics, Protetestants, Jews, blacks, Moslems, or anyone else, they had to be "brainwashed into them." Leave it to the state and they can be brainwashed into malevolent doctrines as well...such as Communism. A real eductation does not concentrate on teaching growing children what to think, it is focused on teaching them HOW to think. Then they can spend the rest of their lives reading, learning what others have to say and thinking by making judgements for themselves in the context of their life experience. BTW, IMO, this is the critical difference between a liberal arts education and a scientific or engineering education. Struggling with all of those problems in the back of the chapters and those lab experiments and reports is far more useful in learning how to think than parroting back what the professor said in his personal interpretation of Hamlet.

Philip Campbell;
Atheism is not a faith, it is merely a lack of belief in god. It is based for most people including me strictly on lack of credible evidence. Faith means believing in something without evidence, that is its very definition.

Andrew MacIntosh is or should be as far as I am concerned free to preach his faith in Christianity wherever and whenever he likes as far as I am concerned...except when he is teaching thermodynamics. There is no place for religion in the study of thermodynamics. The problem with his thesis about the spontaneous formation of DNA from inert inorganic matter being a violation of the second law of thermodynamics is that it is dead wrong and demonstates a profound lack of understanding of the technical subject matter. In a way, this is not surprising because his specialty is thermodynamics as it applies to mechanical engineering, not chemical reactions about which he apparantly knows little. I challenge anyone including MacIntosh to specify in the formation of DNA from inert matter, in the formation of which chemical bond does is second law of thermodynamics violatated. The correct answer is of course in none of them. Why does this affect me? Because I occasionallly interview people including chemical engineers and make recommendations about hiring them. If one came from Leeds University and had taken MacIntosh's course, the value of his education would be suspect beyond acceptability in my opinion.

Philip Campbell

"I think it is sad that some of the contributors on this subject feel the need to resort to ridicule - seems to expose the weakness of their arguments!"

I would strongly prefer a solid scientific debate, but try having a good scientific discussion with a creationist and you'll soon be disappointed. If you don't know what I mean then wait untill pea brain (he usually posts with just the initials of that as his user name) enters this thread. Or read his entries in the 'Belfasts biblical flood' thread.

I don;t recall that Fuller argued that the inclusion of ID in science education posed no threat, but then I have great trouble understanding anything he writes, due I think to some weird kind of world view he has. My impression is that he supports ID teaching due to a misguided idea that ideas compete amongst themselves and underdogs often need help overcoming the ruling theories, so that teaching alternative views in class helps in this process.

This makes no sense, because ideas in science are not changed merely by teaching children something different from the ruling paradigm.

Perhaps the interview will make it more clear, and it would help if a transcript was available, since I cannot get the ´óÏó´«Ã½ listen again service to work on my PC.

Re: # 20
Guthrie - can you run i-tunes or a similar programme on your PC as it looks like the ´óÏó´«Ã½ have started putting William's programme out as a podcast.

Re: Atheism as a faith.

I heard a good quote the other day, can't remeber who said it.

"If Atheism is a religion, then baldness is a hair colour!"

Mark - I don't think people with a liberal arts education are necessarily worse critical thinkers. I would think a third level education in any subject would help someone think beyond the realms of received opinion. Science may be your area of study, that doesn't make all other areas of study worthless.

dp #21
I'm really glad you brought this up because it's something I've given a lot of thought to for a long time, the value of education. Believe it or not, engineering students are requied to take courses in "the humanities" but we consider them "soft courses." These are similar to the usual bill of fare in liberal arts programs.

Here's a contrast between the "reality" of a science or engineering program and a liberal arts program (IMO of course.) When you sit in an engineering or science lecture (at least the physical sciences) the professor draws some kind of model on the blackboard (today it's more often a whiteboard) and writes a mathematical equation to describe it. Shortly after he starts performing mathematical operations on that equation and it's off to the races. Most of the hour is spent copying down mathematical derivations which come in a blizzard, the terms of each one hardly having any connection anymore to the original model. You go home at night and read the assigned chapter and solve the assigned problems, at least you try. I took a speed reading course the summer before I started college, fat lot of good it did. Sometimes it was all you could do to get through two pages a night trying to figure out what the hell they are talking about. Solving the problems consists of figuring out what data you've got from what they give you stating the problem and what equation you need to get to so that the data can be used to solve the problem. While the details of this are different for each course, the process is the same, getting from what you know to what you want to find out. Labs tie this to real world experiments and data and the process is the same. You can learn a lot of tricks doing this. For example you plot the data on graph paper as instructed and the lab book tells you to draw the best straight line through it. But the points are all over the map, what can you do? simple, change the scale drastically, say by a few orders of magnitude until all the data collapses to nearly a single point and then draw a line from 0,0 through the point. :-) Pass enough exams showing you can solve problems this way and they give you a piece of paper saying you are officially educated.

Now what about a liberal arts class say in English literature. The professor gets up and pontificates for an hour on some assigned reading and you get the idea that every thought he has comes through a prism in his brain. Maybe he's a communist, or a Christian or a tree hugger, you get the idea. Then you are assigned to write a theme based on the assigned reading. If you agree with him, you get a C. If you are a little more eloquent than usual or you are the cute blond in the third row he'd like to sleep with, you get a B. If you give him a new argument he hadn't thought of yet and he can use it in his future spiels, you get an A. Disagree with him and you get an F. Get enough Cs or better and eventually they hand you a piece of paper which says you are officially educated.

If you don't believe me, just look at Father Guido Sarducci's five minute University on You-Tube. It's a scream and one reason it's so funny is that there is so much truth in it.

My experience in life is that engineers and scientists are more critical thinkers because they are trained to be more analytical and have had much more practice at it. They make their livings getting the right answer. It's not an unshakable rule but its just a general conclusion I've reached, there certainly are exceptions.

dp- nope, I don't own an i-pod. Don't need one.

guthrie - it's ok, you dont need an i-pod to listen to podcasts - you dont even need i-tunes. try indiepodder.org

Mark - i'll check out the you tube video later.

I agree with you to a certain extent. Since I have taken an interest in Scepticism over the last couple of years I have developed a new respect for the sciences that I didn't have when i was a sociology student. I've even started reading new scientist!
But do you think that having the mental capacity to deal with difficult mathematical equations makes you any better at dealing with philosophical / religious / ethical questions.

Guthrie.

I-tunes is a free download and a useful app whether or not you have an i-pod...

John Wright, you are of course correct, but what creationists/ID-ists cannot seem to grasp is that the most direct route is not the only route. Each step along the way is indeed beneficial (or neutral), but the key point is that it doesn't need to have been beneficial *for the function that it now carries out*. Birds' wings, for example, were originally legs; feathers originally evolved for insulation (plausibly). The principle we're referring to is exaptation. Your thumbs did not evolve in order to use a mobile phone keypad. Your nose did not evolve to support your glasses, nor did your ears - yet this is now an irreducibly complex system (if you wear glasses, of course)!

dp
We had this discussion extensively once before. It was attacked from a different angle. The question was; which explains existance more accurately, science or metaphors. One big advantage science has is that it is very conscious of the precise definition of things and the limitations of those definitions. A mathematical model, any model is only as good as the definitions which are applied, as soon as the situation doesn't conform to the definitions, the model can be all but worthless. In philosophical discussions, metaphors are often used. Words or phrases with imprecise meanings to begin with are used in a way which clouds their intended meaning even further by using a word or phrase as a symbol for something else. It's open to individual interpretation. Then any logical argument which ensues has an inescapable element of ambiguity no matter how well thought out it appears. I'm sure if you think about it hard enough, you can come up with seemingly logical arguments which lead to absurdities (I just can't think of one at the moment but one often used one is that since "I" can't imagine any other way existance could have come about, it can only be explainable as the creation of god.) I'm not sure that "having the mental capacity" is a fair or accurate way to describe the advantage a rigorous and highly disciplined training in the physical sciences and engineering confers. I think it may be a matter of developing mental muscles, like a body builder developing physical power. It may be that all normal human beings think in the same basic way (process) but those processes which allow for critical thinking are more developed in those who use them most. You look at the Empire State Building and you say wow, it must have taken some wizard to have built that. But it was build brick on brick so to speak, one piece of steel, one rivit, one pour of concrete at a time. There was a time in his life when Shakespeare didn't know the alphabet, a time when Newton couldn't count to ten. It was the sustained effort which resulted in their reaching a point to where they had the ability to achieve. They may have had some innate proclivity and they certainly had the opportunity which was necessary to them. Who knows how many Mozarts or Rembrandts never had the chance to reach the heights they were capable of. Anyway, as I said, I don't say it's a hard and fast rule, there are scientists and especially engineers I've known who were dummies and non technical people who were very sharp. I just made a general observation.

Amen- Exactly. It seems a tad presumptious and naive to imagine that there's such a thing as an 'irreducibly complex' system: of course it's a concept which serves only creationism (or ID, same thing). Natural selection forces us to think differently about all such things. Hitchens cites the example that he was taught in school that God designed nature to be green because our eyes are most relaxed when looking at that colour. Even as a child he says he realised instinctively how wrong that was: that the exact opposite was the case. Our eyes have evolved to green surroundings, not the other way around.

I was able to catch an hour to see a film last week at the Natural Science Museum in San Diego (where an exhibition of the Dead Sea Scrolls is now in progress). It was about the work of paleontologists on dinosaurs, and the discovery that some species sat on their eggs like birds and had feathers: the likelihood is that those feathers were used for insulation before they were for flight, and that some usefulness for aerodynamics existed between. The film went on to describe the modern bird of prey (eagle, hawk, etc.) as a species of dinosaur that survived and did not go extinct at all.

Mark
I certainly agree that the brain is like a mental muscle that we can develop. I have witnessed this several times when I have been learning a new juggling trick. Understanding a complex pattern in juggling feels like you are flexing your brain, and only through hours of training does the brain make the connection with what your hands have been trying to do. The same sort of thing happens when I have been learning a musical instrument.
And like body builders some people are more blessed with a natural ability to develop their mind muscle.
It would be interesting to know how good some of the great thinkers - sartre, Russell, Marx etc were at maths and science subjects.

cheers
dp (featherweight)

dp- I thought you were going to say that it would be interesting to see how good Marx was at juggling.

dp #30
Karl Marx espoused a badly flawed doctrine, scientific socialism or communism. His doctrine among other things failed to take into account the utter corruptability inherent in human nature which inevitably lead to the cruelest and most brutal of dictatorships, one which nearly brought the world to an end in a worldwide thermonuclear war and created a population which was for the most part indifferent about productive work seeing no direct benefit proportional to effort and achievement. I think Orwell expounded on this flaw sufficiently in his novel "Animal Farm."

Now Groucho Marx was an entirely different story. Nobody could fault him for lacking sheer genius. You bet your life.

#31 #32

Well - he certainly made a balls up.

Replying to 2 consecutive posts with the same response. How's that for free thinking!

Interesting, Will!

Can "metaphysical naturalism" be sustained in a quantum-mechanical world?

The irony is that modern science began as an extension of the faith of its European fathers.

At present it is heretical to think in their manner, but who knows how quantum mechanics will chew up contemporary scientific thought when it is done.

The current fundamentalist naturalists dont even seem to see this coming, or at least seem to be in denial;

How indeed will the dividing line between natural and supernatural be maintained in the future?

Fundamentalist naturalists may kick and scream in the face of change, but the truth is, while they think they hold the absolute truth they are merely the latest wave in the ongoing ocean which is the history of science.

Why dont any of them seem to understand this?

BTW Will, you seem to have a good grasp on the philosophies of these contrasting systems - but that of course is a very different thing from having gone past the consensus to really examine the evidence for oneself.

Peace.

Gee Dubyah

Thanks for your reply.

The examples you cite are highly subjective and there are many credible views on so-called "vestigal" organs or limbs.

What you are doing is interpreting static historical data, and openly with preconceived views.

My point, which you have failed to either address or understand, is that nobody has ever witnessed an actual mutation of any type that would lift any species out of its normal range of natural variation and into the realms of a new species; this has never been observed - ever - as far as I am aware.

And yet this mutating is the very cornerstone of evolutionary theory. How can this contradiction be explained? Why has this never ever been witnessed in the history of science ie a mutation which creates a new species?

The result is that we are left with a speculative historical model (evolution) which has numerous glaring contradictions and gaps in many aspects.

It is certainly the most plausible model to current mainstream science but that is in the absence of anything else considered credible.

But that is a long way from concluding that evolution is logical in its totality or actually supported by all the evidence.

Just because God cannot be proven or measured scientifically does not mean he was not involved or does not exist.

These are the issues Will is asking above and which contemporary mainstream science cannot, by definition, even begin to address.

Do materialistic naturalists fail to understand that they do not hold the holy grail of absolute truth but are subject to the same weaknesses of a man-made worldview just like the rest of us.

J

Hello John,

I hope you don't mind if I reply to your post addressed to Gee Dubyah. You wrote

"My point, which you have failed to either address or understand, is that nobody has ever witnessed an actual mutation of any type that would lift any species out of its normal range of natural variation and into the realms of a new species; this has never been observed - ever - as far as I am aware.
And yet this mutating is the very cornerstone of evolutionary theory. How can this contradiction be explained? Why has this never ever been witnessed in the history of science ie a mutation which creates a new species?"

Let's consider time scales here. Your question seems to suggest that the appearance of a new species happens through a single mutation. While not impossible, it is highly unusual, an extensive series of small mutations being the normal scenario to create a species different enough to be considered a new one. The mere development of resistance to anti-biotics of virusses has taken decases. At their reproduction rate that means at least tens of thousands of generations. For a macroscopic species to evolve into a different one takes millions of years. You want proof for the evolution of species by observing it in real time. Would you not agree that that is an impossible burden of proof to demand?

Hello John,

I hope you don't mind if I reply to your post addressed to Gee Dubyah. You wrote

"My point, which you have failed to either address or understand, is that nobody has ever witnessed an actual mutation of any type that would lift any species out of its normal range of natural variation and into the realms of a new species; this has never been observed - ever - as far as I am aware.
And yet this mutating is the very cornerstone of evolutionary theory. How can this contradiction be explained? Why has this never ever been witnessed in the history of science ie a mutation which creates a new species?"

Let's consider time scales here. Your question seems to suggest that the appearance of a new species happens through a single mutation. While not impossible, it is highly unusual, an extensive series of small mutations being the normal scenario to create a species different enough to be considered a new one. The mere development of resistance to anti-biotics of virusses has taken decases. At their reproduction rate that means at least tens of thousands of generations. For a macroscopic species to evolve into a different one takes millions of years. You want proof for the evolution of species by observing it in real time. Would you not agree that that is an impossible burden of proof to demand?

thanks for your courteous response Peter

I appreciate that evolution is posulated to happen over a long time.

However, surely in the total history of natural science we should be able to see some evidence of it happening somewhere?

The key point in Darwin's theory is that one species evolves into another, therefore resistance building using existing DNA within any existing species is not actually relevant (ie ref your viruses example).

Surely there should be evidence of shifting variations within species, even if our view is very narrow time wise.

In contradiction to this, I understand the consensus is that man has actually stopped evolving.

But shouldnt we see organisms varying in their features away form the norm? On the contrary, the natural variations around the mean are totally static.

I dont think is an impossible burden of proof to ask, just to see a shift away from the norm rather than a completely new species.

The example of various "stages" in horse evolution is high debatable. It is assumed they came from each other but it cannot actually be proven.

But the bigger problem is that this supposed chain of evolution stands virtually alone; where are all the chains between amobea, plants, fish, amphibians, mammals and birds etc.

Millions of fossils have been found since Darwin and yet these chains remain missing.

sincerely
J

cheers
J

yes Pete

You can be nice when you want to?

John is one of my names BTW...

PB

I think you have got mixed up in your phrases. Evolution has been observed to happen(and so has speciation), I think you are talking about natural selection over long periods of time.

Evolution is of course fact and theory.

I suggest that you read up on the very basics of science.

I find it strange(indeed bonkers) that Biblical creationists should support ID since Behe has no prob with evolution (as such), nor with the earth/universe being billions of years old, man and ape sharing a common ancestor etc etc yet on the other hand these same ID supporting creationists say the earth is 6000 years old, was created in 6 days with a talking snake! serious case of double think there!

Would be great that instead of throwing canards about the same creationists could provide evidence to back up their own position-but none is ever forthcoming!

Good evening folks. I have read this type of debate on several occasions and have a few questions I would like some one to answer.
My understanding of evolution is from one cell organism to multi cell organisms say a horse. We can all see the difference; it would take more information to produce the horse than the one cell organism.
If all life began with the one cell where did all the information come from to produce the multi cell organisms? Do we observe this gain in information in living cells to day? Now these questions are fine but we need to have non living matter become living matter. Do we have any examples of this happening to day?
This question is also fine but we need matter. From what I have read the big bang produced Hydrogen and Helium. Where did all the elements come from? I feel that these are only a few questions that need to be answered before we get to the hair splitting of any evolutionary tree,what is a species etc. And if these questions cannot be answered then are we looking at evolution as a faith With accepting evolution are we in danger of looking at an assumed answer and trying to work out the correct question?
I was at a civil engineering conference several months ago and one of the speakers made a statement “Engineers and scientists use theories to push the boundaries of their respective fields. Theories are assumptions that are required to be tested by empirical evidence. Once a theory steps beyond the limits of the empirical evidence it is outside the bounds of reliability."

Anyone for creationist bingo?

Hello peabrain,

"I appreciate that evolution is posulated to happen over a long time.
However, surely in the total history of natural science we should be able to see some evidence of it happening somewhere?"

If you're looking for evidence in the form of the appearance of a completely new species, then of course not. Some centuries (or a few millenia if you like) of natural history represent maybe less than a thousandth of the time required. Same answer as before pb. And that applies to most of the rest of your post.

"In contradiction to this, I understand the consensus is that man has actually stopped evolving."

You understand wrong. The natural selection part of evolution is active in places. See for instance what AIDS is doing in Africa, part of the following webcast:

"But the bigger problem is that this supposed chain of evolution stands virtually alone; where are all the chains between amobea, plants, fish, amphibians, mammals and birds etc.
Millions of fossils have been found since Darwin and yet these chains remain missing."

Oh dear! I see you still haven't read any of the papers pointed out to you peabrain. Come on peabrain, read up on all those examples that have been pointed out to you.

Btw peabrain, what a rascal you are. When some of my Pastafrian friends posted here under alternative identities you were screaming your lungs out about 'CONSPIRACY!!' to no end. Tst, tst, pb.

Nice picture to creationist bingo DD. A bit too easy here though. Pick any three lengthier posts by you-know-who and you're done.

Peter

The reason I used an alternative post name is because you cloud the issue with so much personal venom against me.

I tire of your endless adhominems which are very curious for a scientist so secure in your thinking.

The evidence is there for all to see, above; when you thought I was someone else you were courteous but then you are exposed as being on a personal vendetta when you find out it was me.

Incidentally, you previously accused me of misrepresenting you in our discussion over feather "evolution".

The latest entry in Encylopaedoa Britannica online totally rejects the long held view that they evolved from scales.

Now if you are still holding to evolution of feathers, where did they come from?

The previous scientific position presumed that they came from scales.

You now have even less evidence for their evolution than this presumption.

What empirical evidence do you now base your views on?

PB

PS As you never uttered one word of criticism against your friends for trying to swamp me with questions using fabricated names, I take it you will decline to condemn me for using one to evade and demonstrate your irrational and personal prejudices.

Hello again peabrain,

Again, I didn't bring in scales, that was your moving of the goal posts. I merely repeated Tony Jacksons examples of half-evolved feather fossils. In response to your claim that there aren't any. Still waiting for you to explain away those examples.

As well as for your positive evidence for creationism.

And your explantion for living animals with half-evolved limbs.

And the basis for your claim of 'there are very few labs that do radiometric dating'.

Pete

from today making a decision not to debate with ad hominenam debaters...

cheers

PB

Square water melons and genetically engineered food are samples that once in a while, life is created. Not a proof, but a plausibility.

Square water melons and genetically engineered food are samples that once in a while, life is created. Not a proof, but a plausibility.

Hi PB, I don't know how you have put up with this crew for so long. Leave them to their little rant.

Hi Roger,

More to the point would be how do *we* put up with PB!

The point of my message to pb was that the sceptics posting on this and other threads appear, almost to a man, incapable of refraining from ad hominem attacks. They boast, ad nauseam, their capacity for cool, calm rational analysis, and yet abjectly fail to engage their adversaries at the level of rational argument, but prefer, a priori, to dismiss as a backwoods fundamentalist anyone who dares to take issue with their "fundamentalist" materialistic presuppositions, be they Southern Baptist pastors or Oxford, Cambridge, or Harvard trained scientists and philosophers. It matters not! All and sundry are written off, ex cathedra, as imbeciles, nutters or terrorists in disguise. Only they, many of whom are themselves ex-fundamentalists (which is significant) can see the obvious: that there is NO God (and that Dawkins is his prophet), no Intelligence preceding, underlying and presiding over the universe and that anyone who believes there is needs their head examined. This is extreme, arrogant pomposity, especially when many of these "enlightened" individuals show by their posts that they would not actually recognise a rational argument if it jumped out and hit them in the face, while they wax lyrical about the mental shortcomings of the poor benighted souls who have come to (many of them late in life and out of a secular rather than religious intellectual environment) believe that God is objectively real and that the meaning and purpose that belief in God brings are real.

Hello Roger,

I'll presume I'm one of those 'atheist fundamentalists' . A few religious posters have critcised me for painting all believers with the same brush. I think Michael N. Hull and Stephen G were two, and they were right in their criticism. However, if you look at their posts and those made by pb you'll find there is a difference in intelligent content between theirs and pbs way larger then the difference in light intensity between night and day. Look through a few threads since the McIntosh appearance. Look at how any info that doesn't fit him is ignored by peabrain, how he distorts, repeats his distortions after a while, ect.

Try taking the opposite view point to him for a while and have a sensible discussion about it with peabrain. You may find the urge to make the occasional strong post becomes overwhelming before too long.

Peter, if you don't like people obdurately refusing to engage with arguments which they don't agree with and remaining entrenched in their own intellectual rut, make sure you don't fall into the same trap! I haven't read many of pb's posts and I don't have the leisure to, but you will have to admit that the same label that you have just stuck on him could equally well apply to a lot of skeptics on this and other sites. (If you don't believe me try browsing through the comments in Richard Dawkins' site). It seems to me that this new skepticism (new atheism) that we are witnessing is just anger-driven, hate-ridden ad hominem vitriol, where rant and wry, smirking slogans and vacuous witticism loom very large and thought-provoking intellectual challenge is conspicuous by its absence.

Roger

Unfortunately I have to agree with you.

As I said recently on this blog, for many of the posters you must enter into a tacit agreement from the outset that you will eventually agree with their non-scientific athiestic viewpoints before the end of the discussion or you will be written off as... well, read Peter, above.

Peter is actually totally misrepresenting me above, I can assure you I can hold an intelligent conversation with him on any topic and I make it a point to play the ball not the man.

You are spot on when you ask why cool rational scientists cannot come to a subject without vitriol and adhominen attacks.

PB

Roger

Just hang about for awhile and you will see what myself and Peter are talking about.

It is a shame that fundamentalists cannot come to a debate without displaying their obtuseness, wilful ignorance and dishonesty!

DD

You are simply affirming Roger's point.

Why cant you just agree to disagree with me and after disagreeing on our views simply remain civil?

PB

Roger,

I do have many Christians as friends and family and I am very proud to know them-I do *not* view them as "stupid" or beneath me, nor as dishonest-The thing is that they are light years away from the type of "Christianity" as is typified by PB. I just wanted to make that clear crystal clear.

As I said it is a shame that fundamentalists cannot come to a debate without displaying their obtuseness, wilful ignorance and dishonesty.

PB

When you actually come to a debate with a bit of integrity and honesty then you will be treated with respect.

Hello Roger,

I'll presume I'm one of those 'atheist fundamentalists', peabrain suggests . A few religious posters have critcised me for painting all believers with the same brush. I think Michael N. Hull and Stephen G were two, and they were right in their criticism. However, if you look at their posts and those made by pb you'll find there is a difference in intelligent content and hoonesty between theirs and pbs way larger then the difference in light intensity between night and day. Look through a few threads since the McIntosh appearance. Look at how any info that doesn't fit him is ignored by peabrain, how he distorts, sometimes apologises for his distortion, then repeats his distortions after a while, ect.

Try taking the opposite view point to him for a while and have a sensible discussion about it with peabrain. You may find the urge to make the occasional strong post becomes overwhelming before too long for you too.