Posted on 09/20/2005 7:02:45 AM PDT by Right Wing Professor
ITHACA, N.Y. - Lenore Durkee, a retired biology professor, was volunteering as a docent at the Museum of the Earth here when she was confronted by a group of seven or eight people, creationists eager to challenge the museum exhibitions on evolution.
They peppered Dr. Durkee with questions about everything from techniques for dating fossils to the second law of thermodynamics, their queries coming so thick and fast that she found it hard to reply.
After about 45 minutes, "I told them I needed to take a break," she recalled. "My mouth was dry."
That encounter and others like it provided the impetus for a training session here in August. Dr. Durkee and scores of other volunteers and staff members from the museum and elsewhere crowded into a meeting room to hear advice from the museum director, Warren D. Allmon, on ways to deal with visitors who reject settled precepts of science on religious grounds.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
If you knwo the fundamental force driving the system then some "asssumptions" (which often makes an "ass" out of "u" and "me") can be made in the model. We can 'assume' the force is constant over the period of evaluation and and we can assume some intial t=o starting point for an exact formulation of convenience (instead of a general formulation of true knowledge).
However, we do not know even know the fundamental force driving the system. All we have are heuristic observations that exclude the forces driving reproduction.
We have certain components of the formula but not other modulating or forcing functions that prevent the current formulas from expiring, converging or diverging wildly.
In the grand schem of things we know practically nothing. Those who are in the business will also admit to that.
Yet we have no evidence to exclude Divine origination. none.
So what kind of scientist excludes, a priori, a possible complete solution without any evidence to support that exclusion?
I am curious about your thoughts on this. It is my understanding that is a certainty that the global climate is changing but the contention that human activity is contributing to it is still just conjecture.
It is hard to find out much information about global climate change as it is so highly politicized so I would welcome your thoughts on the matter.
From my understanding, the global climate is always in a state of flux - not too long ago (1800's?) we had a little ice age. From research I've seen, the climate of the earth routinely alternates between a ice house and a hot house environment.
Prosecutors would love you. A great OJ juror. First refuse to look at evidence, then deny what is in front of you.
The List-O-Links. Shocking!
ID is looking for examples of traits that cannot be explained naturally. Archaeologists have to do this all the time, so it's not impossible. If they find evidence of a fire in a cave, for example, they need to determine if it's a manmade fire pit or simply some sort of natural fire. To make that evaluation, they'll look at the features of the fire for evidence of design. ID seeks to do the same with biological features. Specifically, it is looking for biological traits that cannot be adequately explained through a process of random mutations and natural selection.
And, yes, sometimes in archaeology, the answer is, "We don't know." But unlike your assessment of science, they don't automatically give the unknown over to a natural process. Now you could argue that science defaults to a natural explanation because there is no proof of God, unlike the fact that we know that human beings exist and could have made the fire if they were there. To that I'll simply say that for many religious people, they are convinced that God exists and is real in a variety of ways, thus they don't automatically assume a natural explanation.
And what assumptions? Can you name anything in the history of science where the assumption of supernatural or extranatural causes has been required?
Not off hand, though there are certainly explanations provided by science that rely as much on the assumption that a natural explanation exists as actual evidence that a natural explanation does exist. In other words, there are areas where science accepts the mere possibility of a natural explanation to be sufficient to exclude any other explanation. And if you want to be anal-retentive about the scientific method, you should realize that such hand-waving doesn't really prove anything. It's just begging the question.
I also want to point out that (A) absence of evidence is not evidence of an absence and (B) just because something works 99 times in a row does not mean it will work the same way on the 100th time. Newtonian physics seem to work just fine until you start looking at high energy physics and different frames of reference. You won't notice that Newtonian physics is lacking doing simple tests and just because you've done the simple tests doesn't mean Newtonian physics is correct and Relativity is a crackpot idea. In fact, they are still doing experiments trying to prove some of the more unusual effects of relativity.
Can you name any problem currently under investigation that has reached a dead end in terms of assumptions or methodology?
Off hand? No. But there are plenty of places where science is currently waving it's hand and making assumptions with insufficient supporting evidence. Please note that I'm not claiming that science should be abandoned or that natural explanations for biological features shouldn't be explored. What I am saying is that thinking you have all the answers and confusing evidence and assumptions may not give you the correct answer and, as I've mentioned, there are plenty of examples in the history of science where the establishment resisted better theories because they thought they knew it all.
I'm going to grant what I think is one benefit of ID. It has required mainstream science to tighten up its terminology, and is currently forcing popular publications to be more careful in their pronouncements. It might, in the long run, result in the demise of some of the crap known as deconstructionism. All these things are good.
Correct. And it might also encourage funding for researchers to try to understand if and how various biological systems work and evolved rather than assuming that they just did.
That is the work of science, to find explanations.
Fine. Whatever the current theory is for life starting itself up. It's irrelevant to the point I was making.
That's simply a re-statement of ID, not a prediction.
The prediction is that if life were created it should show evidence of creation just as an archaeologist who comes upon what looks like a fire pit in a cave excavation assumes that if it was man made, it may show some evidence of being man made. Is the archaeologist not doing science?
Alas, science isn't about 'feelings'.
Determining whether one thinks that the preponderance of evidence is sufficient to believe a theory when all of the facts are unknown will ultimately be based on intuition or "feelings" rather than simply logic because logic alone is ofteninsufficient to determine the correct answer when there are still unknowns. Assuming that natural selection is correct, human beings likely developed intuition for a reason.
I never said I have a beef with evolution. I do have a beef with "scientists" and camp followers of science who believe evolution obviates biblical teachings and "prove" the Bible is wrong.
Evolution is Intelligent Design. (you may quote me. LOL)).
In fact, without adaptation to the environment life would have ceased to exist after the first few molecules reproduced and their mud puddle conditions changed radically.
How did evolutionary processes evolve? I say they must initially have been created by a Creator.
It is even harder to comprehend the process of evolution itself coming into existence without an Intelligent Designer than life itself.
The more I think about it the more I am convinced that evolution itself may be a greater proof of Intelligent Design than the origin of life itself!
No, it might have been conjecture 10 years ago, but it isn't any more. We know atmospheric CO2 and other gases are increasing, we know they have greenhouse-like effects, we can make reasonably close estimates of the size of the effects, we know the earth is warming, and we can therefore estimate the fraction of the warming that is due to human activity. It's not a question of 'if' any more, it's how much.
Personally, I think this is a good thing. Over geological time, the earth has mostly been hotter than it is now, and the levels of CO2 much higher. The last million years have been unusually cool, and it's not impossible anthropogenic global warming has saved us from an ice age. Just because we're behind a fair chunk of climate change, doesn't mean climate change is a bad thing, and all the cures I have seen are far worse than the disease!
At the same time, we should be formulating policies to deal with the local consequences of climate change. For example, the proposal to rebuild New Orleans is asinine. Not only are hurricanes likely to become more severe, but the sea-level is rising, and the city itself is sinking. In ten years there won't be a levee high enough to protect it.
The problem with all this stuff is that environmentalists have historically been such chicken-littles that a sober, unemotional debate about climate change is impossible. That should start with whether there's anything we can do about it, and whether it's something we want to stop.
That's a different prediction.
No one has been able to come up with a plausible test for whether a biological object was designed. It is likely that no such test exists. We can look for human artifacts because we know all sorts of things about humans already. But looking for evidence of a designer, having no knowledge at all of what the designer might be, is a different kettle of fish.
That would put you into the camp with the fine tuners and anthropic principle advocates.
Would you argue that this shouldn't be taught in schools, then?
Are you asserting it is immoral to assume natural causes and work to find them?
I am asserting that it is an unsupported assumption. See my screen name. It may even be a perfectly reasonable and useful assumption to make but it's still just an assumption, just as the belief in a divine agent is. If evolutionists would embrace the fact that it's an unknown and allow for the possiblity of God to inhabit that unknown alongside their assumption of a godless universe, I think it would defuse a lot of tension that exists among religous folk who would not otherwise be extremists on the matter. For many religious non-Fundamentalists, the problem is not that evolution explains that mane arose from animals but that it refuses to leave any room for God in the unknown. It seems to assume a godless universe. And that's where the atheist fanatics jump on the bandwagon and start beating their drum.
The scientific ignorance continues...
Don't include me in your presumptions.
God fears nothing from science. Science only reveals Gods nature.
Evolution is even greater evidence for the existence of an Intelligent Designer. Without evolution life systems would not be such a smart design.
I know Patrick is Chief Daemon at Darwin Central, but I think he rigs these elections. Back during the Flame Wars, there was an actual published hit list and he topped that also.
I didn't even make the list. I think he's got a slush fund to bribe the voters.
Yeah, I know, none of them are exactly Lisa Randall. But they sure seem to be Kathy Martin-types!
And ID seems to be encouraging that. So, again, what's the problem?
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