Posted on 10/24/2005 5:27:52 PM PDT by gobucks
PRAGUE, Czech Republic -- Hundreds of supporters of "intelligent design" theory gathered in Prague in the first such conference in eastern Europe, but Czech scholars boycotted the event insisting it had no scientific credence.
About 700 scientists from Africa, Europe and the United States attended Saturday's "Darwin and Design" conference to press their contention that evolution cannot fully explain the origins of life or the emergence of highly complex species.
"It is a step beyond Darwin," said Carole Thaxton of Atlanta, a biologist who lived with her husband, Charles, in Prague in the 1990s and was one of the organizers of the event.
"The point is to show that there in fact is intelligence in the universe," she said. The participants, who included experts in mathematics, molecular biology and biochemistry, "are all people who independently came to the same conclusion," she said.
Among the panelists was Stephen C. Meyer, a fellow at the Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based think tank that represents many scholars who support intelligent design.
He said intelligent design was "based upon scientific evidence and discoveries in fields such as biochemistry, molecular biology, paleontology and astrophysics."
Many leading Czech thinkers, however, boycotted the conference, insisting the theory - which is being debated in the United States - is scientifically groundless.
Intelligent design holds that life is too complex to have developed through evolution, implying a higher power must have had a hand. Critics contend it is repackaged creationism and improper to include in modern scientific education.
Vaclav Paces, chairman of the Czech Academy of Sciences, called the conference "useless."
"The fact that we cannot yet explain the origin of life on Earth does not mean that there is (a) God who created it," Paces was quoted as telling the Czech news agency CTK.
>>>>When one thinks of the kudos, wealth, and everlasting fame that would accrue to anyone who broke ranks and produced evidence that ToE is wrong (and note that even people like Behe, Denton, and Dembski accept common descent and the great age of the earth) and the zero benefit of keeping quiet than you have to be particularly paranoid believer in giant conspiracies to think that somehow scientists are all engaged in some pointless con-game to perpetuate a falsehood aimed at discrediting a particular branch of Christianity, to no benefit to those in the conspiracy.<<<
I thought it was the other way around. I thought any scientist who strayed from the Evolution Plantation would be ostracized and marginalized by the elite?
Sorry Vade, not interested in "religious horror".
Though I have seen plenty of what you're talking about....narrowness... from both sides.... the crevo horrors actually....
"what we prefer to believe trumps fact".
3,000 years ago the Bible said the world was round. It is very clear: Isaiah (40:22)
Actually atheists tried to ridicule religious people by CLAIMING religious people thought the world was flat, which was not true.
Did you ever stop to think that the pro-Evolution scientists would lose money if their THEORY was debunked?
You are laughably misinformed about how science works. New ideas that have evidence to back them are avidly seized upon. Everyone wants to be the amongst the first into new fields, with all the opportunities for new discoveries that exist in a ground-breaking area. What creationists never explain is what motive individual scientists would have for taking part in an insane worldwide century-long conspiracy to attack fundamentalist Christianity and Islam, when to break ranks carries such huge rewards if your beliefs are true. The problem with creationism/ID isn't that it is new, it is that it is a ten-thousand year old idea that has produced no results to-date. 150 years of evolutionary-biology OTOH has produced numerous stunning predictions, and been vindicated in numerous ways that Darwin couldn't have imagined, as our scientific techniques deepen and widen. I remember when the creationists predicted that the molecular genomic data would falsify evolution. Well, they were sure wrong about that, instead the genomic data has provided yet another vindication of evolution; all the predictions made by ToE about how the genomes would stack up have been met. Copying errors, viral insertions, and neutral mutations are preserved in the same tree of life as is indicated by morphology and other cladistic techniques.
Well, actually the word circle means that Isaiah is implying that the world is a disc, not a globe, sphere, or orb. The belief that the world is a disc was common amongst the less advanced ancient civilisations, particularly those who like the Hebrews were not seafarers, and as I have already pointed out this belief can be derived from many more biblical verses than those that clearly indicate that the earth is a sphere (right now I cannot think of any that are clear that the earth is a globe, but maybe you'll find one so I won't assert that there are none)
It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them out like a tent to dwell in
Sure sounds like God sitting above a disc to me, tell me, how does He spread out a tent over a sphere? The verse makes no sense if you think of the earth as a sphere, and plenty of sense if you think of it as a disc.
Actually atheists tried to ridicule religious people by CLAIMING religious people thought the world was flat, which was not true.
So I'm sure you'll be able to come up with an actual example of an atheist ridiculing religious people in that way in the last ten years... I've never come across an atheist ridiculing for that once.
The actual false claim I repeatedly come across from creationists in these threads is the one that "scientists" pre Columbus thought that the world was flat but Columbus proved them wrong. Maybe once a month I get that canard as a kind of "scientists don't know squat" post so I assume that it is on some creationist websites out there.
Would you mind sharing a few of those "stunning predictions"? The idea that the evolutionary model predicts something is curious to me.
This makes no sense. These people aren't paid by the pro-Evolution Board of the US government. The overwhelming majority of them work for private firms in health care fields.
ID's problem is that it has nothing going for it. Most biologists already believe that God created the universe. Since ID won't do science, it has no appeal to Christians who work in biology.
It's only appeal is to people who have little or no science background who've bought into the fantasy that scientists are evil doers working for Satan. And the people who sell this nonsense make quite a bit of money doing it. ID'ers are the ones who stand to lose income if their ideas are debunked.
So that's what I think. :)
Well, why don't you dispose of the ones I already cited in the OP? When you've done that we can look at some more. I'll leave you with an interesting little one. Evolutionary biologists predicted that marsupial fossils would be found in antarctica, but nowhere else (apart from Australasia of course). And when people looked, they were. Here's another nugget. It was predicted early on that no two oceanic islands would share the same species of flightless bird, and they don't. That is because flightlessness is a positive mutation for a bird that makes it to an oceanic island with no natural predators; working wings cost so if you don't need them then lose them. But naturally once they are flightless they cannot make it to another island, so every island has its own flightless bird species, or none at all. You might respond that an Intelligent Designer would do that too, and that is true, but there is no way that anyone could predict in advance that an Intelligent Designer would design a different flightless bird species for every oceanic island, so finding the truth of that is a confirmation of ToE. Put it another way, if any two oceanic islands HAD shared the same flightless bird species that would present ToE with severe problems.
Ok, what's the OP?
(Every once in a while you guys could drop the at-war attitude and answer a question. You are treating me as the enemy and I don't really think of myself as such. You may, but I don't.)
Interesting indeed. Do you think that a mutation is required or simply that the trait was included in the bird's genome and favored by the environment? (left behind so to speak because he couldn't fly)
Not sure where you came up with the idea that ID agrees that man evolved from simple organisms which is evolutionist speculation. Your table makes no sense but neither does macro evolution.
More-IDiocy-on-display placemarker.
That would come from public statemade by Behe and Denton and Dembsky, the leading advoctes of ID.
ID does not propose that man descended from simple organisms. ID deals with design. ID is macro evolution's worst nightmare. Nice try.
Michael Denton, author of "Evolution, a Theory in Crisis, has written a new book, "Nature's Destiny," on intelligent Design. In it he says this:
"it is important to emphasize at the outset that the argument presented here is entirely consistent with the basic naturalistic assumption of modern science - that the cosmos is a seamless unity which can be comprehended ultimately in its entirety by human reason and in which all phenomena, including life and evolution and the origin of man, are ultimately explicable in terms of natural processes.This is an assumption which is entirely opposed to that of the so-called "special creationist school". According to special creationism, living organisms are not natural forms, whose origin and design were built into the laws of nature from the beginning, but rather contingent forms analogous in essence to human artifacts, the result of a series of supernatural acts, involving the suspension of natural law.
Contrary to the creationist position, the whole argument presented here is critically dependent on the presumption of the unbroken continuity of the organic world - that is, on the reality of organic evolution and on the presumption that all living organisms on earth are natural forms in the profoundest sense of the word, no less natural than salt crystals, atoms, waterfalls, or galaxies."
Behe, the chief defence witness at Dover, has this to say about evolution:
I didn't intend to "dismiss" the fossil record--how could I "dismiss" it? In fact I mention it mostly to say that it can't tell us whether or not biochemical systems evolved by a Darwinian mechanism. My book concentrates entirely on Darwin's mechanism, and simply takes for granted common descent.
Perhaps you should study ID instead of accepting it on faith.
Are you dumb, ignorant or just a liar?
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