[Pharmboy]

This came along with the article. Thought you might be interested in this.

[From many - one.]

Looks as if the Times has figured out a way to boost sales.

[PatrickHenry]

Thanks for the ping. The article essentially rehashes old stuff, but it's in the Times, and that alone makes it newsworthy [alas!]. So I'll ping the list.

[atlaw]

"A cell that had the faces of four presidents on it, while other cells did not, would no doubt prompt scientists to look for a designer."

So that potato from my garden that looked like Henny Youngman was designed?

[js1138]

Suppose, instead of Mt. Rushmore, we ask how the pyramids were built. No one really knows, and there have been serious proposals that space aliens provided some of the technology.

This makes the question of the construction of the pyramids analogous to the problem posed by ID. If you don't know the history of an object, how do you go about deciding the most likely origin?

The first question that presents itself is: Is it possible for people having no modern technology to quarry 30 ton blocks, transport them, and lift them 400 feet to the top of a pyramid.

The answer to these questions is not nearly as interesting as how you go about searching for an answer. You could do some computations about the strength of humans and animals, and you might conclude that it is impossible. It's also pretty unlikely that the blocks simply self-assembled themselves into a pyramid.

Again, the real question is, how do you research the problem.

One solution is to try to invent methods and procedures that might work and which use only materials available at the time the pyramids were built. These can be tested.

The downside is, of course, that even if you find a procedure that works, you might never know if it was the actual procedure used by the Egyptians.


...


Now, on one side of the evolution/ID debate, we have mainstream science trying to analyze what would be necessary for life to evolve, breaking the problem down into manageable pieces and testing each piece. These pieces include variation and selection, plus hundreds of related concepts. The question is, can these be sufficient to account for the varieties of living things evolving from simpler forms.

On the other side of the debate, we have people calculating the odds of 30 ton blocks lifting themselves 400 feet to the top of the pyramid.

Which approach is more likely to make progress? Which approach will generate more useful research?

[philetus]

Where are the millions of fossels, skeletons, and mummified bodies of animals and humans in transition?