Posted on 08/01/2005 10:58:13 AM PDT by wallcrawlr
The half-century campaign to eradicate any vestige of religion from public life has run its course. The backlash from a nation fed up with the A.C.L.U. kicking crèches out of municipal Christmas displays has created a new balance. State-supported universities may subsidize the activities of student religious groups. Monuments inscribed with the Ten Commandments are permitted on government grounds. The Federal Government is engaged in a major antipoverty initiative that gives money to churches. Religion is back out of the closet.
But nothing could do more to undermine this most salutary restoration than the new and gratuitous attempts to invade science, and most particularly evolution, with religion. Have we learned nothing? In Kansas, conservative school-board members are attempting to rewrite statewide standards for teaching evolution to make sure that creationism's modern stepchild, intelligent design, infiltrates the curriculum. Similar anti-Darwinian mandates are already in place in Ohio and are being fought over in 20 states. And then, as if to second the evangelical push for this tarted-up version of creationism, out of the blue appears a declaration from Christoph Cardinal Schönborn of Vienna, a man very close to the Pope, asserting that the supposed acceptance of evolution by John Paul II is mistaken. In fact, he says, the Roman Catholic Church rejects "neo-Darwinism" with the declaration that an "unguided evolutionary process--one that falls outside the bounds of divine providence--simply cannot exist."
Cannot? On what scientific evidence? Evolution is one of the most powerful and elegant theories in all of human science and the bedrock of all modern biology. Schönborn's proclamation that it cannot exist unguided--that it is driven by an intelligent designer pushing and pulling and planning and shaping the process along the way--is a perfectly legitimate statement of faith. If he and the Evangelicals just stopped there and asked that intelligent design be included in a religion curriculum, I would support them. The scandal is to teach this as science--to pretend, as does Schönborn, that his statement of faith is a defense of science. "The Catholic Church," he says, "will again defend human reason" against "scientific theories that try to explain away the appearance of design as the result of 'chance and necessity,'" which "are not scientific at all." Well, if you believe that science is reason and that reason begins with recognizing the existence of an immanent providence, then this is science. But, of course, it is not. This is faith disguised as science. Science begins not with first principles but with observation and experimentation.
In this slippery slide from "reason" to science, Schönborn is a direct descendant of the early 17th century Dutch clergyman and astronomer David Fabricius, who could not accept Johannes Kepler's discovery of elliptical planetary orbits. Why? Because the circle is so pure and perfect that reason must reject anything less. "With your ellipse," Fabricius wrote Kepler, "you abolish the circularity and uniformity of the motions, which appears to me increasingly absurd the more profoundly I think about it." No matter that, using Tycho Brahe's most exhaustive astronomical observations in history, Kepler had empirically demonstrated that the planets orbit elliptically.
This conflict between faith and science had mercifully abated over the past four centuries as each grew to permit the other its own independent sphere. What we are witnessing now is a frontier violation by the forces of religion. This new attack claims that because there are gaps in evolution, they therefore must be filled by a divine intelligent designer.
How many times do we have to rerun the Scopes "monkey trial"? There are gaps in science everywhere. Are we to fill them all with divinity? There were gaps in Newton's universe. They were ultimately filled by Einstein's revisions. There are gaps in Einstein's universe, great chasms between it and quantum theory. Perhaps they are filled by God. Perhaps not. But it is certainly not science to merely declare it so.
To teach faith as science is to undermine the very idea of science, which is the acquisition of new knowledge through hypothesis, experimentation and evidence. To teach it as science is to encourage the supercilious caricature of America as a nation in the thrall of religious authority. To teach it as science is to discredit the welcome recent advances in permitting the public expression of religion. Faith can and should be proclaimed from every mountaintop and city square. But it has no place in science class. To impose it on the teaching of evolution is not just to invite ridicule but to earn it.
Nope!
Nope! I want one of 1x10^100 out of 1x10^150. I also want 1x10^10 concurrent draws. By the way, the probability for the ticket 'abiogenesis' to win assuming 26 letters is 1/26^11 or 2.7x10^-16. The probability to lose, for what it's worth is 1 -(2.7x10^-16).
On a more sober note, how the heck do you get superscript from html?
You're saying that if there are calculations made in GR and the results don't match reality then: something's wrong in your calculations or something's being missed.
Is that it?
Well, at least it was a short answer. :>)
I disagree, of course.
I wouldn't say that. Quite often, you have to make a choice on where you draw the line. That means I've arbitrarily chosen some region between a point close to zero, but not zero, and zero. Anything in that range will be considered zero. The same could be done for 1. This is normal for T/F type questions... 0, or 1.
right.
(sup)....(/sup)
(sub)....(/sub)
Substitute < > for ( )
If your calculations don't match reality then (1) your math or logic could be wrong.
OR
(2) You could be missing that the model (GR?) is wrong.
(3) You could be missing the outside influence of an intelligent force.
(1) your math or logic could be wrong.
OR
(2) You could be missing that the model (GR?) is wrong.
(3) You could be missing the outside influence of an intelligent force.
Yes
(GR=general relativity)note GR could be incomplete(knowledge and understanding)
Ah! I'm an "evolutionist." And I have a "mission." Oh, boy! Nothing like a mission to get the ol' juices running.
Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life by Daniel C. Dennett
Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds by Phillip E. Johnson
Icons Of Evolution DVD ~ Brian Boorujy
Darwin Retried (1971), Macbeth;
The Neck of the Giraffe: Where Darwin Went Wrong (1982), Hitching;
The Great Evolution Mystery (1983), Taylor;
The Bone Peddlers: Selling Evolution (1984), Fix;
Darwin Was Wrong - A Study in Probabilities (1984), Cohen;
Darwinism: The Refutation of a Myth (1987), Lovtrup; and
Adam and Evolution (1984), Pitman.
DARWINS BLACK BOX: THE BIOCHEMICAL CHALLENGE TO EVOLUTION by Michael J. Behe
What, nothing from this millenium?
No "Darwin on Trial"? Tsk, tsk.
OK, now your point that you were making with that was what? Or was that the point?
If so, then yes, I see it now.
Effectively zero is by its very nature not zero. If you are calculating the probability of a singular event within a singular set of variables (i.e., my individual chances of winning the lottery), then perhaps "effectively zero" has some meaning in a pedantic way.
But my chances are still "not zero" (even if "effectively zero"). The variables not considered in my individual case are, however, the very variables that make the lottery a viable revenue generator. It will be won at some point by someone. Hence, the "gut reaction" purchase of tickets by the population of individuals who otherwise have an "effectively zero" chance of winning (and consequently money from suckers for the education fund).
Applying a very rough though similar analysis (including the suckers, who may be thought of as the extinctees) to the process of evolution and speciation, the variables that you are not considering (gross duration, population densities, widely variable genetic mutations across a population occurring simultaneously, simultaneous population dispersal across a range of abutting and blending ecosystems, simultaneous and widely variable selectivity within these variable ecosystems by way of food source, food collection ability, and breeding propensity, etc., etc.) render evolution and speciation considerably more than a "not zero" event, and indeed an "effectively probable" event (my apologies to spunket).
Thanks. But did you have to be so clear? I was waiting for my paper to explain things well enough for people to understand.;->
No worries. At the rate I write it won't be done for weeks.
Thanks. I think I will.
I'm getting quite the headache.;)
OK, so if you conclude something is missing, you have 2 choices. The choice is between physics and an intel force.
The lottery is won because they carefully ensure an appropriate number of tickets will be sold relative to the possible combinations of numbers.
If they sold just one ticket,then it'd be a long, long wait.
And if it is you hoping to win, then think that each year there are at most 52 winners and in a decade just 520.
I can safely predict that YOU will not win.
If my model isn't working, then yes, it could be my understanding of the physics is wrong, or it could be some outside intelligence is toying with the results.
If we'd ruled out that the math or logic wasn't done correctly, then odds are with the physics being wrong, but we cannot rule out an outside influence.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.