Posted on 01/18/2006 3:09:20 PM PST by xzins
Vatican Paper Hits 'Intelligent Design' By NICOLE WINFIELD ASSOCIATED PRESS
VATICAN CITY (AP) -
The Vatican newspaper has published an article saying "intelligent design" is not science and that teaching it alongside evolutionary theory in school classrooms only creates confusion.
The article in Tuesday's editions of L'Osservatore Romano was the latest in a series of interventions by Vatican officials - including the pope - on the issue that has dominated headlines in the United States.
The author, Fiorenzo Facchini, a professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Bologna, laid out the scientific rationale for Darwin's theory of evolution, saying that in the scientific world, biological evolution "represents the interpretative key of the history of life on Earth."
He lamented that certain American "creationists" had brought the debate back to the "dogmatic" 1800s, and said their arguments weren't science but ideology.
"This isn't how science is done," he wrote. "If the model proposed by Darwin is deemed insufficient, one should look for another, but it's not correct from a methodological point of view to take oneself away from the scientific field pretending to do science."
Intelligent design "doesn't belong to science and the pretext that it be taught as a scientific theory alongside Darwin's explanation is unjustified," he wrote.
"It only creates confusion between the scientific and philosophical and religious planes."
Supporters of "intelligent design" hold that some features of the universe and living things are so complex they must have been designed by a higher intelligence. Critics say intelligent design is merely creationism - a literal reading of the Bible's story of creation - camouflaged in scientific language and say it does not belong in science curriculum.
Facchini said he recognized some Darwin proponents erroneously assume that evolution explains everything. "Better to recognize that the problem from the scientific point of view remains open," he said.
But he concluded: "In a vision that goes beyond the empirical horizon, we can say that we aren't men by chance or by necessity, and that the human experience has a sense and a direction signaled by a superior design."
The article echoed similar arguments by the Vatican's chief astronomer, the Rev. George Coyne, who said "intelligent design" wasn't science and had no place in school classrooms.
Pope Benedict XVI reaffirmed in off-the-cuff comments in November that the universe was made by an "intelligent project" and criticized those who in the name of science say its creation was without direction or order.
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They've been doing that for a long time. They also have answers.
Instinct in biology is simply emotionally driven behavior. It's automatic. Instinct in human's has another aspect, that is simply fast thinking. The answer already exists in the person's mind.
"I strongly suspect any serious inquiry on how "software" arises from evolutionary processes would tend to support the central tenets of Intelligent Design."Softwear is a creation of the mind that model's nature's instructions. Here's an example of a tree with fractal design, that can modeled with a simple program. Note to create an accurate program, the real parameters, such as sunlight intensity and direction, inherent growth rate, and energy balance must be taken into account
As I said...I'm still waiting for evolutionists to produce a half-plausible explaination for the development of "instinct" with some passing awareness of information theory.
Go ahead and try to find it.
We discussed that before with the question of why bird that was tossed off the Leaning Tower flaps it's wings and flies away, rather than bouncing off the ground. I explained it as a neural equilibrium response and the bird's hardwired flight response. The bird sences the accelaiton, as a person would.
Life itself is limited to organisms. Any organism is a machine that utilizes the energy available in it's environment to sustain it's own self, in form and capacity. The machines capacities define the organism's living features. The capacities that are common to all life is the animations of capacity such as feeding, reproducing, sensing, and response to sensation. All these things have their foundation in the physics of the machine. In the case of higher neural function, rational intelligence occurs. The same physics that applies in simple systems, applies here, regardless of complexity. Complexity arises out of the fundamental builing blocks. It results simply, because the sequential building and arrangement is possible along a low energy path.
Life in less than 100 Gbytes...
I'm aquainted with both. What is it your after a model?
I think you are close – because I am very confident the answer rests with Shannon’s mathematical theory of communications. Information (successful communication) is the reduction of Shannon entropy in a receiver or molecular machine in going from a before state to an after state.
How does your neural model classify these [life v non-life or death]: bacterial spores, mycoplasmas, mimiviruses, viroids, viruses and prions?
The Shannon model deals with all of them quite nicely btw.
Regardless, of the particular model for the universe, the beginning of this universe can be seen as a simple phase transition. The physics for all possible worlds always existed. You can never point scientifically to God as the uncaused cause, because that is a dual with physics of this world. The only way to point to God, is to point to the Person of God.
A peer-reviewed paper would be nice.
Mycoplasmas are living bateria w/o a cell wall, they are alive. Bacterial spores are seeds for life, they are not alive as there is no function going on. Seeds are nonliving packages of blueprints and starting materials for the particular organism they give rise to. The rest in the group are the equivalent of toxins. They never give rise to life, they only corrupt other organisms.
" The Shannon model deals with all of them quite nicely btw."
If the information theory is both correct and applied correctly, yes. The relation between the info, R and the before and after entropy is,
R = Hbefore - Hafter
The entropy H is the number of possible states that have meaning, as far as communicating that an event has taken place. The entropy here is not the thermodynamic entropy, but the information theory entropy. Some folks mix them and the result is ridiculous as far as the meaning of both information and thermodynamics goes. Schneider does it well, as far as applied biological info theory. He does make mistakes though with thermodynamics. See if you can grasp the Cu penny mistake. BTW, his min heat for 1 bit of info is correct. Mixing thermo and info just leads to confusion and obfuscation. Some writers would say 2 DNA strands with different arrangements of the same bases, had different entropy. They have the same! The only way to get an info difference between the two, is to reference it to an applicable system.
Take the viruses above for example. The viroid's info, only has meaning in a potato system and the micoplasma's in it's own cell. Otherwise calculating Hbefore is meaningless. So to is calculating the thermodynamic entropy, unless you're going to see how well you can heat a house with it.
The alternative is the atheist mode of Darwin [and I don't care if, in his youth for which he is not known, Darwin MAY have believed in God however briefly when Darwin was failing as a mainline Protestant seminarian (see Nietzsche, see Bishop Spong, see Stalin for the Russian Orthodox apostate version and Hitler for the Catholic apostate version) given that he wound up a propagandist for the enemies of God, of which he was certainly one.] Faith in God or faith in Darwin. Scripture or the voyage of the Beagle. That's a no brainer of a dichotomy if I ever heard one and it does not favor Darwin or his love slaves.
If you REALLY, REALLY want to believe that the universe occurred accidentally, that there was a big bang of some sort, utterly undirected and utterly chaotic, that you are somehow descended from apes, perhaps your beliefs are proof of at least the last of those propositions (he says sarcastically) but insufficient proof. If there is a watch, there MUST have been (and is) a watchmaker.
More dichotomies: Either God created the universe and all within it or He did not. He did. St. Thomas Aquinas or Charles Darwin???? Scholastic philosophy or the irreligion of the Public Misedjamakashun monopoly???? Public skewels are the parochial skewels of secular humanism. As to me and mine, we are going with God, Scripture, St. Thomas, and Scholastic Philosophy. I cannot imagine the relevance of the Scriptural crutch you have cited to this discussion although I have heard that the Good Book can be cited by you know whom for his own purposes.
Oh, and in a chaotic "big bang" universe without God, why would there be reliable laws of physics, chemistry, biology, et al.? I don't need to know the "science" of Intelligent Design. I'll leave that to Intelligent Design scientists. I need only have faith in God and the use of logic. Our universe is NOT an accident. It and we were designed and created wonderfully by One infinitely more capable than thee or me.
Darwin, his successors, atheists and agnostics, and every ism that seeks or ism pusher who seeks to enslave man to "perfect" the society of the very temporarily living (on earth or on whatever planet) at the expense of the recognition of eternal life, moral authority, moral obligation, eternal punishment and eternal reward can bray as jackasses in the wilderness against the reality of Creation but they cannot change that reality.
Conservatism is what this website is about. Conservatism has a canon of beliefs, of which theism is one. It is not an airheaded libertarianism that encourages each of us to believe whatever fantasy we may, nor an equally airheaded indifferentism which claims that one's specific beliefs do not matter. We do not exist to shape, fit and trim reality into a pre-ordained ideological box which we individually design to suit our own respective tastes.
John Lennon's Imagine is NOT a conservative anthem. It is a nihilist anthem.
Intelligent Design is a brand name for the praiseworthy attempts of Bible Christians to try to re-inject reality into public skewels. God bless them for trying. As a Catholic educated in Catholic schools and as a conservative, I prefer to avoid wasting time (just one life to live, after all) struggling in futility with the public ignorance factories. I prefer abolition of public skeweling altogether, immediately or on the installment plan, the sooner the better and the absolute defunding of those skewels. Then parents should create schools outside of all gummint restrictions on truth, create quality education, and do what the special interest disgrace of public misedjamakashun can never do, actually educate students in something other than PC. The Darwinian nonsense is just one of a thousand reasons for abolishing the organized evil of public skewels.
Nevertheless: If Intelligent Design is not science, then science is NOT the search for truth and therefore is not science. Intelligent Design or Chaotic Cosmic Accident??? Intelligent Design!
As often as we have disagreed on some specifics, thank you for this post on which we certainly agree. God bless you and yours.
The late Bishop Fulton J. Sheen once observed that, if the Catholic Church were really what it is perceived as being, he would not have been Catholic either. Of course, he died Catholic.
There are a billion+ Catholics and thank God we have a pope to resolve the internal differences even if he may not always resolve them all effectively or to my preferences. I know that is not everyone's model of Christianity, but Christ contemplated and prayed on the night before His death over the fact that we would not be as one. He knows and understands. He always did.
Your great uncle Joe and a LibDem relative or two of my own may be merely evidences of the answer to the question: Why did the milkman enter the house and stay for half an hour when the husband was at work? Note that you are not descended from a great uncle. Nor am I descended from my rare LibDem relations, possibly simian dinosaurs who still think of Catholicism as the Demonrat Party at prayer.
May God bless you and yours!
I have no faith in Darwin. I don't even know the man.
"Either God created the universe and all within it or He did not."
God's only interested in a person's response to the Holy Spirit. That's why He gave no sign in His creation. That's what He explicitly said in Matt 12:37-38.
"Conservatism has a canon of beliefs, of which theism is one. "
No.
"Intelligent Design is a brand name for the praiseworthy attempts of Bible Christians to try to re-inject reality into public skewels."
I gave you a rigorous definition and proved that it is not science. I also gave you God's word on the matter, which you failed to address. The problem is a dual. God's only sign given was the sign of Jonah, the Holy Spirit. Religion is not to be taught in the public schools.
" Nevertheless: If Intelligent Design is not science, then science is NOT the search for truth and therefore is not science."
"I prefer abolition of public skeweling altogether, immediately or on the installment plan, the sooner the better and the absolute defunding of those skewels."
Then where would the students go? You'd abandon them to ignorance? Then, to hell with them?
" Nevertheless: If Intelligent Design is not science, then science is NOT the search for truth and therefore is not science."
This does not follow. IOWs, it's illogical, as has been shown.
" Oh, and in a chaotic "big bang" universe without God, why would there be reliable laws of physics, chemistry, biology, et al.?"
Nature is the laws of physics. There would be nothing if nature and the laws of physics weren't eternally constant. God Himself depends upon them. If their were no physics, there'd be nothing to support His existance. There'd be nothing at all.
"Our universe is NOT an accident."
The universe itself appears to be a phase transition from a higher space. You can't point to a phase transiiton and proclaim God. You must point to God and say, "this is Him". If they don't know God, they'll naver understand the dual.
The Intelligent Designer (God Almighty, actually) created the universe and all within it out of nothing. No magic wand necessary but if that would help you believe as opposed to serving your anti-religious sarcasm, fine.
I need to know, love and serve God in this world. I do not need to know the cause of the "unexplainable" other than as explained in Genesis and in Pascendi Domenici Gregis. I am sorry for you that you have reversed the proper priorities and place a higher value on your curiosity than you place on the Truth. Oh, well! Different strokes....
If you want childish, as opposed to childlike, imagine prefering Darwinian BS to the Word of God Almighty.
I am not sure that I agree with your notion that most folks are benighted Darwinians. On the other hand, the Good Book reminds us that the path to hell is wide and the path to heaven narrow. My more biblically oriented brethren are invited to provide specific book, chapter and verse not that you are likely to accept such "childish answers" as God's over your imagination "almighty."
Re-reading your post, I discover that you referenced "garlic-clove pasta" not "garlic-clove pizza." This description is not as abominable as "garlic clove pizza" but somewhat abominable nonetheless. I entertained with the previous paragraph and I am leaving it as is. While "de gustibus non disputandum est" is a sensible standard, there are so very many pasta dishes more suitable and admirably complex than "garlic clove pasta." Secular humanist obsessives are often too obsessed with, well, secular humanism, to appreciate such as Coquilles St. Jacques, Oysters Anton, Chateaubriand (French cuisine is actually the reason why God and not some big bang created France and why we have to tolerate the likes of Chirac and de Villepin. French chefs predominate in the banquet halls and cafeteias of heaven).
French cuisine is genuine science and well worth pursuing as opposed to Darwinian mythology. Where Darwin may be found nowadays, the cuisine is boiled everything (with the exception of permaroast Darwin and friends) without condiments, if you get my drift.
Given your preferences in cuisine, small wonder that you are so confused about more complex matters as to side with Darwin and P.S. 666 over God Almighty. Whatever that confusion may be, it is NOT science or a search for Truth, the pretensions of the secular humanists and the culinarily unimaginative notwithstanding.
Those of us who are crotchety and aging forest creatures have trouble manipulatng our hooves to do that magic trick of linking (or more likely I am too ignorant in my old age to perform such wonders and too old to learn).
As ever, God bless you and yours.
Rely on God.
Do you REALLY want a contest in smart-ass????
OOOOHHHH! I want you on my team in the coming war!
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