This is recognizably the Triffid Nebula ...
Compare the two and you are comparing Creationism and Science.
Posted on 08/15/2005 7:01:06 PM PDT by gobucks
Project begins amid arguing over teaching evolution. Harvard University is launching a broad initiative to discover how life began, joining an ambitious scientific assault on age-old questions that are central to the debate over the theory of evolution.
The Harvard project, which is likely to start with about $1 million annually from the university, will bring together scientists from fields as disparate as astronomy and biology, to understand how life emerged from the chemical soup of early Earth, and how this might have happened on distant planets.
Known as the "Origins of Life in the Universe Initiative," the project is still in its early stages, and fundraising has not begun, the scientists said.
But the university has promised the researchers several years of seed money and has asked the team to make much grander plans, including new faculty and a collection of multimillion-dollar facilities.
The initiative begins amid increasing controversy over the teaching of evolution, prompted by proponents of "intelligent design," who argue that even the most modest cell is too complex, too finely tuned, to have come about without unseen intelligence.
President Bush recently said intelligent design should be discussed in schools, along with evolution. Like intelligent design, the Harvard project begins with awe at the nature of life, and with an admission that, almost 150 years after Charles Darwin outlined his theory of evolution in the Origin of Species, scientists cannot explain how the process began.
Now, encouraged by a confluence of scientific advances — such as the discovery of water on Mars and an increased understanding of the chemistry of early Earth — the Harvard scientists hope to help change that.
"We start with a mutual acknowledgment of the profound complexity of living systems," said David R. Liu, a professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Harvard. But "my expectation is that we will be able to reduce this to a very simple series of logical events that could have taken place with no divine intervention."
The theory of evolution has been both fascinating and religiously charged since its very beginnings, because it speaks directly to the place of people in the natural order. In another era, the idea that humans are the close cousins of apes was seen as preposterous.
Today's research of origins focuses on questions that seem as strange as the study of "ape men" once did: How can life arise from nonlife? How easy is it for this to happen? And does the universe teem with life, or is Earth a solitary island?
At Harvard, the origins of life initiative is part of a dramatic rethinking of how to conduct scientific research.
Many of science's most interesting questions are emerging in the boundaries between traditional disciplines such as physics, chemistry, and biology, yet universities are largely organized by those disciplines. Harvard's president, Lawrence Summers, is a proponent of the view that universities must develop new structures to encourage interdisciplinary science. And new science laboratories based on this are at the center of the plans for a sprawling new campus.
The Harvard origins initiative is on a short list of projects being considered for this campus, along with the widely discussed Harvard Stem Cell Institute, which aspires to bring together biologists, chemists, doctors, and others.
I don't intend to post an opinion here. I like Rush, but I don't worsip him. He can say things I disagree with, and I will still respect him.
I like him too. He's probably the most important asset we conservatives have. It troubles me when he's wrong, as he is in this case. But he's still the best thing to come along since Reagan.
Western science's goal is to reduce processes to a sequence of logical steps so to understand them. Introducing magic to explain transitions from one state to a subsequent state does not help explain the process - so it is rejected. It may be that ultimately a magical step would have to be accepted - but it does not further rational understanding to do so. And science would have no basis on which to assign truth to, or boundary conditions for, the magical steps. It is a fool's errend to try to understand processes with magical transitions.
"We start with a mutual acknowledgment of the profound complexity of living systems," said David R. Liu, a professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Harvard. But "my expectation is that we will be able to reduce this to a very simple series of logical events that could have taken place with no divine intervention."
He presupposes that a naturalistic explanation can be found. This is hardly unbiased research. Of course, creationists readily admit they are biased. I cannot and will not speak for the ID groups.
This much I will say. This Harvard group has a clear cut intention to undermine religious beliefs. It is a direct and clear assault. Such research with such an agenda should not receive a single penny of federal or state monies. If private concerns want to finance it, that is, of course, their free choice. However, tax dollars should not go towards funding a clearly "religious" agenda. If any money is funneled towards this, there will be "heaven" to answer to.
Personnally, if they pursue this course, then all federal funding to any project at Harvard should be cut off. There is no way to keep from indirectly funding this by federal or state monies. Tax money to this institution will indirectly finance this "agenda."
This says it all. Scientists START with a belief. BEFORE the facts. This is not a THEORY for them. It is a core belief. It is religious. It is a tenet of their FAITH. They will now attempt to prove it happened. The fact that they cannot prove it will not change their belief. They will go to their graves believing something that has no evidence because the alternative would rock their world... that God is there and He is not silent. And if there is a Creator, there is a standard of morality. And they are accountable before Him.
No matter what criticisms are thrown at "creationists" - for example, that they start with a belief in a Creator - scientists are no different.
If you are tempted to reply to me that with scientists it is not belief, but a theory. That they will now test that hypothesis. Save your breath. They clearly have a belief not grounded in facts.
...ampu
Cf. ORIGINS ( A Skeptic's Guide to the Creation of Life on Earth ) by Richard Shapiro, Chapter 11, for an account of the Seventh International Conference on the Origin of Life held in Mainz, Germany in 1983. My favorite passage:
"I found that the temperature bothered me mostly at night, in my hotel room. There was no air conditioning, so I had to keep the windows wide open. This in turn brougth in traffic noises, and the heat-and-noise combinations often kept me awake. Ironically, I had little difficulty falling asleep in the lecture hall during the day, even though it was also hot and noisy."
YEC INTREP
This is recognizably the Triffid Nebula ...
Compare the two and you are comparing Creationism and Science.
And don't presume there is but one alternative to the evolutionist's view. Perhaps the truth will rock everyone's world.
Thanks for the ping!
This is, by the way, the source of the term sophomoric, i.e. foolish wisdom. In a medieval university a sophomore was a student who had not yet mastered the rules of logic.
Take away their Ph.D.'s and send them back to school to learn the rules of reasoning.
Your assignment, should you choose to accept it:
Read Newton's "Rules of Reasoning" at the beginning of Vol. II of the Principia ( a mere 2 1/2 pages ) and explain how Intelligent Design is consonant therewith.
Newton, btw, was a devout Christian, and makes declarations, in the Principia, that God is the "Universal Ruler" and "governs all things".
OTOH, it is a fact that he felt compelled to add these declarations after being accused of atheism for declaring that Time and Space existed "without reference to anything external".
Also, he was a Unitarian - a heretic, that is, and was protected by friends via political machinations from being forced to swear belief to the contrary, on penalty of the sacrifice of his academic position and career.
"He presupposes that a naturalistic explanation can be found. This is hardly unbiased research."
Your comment makes zero sense. It has to be a natural explanation because supernatural explanations cannot be described by scientific methods. If they were, they wouldn't be supernatural.
"I found that the temperature bothered me mostly at night, in my hotel room. There was no air conditioning, so I had to keep the windows wide open. This in turn brougth in traffic noises, and the heat-and-noise combinations often kept me awake. Ironically, I had little difficulty falling asleep in the lecture hall during the day, even though it was also hot and noisy."
Classic jetlag!
Rush is alright and knows politics, a real asset to conservatives and someone who genuinely knows how to run radio.
But Rush only has a limited grasp of technology and does not know squat about science and it is embarrassing when he tries to talk about it. I'm not talking about this issue specifically, but in general. When he goes off on some science or technology topic, I usually change the station because it is painful to hear him wax ignorant. A man has got to know his limitations.
Newtons Rules of Reasoning have very llittle to do with a scientist setting out on a quest to use science to "disprove" the metaphysical. Even at Harvard.
Just finished watching a bio of JPII on the Hallmark station. Ultimately, these investigations don't matter. There is something beyond the ken of human study.
Rule I. We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances.But there has yet to be shown a sufficient natural explanation of the origin of life. Newton does not require that we assume a natural cause, only that if one were shown that we should not then appeal to the supernatural.
You are again assuming the conclusion. While science may not be able to prove a supernatural cause this does not mean that there must therefore be a natural one. Indeed, at present all science can now say is that a natural cause for the origin of life has not been shown.
By analogy I cannot show nuclear reactions by the laws of chemistry. If my tools of research were limited to chemistry it would not allow me to say that there must be a chemical explanation that has yet to be discovered. Without a knowledge of atomic particles I could at best say that there might be an unknown chemical explanation.
Similarly, at best the natural sciences can at best say that there might be a natural explanation for the origin of life. Then again, there might not.
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