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'Intelligent design' supporters gather (700 Scientists agree ID is "step beyond Darwin")
Seattle PI ^ | 24 Oct 2005 | ONDREJ HEJMA (AP)

Posted on 10/24/2005 5:27:52 PM PDT by gobucks

PRAGUE, Czech Republic -- Hundreds of supporters of "intelligent design" theory gathered in Prague in the first such conference in eastern Europe, but Czech scholars boycotted the event insisting it had no scientific credence.

About 700 scientists from Africa, Europe and the United States attended Saturday's "Darwin and Design" conference to press their contention that evolution cannot fully explain the origins of life or the emergence of highly complex species.

"It is a step beyond Darwin," said Carole Thaxton of Atlanta, a biologist who lived with her husband, Charles, in Prague in the 1990s and was one of the organizers of the event.

"The point is to show that there in fact is intelligence in the universe," she said. The participants, who included experts in mathematics, molecular biology and biochemistry, "are all people who independently came to the same conclusion," she said.

Among the panelists was Stephen C. Meyer, a fellow at the Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based think tank that represents many scholars who support intelligent design.

He said intelligent design was "based upon scientific evidence and discoveries in fields such as biochemistry, molecular biology, paleontology and astrophysics."

Many leading Czech thinkers, however, boycotted the conference, insisting the theory - which is being debated in the United States - is scientifically groundless.

Intelligent design holds that life is too complex to have developed through evolution, implying a higher power must have had a hand. Critics contend it is repackaged creationism and improper to include in modern scientific education.

Vaclav Paces, chairman of the Czech Academy of Sciences, called the conference "useless."

"The fact that we cannot yet explain the origin of life on Earth does not mean that there is (a) God who created it," Paces was quoted as telling the Czech news agency CTK.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Extended News; Philosophy; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: crevolist; darwin; intelligentdesign; loadofcrap
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To: ThirstyMan
ID observes that nature yields no evidence of intelligence arriving from non intelligence.

ID observes that man evolved over millions of years from simple organisms AND that there is no evidence of intervention by God in man's evolution AND therefore, we should teach our children that God may be dead.

See Mr. Behe's sworn testimony.

101 posted on 10/25/2005 6:25:57 PM PDT by WildTurkey (True Creationism makes intelligent design actually seem intelligent)
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To: Doctor Stochastic
You can trace a single strain by following the "To nnn" link at the bottom of each post. Forward referencing isn't there yet.

A little difficult, but you can foward reference using View Replies.

102 posted on 10/25/2005 6:27:39 PM PDT by WildTurkey (True Creationism makes intelligent design actually seem intelligent)
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To: Sun
Anybody find that missing link, yet?

See post #92.

(Hint, its not missing.)

103 posted on 10/25/2005 6:54:52 PM PDT by Coyoteman (I love the sound of beta decay in the morning!)
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To: Coyoteman

"Anybody find that missing link, yet?
See post #92.

(Hint, its not missing.)"

So the scientists were lying all that time?

Please expound.


104 posted on 10/25/2005 7:28:31 PM PDT by Sun (Hillary Clinton is pro-ILLEGAL immigration. Don't let her fool you. She has a D- /F immigr. rating.)
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To: Sun
"Anybody find that missing link, yet?

===========

See post #92.
(Hint, its not missing.)"

===========

So the scientists were lying all that time?

Please expound.

===========


I posted substantial data in #92. Others have posted substantial data as well.

But all you have done in about your last six posts is nitpick; you have posted no substance at all. Unless you can come up with something better, why should I bother to respond?

I think you are probably a YEC and that you won't believe any data which contradicts your beliefs, no matter how well-documented.

Fine. No problem. Believe what you wish.

But what you are doing is trying to bend the long-established rules of science, with no good reason, and trying to destroy the public's confidence in science's methods and findings, only to try to wedge your beliefs in through the back door.

Do you really think that this will benefit either you or your beliefs in the long run?

105 posted on 10/25/2005 8:25:18 PM PDT by Coyoteman (I love the sound of beta decay in the morning!)
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To: Sun

Its not missing.

Mostly within the past 60 years, our culture has had a wondrous gift bestowed upon us - fossils showing the evolution of our species from an upright-walking creature with a brain the size of an ape's. And in the same time we've been gifted with other wonders - the understanding of the genetic code (which was a great test of evolution's validity -- it passed) and the inner workings of all life necessary to learn more and more about the mechanisms and origins of our planet's life,
and the deeper understandings about our universe and the structure of matter that allow us to understand the mechanisms and origins of the universe we inhabit.


106 posted on 10/25/2005 8:33:05 PM PDT by chrisg2001
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To: Coyoteman

Actually, I see no reason why God could not have created our beautiful world via evolution.

However, the more I read about evolution, there is really no firm evidence to back it up.

There is a large and growing number of sciences who are very skeptical of the evolution theory.

These are the curious scientists, who will look at new evidence, and are not stuck in the past.


107 posted on 10/25/2005 11:52:09 PM PDT by Sun (Hillary Clinton is pro-ILLEGAL immigration. Don't let her fool you. She has a D- /F immigr. rating.)
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To: chrisg2001

For your reading pleasure re: fossils:

http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesDB-download.php?id=119


108 posted on 10/25/2005 11:57:18 PM PDT by Sun (Hillary Clinton is pro-ILLEGAL immigration. Don't let her fool you. She has a D- /F immigr. rating.)
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To: All

In those days the cell was a black box, a mystery. But in the 20th century, scientists were able to open that black box and peek inside. There they found not a simple blob but a world of complex circuits, miniaturized motors, and digital code. We now know that even the simplest functional cell is almost unfathomably complex, containing at least 250 genes and their corresponding proteins.

Explains New Zealand geneticist Michael Denton, each cell “is in effect a veritable micro-miniaturized factory containing thousands of exquisitely designed pieces of intricate molecular machinery, made up altogether of one hundred thousand million atoms.”

The odds of a primordial soup randomly burping up even one protein strand of moderate length are dramatically less than 1 chance in 10150.

It’s hard to grasp how long these odds are—one followed by 150 zeros. We know that a lot of strange things can happen in a place as big and old as our universe, but as mathematician and philosopher William Dembski explains in the Cambridge University Press book The Design Inference, the universe isn’t remotely big enough, old enough, or fast enough to generate that much complexity.

Nor have attempts to explain this complexity as the natural outworking of the laws of nature proven successful. The best explanation? Intelligent Design.
excerpt from http://www.discovery.org/scripts/vi...nd=view&id=2350


109 posted on 10/26/2005 12:00:45 AM PDT by Sun (Hillary Clinton is pro-ILLEGAL immigration. Don't let her fool you. She has a D- /F immigr. rating.)
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To: furball4paws
"Your Chemistry is bad. Your Biology is worse and your knowledge of Evolution is really pitiful. It's a shame."

Yeah? And your breath stinks.
Darwin had nothing to do with the origin *of life* and when he is applied to such, the resulting "science" is a mockery to what is plainly observable.

Life gives birth to life, intelligence to intelligence and until you can prove/show otherwise then all the proposed change-over-time solutions to life's origins are wishful thinking.

And ironically the attempts at starting life up are a model for what you think you're disproving: intelligent design.

110 posted on 10/26/2005 4:54:13 AM PDT by ThirstyMan (hysteria: the elixir of the Left that trumps all reason)
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To: chrisg2001
So, intelligent=organic, and I'm supposed to have figured that out from your question?

Sorry if my terminology isn't just right.

I was using organic in a more generic way to describe life as a living and self-replicating organism. To my knowledge that line has not been crossed.
Am I wrong?

111 posted on 10/26/2005 5:02:05 AM PDT by ThirstyMan (hysteria: the elixir of the Left that trumps all reason)
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To: jennyp
"The Intelligent Design scientist starts out assuming that the Genesis account is basically correct, albeit way too specific in its details to pass the Lemon Test."

Well is that what an ID scientist would say about himself?
If not, it is possible that you have created a straw man.

I personally don't believe that the ID starting point and Genesis are related in any way.

112 posted on 10/26/2005 5:08:12 AM PDT by ThirstyMan (hysteria: the elixir of the Left that trumps all reason)
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To: chrisg2001
"The initial origin of life is not really a component of evolutionary biology, its more in the realm of bio-chemistry."

Which is what I also have been taught, which is why I am confused when folks use Darwin in the same sentence with an origin of life idea.

"I'm not sure there have been any serious experiments attempting to replicate the origin of life on earth in any of the ways it has been believed to have happened. Many experiments have tested components of it. The reason for not replicating the whole shebang is pretty simple - you'd need a lab the size of the earth in which you recreated the primordial atmosphere. If you could do this, I suspect you'd get your replication in a fairly "short" time, like maybe a hundred million years."

Ah, the special ingredient: time ..."a hundred million years." And that's supposed to do the trick? Somehow? While nobody is looking? In some isolated place? When in fact we cannot replicate such a perfect primordial ennvironment in any lab?

That is why ID says the sophistication of what has begun points to the need for more than time and chance, i.e., a designer.

Time plus a lab can't do it but a primordial environment plus time could?

It sure appears to me that in this case time is being given too big a job, one that it cannot accomplish. That's why I am sympathetic to ID as an observation from nature (not Genesis) that the problem and the solution don't match.

113 posted on 10/26/2005 5:38:52 AM PDT by ThirstyMan (hysteria: the elixir of the Left that trumps all reason)
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To: ThirstyMan
Life gives birth to life, intelligence to intelligence and until you can prove/show otherwise then all the proposed change-over-time solutions to life's origins are wishful thinking.

Proof by assertion.

And ironically the attempts at starting life up are a model for what you think you're disproving: intelligent design.

Lovely variant on a standard creationist canard.

Creationist: evolution has never been proven. You can't even duplicate it in a lab.

Scientist: sure I can, look, I grow this population under selective pressure, it changes, that's evolution.

Creationist: but you did it in a lab. It's a designed experiment! That's noi evolution, it's ID!

114 posted on 10/26/2005 5:45:44 AM PDT by Right Wing Professor
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To: jennyp
"It's axiomatic that the scientific method cannot distinguish between a miracle and a natural occurrence that is yet to be explained."

Well put.

"We're always clear that the origin of life is on the bleeding edge of biological science."

Again, well put. That's what I've been taught.(if I understand you correctly)
The introducing of Darwin to explain the origin of life is probably one of the most frustrating misconceptions in this whole discussion.

"This is clearly impossible, as multicelled organisms are way too complex to spontaneously come together from random arrangements of organic chemicals."

"way too complex" Interesting choice of words given our topic under discussion. There are limits and boundaries for scientific conclusions to be viable.

ThirstyMan: Every experiment to prove spontaneous generation is initiated by a scientist yielding the very model of intelligent design.

jennyp: Now this I consider an evil argument. (But it's subtle, so I don't blame you for using it.) If the very fact that an experiment is intelligently designed invalidates any finding of non-design in nature, then that automatically invalidates every experiment that has ever been made about anything.

Yes you are very right. In our situation though, the lab environment, primordial as has been said, must have been able to exist without the aid of a controller/designer. From what I've seen so far that environment cannot have existed outside of a lab (due to the presence of hydrogen?).

Nice discussion jennyp, thanks. Sorry for my disjointed participation, my wife went in for surgery yesterday and my 'puter time is very limited.

115 posted on 10/26/2005 6:05:36 AM PDT by ThirstyMan (hysteria: the elixir of the Left that trumps all reason)
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To: Sun
"However, the more I read about evolution, there is really no firm evidence to back it up."

You should not only read creationism papers.


"There is a large and growing number of sciences who are very skeptical of the evolution theory."

Oh yes! I read about 400 scientist. Very large number. And today 401.


"These are the curious scientists, who will look at new evidence, and are not stuck in the past."

One of these "curious scientists" developed the theory of evolution. The ID idea is rather old. Just look it up in your bible in case you got one. First book...
116 posted on 10/26/2005 6:10:54 AM PDT by MHalblaub (Tell me in four more years (No, I did not vote for Kerry))
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To: Doctor Stochastic

Interesting. Thanks for pointing that out!


117 posted on 10/26/2005 6:18:27 AM PDT by ThirstyMan (hysteria: the elixir of the Left that trumps all reason)
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To: WildTurkey

WT,
You posted a chart to me about Ev/ID. It is interesting,
but why did you post to me?

ampu


118 posted on 10/26/2005 6:18:40 AM PDT by aMorePerfectUnion (outside a good dog, a book is your best friend. inside a dog it's too dark to read)
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To: gobucks; PatrickHenry
"... Ultimately, then, perhaps it's appropriate for the Intelligent Design conference to take place in Prague, the final resting place of astronomer Tycho Brahe, eternally ensconced in the Ty´n Church on Old Town Square. ... Perhaps, as Intelligent Design advocates visit Europe to spread their teachings, they can look to religion's own history and learn something as well."

--- Prague Post Online ---
"Faith requires no rewriting of science", October 19, 2005
http://www.praguepost.com/P03/2005/Art/1020/opinpv.php

You can post your comments there. At the moment just two creationist post something rather...
119 posted on 10/26/2005 6:37:12 AM PDT by MHalblaub (Tell me in four more years (No, I did not vote for Kerry))
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To: Right Wing Professor
First of all what is a creationist?

I do believe in a Creator. Does that make me a creationist?

Secondly, if you look at how jennyp answered my questions, she dialogued with me and lit a path for me to follow. I did not get labeled and dismissed by her as I did with you.

If this is a quest for truth, as I believe it is, then why not hold back on the labeling?

120 posted on 10/26/2005 6:39:06 AM PDT by ThirstyMan (hysteria: the elixir of the Left that trumps all reason)
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