Posted on 08/20/2005 5:45:53 PM PDT by Nicholas Conradin
By SEATTLE - When President Bush plunged into the debate over the teaching of evolution this month, saying, "both sides ought to be properly taught," he seemed to be reading from the playbook of the Discovery Institute, the conservative think tank here that is at the helm of this newly volatile frontier in the nation's culture wars.
After toiling in obscurity for nearly a decade, the institute's Center for Science and Culture has emerged in recent months as the ideological and strategic backbone behind the eruption of skirmishes over science in school districts and state capitals across the country. Pushing a "teach the controversy" approach to evolution, the institute has in many ways transformed the debate into an issue of academic freedom rather than a confrontation between biology and religion.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
If you think all that philosophy is good for is to annoy undergraduate students... well you're like the fish who notices everything but the water.
Would you say that these headlines are basically what the arguement boils down to?
Nothing Creates Universe, Wins Lotto, Universe is Special
Or:
Something Creates Universe, Uses Choice to Make Universe Special
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No. That is what you and countless creationists would very much like it to boil down to, so you can engage in this loony science-by-sheer-logic rhetoric, that was so popular in the 13th century, and which you've recently grown so fond of.
Serious science is not interested in this argument, because it's outside science's sphere of competence. Science is interested in mundane material explanations of material phenomena, and has no useful, or particularly competent, opinions about additional metaphysical explanations beyond that.
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Why is this "outside science's sphere of competence"? If this universe is a creation then there should be some clues to that, evidence IN this universe that either confirms or denies the hypothesis. And it seems to me that physicists have found an abundance of evidence to support the hypothesis that it is a creation. Evidence of this sort is certainly with science's sphere of influence, isn't it?
Is the multiple universe hypothesis is outside of "science's sphere of influence"?
As things presently stand, I can find an equal amount of equally strong evidence for the Odin hypothesis, or the symmetry-breaking hypothesis. Evidence isn't the problem, the world is overloaded with evidence. Getting a useful take on the evidence is hard, and this why science works hard at it.
And it seems to me that physicists have found an abundance of evidence to support the hypothesis that it is a creation. Evidence of this sort is certainly with science's sphere of influence, isn't it?
Is the multiple universe hypothesis is outside of "science's sphere of influence"?
Well, this is sort of massive case of question-begging. When/if there is sufficient evidence of any sort of multi-verse to take seriously as science, all that really means is that we have mislabeled a tiny part of the universe as the whole universe. It's not like it didn't happen several times before. We're still left wondering who or what caused the multi-verse, and/or whether this is a question that really makes any sense at all.
The world would be a drearier place without differences of opinion, so in that light, I cherish ours.
The world would be a drearier place without differences of opinion, so in that light, I cherish ours.
Creationist dishonest tactic #486: Repeatedly and falsely claim that there's no evidence, then when presented with the evidence squawk "I'm not impressed by your data dump" or words to that effect.
Heck, you guys want to see a miracle? Just shuffle a deck of cards!!! The arrangement of cards that arises is so unlikely that it must be a miracle that produced it.
This model poses no paradox, except to those who are stuck in common-sense, Newtonian modes of thinking about physics. Newtonian physics indeed does state that objects at rest remain at rest unless acted upon by an external force. Quantum physics, which replaced the Newtonian paradigm in the early 20th century says no such thing. Indeed there are many events observed in which something at rest DOES NOT stay at rest, even in the absence of an external force (Uranium nuclei come immediately to mind). This "paradox" is resolved by the realization that in quantum mechanics, many events occur which have no "cause" in the common sense meaning of the term. We have to think past common sense when dealing with situations with which we have no first hand experience.
Nope. Theories are theories, facts are facts. In fact (no pun intended), it's more likely that things regarded as "facts" in science will be revised than will theories. For example, it was once a "fact" that a clock on a moving vehicle and a stationary clock will measure time at an identical rate. Based on relativity theory and improvements in time measuring technology, it is now known that this "fact" was indeed incorrect. The "fact" is now that the clock on the moving vehicle will measure time more slowly than will the stationary clock.
Your examples are still indeed theories. It is in fact possible to formulate a mathematically consistent theory that accomodates all possible observations based on the notion that we live on the INSIDE of a hollow sphere, rather than that the earth is itself a sphere. We also have no DIRECT observation that the earth orbits the sun; all we have observed is the position of the sun and earth relative to each other. When a spacecraft photographs the solar system, we don't see the orbit of the earth and all the planets. We infer these orbits from the relative positions of the objects, but the heliocentric theory is still a theory.
The problem is that "theory" doesn't mean what you think it does. A theory in scientific terms is about as close to "fact" as you can get. It is simply a well-supported explanation that is consistent with all known observations. A hypothesis is probably closer to what you would think of as a theory. A hypothesis is an idea that is postulated as an explanation and must be supported by further testing or abandoned.
But it is interesting that when you click on the link for their accrediting agency, you get a 404 error.
It's a diploma mill. If it were a real university, it would be accredited by the State of Florida.
I'm not too worried the creationists on THIS thread are convincing any fencesitters in their own favor. Quite a gallery of grotesques they've turned into.
nice data dump. doesn't prove anything. (Just hoping to beat the creationists who claim "there's no evidence" to the punch.)
Could you give a link to the post where you estimate the money that all the evolutionary biologists stand to make from grants in a year? IIRC, it was somewhere on the order of $10,000 per year, hardly a fountain of wealth and riches for biologists.
The promotion of evolution is NOT limited to biologists. Have you not heard the latest out of the Smithsonian? Ever heard of the Department of Education?
Who do you think pays for the biologists textbooks, and their artists nice art work? It is a business from bottom up.
I am familiar with a researcher who continually begs for money via NIH grants and he is a complete and total believer in evolution. He was in a paralyzing fear of President Bush as he knew his funding would suffer. That was my first hand knowledge of the politics of evolution.
Very amusing to see the evolutionists piggyback themselves onto conservatism.
Here's what I've been able to come up with so far, from this website of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS): Biological and Ecological Sciences in the FY 2005 Budget:
";... funding for non-medical biology ... accounts for only 3 percent of all federally supported life science funding."The National Science Foundation (NSF) remains the principal federal supporter of the biological and ecological sciences, providing 65 percent of the academic funding for non-medical biology. The NSF proposed budget for FY 2005 includes a 2.2 percent ($13 million) increase in funding for the Biological Sciences Directorate (BIO) to bring it to a total of $600 million.
That $600 million is broken down into Molecular and Cellular Biosci, Integrative Biology & Neurosci, Environmental Biology , Biological Infrastructure, Emerging Frontiers, Plant Genome Research. Seems to be all non-medical (and presumably, even creationists don't object to medical research). Here's a table with a breakdown of those expenditures by category: R&D in the National Science Foundation.
If that $600 million is 65% of non-med funding, the total (which would include other stuff from the Agriculture Dep't, forestry bureaucracies, oceanic research, etc.) is about $900 million. That's a nice number. But it's only from federal funding. There is also a large amount of private, industrial funding, from biotech and pharmaceutical firms for example. (There is, of course, absolutely no creationism/ID research program of any kind, private or governmental.)
So let's stick with what the feds spend, non-medical, because that's where the objection seems to lie. If there are, say, 100,000 scientists and technicians working in such research (and it may be more), that comes to ... $9K per person. Incredible riches!
"Festival of Tractionless Trolls" placemarker
YOU are slipping, I see nothing out of the Department of Education.
Your methods of deception are showing.
No "piggybacking" going on here. I've always been conservative. And always accepted evolution.
I suppose you claim to be a Christian as well.
I dropped that rather than accept a 6 day creation.
I was taught in a church in the 70's that evolution and Genesis didn't contradict one another. That same church has reversed itself, and I've left it.
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