That's incorrect. The entire scientific community understands and knows the relevant math for calculating the probabilities of unaided processes accurately sequencing data and/or instructions.
Posted on 01/22/2005 7:38:12 AM PST by PatrickHenry
A movement to drag the teaching of science in the United States back into the Dark Ages continues to gain momentum. So far, it's a handful of judges -- "activist judges" in the view of their critics -- who are preventing the spread of Saudi-style religious dogma into more and more of America's public-school classrooms.
The ruling this month in Georgia by Federal District Judge Clarence Cooper ordering the Cobb County School Board to remove stickers it had inserted in biology textbooks questioning Darwin's theory of evolution is being appealed by the suburban Atlanta district. Similar legal battles pitting evolution against biblical creationism are erupting across the country. Judges are conscientiously observing the constitutionally required separation of church and state, and specifically a 1987 Supreme Court ruling forbidding the teaching of creationism, a religious belief, in public schools. But seekers of scientific truth have to be unnerved by a November 2004 CBS News poll in which nearly two-thirds of Americans favored teaching creationism, the notion that God created heaven and earth in six days, alongside evolution in schools.
If this style of "science" ever took hold in U.S. schools, it is safe to say that as a nation we could well be headed for Third World status, along with everything that dire label implies. Much of the Arab world is stuck in a miasma of imam-enforced repression and non-thought. Could it happen here? Our Constitution protects creativity and dissent, but no civilization has lasted forever, and our current national leaders seem happy with the present trends.
It is the creationists, of course, who forecast doom if U.S. schools follow a secularist path. Science, however, by its nature, relies on evidence, and all the fossil and other evidence points toward an evolved human species over millions of years on a planet tens of millions of years old [ooops!] in a universe over two billion years in existence [ooops again!].
Some creationists are promoting an idea they call "intelligent design" as an alternative to Darwinism, eliminating the randomness and survival-of-the-fittest of Darwinian thought. But, again, no evidence exists to support any theory of evolution except Charles Darwin's. Science classes can only teach the scientific method or they become meaningless.
Many creationists say that teaching Darwin is tantamount to teaching atheism, but most science teachers, believers as well as non-believers, scoff at that. The Rev. Warren Eschbach, a professor at Lutheran Theological Seminary in Gettysburg, Pa., believes that "science is figuring out what God has already done" and the book of Genesis was never "meant to be a science textbook for the 21st century." Rev. Eschbach is the father of Robert Eschbach, one of the science teachers in Dover, Pa., who refused to teach a school-board-mandated statement to biology students criticizing the theory of evolution and promoting intelligent design. Last week, the school district gathered students together and the statement was read to them by an assistant superintendent.
Similar pro-creationist initiatives are underway in Texas, Wisconsin and South Carolina. And a newly elected creationist majority on the state board of education in Kansas plans to rewrite the entire state's science curriculum this spring. This means the state's public-school science teachers will have to choose between being scientists or ayatollahs -- or perhaps abandoning their students and fleeing Kansas, like academic truth-seekers in China in the 1980s or Tehran today.
All of it hinges on a particular interpretation of Genesis, that not all agree on.
That's incorrect. The entire scientific community understands and knows the relevant math for calculating the probabilities of unaided processes accurately sequencing data and/or instructions.
That's correct. The simplistic random sequencing model is completely inappropriate. No one has a model, only a collection of isolated parts and mechanisms. Without a model, there is no math. The math is the model. So if the math shows garbage that does not represent reality, then the model is rubbish.
I have no intention of wading through a whole 'nother thread. Provide your math or STFU!
Science does not believe that DNA was the first molecule capable of Evolution. And calculations of abiogenesis are irrelevant to Evolution.
We told you that. But you are either to dense to even understand the argument, or dishonest and pretending not to notice our points.
That's all fine and well, but still irrelevant. What *matters* is whether a process formed something with or without some type of aid or bias.
We know the answer to that question for computer viri. We know it again for cloning. We know it still once more for how artificially intelligent software programs were formed, and yet again for self-replicating machines.
If you'll look back somewhere around post #237/8 on this thread, you'll see that we also know the answer for DNA-computers and biological machines.
In all of the above, we scientifically *know* that an intelligent designer was required for their formation.
No, and no. DNA could very well be the first living template. RNA is another possibility. PNA yet another. None of the above are "known" to be the first, yet.
But the *sequencing* of viable DNA (or RNA) does matter, and we *can* calculate the probabilities for long sequences to be accurately formed by unaided processes (any and all unaided processes, in fact).
...And that probability math is completely germaine to this debate.
Southhack hereby put on notice for failure to provide math to support his position
And again, it does not matter whether the first life was "designed". The evidence still shows beyond any reasonable doubt that Evolution took place after that.
And again, for what is it, the third or fourth time, DNA is not suspected as the first self reproducing, Evolution capable molecule. It is assumed that much simpler molecules came first. Making your precious math irrelevant.
Yes, it causes folks to stumble. Present and advocating falsehoods does not lead folks to truth.
" All of it hinges on a particular interpretation of Genesis, that not all agree on."
The truth is unique. Reality contains no contradictions, so where they are apparent, the presence of errors, or falsehoods are highlighted and should be corrected.
The mathematical model that I gave you was and is valid and appropriate for any and all unaided (by any form of meaningfully intelligent) processes, not merely something "Random" occurring.
You do recognize the distinction between "random" from that of "unaided," yes?
Which Creationist publication claims the Sun is on fire? Even Billy Thompson got that one right.
Of course, were that true, the gravitational pull would not change. (Proof left to the student.)
And exactly WHERE is this "math" you are so proud of?
No, suspicions and assumptions to not make probability math irrelevant.
Yes... And since those molecules do not have the same complexity, your math is meaningless. As well as it is not known how complex a molecule must be to be self reproducing and thus capable of Evolution.
And again, for about the fifth time, no matter how life came to be, Evolution happened after that.
This discussion is about Evolution, not abiogenesis, so all your efforts are for naught.
Go to bed.
"I have no intention of wading through a whole 'nother thread. Provide your math or STFU!"
The math *is* provided in the thread that I gave to you. That you want to clutter up this thread (when even after so doing you would still be unable to show math of your own to refute it) serves no useful purpose.
Go to the link. "Wade" through that thread. It's an entire thread of math (the same math that you bizarrely keep requesting).
Until Southack provides a source/link or the math under discussion, I will not debate his particulars since we have no idea of the whole.
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