That depends on your relativistic inertial reference frame, now doesn't it?
Posted on 12/22/2005 7:15:18 AM PST by Michael_Michaelangelo
WHEN Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859, he gave a convincing account of how life has evolved over billions of years from simple microbes to the complexity of the Earth's biosphere to the present. But he pointedly left out how life got started.
One might as well speculate about the origin of matter, he quipped. Today scientists have a good idea of how matter originated in the Big Bang, but the origin of life remains shrouded in mystery.
Although Darwin refused to be drawn on how life began, he conjectured in a letter to a friend about "a warm little pond" in which various substances would accumulate.
Driven by the energy of sunlight, these chemicals might become increasingly complex, until a living cell formed spontaneously. Darwin's idle speculation became the basis of the "primordial soup" theory of biogenesis, and was adopted by researchers eager to re-create the crucial steps in the laboratory. But this approach hasn't got very far.
The problem is that even the simplest known organism is incredibly complex. Textbooks vaguely describe the pathway from non-living chemicals to primitive life in terms of some unspecified "molecular self-assembly".
The problem lies with 19th-century thinking, when life was regarded as some sort of magic matter, fostering the belief that it could be cooked up in a test tube if only one knew the recipe.
Today many scientists view the living cell as a type of supercomputer - an information-processing and replicating system of extraordinary fidelity. DNA is a database, and a complex encrypted algorithm converts its instructions into molecular products.
(Excerpt) Read more at smh.com.au ...
There is ample contextual and grammarical justification for concluding that the Hebrew word translated as "Day" in most modern translations could also be translated as "Age".
"Nonsense. ID is not a scientific theory."
Should we make an assumption in our schools that (A)God exist?
(B)Does not exist?
(C)Is irrelevant?
What does that have to do with ID failing to meet the basic standards for a scientific theory?
Probably true but the extent is debatable. Would conservative scientist let that one issue cause them to aid scientist who believe in global warming, or are many of them among that group? Would conservative scientists ally themselves with a party, the Democrats, who openly aids the terrorists against this country? As scientist, do they see a fetus as simply a mass of cells with no worth?
There are a lot of scientists and other highly intelligent fellows...
I assume you include yourself among those.
...who lean conservative but would never think of voting Republican, just because the party is perceived as being anti-science as a result of the creationist presence.
I think you have it logically backward. It is much more likely that being strongly pro-science would make one anti-creationist rather than vice versa. I know of no creationists who are anti-science. Anti-evolution doesn't mean anti-science. In fact most religious people are not against evolution as a possible way for species to develop. They are just against it as a replacement for creation.
Since there are many religious scientists and many religious people who appreciate and admire science, I find your argument to be either ill informed or disingenuous. You don't seem ill informed but perhaps you are misreading your fellow scientists.
If they've spent 15-16 years doing research, where is it?
They may have been speaking about research done by DI Fellows. Here is a list of publications:
Actually, I would be very happy for someone to put an end to the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. It makes interesting science fiction but I think in the long run it's a dead end.
You may be interested in this piece from Creationsafaris:
Exactly. The problem, however, is that our public schools do somehow manage to do so.
Anti-evolution doesn't mean anti-science.
Yes it does, when "anti-evolution" means ignoring or denying the physical evidence for evolution, or dumbing down the scientific meaning of words to make them conform to PC.
Are you saying things like the bird flu are designed?
Do people think outside their own programing? Or is the programming so complex that we just can't see the patterns?
Free will vs. determinism is one of the oldest debates in philosophy. Computer technology and the notion of "thinking machines" just gives us another metaphor to frame the debate.
So to reverse your question, are computers a primitive, limited analog for the human brain, or is the human brain a vastly more sophisticated computer than we can, at least now, comprehend?
Do what? There's a tangle of negatives in this thought.
That depends on your relativistic inertial reference frame, now doesn't it?
I meant without.
The typo is mine, but the context should have made it clear.
Science cannot coexist with the assumption that God meddles in the world. There could be occasional miracles, but ongoing stirring of the soup would make science impossible.
I know of no evidence of miracles. I don't take that as proof that miracles have never happened, but I take it as supporting the conclusion that miracles don't leave evidence.
False logically. The scientific requirement of consistency of phenomena does not exclude divine causality. Whether divine causality is consistent or irregular, this makes no nevermind. In fact, our consideration of random and chaotic events are also relevant.
This is also false historically. Any history of science will prove this false. Perhaps you want to say that science must be limited to material causality. But that is something different than ir/relevance.
I liked the joke in the next article. It kind of reminds of the proof of there being no largest prime number.
A physicist, a chemist, and a mathematician are stranded on a desert isle, when a can of food washes up on the beach. The three starving scientists suggest, in turn, how to open the can and ease their hunger. The physicist suggests they hurl it upon the rocks to split it open, but this fails. The chemist proposes they soak it in the sea and let the salt water eat away at the metal; again, no luck. They turn in desperation to the mathematician, who begins, “Assume we have a can opener....”
Sorry, I thought it read "without."
But then, again, what did you mean?
Plenty of things are taught, as fact, in our science classes that fail to meet the basic standards, and, have in hindsight, been found to be ridiculous.
There seems to be far more outrage on these boards about ID, than a lot of the truly destructive garbage that occurs.
Me, and many others, are convinced that if a school board was allowed to assume the concept of a creator, the relativism that breeds this garbage would disappear since public schools would once again be allowed to address the big questions and teach that objective truth exists.
Materialism -- that everything is explainable by measurable events -- is considered a valid scientific concept. Do you think it should be, even though the existence of God is by far a more rational explanation for reality?
Plenty of things are taught, as fact, in our science classes that fail to meet the basic standards, and, have in hindsight, been found to be ridiculous.
Surely you aren't suggesting that because some errors have been made in the past, everything done now is an error as well?
Evolution has a solid foundation. There is evidence to support it - even as profound a Creationist as Pope John Paul II admitted that.
That is a rather narrow view, and somewhat bigoted for a scientist. Also, accusing conservatives, even religious ones of being PC is quite a misread of PC.
I also specifically said that many accept evolution as a science but not as a replacement of creation. Contradictory? Not necessarily.
I will also include you as an exhibit as evidence of my second conspiracy theory.
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