Scientists in the Kansas intelligent design hearings make their case public

Darwin Central has noted your security lapses WRT our Satanic and alien sponsors. Watch your backs.

Thanks. I skimmed over the astronomy article. I admit most of it is over my head but I'll study it more when I'm not as tired.

God doesn't need me to lie for Him.

A righteous creationist! One of the few. God bless you.

I personally never heard of Anthony Flew before he decided he believed in God

Anthony Flew has not said in believes in God (aka The God of the Bible). He has specifically said he still considers that God a mythical monster.

Science is, in its own way, an institution cobbled together to overcome some of our mental shortcomings. Primarily our tendency to see patterns in ambiguous stimuli and to attribute cause and effect to phenomena that occur near to each other in time.

How lyrical. It reminds me of a judge's opinion that a contract is an attempt to substitute certainty for serendipity.

now that you think about it...yeah that would be good to replicate the 1500's with physical and political action. People could go vote, go protest, make a letter, dial a phone, donate a $. That sure would suck if people didnt take action.

...or kill the occasional jew or wierd old woman for christ.

Surely, there must be some intelligence guiding the second-to-second metabolism of every living thing on Earth, because it's far too complicated to continue to function by chemical/physical means alone.

Yes. Verily the hand of Providence is obvious in all my posts.

However, species remain species.

No they don't (Link orginally provded by mlc9852)

Surely, there must be some intelligence guiding the second-to-second metabolism of every living thing on Earth, because it's far too complicated to continue to function by chemical/physical means alone.

I'm too complicated to do my taxes.

I got the year wrong. It was 1919.

Rutherford's Biography .

In 1919, during his last year at Manchester, he discovered that the nuclei of certain light elements, such as nitrogen, could be "disintegrated" by the impact of energetic alpha particles coming from some radioactive source, and that during this process fast protons were emitted. Blackett later proved, with the cloud chamber, that the nitrogen in this process was actually transformed into an oxygen isotope, so that Rutherford was the first to deliberately transmute one element into another. G. de Hevesy was also one of Rutherford's collaborators at Manchester.

I'm too complicated to do my taxes.

Fine by me, but when you tell that to the IRS, remember--you never heard of me! ;)

What limits would you then put on what can call itself science, and what is too big for science? Mine are that it can be addressed with the scientific method, that you can't appeal to miraculous events. Just out of interest sake, I'd like to know yours. For example, philisophical pondering of morality and meaning? I understand you don't like the current definition of scientific material, but what limits yours?>>>

Again,I thought this a very good and insightful question. Let me make a stab at it, then I have to go eat.

The answer to the question "what limits would I put on what I call "science" is fairly close to what I suspect yours would be....., at least theoretically. All the standard stuff you learn in freshman bio. The difference, I suspect, is that I believe science is not a field of knowledge "apart" on its own. It cannot be. Just as one example, science itself is predicated on the ideas that we live in an ordered universe that has uniformity of natural laws, and that our brains are predisposed to correctly take in and correlate sensory input in a manner consistent with what is "really" out there. Those ideas are not "science" at all, nor are they scientifically verifiable (they are philosophical assumptions or "faith" positions), but relate to science so closely that they have to come into play.

Then the question becomes "how do I relate science to my philosophical tenets,and what happens if some tenet which SUPPORT my view of science is seriously challenged by the data itself? I have the following options:

1) I can live in a divided world. Many modern scientists do exactly this. In the lab, they are convinced materialists, yet they want to go home to wives and family and act as though "love" were more than some description of biochemical reactions in a complex machine. I can say that I am a process of billions of accidents farted up by a dead universe, and get all offended if you don't give me the respect on I want on a bulletin board (A ***BULLETIN BOARD*** for Christ's sake!!!!). A fundamentalist does the same thing when he is afraid of learning and academics lest he find out his faith is unsupportable.

2) I can re-examine my philosophical underpinnings to determine if they need adjustment or (for the sake of argument) abandonment. I have adjusted my own beliefs several times, having been all over the map on the age of the earth and the extent to which evolution has occurred. I expect my world view to "synch" with the world around me. For example, I believe the first chapter of Genesis is not a chronological account at all, but rather a poetic way of simply stating that God is creator and Lord of all. This is called the "framework hypothesis" and says that the "framework" for Genesis simply states that God created the "realms" correlated with the "rulers" or "dominions" of each
Day 1: Light and darkness
Day 4: Sun and moon and stars- the "rulers" or dominion
Day 2: Realm of heavens and waters
Day 5: Birds and fish - the resident rulers
Day 3: Plants/dry land
Day 6: Animals and man the capstone ruler in God's image
This is a tenable description which is faithful to the text (though fundies would argue not) and is consistent with a WIDE variety of viewpoints. It simply teaches that there is a sovereign creator "ELOHIM" who is lord of all the cosmos, consistent with the message of Genesis. It is not designed nor does it purport to teach a seriatum description of events.

3) I can re-examine my construct of the data to see if it really DOES point to a problem (maybe I have misconstured the data? are there other theories which explain the data as well as the one causing problems?)
ditto example in 2 above, and of course, reevaluation of accepted material constructs

4) I can say "there appears to be a problem! I will wait to see if there is a heretofore unseen resolution of the conflict."

5) I can deny that the data exists, and "fix" the problem that way

In my experience, neither theists nor naturalists do #2) very often. The reason for this is that for all the pretentiousness and posturing, world views are almost NEVER chosen because of the relentless demands of the data. #3) is sometimes the mark of an honest man, who looks at what he sees and seeks to reconcile it with what he believes #4) is more common tack (not that it is "less honest" than #3..., it is just more common). The person says "this seems right to me, and although the present data does not support it (he never says THAT, rather that it is "incomplete, inconclusive, or partial"), he takes an attitude of FAITH that there will be an ultimate reconciliation. #5) is the most common solution. Just look around you. Happens with the religious and irreligious. That is an "outline" of how I view scientific content interacting with philosophical principles.

I would love to BS you with a story of how I chose my own decidedly religious worldview on the basis of pure reason, but that would be a lie. However, I have been delighted over the years to see more and more clearly that not only is the biblical world view (which is, by the way decidedly NOT the fundamentalist world view in many cases) coherent, rational and reasonable, it is actually the best "model" for assimilating the facts and observations of the world and the people who live in it, including myself.

...... In reading what I just wrote, I am disgusted with myself for being so inarticualate and doing such a poor job. Better luck next time, but I need to go home and eat.

I am also disgusted with myself for misspelling "inarticulate"
but that will be forgotten quickly

>>You must be new to these discussions. Geology would be on the list if it were taught in high school, as would astronomy.

Physics is already on the list. schools will have to entertain all kinds of speculation about the variable speed of light and rate of radioactive decay.

In chemistry we would teach that the unguided assembly of proteins is not merely an unsolved problem, but an absolute impossibility.

In computer science we would teach that feedback cannot be a source of information.<<

The problem with that argument is that too make it, you have to understand the science and the implications... but the people making the argument for teaching things in science class that aren't science don't usually understand and therefore the audience is lost on them.

I can imagine Galileo dealing with people who didn't understand why gravity needed to be tested and science taught according to our best science rather than the philosophy of Aristotle and the Catholic church.

This really isn't any different. Their God is too small. They think he is threatened by doing our best to study the world. God is above such concerns, in my opinion - he is "compatible" with the truth.

Their God is too small.

You've got it.

Creationists think that God is incapable of 3 billion years of patience to create a human.

They think that "miracles" are simple instantaneous acts, rather than long drawn out processes.

The points in this thread are interesting, that if creationists really knew how complex individual cells are, they would claim that it's impossible for even a single cell to operate without divine guidance.

Creationists argue against evolution, because they think that "mere chance" could not explain life. But their God is too small to have created the existence of "chance" in the first place.

Uh, anybody can mis-interpret a biology experiment.

But I don't think you understand the role of proof and conjecture. When a proof is found to be wrong, it's wrong forever and it's definitive. When a biology experiment interpretation is "believed" to be "wrong" it takes a good century to get the bad interpretation out of the zeitgeist. Until it makes a comeback.

I see. You know it can't be wrong, but you can't verify it. Very amusing.

No, you don't know it can't be wrong. There was a great deal of argument about whether it was a proper proof. And fear that others would try to prove things in a similar way. If I remember, it didn't get published in a regular journal. But that was a long time ago and Appel and Haken's ideas lead to the verifiable Robertson and Seymour proof. And other proofs of that type did not emerge.

Tell ya what, here's a simple set of arithmetic identities, all valid in finite math,

Uh, what is "finite math"? I assume you're using some sort of Abelian group structure.

Careful about Gödel. That only has to do with a closed system. You just move to a more complete system. For example, x²+x+1 cannot be factored over the reals, so you just pass to complex. Voilá.

Since you know FLT existed for many years unproved, you acknowledge that math exists that hasn't got a proof associated with it.

Well, you've got to have conjecture before proof.

"Full-blown creationoid filth alert! This same poster was called on this same fraud back in January.

I have this hilarious picture in my mind of you and your friends flitting from thread to thread in your "full-blown" flowing red capes with the words "creationoid filth and fraud police" embroidered in big yellow letters on the back.

Those in the Darwinian cult who embrace his blind-faith macro-evolution mystery religion are entitled to their opinions, but they can't expect to be taken seriously by those capable of critical thought and intellectual honesty.

... "With me... the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?'" Charles Darwin

"Ah, yes ... yet another out-of-context quote,...In the actual letter, Darwin isn't discussing evolution at all. Not even close. He's discussing the role of chance and purpose in the universe, and the blue part expresses his doubts about his conclusions. This is irrelevant to evolution. ..."

I report - the intellectually honest critical thinkers can decide what's relevant and whether Darwin's religion ("macroevolution") has anything to do with the role of "chance" or not:

The Materialistic / Naturalistic / Evolutionary / Darwinistic Religious View:

The universe was created by chance events without ultimate purpose.

Man is the product of impersonal time plus chance plus matter.

Nobel prize winning biologist Jacques Monod comments in his Chance and Necessity, “[Man] is alone in the universe’s unfeeling immensity, out of which he emerged by chance…” and, “…chance alone is at the source of every innovation, of all creation in the biosphere. Pure chance, absolutely free but blind, [is] at the very root of the stupendous edifice of evolution….”

Noted evolutionist J. W. Burrow writes in his introduction to The Origin of Species: "Nature, according to Darwin, was the product of blind chance and a blind struggle, and man a lonely, intelligent mutation, scrambling with the brutes for his sustenance."

"Gould has written that if we could rewind the "tape" of evolution and replay it, the result would not be the same (Gould 1989). Among other things, humans are almost certain not to re-evolve. This is because the number of contingent causes (asteroids hitting the earth, continental drift, cosmic radiation, the likelihood of significant individuals mating and producing progeny, etc) are so high that it is unlikely they would occur again in the same sequence, or even occur at all. If an asteroid hadn't hit the Yucátan Peninsula 65 million years ago, for example, mammals probably would never have diversified, as they didn't in the 100 million years before that." ~ John Wilkins

“Secular humanism” or “scientific materialism” assumes man is the end product of the chance workings of an impersonal cosmos.

Etc., etc. .... ad infinitum Hahahaha

>> Tell ya what, here's a simple set of arithmetic identities, all valid in finite math, and an equivalent set could easily be part of a useful program. tell me what c resolves to and provide the proof of your answer.

a = b + 1
b = a - 1
c = b + 1
<<

Unlees I'm missing something This appears to just be a linear relationship (i.e. a straight line) a=b+1 where a and c are interchangable. Am I missing something?

The line would be 45 degrees with intercepts of (0,1) and (-1,0)

The system could be reduced to 2 lines a=b+1 and A=c

I guess I've got to be missing something.

Hahahaha

I wonder if Matchett-PI really is aware that he is lying brazenly, or if he is genuinely clinically insane. I mean, why else would he post such blatantly doctored -- or in some cases completely fabricated quotes -- and defend his actions after his lies are exposed unless he was batsh*t crazy?

he still considers that God a mythical monster.

Along the lines of Azathoth perhaps?